This narrative is not a prediction, it is not a forecast, and it isn’t even highly probable—not yet. But events here and abroad are moving in the direction of devastating consequences faster and faster on a daily basis. And even though I do not hold myself out as a doomsday predictor of unspeakable news, somebody has to at least explain the possible road ahead that nobody wants to hear or read about. I elected myself for that task.

The polls currently show that Joe Biden has a huge lead over Donald Trump. If the elections were held today, Biden would be the easy winner. The following four years would be difficult, but we would be pulling together. And we would emerge from these times relatively intact. But there are 145 days until election day. And we all know there will be many changes coming our way twixt now and then.

Donald Trump has shown us that he will pull out all the stops in his quest for a victory. He has a bulging war chest of campaign funds from which to unleash barrage after barrage of lies, distortions, and mis-directions on a scale unheard of in modern times. He recently proclaimed the recent 2.5 million employment gain as a huge victory for humanity, despite the 21.5 million worker loss just one month earlier.  But that is only a tiny wiggle of what his campaign is able to do. We will all be pummeled by them soon enough. But what if the virus and the economy have us all in deep murky waters…and he is still the predicted loser come late September or early October? What then?

He could declare a national emergency, and postpone the elections indefinitely. Would he be prepared to ward off an intervention by the Supreme Court? Yes. And would he accept a ruling against him? I think not. He might even try to disband the Supreme Court. In his own words, “What would he have to lose?” Neither justice nor fair elections are part of his vocabulary. He is a dictator—a megalomaniac. He could seek personal safety by hunkering down in remote places such as the top-secret Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado. There he could issue Executive Orders every day that direct people and events to bend to his will, or order other shenanigans for us to do until the polls shifted decidedly in his favor. Whether that took 6 months or 6 years, he wouldn’t care. 

Meanwhile the economic wheels from around the world would grind to a halt. And a new Dark Age would envelope us.  We would be reduced to growing and stockpiling our own food, to keeping  many weapons at our disposal, and to hunkering down as best we could with little or no support from public utilities for electricity or water. Banks would all close as borrowing and lending both dried up, stock prices would plunge to all-time lows, while law and order would quickly become a thing of the past. Survivors might aggregate into renegade bands who made up their own laws as events demanded. Why would anyone listen to reason when a few bullets could win most discussions?

How might a megalomaniac respond to such conditions? I believe he would launch a nuclear war against all his enemies. And that could include everyone we now consider as our friends.  The rest of this story goes beyond my limited imagination. Early survivors would be too few and too far between to expect there could be long-term survivors.

Well, there it is. With a few refinements, it could be made into a B-grade movie. But with a few more changes, we may not have enough time to include them all before the nukes began reducing us to rubble.