The Bracken Anthology

by Matthew Bracken

  Catch-22, anyone? When these demands do not bring the desired outcome, the participants will ratchet up the violence, hoping to force action by the feckless state and national governments.

  The “food riots” will be a grass-roots movement of the moment born out of hunger and desperation. It will not be dependent upon leaders or an underlying organization, although they could certainly add to the sauce. Existing cell phone technology provides all the organization a flash mob needs. Most of the mobs will consist of minority urban youths, termed MUYs in the rest of this essay. Which minority doesn't matter; each urban locale will come with its own unique multi-ethnic dynamic.

  Some locales will divide upon religious or political lines, but they will not be the dominant factors contributing to conflict. In the American context, the divisions will primarily have an ethnic or racial context, largely because that makes it easy to sort out the sides at a safe distance. No need to check religious or political affiliation at a hundred yards when The Other is of a different color. We Americans are all about doing things the easy way, so, sadly, visible racial and ethnic features will form the predominant lines of division. Would that it were not so, but reality is reality, even when it's is a bitch. Especially then.

  NEXT STEP: FLASH MOB RIOTS

  In order to highlight their grievances and escalate their demands for an immediate resumption of government benefits, the MUY flash mobs will next move their activities to the borders of their ethnic enclaves. They will concentrate on major intersections and highway interchanges where non-MUY suburban commuters must make daily passage to and from what forms of employment still exist. People making a living will still be using those roads to get to where they earn their daily bread.

  The results of these clashes will frequently resemble the intersection of Florence and Normandie during the Rodney King riots in 1992, where Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck's cab and beaten nearly to death with a cinder block. If you don't remember it, watch it on Youtube. Then imagine that scene with the mob-making accelerant of texting and other social media technology added to stoke the fires. Instead of a few dozen thugs terrorizing the ambushed intersections, in minutes there will be hundreds.

  Rioters will throw debris such as shopping carts and trash cans into the intersection, causing the more timid drivers to pause. The mobs will swarm the lines of trapped cars once they have stopped. Traffic will be forced into gridlock for blocks in all directions. Drivers and passengers of the wrong ethnic persuasions will be pulled from their vehicles to be beaten, robbed, and in some cases raped and/or killed. It will be hyper-violent and overtly racial mob behavior, on a massive and undeniable basis.

  Some of those trapped in their cars will try to drive out of the area, inevitably knocking down MUY pedestrians and being trapped by even more outraged MUYs. The commuters will be dragged out of their cars and kicked or beaten to death. Other suburban commuters will try to shoot their way out of the lines of stopped cars, and they will meet the same grim fate once they run out of bullets and room to escape.

  The mob will be armed with everything from knives, clubs and pistols to AK-47s. A bloodbath will result. These unlucky drivers and their passengers will suffer horribly, and some of their deaths will be captured on traffic web cameras. Later, these terrible scenes will be released or leaked by sympathetic government insiders and shown by the alternative media, which continue to expand as the traditional media become increasingly irrelevant.

  Implausible, you insist?

  This grim tableau is my analysis of human behavior patterns, adding flash mobs and 2012 levels of racial anger to the old recipe. Early-teenage MUYs today are playing "The Knockout Game" on full bellies, just for kicks, and proudly uploading the videos. They loot convenience stores as a lark, not bothering to conceal their faces. They and their older peers can be expected to do far worse when hunger and the fear of starvation enter their physical, mental, and emotional equations. The blame for their hunger will be turned outward against the greater society, and will be vented at first hand against any non-MUY who falls into their grasp while they are in the thrall of mob hysteria. These episodes of mass psychology we will refer to as “flash mob riots”, “wilding” or some other new name.

  THE OFFICIAL POLICE RESPONSE TO FLASH MOB RIOTS

  To gear up for even a single "Florence and Normandie on steroids" flash mob street riot, city police departments will require an hour or longer to stage their SWAT teams and riot squads in position to react. Ordinary patrol cars in small numbers will not venture anywhere near such roiling masses of hysterical rioters, not even to perform rescues. Those citizens trapped in their cars cannot expect timely assistance from local or state authorities.

  Even in the first days of widespread riots, when the police forces are well rested, it might take several hours to mount a response sufficient to quell the disturbance and restore order to even one major street intersection riot. In the meantime, scores of innocent commuters will have been attacked, with many of them injured or killed and left at the scene. It will be a law enforcement nightmare to quell the disturbance, mop up lingering rioters, restore security, and bring medical attention to the living and get medical examiners to the dead. And each jurisdiction will face potentially dozens of such scenes, thanks to the ability for MUYs to cross-communicate at will using their wireless devices.

  The far more difficult challenge for the police is that by the time they are suited in riot gear, armed and geared up to sweep the intersection, it will probably be empty of rioters. The police, with their major riot squad reaction times measured in hours, will be fighting flash mobs that materialize, cause mayhem, and evaporate in only fractions of hours. This rapid cycle time is a clear lesson taken from massive riots by immigrant French Muslim MUYs in their own religious enclaves and bordering areas.

  The American flash mob riot will exist almost entirely inside the law enforcement OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. Until recent times, superior police communications meant that they could use their radio networks as a force multiplier. With their networking advantage and cohesive reactions both within a department and among cooperating local agencies, police could act as shepherds guiding or dispersing a wayward stampeding flock. Today, the mob has the greater advantage, immediately spreading word of every police preparation by text and Tweet, even in advance of the police movement. Attempts by the authorities to stop the flash mobs by jamming wireless transmissions will have limited success. First-responders, victims of violence or persons reporting fires also depend on the wireless technology, so the localized blocking of cell transmissions will bring mixed results at best. In any case, the flash mobs will only need to use wireless devices at the outset of a riot.

  These enraged mobs in urban America will soon recognize that their spontaneous street riots cannot be stopped by the police, and then they will grow truly fearsome. For the police, it will be a losing game of Whack-a-Mole, with riots breaking out and dispersing at a speed they cannot hope to match. The violence will spread to previously unaffected cities as an awareness of law enforcement impotence is spread by television and social media. After a few days, the police forces will be exhausted and demoralized. As the violence intensifies and spreads, and in the absence of any viable security arrangements, supermarkets and other stores will not be restocked, leaving the MUYs even more desperate and angry than before. At this point, even if the functionality of the EBT system is restored, it will not matter because the stores cannot be restocked. The increasing desperation born of worsening hunger will refuel the escalating spiral of violence.

  Nor will violent conflict be only between the inhabitants of the urban areas and the suburbs. The international record of conflict in tri-ethnic and multi-ethnic cities is grim, making the old bi-racial dichotomy formerly seen in America seem stable by comparison. In tri-ethnic cities the perceived balance of power is constantly shifting, with each side in turn feeling outnumbered and outmuscled. Temporary truces, betrayals and new alliances
follow in rapid succession, removing any lingering sense of social cohesion.

  Bosnia, with Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim divisions, comes starkly to mind. The Lebanese Civil War between the Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze raged across Beirut (at one time known as "The Paris of the Middle East") for fifteen brutal years. Once a city turns on itself and becomes a runaway engine of self-destruction, it can be difficult to impossible to switch off the process and return to normal pre-conflict life. It's not inconceivable that the United States could produce a dozen Sarajevos or Beiruts, primarily across racial instead of religious divides.

  Vehicle traffic by non-minority suburban commuters through adjoining minority areas will virtually halt, wrecking what is left of the local economy. Businesses will not open because employees will not be able to travel to work safely. Businesses in minority areas, needless to say, will be looted. "Gentrified" enclaves of affluent suburbanites within or near the urban zones will suffer repeated attacks, until their inhabitants flee.

  Radically disaffected minorities will hold critical infrastructure corridors through their areas hostage against the greater society. Highways, railroad tracks, pipe and power lines will all be under constant threat, or may be cut in planned or unplanned acts of raging against "the system." As long as security in the urban areas cannot be restored, these corridors will be under threat. Even airports will not be immune. Many of them have been absorbed into urban areas, and aircraft will come under sporadic fire while taking off and landing.

  In the absence of fresh targets of value blundering into their areas, and still out of food, MUYs will begin to forage beyond their desolated home neighborhoods and into suburban borderlands. "Safe" supermarkets and other stores will be robbed in brazen commando-like gang attacks. Carjackings and home invasions will proliferate madly. As I have discussed in my essay "The Civil War Two Cube," so-called "transitional" and mixed-ethnic areas will suffer the worst violence. These neighborhoods will become utterly chaotic killing zones, with little or no help coming from the overstretched police, who will be trying to rest up for their next shift on riot squad duty, if they have not already deserted their posts to take care of their own families.

  THE SUBURBAN ARMED VIGILANTE RESPONSE

  In the absence of an effective official police response to the exploding levels of violence, suburbanites will first hastily form self-defense forces to guard their neighborhoods—especially ones located near ethnic borders. These ubiquitous neighborhood armed defense teams will often have a deep and talented bench from which to select members, and they will not lack for volunteers.

  Since 9-11, hundreds of thousands of young men (and more than a few women) have acquired graduate-level educations in various aspects of urban warfare. In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife. Today these former military men and women understand better than anyone the life-or-death difference between being armed and organized versus unarmed and disorganized.

  Hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces, lacking only the full-automatic selector switch. Their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors who did not serve in the military are often just as familiar with the weapons, if not the tactics. Today the AR-pattern rifle (the semi-automatic civilian version of the familiar full-auto-capable M-16 or M-4) is the most popular model of rifle in America, with millions sold in the past decade. Virtually all of them produced in the past decade have abandoned the old M-16's signature "carrying handle" rear iron sight for a standardized sight mounting rail, meaning that virtually every AR sold today can be easily equipped with an efficient optical sight. Firing the high-velocity 5.56x45 mm cartridge and mounted with a four-power tactical sight, a typical AR rifle can shoot two-inch groups at one hundred yards when fired from a steady bench rest. That translates to shooting eight- to ten-inch groups at four hundred yards.

  Four hundred yards is a long walk. Pace it off on a straight road, and observe how tiny somebody appears at that distance. Yet a typical AR rifle, like those currently owned by millions of American citizens, can hit a man-sized target at that range very easily, given a stable firing platform and a moderate level of shooting ability. I don’t mean this article to be a promotion of Eugene Stoner’s half-century-old design, but amazingly, it is still highly representative of the modern self-loading “sport utility rifle.”

  And there are a far greater number of scoped bolt-action hunting rifles in private hands in the United States. Keep this number in mind: based on deer stamps sold, approximately twenty million Americans venture into the woods every fall armed with such rifles, fully intending to shoot and kill a two-hundred-pound mammal. Millions of these scoped bolt-action deer rifles are quite capable of hitting a man-sized target at ranges out to and even beyond a thousand yards, or nearly three-fifths of a mile. In that context, the 500-yard effective range of the average semi-auto AR-pattern rifle is not at all remarkable.

  So, we have millions of men and women with military training, owning rifles similar to the ones they used in combat operations overseas from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. They are the opposite of unthinking robots: their greatest military talent is looking outside the box for new solutions. They always seek to "over-match" their enemies, using their own advantages as force multipliers while diminishing or concealing their weaknesses. These military veterans are also ready, willing and able to pass on their experience and training to interested students in their civilian circles.

  Let's return to our hypothetical Florence and Normandie intersection, but this time with hundreds of rioters per city block, instead of mere dozens. Among the mobs are thugs armed with pistols and perhaps even AK-47s equipped with standard iron sights, and except in rare cases, these rifles have never been "zeroed in" on a target range. In other words, past a medium distance of fifty to a hundred yards, these MUY shooters will have little idea where their fired bullets will strike—nor will they care. Typically, most of the rioters armed with a pistol, shotgun or an iron-sighted rifle could not hit a mailbox at a hundred yards unless by luck. Inside that distance, any non-MUY could be at immediate risk of brutal death at the hands of an enraged mob, but beyond that range, the mob will pose much less danger.

  Taking this imbalance in effective ranges of the firearms most likely to be available to both sides, certain tactical responses are sure to arise, and ranking near the top will be the one described next.

  THE SNIPER AMBUSH: THE NEW TACTIC OF CHOICE

  The sniper ambush will predictably be used as a counter to rampaging mobs armed only with short- to medium-range weapons. This extremely deadly trick was developed by our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the significant effective range and firepower of our scoped 5.56mm and 7.62mm rifles. Tactics such as the sniper ambush may not be seen early in the civil disorder, but they will surely arise after a steady progression of atrocities attributed to rampaging MUYs.

  Street intersection flash mob riots will not be the only type of violence exploding during periods of civil disorder. As mentioned earlier, the number and ferocity of home invasions will skyrocket, and they will be very hard to defend against. Neighborhood self-defense forces will be able to protect a group of homes if they are located on cul-de-sacs or in defensible subdivisions with limited entrances, turning them overnight into fortified gated communities. Individual homes and apartment buildings located in open grid-pattern neighborhoods with outside access from many directions will be much more difficult to defend, and the home invasions will continue.

  Carjacking and other forms of armed robbery will proliferate to previously unimagined levels, leading to a total loss of confidence in the government's ability to provide security across all
social lines. Stray bullets striking pedestrians or penetrating houses will take a frightening toll, even in areas previously considered to be safe. The police will be exhausted by constant riot-squad duty, and will not even respond to reports of mere individual acts of violent criminality. They will simply be overwhelmed, and will be forced to triage their responses. The wealthy, powerful and politically well-connected will demand the lion's share of remaining police resources, further diminishing the safety of average Americans.

  In that context, neighborhood self-defense forces will form the nucleus of the armed vigilante direct action groups which will spring up next in the progression. Suburban anger will continue to build against the MUYs, who are perceived to be the originators of the home invasions and gang-level armed looting raids. Survivors of street ambushes, carjackings and home invasions will tell blood-curdling tales and show horrific scars.

  The neighborhood defense teams will evolve into proactive suburban armed vigilante groups (SAVs) out of a desire to preemptively take the violence to their perceived enemies, instead of passively waiting for the next home invasion or carjacking. The SAV teams will consist of the more aggressive and gung-ho members of the self-defense forces, who met and compared notes. Often they will be young men with recent combat experience in the armed forces, who will apply their military training to the new situation. Major intersections and highway interchanges where ambush riots have previously occurred will be among the SAV targets. The SAV reaction times will be measured in minutes, compared to the hours required by major police department SWAT teams and riot squads.