We’ll accept for the sake of the hypothetical that someone got a pile of wet leaves burning with only a bic lighter and the left and right have gone guns hot.
We long ago went to a just-in-time delivery system for stores so what’s on the shelves and in the store rooms is what you’ve got. It’s truly going to suck in the cities. Super suck in big cities. And Ultra-Dragon suck in metropolises.
Wal-Marts, Sam’s Clubs, and Costco’s are going to be empty no more than 6 hours after the ball drops. If the 54th street irregulars manage to take control of a store and prevent looting it out, someone on the outside is going to put a few rounds into the transformers and any generators supplying power so that’ll be smelling like a slaughter house in short order without the freezers running.
Short answer, I pity anyone living in a city.
Let’s move on out to the suburbs. Less population density and generally more affable neighbors. Any neighbors that everyone hates have already been evicted or dumped in the alley. More likely to band together for mutual defense against the Main Street Militia sortieing out from Cityville than going out looking for trouble.
They’ll manage for a week or so until their pantries start getting bare.
And in the country.
The farmers and ranchers have blockaded the roads and most vehicle accessible routes with multi-ton farm equipment and implements. Any attempts to raid are exercises in stupidity and suicide.
They’ll be fine unless the big guns start playing.
Finally the wild card. The big guns. What’s the military doing while this plays out?
Did they take a side? Did they take both sides? Are they bunkering up not supporting anyone and just waiting to clean up the mess?
End game. What are the victory conditions. Is there even a victory or just everyone stopping in exhaustion?
Well, that’s part of the problem. The next US civil war isn’t going to be like the last one. The time “the ball dropped” will likely only be apparent in hindsight, and will probably be the subject of vigorous debate even then. It’s most likely going to be a series of increasingly violent affairs spread over a large part of the country, and patterns will only develop over time. You’ll wake up one day to realize you’re living in an armed camp instead of a suburb.
That’s the most likely outcome. Since the violence won’t be led from the top like a traditional army, the motivations will be all over the place, and will likely shift over time as various grudges develop. “I just wanted to protect my town, but then those people came in and killed a lot of my friends, so now those people are going to get it!”
As others said in that other thread, it will be less Civil War 1860s style, and more Ireland during the Troubles, or Yugoslavia during the break-up. Lots of little factions carrying out terrorist-style attacks. Occasionally they pull off attacking a military outpost or police station, but mostly it will be attacks against civilian centers. Show up, kill people and break things, then fade away, knowing your supporters in the community will help you hide from the police.
It kinda sounds like you are already aware of how it would play out. The rural areas would attempt to starve out the cities while hunkering down themselves, possibly with incursions to further disrupt supplies and logistics.
I get the feeling that people think that this is a both sides thing, that the left and the right are hankering to go to war with eachother. This isn’t the case, the left has no desire to go to war, and the right won’t as long as it gets whatever it wants.
And as with the last several decades, the left will give what the right wants to appease them and attempt to keep our country together for another few years at a time, and that will continue until there is nothing left to give, and then our country will simply fall apart as we have squandered every bit of equity and treasure in attempting to appease them.
No one wins, and people fight over the scraps that are left as China takes its position as the world’s superpower.
So it was the right that was occupying several blocks in Seattle? And it was the right wing protestors blocking traffic. And rioting and looting shops and burning police cars.
One of the good things about posting on the internet is that you don’t actually have to have a straight face to post something like that when there are so many obvious examples to the contrary.
I’ll just point out that this thread was about the actual civil war and not how we got there.
Ah, so that’s what you mean by civil war? Rather odd definition, but if it works for the narrative you are going for, then bully for you.
I suppose so, it also seems as though it allows one to distort what has actually been said and twist it into something entirely different with a straight face.
They might try, but there’s no way that the rural folks could sufficiently protect their low population, high surface area regions. If the city folks wanted some french fries, they’d just roll into Idaho and take some potatoes.
Of course they’ll take both sides. Something will happen that will give one side to claim control over some key portion of the government, and the other side will dispute that and maintain that they still have control of that part of government, and both governments will claim legitimacy, and the military will be split.
None of those things is even a small step towards civil war. Attempting to kill Congress and the Vice President to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the majority-elected new President, however, is.
The internecine strife described in the OP is more reminiscent of the Bloody Kansas period of the 1850s than the Civil War. To become a true civil war there must be, as @Chronos said, a political element to the struggle: some bone of contention, probably one side disputing the legitimacy of the government.
I hope they(whoever “they” end up being) don’t go far out of their way for idaho spuds, Maine grows better potatoes.
There is at least a small political faction. Here in potato-land, there are some number of potatoes that do want a shooting war. They have this image of liberals as talky talky antigun vegan softies who’s main worry is recycling their birckenstocks or something. They think it’ll be easy, plus they think they’re protecting the US and democracy and the constitution somehow, not undermining and destroying those things. For those people, victory is when all the intellectuals are dead and all the people who aren’t white males are subjugated and “in their proper place”
These civil war ideas are quite silly. One side does not get everything their way over a couple of issues and it is time to start shooting. Grow up and let the political process work, get involved. Most people are reasonable, but now it is time to start shooting because we are spoiled brats who aren’t currently getting what we want.
Who are you going to shoot, your neighbors? Because that is who you are going to war with. Does anyone actually live in a monolithic blue or red area? I live in Oregon, a reliably blue voting state but a very red state outside of the urban areas. Do you really think that when the shit hits the fan the rural areas will be killing people streaming out of the cities, no. And even the cities are not a monolithic group of like-minded people.
Our chosen form of government works very slowly, sometimes it feels like it doesn’t work at all, that is the beauty of it, rapid, radical change does not happen. After all the frustration with this process something more watered down and acceptable is the end result. There is always another day to fix it.
But by all means go ahead and throw a childish temper tantrum and talk of war. If your neighbors’ house was burning down would you help them? Of course you would. You are not going to sit by and watch it burn because they have the wrong political sign posted on their lawn. Personal politics remains a trivial thing.
Decide who you are going to shoot. Is it the nebulous very bad Republicans or will it be your neighbors. When you decide to shoot your neighbors and freinds who disagree with you then you are one step closer to insanity.
Unfortunately, there are a number of right wing militias who won’t grow up, and do threaten to start shooting if they don’t get what they want. Some of them have already assaulted the US Capitol. Others have assaulted various state government capitols and facilities. I don’t know why you would think that they are sated with this and will now stop.
If it comes down to me having to shoot people, it’s because they started shooting at me. It may be my neighbors, I’ve got a few who look forward to a chance to start killing some Democrats, and are really only held at bay due to their fear of judicial retribution.
No, and where would you get such a silly notion from? What would much more likely happen is for the cities to be targeted by right wing terrorists, killing people and destroying infrastructure. Cities actually have a number of weak points to them, and it would not be that hard to cut off electricity, water, and communications, as well as roads and bridges serving to supply the city with food and goods.
I agree, but it’s not my choice here as to whether or not Trump supporters decide to wait another day for a return to when America was “great.”
Well, yes and no. I’ll call 911, and I’ll provide them with clothing and shelter until they are able to make arrangements, but I’m in no shape to actually be fighting a housefire. If the firetrucks can’t get there because of destroyed roads, or there is no water in the hydrant because of damaged waterworks, then we’ll all just sit and watch it burn together.
If you feel that way, you really need to adjust your speech and direct it at those who are fomenting violence, not at those who are aware that it is a distinct possibility and are looking to find ways of avoiding or at least mitigating it.
And they’ll be right. For a while. But at some point, the libs will realize that shooting back is the only way they’ll be able to feed their families and be generally safe walking down the street.
Fair points. I suppose at some point we have to define exactly what a civil war is in this day and age and what’s just a massive uncivil disagreement.
The last civil war had infrastructure behind both sides to support prolonged hostilities. Today the sides are too closely situated for that to be a realistic possibility.
Even though the red-blue divide kind of follows beltways, I think a civil war is more likely along battle lines similar to the last one, the Confederacy and the Union, with states further west joining based on red and blue voting majorities.
Because of the Electoral College, we will tend to cement most states further and further into their camps, with some flow of people moving into territory friendlier to them. Dissatisfaction with whichever party is ruling DC will drive some state to leave leave the US, such as Washington or Oregon or maybe California. Or such as Texas or perhaps Florida. There will be too much sympathy for them for the rest of the US to chase after them. Either way, the remaining US is suddenly very lopsided politically, with a large population having no hope of significant political representation, and the unzipping process has begun.
It will look a lot like the war we’re in now, lots of terrorist attacks, lots of fascists using elements of the state to repress civil rights for nonwhites. As for what victory looks like, for red state America women are nothing more than vessels for children and voting is for white people, it’s illegal to teach about racism in America or to say climate change. Look at red state America now, it’s a dystopian shit hole, they want that everywhere.
For blue state America victory is we finally get to cut ourselves lose from the burden of red state America.
As I’ve said in other posts, the OP’s scenario is what the people wanting a civil war think will happen. They think they control the food and will be able to starve out the cities. I think the cities would remain far better supplied better than the OP makes it seem. He assumes widespread looting of stores, but I don’t think you’d see that in this type of civil war environment.
I think the stores would have already been under the cities protection, goods safe and ready to be rationed out well before the shooting started. It would be clear to all that the goal is to starve them out so you wouldn’t see widespread looting. City dwellers are more trusting of government by nature. So there would be more than enough food to last quite a while, a week is optimistic on the OP’s part. His OP is more of a doomsday nuclear scenario where it wasn’t expected and everything is destroyed.
Most power plants are in or very close to the cities, as are the parts need to maintain the grid. They transmit the electricity out to the rural areas. They would have to come to the cities to disable it, and those areas would be heavily defended. They most likely wouldn’t have enough people from the rural areas to take them.
All the shipping ports and airports are in cities, so they could be resupplied easily by allies. You’d don’t think the whole world would get involved in a situation like this? The cities would be the ones blocking the supply roads out to the rural areas. They would have to come to the cities to open them but as the OP said “any attempts to raid are exercises in stupidity and suicide”. They would be well out numbered. Don’t let those maps fool you, the red looks overwhelming in some of them but you have to remember that very few people live in those areas.
Plenty of blue states are more than capable of growing the same food, close to the cites, and have the people power to do it if things got really bad.
All of that applied to Sarajevo, and applies to Ukraine now. And yet, in spite of all those disruptions caused by war, the wars keep going. Wars can override rational issues like economics. People will suffer; people will go hungry; people will die. And yet wars keep happening.