Cars? California was the car capital of the U.S. The roads were choked. As in, not moving.
It was a fucking death-trap.
Marines and the few National Guard that had assembled did what they could. And a couple of NG units were wiped out for it. But something like two million people are believed to have died in the area south of L.A. That's on top of the estimated four million from the direct effects of the Plague.
Some made it over the mountains into the Valley. The Valley was better. Services were starting to come back, there was more water and such.
Then Fresno got hit by about a million refugees from Los Angeles. Most of them the toughest and meanest. Things were ugly for a while.
Estimates again. Deaths in the L.A. metropolitan area, total population about 12 million pre-Plague.
Four million direct effects. One in three again.
Maybe another four million in the first breakdown of order.
One million or so from secondary effects and secondary epidemics in the next four months.
Evacuees?
Well, Orange County, as of last census, has about a half a mil as noted. Rattling around like peas. Total L.A. metro area is a mil and change. Say a mil and a half.
And most of those went there after the Plague. Still not a bad place to live. If you're not addicted to water.
Like I said, it emptied.
Point is, a lot of the "blue" areas were like that. L.A. is worst case, but it's not completely off.
San Francisco got hit hard by direct effects of the Plague. Okay, one of the reasons, frankly, was AIDS. The drugs that HIV "sufferers" took kept them alive. It didn't rebuild their immune systems. But that was, at most, a couple hundred thousand. Nobody quite knows because the records were "secret" and nobody's bothered to dig out the no longer secret records.
But they had something like 40% mortality rate from direct effect. Worst noted mortality in the U.S. Reason? Nobody quite knows. See all the previous factors and reverse them is my guess. Low societal trust, healthy eating . . . Water, again, became an issue. They got it from across the Bay. Pumps weren't working. No water eventually equals death. Movement started, north and south.
South was The Valley again. The Valley had gotten hit, too. But there were big pockets of "high trust" zones. Suburbs, yeah, but farming communities, too. Those that hadn't gotten eaten by the suburbs.
The Valley mostly was able to absorb the refugees from the Bay area and even L.A. Not easily and the fringes in both directions got hit, hard. But they managed to absorb the blow.
Thing about it is, the Valley was one of the most conservative areas of California. The "blue" people from the cities were dependent on the charity of those evil "red" people. Who were clearly busting their ass to help.
Bottomline: Various and sundry effects of the Plague hit liberals hardest. Oh, the "poor" too. But if you look at the demographics of the Democrats they tended to be uppermost echelon of income and lowermost echelon of income.
The Plague, except for the tiny fraction at the very top, tended to hit both groups harder than middle class.
And if you looked at the demographics of the Republicans, they tended to be middle class.
There's one last point. Prior to the Great Depression, the Democrats were a minority party. The Grand Old Party (GOP: Republicans) had dominated every Federal office since the Civil War.
Hoover killed that. His response to the Great Depression was to tell people to pull up their socks and quit complaining. Not a functional response. People couldn't afford socks. It went over as well as "let them eat cake."
FDR simply did things that made sense to people. Oh, they were considered "communist" at the time, but they made sense. He put people to work. He made sure people got fed. He led. "A chicken in every pot" was his mantra. (Back then, chickens were high-cost food. They were hard to raise and focused primarily on egg production. The modern chicken farming industry was started at least in part by it being a "Hero Project" if you will.)
Warrick's response to the Plague had been:
Screw up the vaccination distribution. (The vaccine worked sometimes.)
Bitch about conspiracies.
Ignore all the experts on recovery.
Pour all her efforts into places that were free-fire zones.
Play the victim card.
Start seizing every business in sight and proceed to run it further into the ground.
Talk about the wonders of socialized medicine.
Talk about the environment.
Play the race card . . .
It was getting old. People were as tired of her "Plan for the Future" and "Conversation with America." They were tired of her waffling and she was starting to look a bit weird every time she was on TV. Like a robot or a brain-eating zombie. (Heavier and heavier doses of tranquilizers as it turns out. Good ones, too.)
Even liberals will see sense when survival was on the line. Just as a lot of Republicans saw sense in 1932. It's hard to call someone a "mindless myrmidon" or a "babykiller" when he's handing you food. And looks at your kid and gives you some more under the table.
Point is that a lot of good, devout, tofu-eaters were starting to go the other way. And the problem with unthinking zealots is, they tend to stay unthinking zealots.
When a long-term vegan has to eat meat or die, they have to rethink their morals. When a PETA "animals are people" lover has to kill and eat a house cat to survive, they then have to justify their choice. To themselves if to no one else. Ditto some long-term gun-hater who gets a gun for self-defense fighting her way out of L.A. and has to use it. Multiple times.
And if they are truly unwilling to adapt, they just die.
A conservative is a liberal who's been raped. There'd been a lot of that in places like L.A.
The Plague and the depression that resulted were causing a lot of grasshoppers to choose being ants or die.
Warrick was looking at taking her place in history next to Herbert Hoover crossed with Saddam Hussein.
The last fucking thing she needed was her former radical liberal tofu-eaters, now quickly becoming radical conservative fire-eaters, swooning over a company of Hellenic Mold Heroes cut off in Iran.
I was told, later, that my "winning looks" had a part to play in all this. Given the sexual orientation in some of the "switchers" I'm not sure that was a good thing.
And the Brass was being notably passive aggressive.
Then I got The Call.
So there I was, trying to stay away from the flies . . . Really, it was the only reason I was lolling around in bed. Oh, that and that it was, like, 2AM again.
And the phone rings.
"What now?"
"Sir, you've got a call."
The on-duty RTO wasn't real happy. It was either brass or reporters again.
"I'll be right over."
"It's . . ."
"I'll be right over."
So I sit down, wearing my best uniform and at least half awake.
Guy comes on. Colonel in dress uniform.
"Captain Bandit? Stand by for the President."
"Roger."
Oh, holy FUCK. No, no, no, NO!
Yes.
So there's the robot bitch. And to add to the misery, there's the fucking Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State on other screens.