Anarchy

Yesterday I watched about 40 minutes of "protest" in Athens Greece live on Facebook. The "protest" was marking the eighth anniversary of the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old student who was killed in 2008 by two Athens police officers. Molotov Cocktails, rocks, large fireworks and other items were hurled down the street at police officers in riot gear who every once in a while would close ranks and chase "protesters" back up the street. I don't know how long this went on...but it did not seem like an end was in sight while I watched.

Anarchy is something I have been studying lately. As a prepper, I know that our country could devolve into anarchy after a major nationwide crisis but I have been trying to wrap my head around what that really means. I grew up in the suburbs of a major metropolitan city in the Midwest during the 70's & 80's. Listening to "Anarchy in the U.K." by The Sex Pistols and "I predict a riot" by Kaiser Chiefs is as close to anarchy I ever got. Actually, I was raised about 5 miles from Ferguson MO....so, I guess had we stayed in that area I might have been closer to it...for a short while. The LA riots on TV and more recent riots in Baltimore are I guess my reference points.

Prepping causes you to have a little different perspective than everyone else. While some people think we are crazy conspiracy nuts (ok, some are), we tend to think we look at the world with glasses shaded less rosy. We look at history and say..."well, that happened...and we learned nothing from it...so we will see a repeat of that at some point". Put that in the "What if...?" column.

So as I watched the "protests" on my screen I wondered about what anarchy in "Any City" USA would look like. What could trigger people to act at their base level, here in the good old USA? I wondered how big and out of control would an event have to get before police abandoned their lines and went home to protect their families. After that happened...how many thousands, hundreds of thousands would die from the ensuing lawlessness and then collapse of our once great society?

The answer I always come back to as a base catalyst is food. Even in drought conditions here in South Carolina, water for drinking is not an issue. We are fortunate that in the United States water is in abundance..even when it isn't. Relatively. Our food supply is a completely different story. We have become accustomed to eating well, often and without concern for where our food magically comes from. If nation wide commerce stopped and food delivery to the local groceries outlets stopped I believe it would not take long for us to see what total anarchy truly is.

Most of us have heard the quote uttered in 1906 by Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”. I'm afraid that one day we will know the true meaning of those words. If we were smart...we would take it as a warning.

#food #anarchy #riot