The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future

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On a small two-lane bridge in a rural county that resents the federal government, the US Army employs lethal force to end a standoff with hard-right militias. Meanwhile, in an ordinary diner, a disaffected young man with a handgun targets the American president during an impromptu photo-op, resulting in a bullet that divides the hyper-partisan nation into mourners and revelers. In New York City, a category 2 hurricane submerges neighborhoods, creating millions of refugees overnight, following a devastating financial crash and years of droughts, pushing America toward ruin. These scenarios represent just three of five potential triggers for chaos in the United States. Drawing on predictive models and nearly two hundred expert interviews, journalist Stephen Marche forecasts a terrifying future collapse that many prefer to ignore. He has consulted soldiers and counter-insurgency experts to understand what it would take to control the U.S. population, revealing that battle plans for a potential civil war have already been drafted—not by fiction writers, but by military colonels.