Background on this story

First off, this story is partially fiction. I have no idea what people thought and said while they did this. It isn't fiction when it comes to the events. If anything, I choose to only write about a sample of the activities of the average police battalion during this period. By my extremely rough calculations approximately 20 police battalions shot at close range over a million people in 2 years.

I usually write stories about the near future. The future I see is really just the past in a new clothes. Men don't change - only the date on the calendar does. It is my belief that should there be a collapse of the economy, actually, I think it already is, then the future will be interesting.

This is a fragmented society held together by the most tenuous of bonds - electrons - and half remembered, half baked ideas of what a society should be. I personally believe should it come to that then America will not be a pleasant place to be for at least a generation.

You may believe that people such as the characters don't exist. They do. This story was reality for years a large number of people. The Germans and the Soviets lost more people in a single battle than the US did during the entire war. One out of five Poles died. The death rate in Ukraine was even higher. The Jews were exterminated. Ideological wars are religious wars and history has shown they are the most brutal.

The book that influenced me the most was Professor Brownings Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101

In it Professor Browning wrote about a reserve police battalion consisting of middle aged men who had grown up before NSDAP gained power and were by all accounts normal people. These normal people went out and shot thousands of men, women, and children when ordered. Yes, they had the option to refuse. No one was ever punished for refusing. Very few did. Most pulled the trigger.

If you are interested in life after a major crash then keep this mind. It will be ugly. Reading about it may be entertaining but there is a huge difference between that and the reality. I do not believe everyone is evil nor do I believe everyone will be an enemy. I do believe that out of a 100 people the odds are pretty good at least one of them will be an evil piece of shit.

One of the questions I have thought about is what do you do when confronted by evil in the guise of a human? For most of us there is nothing really we can do in a functioning society. That is why we have the law. Law enforcement, at least to me, is at the core nothing but people who have sworn to protect the innocent and not so innocent from the true predators. This is where Gardener and Max come from. On the other side of them is the characters in this story. To appreciate what is right you have to know what is wrong. Not only know it but understand it as much as it can be understood, fear it, and kill it.

Edit: I do not believe that if the US tears itself a part we will be living simple wars of conquest and looting. We will experience ideological war. Total war. I hope it never happens.

Edit Again: I do know a little about what I am writing here