Caitlin should have had a secured job with the DoD, but what happened was that government employees were not fired, but put on furlough without pay ‘until further notice’.
They had planned to fall back on their savings but the hyperinflation that followed the bank run soon wiped those out and they were solely reliant on their preparations and food stocks.
They had never got as far with their prepping as buying precious metals, but they figured that you couldn’t eat them anyway so what was the use? Better to buy more ammunition.
When the grid went down, Jack wished they had been able to afford the generator they had planned for, but by then it was too late. It was the beginning of fall and luckily they had a wood fire, a woodpile, plenty of propane and some camping style wood burning stoves and a rocket stove.
Jack had also stockpiled enough gas to refill both their cars once each. They had a Suburban and a Dodge grand caravan, and when the lights went out they moved the two vehicles to the rear of the house to keep them out of sight.
The plan, given that they did not have an alternative place to go, was to hunker down in place. None of their family was near and the only suitable place that Jack could think of was the farm belonging to their friends Bill and Cindy, who lived out in the country past Manassas towards Shenandoah. But they had made no plans and they did not want to impose uninvited. How would they feel if the roles were reversed, after all?
Bill was an old friend from Jack’s army days. He had fully embraced the prepper thing, but had gone beyond that to writing a libertarian blog highly critical of the Administration. Jackagreed with him, but given that he and Caitlin worked in DC and had security clearances, he didn’t want to make any waves.
Jack and Caitlin worked on getting their place ready to sit out the coming chaos following the cyber-attack. They did not in fact know it had been a cyber-attack, they just knew that the power had gone out and that it appeared to be widespread. They were getting FEMA updates on their wind-up radio, which were mainly transmitting locations for FEMA refugee camps and food distribution areas.
There was no more fuel in the gas stations so there was a network of pickup points for FEMA buses that would take people in. The unofficial word was that firearms were now outlawed and you had to turn them in, and anyone in receipt of handouts had to be RFID chipped.
Apparently, you did not have to go into the camps permanently, but if you took food handouts and returned home on the buses, you had to be chipped and file your address and details with FEMA.
Initially after the blackout their street had been pretty social, more so than in normal times. The situation had drawn a lot of neighbors out of their homes to talk and pass around information and rumor. There was talk of mass exoduses from the cities and gridlock on the roads, with many ignoring FEMAs request to concentrate under their control.
They had not seen much traffic, either foot or vehicle, through their sub-division and so far no rioting or looting had spread their way. However, there were rumors of mass violence as the mobs tried to get out of the cities into the surrounding country.
The remainder of the utilities had all shut down a couple of days after the power went out. There was no longer any water service. As the days dragged into weeks this took its toll, along with the beginning of starvation, and activity dropped on the street. Some families drove to the FEMA reception center downtown, or took the bus there instead. Others decided to head out and try to make it to relatives or simply into the country. Many stayed in place.
Jack had boarded up his ground floor windows internally with plywood and barricaded his front door, including moving an upright piano from the opposite wall in the foyer to block the doorway. They had shifted to cooking on propane tanks on a camping stove in the kitchen. It was the start of fall and they had firewood, but it wasn’t really cold enough to need it yet.
Jack had an old camping shower tent that he set up in the yard over a deep drop latrine that he dug. They would go potty in a bucket, and tip it into the hole, with the adults simply going out to this improvised outhouse for ‘number twos’. He was using biocide to tackle the waste in the hole and gradually filling it in with dirt; he would start another hole and move the tent when it was full.
They still had plenty of drinking water in 55 gallon drums in the basement, and there was a small lake that had fish nearby that he planned to replenish from, filtering and boiling the water as necessary. Jack had rain barrels attached to the downpipes on the corner of the house, and they had initially used this water to flush the toilets before they decided to block them as a defense against backflow and gas.
They were even able to shower, using the rainwater heated up over a wood stove to fill a solar shower. Jack had rigged a bar up over the shower in the master bedroom to hang the solar shower from, and it was fairly comfortable to use. The bath in the main bathroom was still occupied by the ‘water bob’ that they had filled before water service stopped.
It was not really practical to run a watch system, and there really did not seem to be much going on. Jack relied a lot on their German Shepherd family dog, Jasper. He barked without fail whenever anyone approached the house.
Jack took to stashing his tactical vest and rifle in an easily accessible central place. He had started wearing his battle belt with his handgun and some magazine pouches all the time anyway, and Caitlin and Andrew wore their battle belts also. Jack always slung his rifle on his back when he went outside.
The rifles and shotguns were moved room to room inside the house to keep them close, and the ‘Alamo’ was in the basement. They put the weapons up on six inch nails Jack had hammered into the walls, to keep them available yet safe from the young kids.
They ran the kids through ‘bad guy’ drills for taking cover in the basement. When they weren’t doing chores in the house or the yard, Jack and Andrew often took turns sitting in a chair by an open window in an upstairs bedroom, just listening and observing the junction. Between that and Jasper, they hoped to avoid being taken by surprise.
There had been some gunfire in the distance from time to time, sometimes the sirens of emergency response vehicles, but none of those lately. It was plain from the rumor mill that although FEMA was determined to concentrate everyone at their reception centers and camps, it was not working out like that. Many had gone in to the camps; others just used the distribution centers, handing over their firearms and getting chipped for the privilege.
Jack had expected more of a problem in his area from looters and marauders, but although he could hear the evidence of the gunfire in the distance, they had not really seen anyone transiting through the neighborhood. It was true that their sub-division was off the beaten track, it was not an obvious transit route so may have been bypassed.
Jack also wondered whether it had something to do with the high proportion of ranking government workers and those in the employ of the various DC alphabet agencies who resided in the area. Perhaps the area had been a higher focus for protection by law enforcement agencies?
There were some bad rumors spreading around about treatment at the FEMA camps. Because of this, many had headed out to the countryside or remained at home in their properties outside of the zones.
Of course, incompetence and corruption before the collapse had transferred to the current Regime. Progressive socialism with its doublethink logic went hand in hand with cronyism, incompetence and corruption. Those that actually handed over their guns in return for registration and food made the mistake of thinking the Regime was all-knowing, when in fact it was mostly a confidence trick. The corruption worked both ways, it benefited the cronies but it also created gaps for those wishing to evade the oppression.