Calamity in America (14 page)

Another thing that happened shortly after the beginning of Martial Law was the end of retail firearms and ammunition sales.  Gun and ammunition dealers and distributors all had their entire inventories seized by our government.  This happened all across the nation at basically the same time.  There was no warning given and both the military and a host of different federal agencies took part in this as it required a large amount of manpower.  This was done to keep the guns out of the hands of the rioters and agitators according to our government, and to make our nation a safer place for everyone.

Most of this all happened during a Presidential election year but because of Martial Law the elections were put on hold, though not until almost the last minute.  When this was announced it led to major discontent I can tell you!  But by this time the military had a very tight hold on most of the country.  Due to Martial Law, gatherings of any kind were forbidden.  In the beginning this was used to stop the riots before they got started and seemed reasonable, but now it was used to stop any type of gathering of American citizens, even very small groups.  So at this point there was almost no travel by common citizens and no public gatherings.  These two points made any resistance to the government more difficult to organize and there was always the matter of just who could be trusted.  With money so tight, the government immediately started a reward program for anyone who turned in these “agitators.”  Pitting neighbor against neighbor was a tactical and age-old ploy.

Of course, not all this was known by everyone and it was gradual process.  The media had slowly faded away.  Or maybe I should say the media was mostly closed down not too long after Martial Law was declared.  So the only information we heard was what the government told us or allowed us to be told.  There was still the evening news on channel five or whatever, just like always, but now it was basically run totally by our government.  This was not a secret deal at all and it was explained to us that this way our government knew that everyone was getting only the honest news, along with all the vital information we needed.  At first we all had the internet and phone service for added news, but then the internet went down, but not all at once which would have been seen as an obvious government takeover. Instead, the internet became spotty at first, like they were just having some kind of technical problems (and it was reported on the “news” that agitators were attacking internet providers), then the internet was just gone and it did not come back.  This was immediately blamed on the so-called agitators. 

Next was phone service.  Cell phone service suffered the same fate.  First it was spotty service and then it was no service at all.  Again, the “news” reported these outages were caused by the agitators.  The land line phones worked through most of the whole time but there was no long distance service, only local.  So you could call your neighbor and call your mother across town, but you could not call another town or city or another state to find out what was going on there.  Whenever a long distance number was dialed you would get a canned message like, “All lines are currently busy.  Please try your call again later.”

Later on I heard that ham radio and all private radio communications were also blocked or jammed.  I was never into that and know nothing about it but that is just what I heard through the rumor mill.  Rumors were all any of us had to go on.  No one had any real solid information about anything thanks to the loss of all communications.  And like all rumors, I assumed most of what we heard was false, and much of the important stuff we did not hear about at all.

We still had TV and radio stations through most of this.  Though the stations became fewer and fewer until there was just one TV station and only one radio station.  It was the GBS station.  The Government Broadcasting Station.  Or just Government BS for short.  The Government BS was a running joke but at the same time it was a joke that you were very careful about. 

Sedition was a crime and I think everyone knew that most anything you said could be called sedition.  Those taken away for any kind of crime were never heard from again.  The rumors ran wild as to what exactly happened to anyone who was arrested.  Again, all we had were rumors and guesses because no one knew for sure and most were wise enough to not ask too many questions.

So through most of the demise of the once great and powerful United States of America we could still watch reruns of some of our favorite shows and hear the weather reports.  And always get the daily government news broadcasts.  These stations gave us their version of the news and also gave us our orders.

These were dark days for the once great United States of America.  The “land of the free” and all that stuff we used to brag to the world about.  We had fallen about as low as we could fall.  There were no freedoms at all anymore.  We all now lived in fear of our all-powerful government, and we remained “free” only at the whim of our new master.

There were grumblings about the state of the nation, but these grumblings were spoken very quietly, and everyone was very careful to speak softly and quickly when they met one of their neighbors or friends or relatives at the grocery store or anywhere else that was a public place. No one wanted to attract any attention or make it look like a gathering of any kind.  The government was not everywhere but an awful lot of people were anxious to get the cash rewards for turning in those dreaded “agitators.”

Chapter 2

Not to toot my own horn but I am not stupid and neither was my wife.  When crap started happening we thought this might just turn out bad and last for a very long time.  So we tried to prepare for the worst of what we feared was coming.  I cashed out my small retirement account and we sold both of our newer cars and bought an older pickup (only because it was cheap).  Then, using what cash we now had, we bought useful stuff.  Food was first on our short list and we bought a lot of that.  We also bought garden seeds, a lot of them in the hopes that we could start and grow our own garden for food.  Plus garden seeds were very cheap so that was something we could afford.  But most of what money we scraped together went towards food for storage that we would use to keep us alive.

I would like to say that we had a mountain of cash and filled our rented house with supplies, but that was just not the case.  I was 24 years old and my wife was 22 at that time.  My retirement account was slightly less than three years old and had very little money in it.  Our two cars were pretty new but only one was paid for and after selling them both and paying off the loan on the one we only netted a few hundred dollars over the price of the well-used pickup we bought.  There were plenty of used vehicles for sale.  But still, it was extra money that we generated, and it did allow us to stock up some.

We did not need two vehicles anymore because my wife Jennifer had lost her job.  And with the dismal job market we both accepted the fact that she likely would not find another job.  There were no jobs to be had though she did try hard for any job at all.  There were no jobs flipping burgers or as a waitress or as a maid in a motel.  No jobs of any kind.  And she really tried hard to find something.

We would have sold more stuff but we had really nothing worth anything to sell.  And everyone else was selling everything they had at the same time as us, just trying to make ends meet.  We did cut our cell phone service.  I mean we cut it off completely.  No cell phones and later we cut off the land line phone also.  We had a small satellite TV service but we stopped that and we bought a used TV antenna at a yard sale and watched free broadcast TV, while it was still being broadcast that is.

We stopped our internet service and Jenny walked to the nearby library and used a computer there to surf the internet, at least until the entire internet service went down.  That was one way she looked for jobs—with the internet.  It was a free way to look for a job, too.

We couldn’t do anything about our rent, at least at first anyway.  When things kept getting worse we negotiated the rent lower.  Then, later yet, we just stopped paying the rent like everyone else.  Everyone stopped paying for rent, stopped paying their mortgages, stopped making car payments and credit card payments.  Everyone stopped paying all of their monthly bills.  Almost no one had a job or any money.  The credit cards stopped working early on and everyone had to use cash.  Even checks were not taken by any retailers though you could send in checks to pay monthly bills.  Of course, by that time just about everything a person needed was rationed by our totalitarian government anyway.

Soon even real paper money was not even used and instead you just used your monthly government-supplied ration stamps.  That was just done near the very end though.

Way back when the government closed all the gun shops it set off alarm bells for many people, including me.  We all (at least the ones awake) thought that the next logical step was total gun confiscation.  I had several guns that I had inherited from my dad and my granddad.  The government did not know about them.  I kept a single shot shotgun and a box of ammo for it in the house for defense but hid very well everything else gun-wise that I owned.  Good thing too.

Without any communications and with the very restricted travel and no public gatherings no one knew what was going on, and if something bad was happening somewhere from the government’s hand, then there was no way for citizens to effectively mount a resistance to the government.  At least not very easily anyway.

When the government finally came to our house we had no idea why.  They came and said they were searching for several escaped murderers and were searching every house in the whole area.  We were escorted outside and we could see our neighbors were all outside also while all our houses were being searched “for our safety.”  None of us really knew what was going on or what these government men were searching for except for what they told us.  And the excuse they gave us was not all that far-fetched.  Plus, when you have automatic rifles pointed at you and your wife, the best thing is just to do exactly as you are told and try to stay alive to fight when the odds are maybe not stacked so heavily against you.

When they finally exited our house they had that old single shot shotgun and the box of ammunition for it.  They took it with them.  They carried several guns from our neighbor’s house we noticed.  Our neighbors were also taken away, though surprisingly they returned a couple days later.  They said they were questioned about having so many guns.  They did not look very happy and were very subdued while we were talking to them when they got back.

I had to guess that this searching and gun confiscation was going on all across the country.  And it likely had been for quite some time and we just never heard about it of course because of the no-communications situation.  Just the enormity of this task of searching every house or apartment in the nation would require a very long time to complete. 

But in rural areas and small cities it would have likely went fairly smooth just like it did here in our small community.  Who knows where in the nation they started the searching and gun confiscation but it was most likely that the out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere that we called home would not be first on their list of places to search.  In our community I heard no gun shots, and even later I did not hear of any resistance during these searches.  I assume this was likely a normal result.  After all, none of us knew what the government had planned until they showed up at our door and the excuse they had was not that far out of line.  Plus, there was the fact of their overwhelming show of force when they did show up.  The ones that came and did the searches looked like they had done them many, many times before.

Apparently our government maybe never fully completed this task of total gun confiscation.  I don’t know what all happened but I did hear rumors later that there was quite a resistance group in our nation trying to stop our government from all these illegal and un-American actions.  Rumor also has it that a big part of our military rebelled and joined up with this resistance faction.  Rumor also says that the President, Vice President, most of the Cabinet members and a big chunk of our Congressmen and Senators were all put to death for their traitorous actions.  This could be true and it could be all just stupid rumors.  I have no way to determine the truth.

I do know that all the government radio and TV stations went off the air.  We also did not receive any ration stamps and when we went to the stores where we used those ration stamps they were mostly all closed down.  About two or three weeks later the electricity went off and never came back on again. 

Then it was total anarchy.

Chapter 3

As soon as the power went off things got pretty ugly pretty quickly.  Thanks to our foresight my wife and I had a fair amount of food stored away for our use but we were certainly the exception on this food issue, most people by this time had very little or no food stored.  Those that had stored some food had been using it to supplement the rations that we were allowed each month.  The rations were not very much and there was no way anyone could get fat off them.  By the time the power went off I had gone out and “found” a couple of the guns I had previously hidden.  It was very early winter or late fall and I decided to go hunting and hopefully return with a deer for us.  The fresh meat would really allow us to stretch out our stored food and we had made plans to make jerky out of all the meat so it would keep without being frozen and could even be stored in the now-useless refrigerator.  Plus it was something that could be eaten without further cooking.  Cooking was now a problem.  The act itself was the same for us because we had a propane gas cook stove in the kitchen.  But the cooking produced odors that could be smelled by any hungry person in the area.  That made for many knocks on the door and then the begging for food.