To keep on track with the downfall of the Roman empire, how about a mass conversion. Maybe the president becomes muslim, overthrows the democracy with his renegade military faction, and declares a jihad on all non-Muslims in the country. Unlikely, but it would certainly bring the U.S. to a halt.
Could we clarify WTF “come to a halt” means? I can name a buch of possibilities
– Sudden change of national mood to stunned silence (i.e. 9/11, JFK shot)
– Sudden end to everyday activities (Blizzard)
– Sudden loss of modern technology with all that entails (Y2K, EMP bursts).
– Sudden loss of governmental functioning (nuclear war)
I assume the phrase excludes “gradual loss of…”
Funny, I still had to go to work for those two or three days, was still able to buy food and underpants, and nobody was looting my neighborhood…
Some “stop.”
I would second the EMP Burst. IMO, that’s probably the most likely disaster of the magnitude we’re talking about, aside from an uncontrollable disease (which would hardly qualify, since it wouldn’t just be the U.S. going out of business).
A good-sized EMP, or a series of them, would at least grind the civilian element of the U.S. to a halt in all but the most rural regions. I believe a significant proportion of our military hardware is hardened against this sort of attack, but the military can only sustain itself for a very short time if the infrastructure of the sponsoring nation is completely in shambles.
As far as a revolution or civil war goes, I think it’s pretty unlikely. The civilian population is simply not armed well enough to mount a serious insurgency (other than an IRA-style bombing campaign, which would be unlikely to bring the country to a halt), and our military is extremely well trained to follow the orders of the government. Command is centralized in the extreme (one building, for all intents and purposes).
I agree that it is unlikely, but not for the reasons you state. I think the US civilian population is quite well armed, and the Army is still somewhat decentralized (residual Cold War structure), and our officers are trained not to obey illegal orders.
The reason I think it is unlikely? There is currently no reason to rebel because the mechanisms of government, while not perfect (nothing ever is), have been sufficient to address the people’s grievances to date. Let’s keep voting to keep it that way!
A half-mile wide asteroid, striking either the continental US or any point within a few hundred miles of a coastal area.
BTW, whatever happened to SeaSorbust, anyhow?
Well JR, I had to work for those three days as well, in fact, I worked for 72 hours straight after the incident (firefighter/cop) because no one really knew what the devil was going on. By ‘stop’ of course, I meant that the financial, business and transportation centers ground to a halt while the rescuers began to sift through the rubble in the search for living victims. I seriously doubt that your ability to purchase underpants was indicative of the state of our nation on that day. If that is the stick you use to judge the health and activity of the country, perhaps you should broaden your world view just a bit.
Dirty nukes in DC, NYC, and LA would probably put a monkey wrench in our gears. Crop dusters load with anthrax flying over those cities would be bad too, although anthrax by mail is easier to do. Let’s see what else… hidden snipers in every major city taking out random people, poisoned water reservoirs, daily suicide bombings at civilian establishments, how about the old sneak a box cutter through our crack airport security staff and fly a fully gassed plane into some more buildings.
If you’ve got nothing to lose, the sky’s the limit… 
Remember, John Walker Lindh said 9.11 was the first of three progressively more destructive attacks planned by OBL, who is still on the loose. Israel has been confronting terror attacks for 50 years and they still can’t stop them. Only America could think a new $40 billion cabinet and a $100 billion war with Iraq will make them safer.
Isn’t a hault something you find in a fen?
*“By God don’t get me wrong”
“Good Lord, I don’t mean…” *
Brent, are you really James Brown? C’mon, you can tell us.
I’m with furt. What does the OP mean by “come to a halt.”
I mean, even during 9/11, people were picking up their coffee from Starbucks and downloading porn from the internet. And why shouldn’t they? 9/11 didn’t happen all over the country, in every city and town, so the impact wasn’t equally distributed.
If there was a nuclear blast in or near the US, I don’t think we’d be watching Law & Order that night. But short of that (and an alien invasion and the Second Coming), I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with an event that would close down everything all over the country, effectively making the country “come to a halt”.
Sort of off-topic: Does anyone remember the Black Fog of London in '52? I had never heard of this before yesterday, but apparently thousands died when the city was smothered in an unmoving blanket of coal smog that hovered over the city for four days. Imagine four days of complete blackness, with everyone killing over with respiratory problems. It makes me shudder to think about it.
No way we would. I bet people would sue Al-Qaeda for the dirty bombing, and for the ensuing chaos. I would say most people these days wouldn’t know the word sacrifice if they were bludgeoned upside the head with a 2x4 with it written on it in 5000 pt bolded times new roman font. (caps natch)
Get serious. If you grew up during the comfort and ease of the 1945-2002 period in the US, you/we don’t have a clue how people actually survived in a calamitous time such as the depression(or flu outbreaks such as occurred after WWI http://chnm.gmu.edu/features/voices/ww1flu/listeningtowwith.html ).
The fact that a great portion of the population prior to the Great Depression was still agricultural or had immediate family still on farms lent itself to the populace being more self-reliant, able to feed itself. My dad and grandmother who were living in Danville, Va. prior to the Depression had to move back to the family farm to survive. If you grew up HAVING to work when you were a kid, you would have a better sense of the value of money. My kid who is 16 works part time, but he knows he doesn’t NEED the money to help his family survive. He knows that he can spend a great portion of it frivously. Now, you can say that’s my fault for not teaching him bettter habits, but I don’t think I’m unusual today.
If a full-blown depression broke out today, could the average American change their own oil in their car? Could they tune it up(of course not. Computer necessary.). Well, you could always ride the bus to work(urp! live in the suburbs–no bus), assuming you sill had a job.
But you’re right–people can SURVIVE just about anything. You can wear the same pair of pants for weeks on end. You can eat less. You can read a book because you can’t afford cable tv. You can move back home with the parents. But I think the US would come to a screeching terrible halt if the depression hit.
Also, the Axis in question is quite dissimilar to the WWII one. The difference being that it is neither unified nor an unprovoked aggressor. Iraq is a corrupt state ruled by an evil autocrat…that the US helped install because they wanted an evil sob to fight communism in the 60’s and kept around to fight Khomeini in the 80’s. Iran is a repressive theocracy that replaced another US installed dictator that has been steadily embracing democratic values the past 20 years. N Korea is a Cold War relic that poses its own threat. Al Queda, the Arab Street, Islamic revivalism, whatever you want to call it is a reaction to Western imperialism, not an invader attempting to conquer the world. If things came to a head, I doubt you would see anything like the enlistment movement of the 40s. More likely, you would see kids burning draft cards, moving to Canada, and marching on Washington ala a less successful US war.
Note what I said above about the 60’s and hippies. Think about the Kent state incident happening weekly at almost every major Unniversity out there.
While I don’t disagree 100% with you, I still think kniz isn’t wrong either. The WW2 generation was tested and passed with flying colors. But just because we haven’t been tested in the same way doesn’t make us “not as good”.
I’m sure the pioneers would have thought their successors to be weaklings too. (Whaddya mean you can’t hunt! Every little boy above the age of five should be able to kill his own deer, gut it, skin it, and bring it back home!) Every generation has its own challenges. And every generation rises to the occassion.
(I don’t see how being able to change oil is linked to greatness. I can make macoroni and cheese. If the world came to a halt, my macoroni and cheese would nourish me for days. How would changing oil sustain me? ;))
Your last line is the telling point.
<<9/11 didn’t happen all over the country, in every city and town, so the impact wasn’t equally distributed.>>
cainxinth has the thought process I had in mind. However, forget the high-tech dirty nukes and anthrax attacks. Low-tech and following the KISS principle works even better:
- Two dozen sniper teams picking off people at random in just as many cities, preferably between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each takes out ten people per day for a week and then move on to a different location to repeat the actions. Remember the Washington, DC area snipers only got caught because someone knew them (well, at least one) and their actions were personal. And as we all know now, only two people literally held millions of people at bay for weeks.
By choosing the holiday shopping period, they attack the economic forces as well. When you consider two-thirds of the economy is consumer spending and many (most?) retail outlets make most of their entire fiscal years sales in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, dominos start to fall.
In addition, doing this during late fall / early winter plays upon weather conditions keeping people in concentrated areas. People won’t flee to the hinterlands because of the weather, scarcity of goods and services and the emotional ties of the holidays.
- At the same time, random acts of hijacking loaded fuel trucks and driving them into schools and other places people congregate, exploding them with great devastation.
This literally hits America at its Achilles Heel – our children and our future. It would also probably generate the greatest emotion to fight back any way we can. This in turn would place enormous strains upon civilan authorities trying to keep the peace while investigating/pursuing the bad guys. You can bet the military would be called out throughout America, straining overseas deployments (which would have to happen) and placing remaining citizen soldiers all over America. I would see a draft enacted in a matter of days.
- Hijacking television stations, regardless of market size, and airring their political/terrorist claptrap. This is to raise the fear factor because Americans would tune in just to watch and disbelieve it’s really happening at their local television stations.
Doing this all over America, eventually escalating terrorist actions as time goes on would certainly halt America nationwide just long enough for the breakdown in supply chains to take effect. At that point, the interdependence of American culture being stopped would cause the long-term damage.
Probably no more than 100 terrorists could do all this in six weeks.
All the pro-lifers revolting and going around killing everyone would probably cause at least a few days of downtime.