It’s 7:35 a.m. on a Friday in the not-too-distant future as you grab your keys and leave for work. It’s payday. Your thoughts turn to the weekend ahead as you’re looking forward to a restful weekend with your family. You’ve had enough of the headlines, the news, and the websites that seem to publish nothing but bad news nationally and internationally. Rumors of war, economic collapse, race wars, and terrorist “chatter.” Fear porn, they call it, and you’re sick of it. After all, we made it through 9/11, the economic stress of 2008, events before and after and we’re still here. Anyway, you’ve got enough of you own problems to handle. It’s been a bad week.
Your doctor’s office called on Tuesday and informed you that your diabetic medication is not working and they are switching you to injectable insulin. Your wife is due to give birth to her third child, but there might be some complications. You also need to remodel your suburban home to accommodate your new addition. Your transmission is on the fritz and the mechanic says that he can get a used one installed for just under $1,200, money that you were saving for the hospital co-payment next month. Your money, it seems to be in great demand for too many things, yet the economy is supposedly getting better.
As you wait in line at the Starbucks drive-thru, your thoughts turn to your visit the night before with your elderly mother in the nursing home in the city. She seems to be going downhill, and she’s been sleeping more than usual. Your in-laws live across the country, and might not have the time or money to visit when the baby is born. You can’t wait until the work day is over, when you can go home, turn on the television and chill out. That is, of course, if you can avoid your pesky neighbor who has long been wearing on you, constantly blabbing about “being prepared for the worst.”
What are you going to do when the system collapses?
As you approach the drive-thru window, you find yourself cursing your neighbor under your breath. You’ve had just about all you can take of his constant yammering about hyper-inflation and bank closures, conspiracy nonsense about false flag attacks, and whatever this persistent bearer of bleakness has to say during his incessant warnings. After all, your money is insured by the FDIC, the supermarket is full of fresh produce and aisles of food, gas prices are lower than they’ve been in years, employment is up according to the nightly news, and things are as normal as they’ve always been.
That guy needs help, you think. Is he trying to sell me precious metals? He keeps telling me to prepare and protect my money, get food, water, and even a gun. What in the hell would I do with a gun? Why carry money – my debit card works fine. Food? The store is 3 minutes away, and it’s open 24 hours a day. What an idiot, you think, and as you look around, you actually begin to chuckle at his doomsday musings. Damn fool, just like on those “prepper” shows. He can’t scare me, these things won’t happen here, and even in the off chance they did, there would be plenty of notice.
Lacking actual cash, you hand your debit card through the window and take your $4.00 cup of coffee in return, arriving at your office 20 minutes later. As you power-up your computer at your desk, you scan your email, finding yet another message from your neighbor. The subject line reads “economic collapse imminent – get your money out of the banks.” Shaking your head in disbelief, you mutter a few choice words about his sanity and delete the email without opening it. Having your own problems, you force your thoughts back to work while waiting for the weekend to begin.
Just before lunch, you see several co-workers surrounding a small television in the break room. They are looking intently at the images on the screen that switch from clashes between protesters and police in the streets to people raiding grocery stores. The scene switches to cars lined up at gas stations, reminiscent to the gas lines of the 1970’s. A few fights break out among the drivers, but no police are in sight. As you see the images flash across the screen, you ask, to no one in particular, what country is this? Your question is met with frightened stares… it’s happening here, in our city, and it’s live someone says.
You walk back to your desk to call your wife, who by now should be on her way to a follow-up doctor’s appointment. You can’t get a signal as there is no signal. You decide to leave work early along with most of your co-workers. You decide to fill up your gas tank before things get bad, only to find that the few gas stations that are open are only accepting cash. Realizing you have none, you go to the nearest ATM only to find that the bank is closed and offline. You meet the same fate with all of the ATMs you try. The $2.34 in change in your center console is of little value, as gas prices are rising by the hour at the hands of gouging station operators.
Thoughts turn to your wife. Continued attempts at getting a cell phone signal fail, and you decide to drive home to hopefully find your wife, regroup and get your two children from school. Your trip home is far from the usual serene journey of yesterday and the days before. You are forced to take the back roads to avoid groups of protesters, looters and young people who seem to be forming into roving gangs. You think about your gas situation, noting that you’ve got just above a quarter-tank. But you do a five-gallon can half-filled with gas for the lawn mower at home, so it should get you through the weekend. Maybe, you hope.
As you arrive home you are unable to open your garage door, noticing that the power is out at your house and throughout the entire neighborhood. You leave your car on the driveway and rush in to your house, finding your wife seated at the kitchen table, listening to an old portable radio. She’s got her head in her hands and has been crying, saying that she was blocked from getting to her doctor’s appointment by power outages and gridlock. She barely made it home without being carjacked.
She’s trembling as you hold her in your arms, and she explains, in staccato fashion that everything is on lockdown, including the schools. Parents will be notified when their children will be “released.” The government has declared a bank holiday and no one is able to get any cash from their accounts until at least next week. The shelves of the grocery stores have already been stripped down to nearly nothing, and it’s dangerous, if not impossible, to take a trip to the store. As you open your cupboards and pantry, you realize that you barely have enough food to last the weekend. Fear begins to coalesce in the pit of your stomach as the unthinkable begins to sink in.
It’s your neighbor, you think, it’s his fault. And people like him. If he wasn’t such a pain, promoting all this doom, gloom fear, none of this would be happening. It’s because of all of his dire predictions that this is happening. If he would just have kept his mouth shut, kept his dire warnings to himself, people wouldn’t be reacting like this.
As your anger and fear mount, there’s a knock on the door. You peer out the window to see who it could be, given the rioting, street closures, and now, roving gangs. It’s your pesky neighbor. You walk to the door and angrily swing it open, ready to give him a piece of your mind. Before you can talk, though, he begins.
“I’ve been doing my best to warn you that this was coming, and now it’s here. I wanted to stop by because I know your wife is 8 months pregnant and your children are stuck at school. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve put aside some provisions for you to help you through this mess, to get you by for a week or two, or until we can figure out what we can do.”
You tell him that you’ll be fine, the police will never let the looting get to your street with the high taxes you pay. It’s an upscale neighborhood. Once things calm down, the power and other utilities will be restored and things will be back to normal.
He then tells you that the police are strained with riots, rapes and murders and are not responding to any calls, according to his scanner and his contacts with his fellow “preppers.” The gangs have emptied pharmacies and nursing homes of pharmaceuticals, and have even set some ablaze. The gangs are growing in number and size, and that de facto Martial Law has been declared in all urban areas across the nation. The Russians have just declared a state of “military readiness” against the United States. A statement is expected by the Oval Office later tonight.
Standing in stunned silence, you think about our mother, your children, your wife, your home, and the lifestyle you once knew. Unable to speak, your neighbor places his hand on your shoulder and tells you to come over to his house to take some supplies back. He adds that nothing is normal now, and it won’t be changing anytime soon.
“We’ve got to stick together to survive,” he says.
As he turns to leave, you tell him you’re sorry for laughing at his “doom porn.”
“My what?”
“Doom porn. You know, fear porn. Silly conspiracies. I never thought anything like this would everhappen, not in America,” you say.
With a slight smile, he replies, “I never heard you say that to me. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. There will always be people who refuse to believe it will ever happen to us. I just happen not to be one of them.”
Credit to Hagmann and Hagmann
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