America’s once proud and efficient railroad system, long the victim of government ineptitude, was unable to make any appreciable difference in the transportation crisis. Most of the factories that had been built in the past thirty years had been positioned near highways, not railroad tracks. Also, like the highways, most rail lines passed through urbanized areas, placing trains at the same risk as trucks. Gangs of looters found that it did not take large obstructions to cause train derailments. Within a few hours of each derailment they stripped the trains of anything of value.
A few factories managed to stay in operation until early November. Most had already closed, however, due to failing markets, failing transportation, failing communications, or the failing dollar. In some instances, workers were paid through barter, rather than cash. They were paid with the company’s product.
Chevron Oil paid its workers in gasoline. Winchester-Olin paid its workers in ammunition.
The last straw was the power grid. When the current stopped flowing, the few factories and businesses still in operation closed their doors.Virtually every industry in America was dependent on electric power. The power outages forced even the oil refineries to shut down. Up until then, the refineries had been operating around the clock trying to meet the increased demand for liquid fuels. Ironically, even though refineries processed fuel containing billions of BTUs of energy, most of them did not have the ability to produce enough electric power to supply all of their needs. Like so many other industries, oil refiners had made the mistaken assumption that they could always depend on the grid. They needed a stable supply of electricity from the power grid for their computers and to operate the solenoids for their valves.
The power outages caused a few dramatic effects. At a Kaiser aluminum plant near Spokane, Washington, the power went out during the middle of a production shift. With the plant’s electric heating elements inactive, the molten aluminum running through the hot process end of the plant began to cool.
Workers scrambled to clear as much of the system as possible, but the metal hardened in many places, effectively ruining the factory. If the plant were ever to be reopened, the hardened aluminum would have to be removed with cutting torches or jackhammers.
Electricity also proved to be the undoing of prisons all over America. For a while, officials maintained order in the prisons. Then the fuel for the backup generators ran out. Prison officials had never anticipated a power outage that would last more than two weeks. Without power, security cameras did not function, lights did not operate, and electrically operated doors jammed. As the power went out, prison riots soon followed.
Prison officials hastened to secure their institutions. Under “lock down” conditions, most inmates were confined to their cells, with only a few let out to cook and deliver meals in the cell blocks. At many prisons the guard forces could not gain control of the prison population, and there were mass escapes.
At several others, guards realized that the overall situation was not going to improve, and they took the initiative to do something about it. They walked from cell to cell, shooting convicts. Scores of other prisoners died at the hands of fellow convicts. Many more died in their cells due to other causes; mainly dehydration, starvation, and smoke inhalation.
Despite the best efforts of prison officials, 80 percent of the country’s more than one-and-a-half-million state and federal prisoners escaped. A small fraction of the escaped prisoners were shot on sight by civilians. Those that survived quickly shed their prison garb and found their way into the vicious wolf packs that soon roamed the countryside.
The economic depression and resultant chaos that gripped America also occurred around the world. Each evening, Todd and Mary Gray turned on the Drake R8-A shortwave receiver that Mary had mail-ordered from Ham Radio Outlet the previous year. They listened to the civilized world disintegrate. It was a sort of macabre form of entertainment. In many cases, radio stations went off the air altogether. The first to go was Radio South Africa, followed by the BBC, Radio Netherlands, and Radio Deutsche Welle.
On one notable evening of listening, Todd and Mary were listening to HCJB in Ecuador, and were surprised to hear gunfire in the background as the news announcer spoke. Then, even more incredibly, the radio station was taken over by revolutionaries while they listened. The Grays turned off their receiver after the microphone was taken over by a “Commandante Cruz” who was shouting in rapid-fire Spanish.
With the same radio, Todd and Mary were also able to monitor amateur radio broadcasters throughout the western United States. For a brief time after most other U.S. stations had vanished, WWCR in Nashville, Tennessee, remained on the air at 3.215, 5.070, 5.935, 9.985, 12.160, and 15.825 megahertz. Todd had the most success with the amateur band centered on 7.2 megahertz. The news that they heard from these ham operators was almost universally bad. They reported civil unrest in nearly every city with a population over forty thousand. Most of the hams were operating on standby power, as there were only a few isolated areas that still had regular utility grid power.
In Bovill, Idaho, the town nearest the Grays’ farm, there were not many noticeable effects of the Crunch during its early stages. The sawmill in nearby Troy, which had cut back to one shift per day two months earlier, shut down completely. The nearby Shell gas station sold out of gas in a two-day period.
Most Americans had a hard time dealing with the galloping inflation. This phenomenon had an only limited effect in Bovill. The local grocery store was sold completely out of stock by the time inflation reached triple-digit figures.
When there was little or nothing available to buy, the value of the dollar was inconsequential.
As in other small towns across America, most people around Bovill just stayed at home, glued to their radios and televisions. In rural Idaho, the riots that were breaking out in the major cities seemed a million miles away. The catchphrase of the day was, “Isn’t it terrible what’s happening in New York?”
To Todd, the phrase had a tone that he had heard before. It was the same tone used when people talked about famines and floods overseas. It seemed that the local residents were trying to deny that what was going on had any impact on them. The Grays’ neighbors expressed concern for their personal safety only when there were disturbances reported in Seattle. That was six and a half hours away by car. Things were getting steadily worse all over the country, but in remote regions like the Palouse Hills, there was a time delay.
During this pause, Todd started making some final preparations. First, he closed and latched all of the steel shutters over the windows of their house.
Mary commented that it made the house seem dark and gloomy. Todd just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to get used to it.”
Next, Todd mandated that they lock—and keep locked—both the gate at the county road and the gate on the chain-link fence around the house, and the doors to the house. Mary suggested that they also keep their Power Wagon pickup and herVolkswagen Beetle locked up in the garage with their distributor rotors removed.
Mary also suggested that she and Todd have a meeting with the Latah County civil defense coordinator in Moscow. By this time, however, the phone line—and with it their Internet connection—was dead. They finally decided that the benefits of such a meeting were outweighed by the expenditure of now precious gasoline that they would have to use. It was a sixty-five-mile round trip to Moscow. Further, Todd did not rule out the risk of social unrest in Moscow—even if the city did have only thirty thousand residents.