You help scavengers, you shoot looters. (Okay, okay, shoot me. It was too good to pass up! But I'm getting ahead of myself again.)
Inner city neighborhoods that had been the target of "specialized policing" were the absolute worst. These were the grasshoppers gathered in force. Trust barely existed within family groups. There was little or no social cohesion.
After the first wave of the Plague they were free-fire zones. I'd have rather walked down a street in Qom butt-assed naked than drive through South Detroit in a Stryker.
But not only were those areas where the bulk of her voters came from, they were where the news media was. If it bleeds it leads and it was bleeding hard in South Chicago, Detroit, Watts, East L.A., Washington, DC . . .
The worst spots were to be the target of the most concentrated effort.
There's a military term for this. It's called "slamming the wall." The basic concept is that if you take your enemy's strongest position, it will break him. It's also called "suicide." Porkchop Hill, the Somme, Coldwater Harbor. Historical examples of "slamming the wall." Also historical examples of highest casualty assaults. And none of them did a damned bit of good in the end.
Neither did pouring vital supplies into the free-fire zones.
And then there were the Rules of Engagement. They went way beyond "do not fire unless fired upon." Warrick was, after all, a lawyer. Written out, they went to five pages of flow diagrams. They were worse than the ones issued towards the latter part of the Iraq Campaign. Essentially they came down to "do not fire." Period. If you shot anyone, for any reason, you were probably going to jail.
Soldiers were prosecuted, during that period, for firing upon people who were actively firing at them. Guys went to Leavenworth who had bullets in their body-armor. Dozens of food shipments were lost to gangs that forced the soldiers to turn them over. It was that or have a fire-fight. And they were not permitted to fire. When it was more or less one on one, and it often was, not firing first meant heavy casualties. The leaders, and I don't blame them, were willing to give up the shipments rather than take the casualties.
Units were required to "maintain a minimum presence of force." That is, they weren't supposed to ride into the neighborhoods like an invading army. No matter how violent they were. Habeas corpus had been suspended but you couldn't tell it if you were a soldier. Unless, of course, you were up for punishment. Then you hadeus no corpus.
And some very heavy weapons had gotten into the hands of these gangs. One Stryker was hit and destroyed by a Javelin while escorting a food convoy. Most of the units doing the escorting didn't have Javelins issued. (A Javelin is an anti-tank missile. More about those, later, too.)
So while the red counties, the rural counties and smaller cities that made up "fly-over country" were organizing and recovering and hoping for some help, however little, the "blue" counties, many of which had gone completely bat-shit, were having food and medical supplies and emergency supplies shoveled into them like coal into a furnace and for about as much result.
Okay, they were not all losses. Notice I didn't mention Harlem, Queens or the Bronx. That's because they didn't ever get that bad. Not even close. Part of that was because the mayor refused to let it get that bad. Mortality had been incredibly low. Less than 20% and that, frankly, tended to be among grasshoppers. Police presence was high and the local National Guard unit had been turned into something closer to the New York militia. When they were ordered to displace to handle problems in New Jersey—Newark was one of the war zones—the orders were ignored.
Food shipments got to where they were supposed to go. Bodies were collected. Order never really broke down in New York. It's possible for at least a local government to maintain near normal conditions even in densely populated areas, even in a disaster as bad as the Plague. But it took strong and effective leadership. People have got to trust. Let's all work together said "I'm trusting you to trust me to not screw you." Enough people got the idea that it worked. The few "random associators" among New Yorkers supported the mayor. And the "King" types were willing to follow a strong man in a time of trouble. Call it a cult of personality.
Like I said, if Cranslow runs for President, I'll work with him. He's even a fiscal conservative. What the hell.
Chapter Nine
Random Associations
The majority of the functional distribution, therefore, happened outside cities. Much of it was illicit. That is, food convoys were ordered to Philadelphia and "broke down" before they got there. And set up distribution stations. And fed people that needed it and weren't going to try to steal it. And, often, turned bulk materials over to "local random associations" for distribution.
Okay, the gangs were, often, local random associations, more or less. Some of them, especially Hispanic and Asian, were at core familial based. (And by Asian I don't mean just Chinese. Note the Caliphate.)
But they were not going to be, in turn, acting as useful distributors. The food was used for internal power. There was a touch of that in places with the churches and other associations (VFW did enormous if unheralded good during the Time). They had the food and they made the choices who ate and who did not. Generally, this was not race based as was often reported. It was, to an extent, based on trust issues. But mostly it was based on the same reasoning that young lady in Blackjack used. Feed local emergency services personnel first. Feed kids and elderly next. Feed random associators next. Feed the grasshoppers last.
There was a degree of blending and bonding during the Time which was unprecedented in American history. Generally, for actual biological reasons, people do differentiate on the basis of color. (Yes, babies do not. Children, by and large, do not. The trait kicks in at puberty. It can be culturally adjusted, but it's a defined human trait. A white child raised among Chinese is going to trust Chinese over whites. True study. Another urban myth trashed.) And there were then and are now bigots on that score.
But due to societal factors, random associators had a fair slice of military personnel in their midst. And military personnel deal with all kinds of colors when they're in. It's hard to be in the military for any time and not become to an extent color blind. They may look at cultural factors, but they tend to look past color per se. The two are not equal.
(Had a bit of an issue on that part just before the last Iran deployment. We were having a hard time getting a widget out of one particular supply unit. I paid them a visit to try to sweet-talk. Ended up talking with the unit commander. Didn't get far. And then the fuck-head had the audacity to say "I guess you're just not part of the African-American mafia." So I laughed and admitted I wasn't. And then I turned the whole thing over to the IG. Along with my report of the meeting. About three weeks later the unit commander was on his way out of the Army.
By the same token, Colonel Richards, just about the best fucking battalion commander I ever had, was black. Culture is not the same as race.)
So when a white kid walked up to one of the white distributors and asked for extra food to take back to his family, he was judged on his social appearance. Did he have his pants hanging down to his knees and his ball-cap on sideways? Was he wearing an earring? Did he look "ghetto"?