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Monday, January 28, 2013

Day 99- In The Cities

When the power went out people went crazy.  So many people, so unprepared, so close together.  People went to work for the first few days, but found little they could do.  The retailers lasted a bit longer, almost a week, until desperate people with no access to money started pillaging for whatever food and supplies they could get their hands on.  It wasn't safe to go to work.  It wasn't their problem anyway.  Let the store owners deal with the pillagers.

Crime was at an all time high.  Looters were out on the streets, breaking into buildings, taking the big ticket items- the big tvs, stereos, computers.  They expected to be sitting pretty once the power came back on.  The days passed, as gangs and looters ran into each other and fought in the streets, as they stabbed, shot and bludgeoned one another to death.  Riots broke out across the cities.  Desperate people, with nothing to eat, worried about friends and family, got caught in the crossfire.

People were afraid to leave their homes.  They barricaded the doors, covered the windows, hiding in the dark, waiting for rescue. 

Police tried to maintain order.  So much crime.  So many deaths.  Bodies littering the streets.  They're human too.  People were out of control.  The world was out of control.  Each day fewer and fewer officers showed up to work.  They too were hungry.  They too were worried about their families.  They knew it wasn't safe to leave their families at home alone.  And for what?  To do body counts?  There was no controlling the raging mobs.  There were no jails to put them in- the guards were gone, no food to feed them, no electricity to power the security.  Their only recourse was to shoot to kill.

The doctors and nurses went to work.  They tried to care for their patients.  Back up generators ran out of fuel.  Equipment failed.  People died.  More and more sick, injured, hungry and desperate people came in.  The medicines ran out.  The bodies piled up.  The hospitals became centres for disease out breaks and crime.  They were human too.  There was nothing they could do.  One by one, they stopped going to work and chose to stay with their families.

Government and city officials became targets for crime.  People were convinced that they must have food and supplies in their big fancy houses.  People were angry that nothing was being done about the power outage, the crime, the services.  Of course some public officials managed to flee, but many were murdered.

Weeks passed.  Desperate, hungry people couldn't hide any more.  They ventured out of their hiding places looking for food.  Looking for some sense of safety, some sense or order.  Many were killed.  Many got sick from the disease infested streets.  Bodies lay rotting in the streets.

Some made it out of the cities, to friends and family in smaller towns.  Some stayed.  Some took disease with them and sentenced those who had given them refuge to die as well.

4 comments:

  1. Very nice, very realistic, I think anyway. Now, will they be coming to your town is the question.

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  2. I've also thought of those in nursing homes, hospitals, mental inst. & prisons. They wouldbe left un attended. Med cabinets and doors are now set under powerr locks...scarey thoughts

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  3. thank goodness you are posting again! i was reading somewhere that everyone in the world is waiting for a show called the walking dead to return and all i could think was - i am waiting for Wendy's Colony to return - bahahahah! both becky and katidids make interesting points - the main reason why i am loving your story is because it is so realistic. i've said it before, i'll say it again - you write the best TEOTWAWKI fiction out there. and you are making me think, plan, prep and think some more about what will really matter if SHTF - regardless of the reason.

    your friend,
    kymber

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  4. The Walking Dead- lol. My boys watched a few episodes of that. I glanced at the screen a few times. Creepy. I told them if they give themselves knightmares not to wake me up.

    I think my town is fairly safe. It's far enough from the major centers to not really be worth pillaging, not on good farmland, and we were headed into winter when the power outage first started, which would keep a lot of people away. On the other hand, if the power outage had started in the spring or summer, it may have had the opposite affect- people heading north to escape the heat.

    The institutions would be a mess, no doubt. I wonder whether the worst offenders would remain locked up to die, set free, or be able to escape. That in itself would be scary.

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