Savage Planet

The end of the world as we know it began as a social experiment in prison reform. A surprise ruling from the Supreme Court declared the incarceration of criminals in penal complexes as a violation of their civil rights. Lawbreakers, even the most violent, were instead to be supervised in minimum-security facilities within their own communities.

The colossal stupidity of this ruling was apparent almost immediately. Within a year violent crimes including killings, armed robbery, pedophilia, and kidnappings surged to 100%, and soon doubled again. The reformers countered the critics declaring any social experiment must go through a chaotic trial period, citing the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s as an example.

Five years later, the experiment had gone too far to turn back. Criminal’s gangs forced themselves into local governments and formed their own political parties. As they once manipulated our liberal judicial system, law-breakers now used the legislature for their own devices, creating new laws that favored the criminal over the victims of crime. Anarchy reigned in a Mad Max world.

Law-abiding citizens congregated in groups for mutual protection. Churches and school auditoriums were filled with desperate families seeking refuge from the gangs. Then, someone seized on the idea of finding shelter in the penitentiaries, long abandoned by its former occupants by court order. Encircled by massive chain link fences, guarded by spiraling towers, and honeycombed with living quarters, the prisons became perfect, though cramped dwellings for the refugees from the cities.

Many wondered why the criminals ever left, upon observing the spacious and well-stocked libraries, kitchens, and machine shops. Surrounding the massive structure were fields for planting crops as well as barns for livestock. The prisons were completely self-supporting.

Designed to keep felons in, these magnificent monuments to America’s once great Penal System now kept the wrongdoers out. Interstate commerce soon ceased altogether and these "security cities" became self-sustaining islands in a sea of lawlessness.

Long shunned by the boomer generation and their offspring, forced into nursing homes and often forgotten by family, the elderly suddenly became a much-valued asset. Now the seniors’ life experience growing up on farms, raising their on food, and living off the land was much sought after by a new generation whose civilization was in ruin.

It is amazing how our mores of equality for women, born during the prosperous decades of the last century, fell to the wayside in the face of national survival. Females again became the raisers of children, while cooking and cleaning amidst the cramped hovels that were their homes. Vegetables and meats were canned and preserved, and clothing became all hand made, as women were retaught the old skills of their mothers and grandmothers.

Meanwhile, men reverted to their traditional roles as hunter and gatherers in the surrounding fields and forests. As the oil stopped flowing in the worldwide crisis, so did most mechanical vehicles ceased to function. Crops were again raised, as they had for centuries, by man and animal driven plows. While some worked, others stood ready to ward off attacks by roving gangs. They worked alongside firearms in the manner of the first colonists, who remained constantly on guard from Indian attack.

The facilities were well restructured for defense. The massive watchtowers that once guarded against an internal threat could equally protect against an external menace. The guns that once pointed in to deter revolt and riot, now faced toward the outside peril. Terrain favored the defense, as the new cities were surrounded by perilous swamps and rivers. The prison was an island unto itself, with only a single, well-guarded roadway providing entrance.

By the turn of the 21st Century, the new Security Cities were thriving. Population from the first rose from 500 to 10,000 with newer dwellings matching the increase. Some trade was ongoing with other like cities, but only under heavily armed guard, similar to the great caravans of ancient times.

Life was again tolerable for the new "inmates" of the old prisons, and sometimes good. Nothing though, could erase the memory of what was now lost. The spacious malls and fully stocked grocery stores; the well-equipped hospitals and parks. Gone were the lazy Saturdays when neighbors greeted one another and children played without care in the streets. Gone as well was the ability to come and go as they pleased, or to sleep soundly in their beds without care, often behind unlocked doors.

Now there was only the fence and the armed guards, plus the constant vigilance. There was also the daily threat from the menace beyond the iron gates: the armed bands that lived only to pillage and destroy the tiny bastions of Civilization that remained.