One only has to look at current global news for a premise to a very frightening story. Whether social injustice, right versus left, poor versus wealthy, or other issues the gathering of people under a cause can lead to social disorder, some unintentionally, some not. All one has to do is go back and study history to see the outcomes of mob rule and frenzy. It is not a pretty scene.
What if people in your own community gathered and decided to take what they perceived as due to them? What if government entitlements ceased to be paid from lack of funds? Sound impossible? Watch Greece particularly close over the coming months to see how their citizenry handles austerity measures. We Americans do not fully grasp many of the outcomes of poor financial choices made over the last decade. Today we stand unfunded by $118 trillion in our major entitlement programs. Simply put, past promises to pay benefits once calculated is $118 trillion short. Our national debt (sum of all deficits) is racing towards $16 trillion. Soon many major functions of government will be tested. Lately 4 of 19 major banks failed their stress tests. Civil engineers give our overall infrastructure a rating of “D” and a dire opinion that we stand on the edge of no return. Tensions are heightening in the Middle East.
These conditions create a scenario that many are now talking about and taking action to survive against. All one has to do is read the blogs of activists such as those involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many may have an honest purpose of ending corruption on Wall Street, but there is also a darker side if you read their posts. The internet and social media are creating frenzies and judgment is being passed by mob vote, rather than legal due process.
We stand on the brink of very challenging times and quite frankly a very frightening period of history. If people amass, justify violence over law, and/or emotion over rational thought, we will find ourselves making survival decisions. Such scenarios create the premise for a variety of stories for authors to tell.
