I used to wonder what it must be like to watch your homeland become a warzone. I had no fanciful notions about the nature of war, but I never guessed what it felt like to see it happening in your own neighborhood. For the first time in 200+ years, in the Invasion of 2019,  we Americans were the guerillas, the defenders, the invaded. I guess I got my answer. If you haven’t lived under a nuclear bunker all your life, which was a smart idea in those days, you’ll already be familiar with this period in the world’s history, but pay attention anyway.
    It all started with the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump… A name that will forever stand in history as the man who started World War 3. He was a surprisingly popular candidate, probably because of the second crisis of confidence that arose in the post-Snowden era, in which confidence in ideas was valued over their objective merit (somewhat more than other decades). There were many people who turned to the Republican party because of the growing dissatisfaction with Obama’s foreign policy. He, and by extension the Democratic party, were perceived as being too weak in responding to the terrorist caliphate ISIS, and the most successful of its type to date. So they put Trump up there to fix the situation… He gave people what they wanted, I suppose… something to fight, someone to blame their troubles on. True, if he hadn’t started the war, he might still have brought the U.S.A too far down the path to xenophobia and caused other troubles, but it’s hard to justify the loss of life of WW3 on such a flimsy might-have-been. As it is, there are still those who believe he was in the right. So what did Trump do? He had managed to make more mistakes in foreign policy than any president yet. He somehow made an enemy of the major middle-eastern powers who we were helping fight ISIS, as well as alienated some of our more established allies. The real definitive point at which he began the war was when, after a year of escalation of tensions, on November 19 he decided to break out the nukes in his signature “decisive” (read: impulsive) style. Somehow he’d gotten everyone so worked up that nobody stopped him in time. Of course, in short order they realized that he’d just used a nuclear weapon against what was effectively a distributed militia, wiping out tons of civilians.
In response, ISIS and North Korea formed an unlikely partnership to smuggle small dirty bombs (regular bombs that spread radioactive fallout without a significant explosion) into major western cities. Kim Jong Un also launched some missiles which fell short, embarrassingly. (Perhaps the only reason we didn’t experience nuclear winter from mutual defense agreements is Trump’s bad example and that at the end of the day, there’s usually enough people who don’t want to watch the world burn to counter those that do. But there was another problem to deal with in Russia. Vladimir Putin, a Stalin of the 21st century, had tried to expand Russia by annexing the satellite states, but it ultimately failed. His taking of Crimea after failing to get Ukraine is as much an admission of failure as the Soviet agreement to split Poland with the Nazis. This degeneration had gone mostly ignored by the West in favor of the conflicts in the middle east, but the Trump conflicts sparked off a coup over Putin’s intention to take advantage of the distraction and follow Trump’s example. Country-wide riots and looting, the worst on any black friday to date, various boilovers on unrelated tensions and especially confusion from a temporary collapse of the majority of the power and communication grids (even the most complex backup systems, due to a bit of radio jamming) caused by unknown hackers conspired to distract the Government, which was split into even more factions than normal and useless at making decisions right away, from China sneakily making its move. With radar and the chain of command impaired and wavering, China believed that it was the perfect time to attack the U.S. since the majority of our forces were deployed overseas anyway. They falsely believed we had little way to defend against a land invasion. Of course, since we did still have a military to speak of, even if it was mostly absent at first, most of their invasion consisted of attempting to send infantry in basic transport trucks throughout the country to control the citizenry. These were perfectly vulnerable to even the weaker armament the average citizen was allowed to possess back then- unlike nowadays, it was hard to get much more than a semi-automatic rifle or handgun, and they were more expensive as well. The Chinese knew they had to rush as many people in as quickly as they could, and they couldn’t do that with the strongest and less common armored vehicles as easily as they could with the good old truckload of soldiers. But while our military was largely occupied and of dubious authority with the fractionated government, it was still able to prevent most of anything much more than the infantry from getting far past the west coast, although it’s true that wasn’t the only point of entry.
So this is where I and the rest of the American citizenry come in. I wasn’t particularly important or anything before, just a sophomore at Texas A&M, but I was not about to let anyone get away with invading my country. With the government infrastructure so fractionated and the seeming possibility of attack from any direction, I decided to join a local militia- had I joined the military, they’d not have had time to run me through training anyway. ‘Course although I was being a militia and a guerrilla same as the Wolverines, I was maybe aiming a little higher than the kids in Red Dawn had. I figured on making it out alive, and, well, here I am. My roommate, a friend since junior high, wasn’t having any of it either- and he was a country boy, knew just about everybody, and always seemed to know who to talk to for just about anything- so he wasn’t lacking in conventional weaponry. ‘Course, that was all at home and we were in college thinking about our upcoming exams when it started.
    “Told you it would be the Chinese” I remember joking.
As we started packing, the power had gone out, and he had bantered with me on how I said electric cars were getting to be practical for most people. I remember sharing a coffee with him to finish the last of it up and pack up the pot, pulling the hard drives from our computers for safe-keeping and making him promise that when it was all over he’d join me for a video game- but maybe one a little less violent than usual. To demonstrate the severity of the situation, here’s the last thing I said before leaving.
“Listen, you know how I say your reckless driving is going to come back to bite you some day? Well, try to keep up.”
    We both joined the local militia, which communicated mostly over handheld radio, because although I bet we could have brought landline phone service back online, the radios were more useful anyhow given their portability, the fact they were easy to power, and that the local ham radio guys were able to change the frequency of their repeater to work with regular equipment, giving us a good range. Although you didn’t need to own a weapon to join up, you could only get people’s second pickings that way unless you made a lucky trade with someone. I had plenty of my own guns to pick from, but I picked up a few things on trade for a spare rifle and some homemade weapons anyway. We had better logistics than you might expect from a militia, and everyone kept well enough supplied as long as they could get in contact over radio to request what they needed.  The first contact didn’t occur until we were well set up thankfully. We were informed of an enemy supply convoy driving through our county on its way to the state capital. It had probably come from landing craft on the Gulf of Mexico rather than overland from Mexico as many others did, to have gotten to us without seeing resistance yet. It was an easy victory- we stopped them on the highway with a roadblock, and fired a volley as a warning. They surrendered, and were red-faced when they saw it was civilians that defeated them.
Another time, the convoy had some light machine guns and was too dangerous to approach, so I dealt with that personally- I’d joined the trap-building crew, and released some teargas on them remotely. The teargas got the front of the convoy choking, but the wind was wrong to get the other half. When they started setting up organized fortifications, good supporting fire, and it seemed as if they were forming up to move out, I had to use the explosives. The sights didn’t get to me then, and although the memories don’t really impair me now either I have a bit of regret for the way we had to fight, even as I’m angry they’d try to invade. The one thing I’m truly guilty for is some of the other weapons I had made, intending them as a last resort. They’re what got me and maybe the county known for our effectiveness, but I’ll just say there’s a reason chemical warfare is banned.
It wasn’t all dark and dreary though, and there were a few downright humorous situations. Before they as a whole realized our county meant serious business, a squad-worth greedily decided to rob our main bank. When they went to leave, they ran smack dab into some guys that noticed the truck, including 20 members of the last patrol, then on meal-break, who greeted them with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other. That doesn’t beat the time a few of them tried to take the courthouse though. The nice old ladies that took that group prisoner must have surprised the heck out of them when the two ladies leveled their shotguns and told the chinese to set their weapons down, gently now, so as to not scratch the tile.
    The fighting didn’t last all that long in the grand scheme of things, but those short weeks before the government reasserted itself and the military mopped up the majority of the Chinese forces showed me why it’s young men who so often go to war. Although I’d fight if necessary now, years later, back then I just didn’t think about the numbers of people we lost. I only cared about getting as many of them as I could, so they couldn’t do the same to me. I don’t think it’s something to be celebrated, the number of people we of the county militia took out of this world, but the number we protected from those invaders.