This Adult Dystopian Novella is set after a world-wide economic crash, followed by a man-made plague that killed half the population and made over half the surviving men infertile. This story, could reflect reality in the not to distant future. Here is an excerpt from Danny Appleseed, Tinker, Teacher, and Baby Maker:

“Once a month, we would load the truck and go to Santa Rosa for Market Day. The city had been devastated by the mobs coming out of the Bay Area. The population was only a tenth of what it had been in the pre-crash days. On one July Market Day I found several pages in a notebook written by a Mr. Patrick Humphrey, the author and a History Teacher, which described the crash in California.

The Late Great State of California

The crash resulted from too many years of governments, corporations, and Banks kicking the can down the road. Combinations of debt, derivatives, and corruption became unsustainable. The trigger point was the immigrant riots in Europe. Burning cities pushed countries already on the brink into economic collapse. Derivatives failed, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Firewalls and other emergency measures to contain the developing disaster were erected and failed.

The interconnected world economy fractured and died. The effects of the crash cascaded down as bankrupt governments printed more paper money and inflation roared. Companies made massive cutbacks. Even government employees encountered bounced and missing paychecks. Unpaid utility workers stopped going to work, and power plants ceased operations. Stores closed and just in time deliveries of food, fuel, and other necessities became unavailable. Emergency police, fire, and medical service disappeared.

In California, the vacuum caused by the loss of police and National Guard law enforcement was filled by the cartel gangs. Sweeping up from Mexico, they joined their compatriots in Southern California to plunder a defenseless population. The panic was all-consuming, and the population attempted to escape the metropolitan areas. Within days, freeways were gridlocked, with people leaving their trapped vehicles and attempting to walk to safety.

The gangs followed, leaving a trail of plunder, rape, murder, and devastation. They either bypassed any pockets of resistance or burned them out. The mobs with fuel remaining poured North and East from Southern California. Those who traveled East met Nevada Militia, who blocked their entry with automatic weapons. Within a week, the interstate and the desert were filled with the dead and soon to be.

The mobs heading North pushed through the central valley and along the coast. They encountered mobs fleeing the bay area and more gangs. Within a month, the cities of Southern California became a burnt out war zone, with enclaves controlled by different gangs. The gangs had lots of plunder and willing slaves initially. But, soon the supplies of plundered food and fuel became short. Warfare, between the gangs over the shrinking supplies became the rule, rather than the exception.

In Northern California, the mobs leaving the bay area ran into the same merciless blockades when they attempted to enter Nevada on US 50 or US 80. The gangs rampaged throughout the region with the same results that occurred in Southern California. During the first winter after the crash, starvation stalked the state. The central valley, once “the breadbasket of America” lay fallow, and the warehouses holding food were plundered.

Even those individuals who planned to live off the land, quickly found there were more hunters and gathers than game or edible plants. The plague hit that summer and killed off half of the surviving population. By the next year a large percentage of the surviving men were infertile.

As the gangs depleted their fuel and food they starved in their enclaves. Some even resorted to cannibalization. As far as I know, Southern California is now a barren, lifeless, wasteland. In isolated pockets where it was possible, a few survivors grew gardens, and many survived the following winter.

With good fortune, some of us will learn how to survive and prosper in this new and different world. Our lives will be subsistence based for many years. I hope we will retain the knowledge base from before the crash, and I hope we will develop the wisdom to avoid the actions that led to it.”

This novella is available Free through Labor Day as a Kindle eBook on Amazon.com at: https://www.amazon.com/Danny-Appleseed-Tinker-Teacher-Maker-ebook/dp/B01JDQN72O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8#nav-subnav

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