A Fictional Time-line

Federal money for EBT ran out November 8 at 9:30 a.m. EST

"Red" states drained other budget-buckets to back-fill the Federal shortfall for-the-duration.

"Blue" states hard-stop the EBT transactions.

Anticipating "issues", the major grocery chains had only made a half-shipment of the non-perishable foods the night before. They HAVE to ship the perishable because they don't have the refrigerated space to store both out-going and incoming at the warehouses.

Stores like Walmart had not only stopped all shipment of items that are traditionally targeted by looters but had stripped their shelves of electronics, drugs with street value, ammunition, paint, aerosol cans, flammable liquids, cosmetics and jewelry. It was a simple matter to tweak the "remodel" plan to load the merchandise in CONEX containers next to the warehouse in a way that would jack-in-the-box merchandise in an orderly way such that it was painless to repopulate the shelves.

Looting was in full-force by 11:30 a.m. in many large cities and several small ones. It was as if they had planned to riot in loot in-advance. They didn't just loot food. They took everything that they thought that they could hock for $$$. After all, the government owed them.

Many employees who worked in the stores walked-out. Many of them were on food-stamps due to age, low wages and part-time hours.

Immigrants from countries that had recently experienced food insecurity, countries like Venezuela and South Sudan, filled their carts with rice, dried beans, flour, garlic, dried dog-food and vegetable oil. At the other end of the spectrum, others focused on "premium brands" and turned up their noses at "house-brands".

By the end of the first 12 hours, there is nothing edible left on the shelves of all stores within a 30 minute drive of The City where looting occurred. Restaurants were closed.

Home break-ins are not a big thing as The City as it convulsed in an orgy of undirected violence.

Hospitals shut down admissions. 

9-1-1 went down due to the volume of calls two hours after dark on the first night.

The huge surge in home break-ins started the second night. Military doctrine contends that it takes three-times as many trained attackers as defenders to overcome a defended position. Some of the homes were swarmed by mobs. Others, in more isolated areas were breached by teams of two or three. The attackers were not "trained". Many of the defenders were...or were at least intimately familiar with the structure they were defending.

M855 wound track. Image by Fackler.

Some of the "alarms" were stupid-simple. A dog. A stack of tin cans in front of a door. M855 ammo makes hamburger out of the first and second guy in the stick and the third guy usually has a really bad day. And Bubba doesn't stop pulling the trigger until he is SURE the threat(s) are down. He rolls them in a tarp and drags them to the middle of the road one-at-a-time and leaves the bodies there.

By day four, the Blue states were refining their EBT rolls to identify "at highest risk families". That is, the families with children under age 10 and families where both adults were senior citizens. The money is going to run out eventually and they want as intelligent of a glide-path as is practical.

Emergency response was in total chaos. Most agencies are resourced to "handle" a two-day surge with twice the typical number of calls. They build a back-log and work it down. They call in mutual-aid. The number of incidents super-saturated the system. Mutual-aid was not available because every agency was pinned down. If 9-1-1 had been "up", the number of calls would have easily been 20X normal, hour-after-hour-after-hour. Responders called in sick at work. They were hardening their own homes and making their own preparations.

Each party blamed the other. The conservatives point to the not-rioting Red states. The liberals point to the majority's intransigence in bowing to the will of the minority. The mass media keeps running the liberal's message. 

The liberals release mass-dox files on ICE officers and other "Federal" law enforcement personnel.

Conservatives respond by mass-doxing NGO personnel and everybody who works in mass-media.