then crop failures
Bankruptcies
Layoffs
Stock market crashes
Intermittent power outages
Bold crimes, day and night
Spot shortages of gasoline
Schools close
Groceries close
Home invasions
Banks close
Roaming gangs
All drivers carry guns
Stores looted
Power grid shuts down
People disappear, fate unknown
Gas stations shut down
All vehicular traffic stops
Water supply shuts off
Hospitals close
Food becomes currency, money no longer accepted
Police quit responding
Empty 55 gallon drums used as fireplaces
All nearby trees cut down for fuel
Hunger
Fire fighters quit responding
Homes fortified
Pets disappear for food
Gangs become organized with heavy weaponry and battering rams
Neighbors band together for defense
Vigilantes kill criminals
Communities begin to war
National and state boundaries disappear
Military armories are plundered for weapons
Leaders emerge – brutal people with weapons and material
Some people try to survive alone in wilderness areas
Most homes abandoned now
Scrap steel is formed into weapons
Fortresses emerge
Vigilantes kill any stranger
Starvation
Cannibalism
Diseases begin to spread due to poor sanitation
Epidemics – typhus, cholera, plague, poxes
Death by disease affects criminals and vigilantes equally
Fortresses are abandoned due to diseases – people are afraid to cluster
Some have resistance to diseases, survive
Most children dead by now from disease, starvation
Fortresses re-emerge as epidemics wane
Population small now
Vehicular traffic reappears as warlords seek out gasoline in underground tanks
Spies infiltrate nearby fortress communities
Blitzkrieg raids on nearby communities
Warlords seek people who can grow things
Warlords enslave growers
New children are born
Larger armies form to protect fields and granaries
Last stores of gasoline are gone
Most skilled workers dead now
Some armies roam and pillage without farming
Warlords import horses and mules from areas where they weren’t all eaten
Mules are used to plow
Armies range further on horses to areas with rainfall, pillaging
Quarry tools are formed from discarded steel
Drought
Crop failures
Slave hordes forced by warlords to migrate to areas with rainfall
Warlords/armies succeed only where slaves succeed at growing food
Towns form
Deforestation for fuel
Hit and run bands scrape by in deserts, preying on farmers and towns
Last plundered munitions run out
Slaves forced to mine coal for fuel
Scavenged ancient machinery used to build catapults, other weapons
Hit and run bands steal horses, become skilled horsemen
Drought
Crop failures
Cannibalism now rare except as practiced by hit and run bands and for religious ceremonies
Starvation
Disease
People are sacrificed to appease god(s)
War
Misery