Almost fifteen years ago now, I read a post-apocalyptic novel The Postman by David Brin. It was about post-collapse society in the US, after a string of events took out the US around the turn of the millennium. What struck me as odd and implausible at the time was the way in which the collapse occurred, but given what I know now, this book sounds eerily prescient.
The collapse started with nuclear and biological attacks. The country was in the process of recovering from those. But humanitarian efforts were being thwarted and government relief workers were being murdered by a party of hyper-survivalists that formed around the writings of a guy named Nathan Holn. I think you could basically boil Holn's philosophy down to hyper-masculinity plus might makes right.
The whole thing seemed implausible to me, because I'd lived through the Oklahoma City bombing, September 11th, the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and so forth. In all of these events, the country was more-or-less unified after the disaster. No fuckin' way is any of this scenario going to happen. The American people come together after these things; they don't kill relief workers.
Fast forward to late 2024. One day, I woke up to a news story about hurricane aid workers being harassed by -- you guessed it -- survivalist militias. Here are a few example articles from the time.
FEMA workers change some recovery efforts in North Carolina after threats | AP News
Witnesses saw armed group harassing Helene aid workers in Tennessee, sheriff says | AP News
And now, in early 2025, we have Trump wanting to eliminate FEMA completely.
Trump proposes "getting rid of FEMA" while touring disaster areas | AP News
In The Postman, the catalyst was nuclear and biological attacks. While those are still plausible threats, a more likely scenario for our time would be natural disasters brought on by climate change. But any of those scenarios is just a catalyst. The collapse in the book happened because people with a certain philosophical outlook actively sabotaged relief efforts.
What seemed far-fetched to me in 2011 now seems at least possible, though hopefully not probable.