In the run-up to Election Day, militias trained and prepared for a civil war they believed would result no matter who won the election. Hunters cleaned and lubed their weapons for deer, bear, ducks or rioters. Gun sales nationwide increased twenty fold as ammunition supplies dwindled. One YouTuber who focused on prepping and personal protection displayed a wall of more than three dozen rifles along with more pistols than one man can carry. How much ammo did he advocate? As much as you can afford (after storing food for at least three months to a year). A hundred rounds for each weapon? A thousand? How much is sufficient? What are you fighting? A single assault by one person, or multiple assaults by an organized group of banditos? How could you know? More would always seem better in the absence of information that was impossible to acquire. For what had not yet happened, nothing could be known, only guessed. No one would intend to find themselves one round short of an effective defense. Nor would anyone expect that ammo would be readily available once the shit hit the fan. Only the most over-supplied hoarder would trade ammo for gold while the streets burned. But a starving man would trade ammo for food when he had nothing left to protect.
Bug-out camps were hidden deep in the woods. The delicate dance was one of having an escape camp close enough to reach in the worst of conditions and far enough away from populations to be safe from marauding groups needing supplies while escaping the city. A good camp would be too far for most people to reach by walking, would have its own independent supply of water, a large garden site and alternative energy sources (solar preferred over power generators that create noise that the curious might track). It would already be stocked with food and critical provisions and have a protective perimeter. There would be room for family and a few friends. Who would you trust? What skills and resources would they bring? What goods? Selectivity is critical; these people become family, like it or not. As with an obnoxious uncle or ne’er-do-well cousin, you must accept that you may never be able to oust or evict them. Could the remaining group survive without the .50 cal machine gun and 20 cases of ammo that Uncle Bob requisitioned while serving in Afghanistan? Where would they go? How would they support themselves? Would they exact vengeance for being excluded? It is imperative to be sure you wanted, better yet needed, to include them in your bug-out plans. Some trades do not work out. Some needs must go unfilled.
Mack pondered the question of forming a group for a few months before he and Susan decided to limit themselves to family, the two of them and their two children. Part of the analysis had been who might be a good fit. Who could they trust? A more difficult consideration was who among people they considered friends they would choose to exclude. Exclusion felt heartless. It seemed like they were refusing aid and assistance, surrendering empathy, disregarding their own moral and ethical foundations. How could they realistically deny people they loved the option of joining them? Practical issues aside, exclusion was tantamount to abandonment. Their friends might not have the ability to protect themselves, to feed themselves, to care for themselves in case of illness or being wounded. Two heads better than one and a reliable group essential for defense. What if they were the ones excluded? How would they respond? How would they feel about the friends that left them behind? Could you trust anyone who decided that you were unworthy of inclusion?
The entirety of the issue was damnable because it forced a false choice between those from whom Mack could expect a contribution of goods, effort, or skills and those who nominally had nothing to offer. The very words described a selfish and materialistic evaluation, the antipathy of Mack’s values. But what exactly were “values” in this new world? Survival seemed paramount, but was it? Or was survival an excuse for the self-interest that inevitably excluded the weak, the old, the people most in need of communal support? Extend the logic of the survival argument, and you find yourself defending the accumulation of excess. Billionaires never had enough money despite having so much they could never possibly spend it all. Their wealth was their measure of their self-worth, their self-importance, their superiority over anyone who had less, whose lives were steered by the pursuit of simply having enough to live, to survive in a sense that was more elemental before the pandemic.
But survival had become a struggle, a real and physical, in some cases armed, fight for life against those who would take what was not theirs, including life. Survival had been reduced to its most basic terms: Who would starve? Who would be killed or worse? Survival included keeping alive and safe those you loved. It was not purely personal. Eventually, survival must encompass more than the essentials to embrace a thriving life, a reestablishment of the lost world of the past, a restoration of community and order. However, that sense of survival loomed too far in the future to have meaning in the present.
In the meantime, Merks, self-appointed gang rulers of the unaffiliated, unprotected, the vulnerable who had not yet exhausted their own resources, collected in small towns where they were unencumbered by law or order other than their own. Their objective was acquisition of whatever they deemed of value to themselves, food, ammo, slaves. A key characteristic of being a Merk was the importance of compensation. Their code did not recognize generosity or sympathy. Any person who had nothing was, to them, worth nothing. And those with resources had value only to the extent of their resources.
Standing opposite and against the Merks were the MAGs, tribal clans, mutual assistance groups of families, neighbors, fellow church members, co-workers, who had banded together for defense and collective effort. The MAGs established areas that could provide defense and support resources such as farming, trapping, hunting, livestock, a sustainable community. Merks had no intention of settling long enough to plant gardens or practice animal husbandry. They consumed what they could capture, feast and famine, then moved to the next killing ground.
Along with the pandemic, scuttlebutt and rumors of threats washed through the area like storm waves surging over the barrier islands. Merks on Highway 55 had decimated the scattered communities of Olympia and Reelsboro. Despite the resistance of small church-related groups that included skilled hunters familiar with the land and terrain, the sociopaths were better armed and traveled without moral reservation as they killed any opposition and pillaged what they needed and what they wanted, burning whatever they left behind. The locals, being Southerners, could not but recall the devastation of Sherman’s march from Atlanta, a legend preserving the traditions of a suppressed society no longer applicable much less accurate.
As the disease closed in, Mack could see only one option, they could flee in their sailboat. But how could they navigate this horror? How could they anticipate the needs of next month or next year when the experts expected the virus to resurge? How could they raise food? How would they eat? Steal? Chickens, geese, or ducks aboard? Buckets of vegetables hanging in the rigging and over the lifelines? From where would they procure fresh water? Fresh or brackish streams flowing into the small rivers and bays? Rain alone? Would that be sufficient?
The variables were nearly unlimited. When you start with zero immunity and no vaccine, where can you find safety? Where can you find security? With no baseline and no comparable point of reference, there is no guiding star, no zone of safety, no bunkers like they built in the sixties in anticipation of the nuclear wars that never came. There were only the dead and the newly infected, the daily statistics that told people too little but confirmed the worst. They were not winning. They were the data of history that someone would study much later.