Glen Tate: 299 Days: The Collapse

While there were gangs, this did not mean that California or the rest of America started to resemble an apocalyptic wasteland. Many people were still living their normal lives.

People still took their kids to school and went to their jobs, if they still had them. Most people still had jobs as the unemployment rate was only 25%. People went to baseball and football games. They had friends over for BBQs. They did normal things, but the crime rate was very high and people were gravitating toward groups for mutual protection.

California police and the California National Guard, along with federal troops, were still under orders that they could not be seen as hurting minorities. It was a joke. Many innocent minorities were getting killed because there was no law and order. The California government got blamed for this, too. They couldn’t win, because they weren’t trying. They were muddling through. They were being bureaucratic, which is all they knew. They were following orders from idiot politicians. California was so racially and politically divided it couldn’t function. And it was bankrupt. The state of California was ceasing to exist as a state. It was becoming a place on the map where the Federal Government was technically in power.

People began leaving California in droves. Many drove up Interstate 5 to Oregon and Washington. The California real estate market tanked with so many people leaving and so much violence.

The role of the Federal Government was strengthening in some regions and decreasing in others. In California, the Northeast, and the cities of the Midwest, the Feds were running things. The areas being run by the Federal Government became known as the “Former United States of America,” or “FUSA.” At first, the term “FUSA” was a joke to illustrate how the United States was not as united as it once was. But it was increasingly becoming real.

In the Southern and Mountain West states, which people started calling the “Southern States,” the Federal Government was becoming increasingly less relevant. Many states, again led by Texas, were having their Congressmen and Senators take an oath of loyalty to their states, not the Federal Government. Some refused, but most took the oath. Southern States were passing laws nullifying federal laws. Oklahoma passed a law that guns made and sold in Oklahoma were no longer subject to federal firearm regulations. Southern states were passing laws reaffirming their Tenth Amendment rights, which was the part of the Constitution essentially saying that power not specifically given to the Federal Government remains with the states and the people. The Federal Government was exercising all kinds of power not specifically given to it under the Constitution, like draconian environmental laws. Federal agencies like the EPA essentially stopped working in the Southern states. They had no money to enforce their regulations, so they just stopped coming to work.

The country was not headed into a second Civil War because it wasn’t necessary. The Feds were so broke and powerless that the Southern states could just ignore them. There was nothing dramatic about it. These states, along with many Americans were quietly ignoring the Federal Government.

Before the Collapse, most anyone who imagined what dissolution of the United States would look like often jumped to dramatic conclusions. They would envision large federal and rebel armies fighting each other; like the Civil War.

It didn’t happen that way. Real life is usually less dramatic than grand predictions. Instead, it was a gradual dissolution over the period of a few months based on the impracticality of the Federal Government continuing to govern, followed by the Southern states coming into fill the vacuum. There needed to be some level of government, especially honest police protection and infrastructure like roads and utilities, and the Southern states could do it. The Feds couldn’t. It was that simple. It was practical, not dramatic.

During the Collapse, most people didn’t want to choose sides; they just wanted the economy to be fixed and the crimes to stop. No one wanted the bloodshed that would come if the federal and Southern armies began fighting each other. There were ten thousand nuclear warheads out there, many of them on bases in the Southern states. The Feds kept strict control over the launch codes for them, but there were still ten thousand containers of highly radioactive materials that could be used to make “dirty bombs.” Those were a conventional explosive that distributed uranium or plutonium in an area, making it radioactive. Not as big of a “bang” as a nuclear detonation, but devastating all the same. Very quickly into the Collapse, the Feds secured these weapons. They had planned for this.

There was another reason why there wasn’t a fight between two giant armies. Oath Keepers and those loyal to the Federal Government were thoroughly mixed together; sometimes a unit was split down the middle between the two. Oath Keepers called themselves “Patriots,” and those loyal to the Federal Government, “Loyalists.” Each side knew a full-on fight with large armies, navies, and air forces would destroy both sides in about fifteen minutes. Fight over what? Who wanted to rule over the burned out and broken shell of the FUSA? It was like a couple that, instead of getting divorced, just starts doing their own thing but still live in the same house and go through the motions of being married. They still fight, but not the final showdown kind of fight.

“Don’t Tread on Me” flags were everywhere, especially in the Southern states. The flags were even popping up in Washington State. There were quite a few Patriots in Grant’s state.

The “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which was once a mild political statement, had now become a battle flag. It was a statement that a person had taken sides and that he or she were accepting the risks that came with that. Grant got a big “Don’t Tread on Me” flag for the cabin. At the beginning, he didn’t fly it out there because he didn’t want to attract attention, but he knew that he would be flying it at some point. He knew it. It was that weird feeling of the present and the future happening at the same time.

Everything happened so quickly in those first days of May. Each day after the May Day Dump of bonds brought some new amazing revelation that the whole system, held together with duct tape and chewing gum, was coming apart. The U.S. could no longer borrow money. There was a giant tax protest movement. Each day after the May Day Dump, millions of people were quietly deciding they would no longer pay their taxes. Arizona renamed its National Guard the State Guard and announced it would use state forces to enforce the border. Several states, led by Oklahoma, announced that they would no longer contribute to Social Security for state employees, and they would not assist federal authorities in tax collection or any other activity. Large communities in California were given orders to relocate because of all the violence. A gallon of milk was approaching $10. There were gasoline shortages.

Grant and Lisa were both home a few days after the May Day Dump. Grant was making some lunch when Lisa got a call from her boss. She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. They didn’t want her to come to work. She commuted from Olympia to Tacoma, a thirty-minute drive in normal conditions, but the interstate was jammed. It was taking two hours to get to Tacoma. Her boss also said that they couldn’t guarantee her safety in the hospital, despite all the need for doctors as a result of the increased crime. The crime was causing the ER to overflow. People were running into the hospitals—some armed, some not—to steal pain killers. Lisa’s hospital didn’t have enough guards, and the ones they did have were unarmed because long ago the hospital decided it would be a “gun free zone.” Doctors and nurses were being robbed in the parking lot and attacked for no reason.