On Jan. 6, 2021, the day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were to have their electoral victory confirmed, Rudy Giuliani put out a call for “trial by combat.” In the ensuing hours, Trump loyalists overran the U.S. Capitol.
They breached chambers, broke windows, raised Confederate flags, and issued assassination threats. After Biden said the Capitol riot bordered on sedition, Trump weakly asked the rioters to leave, but only after again stirring them with his grievances about a stolen election.
The result? Five people dead, property destroyed, and 14 law enforcement officials injured. Some said it was a demonstration that got out of hand. Others called it insurrection. Either way, it was a disorienting day.
But the events also hit me from a different angle. For the last three years in my spare time I have been working on a piece of speculative fiction that takes place a decade from now. It involves a successful coup d’état powered by our deep divides, an uninhibited social media, a gridlocked federal government, and a clever coalition of conspirators.
In my storyline, the central character is drawn out of his reclusive existence deep in the woods of the Cascades and straight into the vortex of a new civil war. He becomes part of an improbable rear-guard resistance movement in the sweetest small town in North America.
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So far, it’s all a speculative fiction written in the spirit of spinning a good yarn. But as events unfolded on Jan. 6, it sparked odd thoughts. What if in the not-so-distant future a true, full-scale U.S. civil war really erupted? What if our federal government was decapitated by domestic terrorists and outraged paramilitaries? And what if, in the ensuing mess, the national economy crashed, constitutional governance failed, and mainland cities were on fire?
More to the point, how would a scenario like this impact Hawaii, where we tend to be psychologically removed from events elsewhere?
Most likely we would experience minor demonstrations of outrage, but no large scale local insurrection. In a prolonged conflict, however, federal money would begin to dry up as would foreign investment, tourism dollars, jobs and paychecks.
We would probably see a surge of transplants, especially people with money seeking the safety of remote islands. Shipping would disrupt, supply chains would diminish and imported food, medicine, and energy would become scarcer. If past is prologue, people will horde, local poverty will amplify, and government services will erode.
In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a brilliant book describing sudden, unanticipated events and their ripple effects. Think of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, the launching of Sputnik in 1957, or the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. He called these “Black Swans.” White swans are predictable. Black swans are atypical.
Could a coup d’état and prolonged civil war on the mainland really happen? More and more people seem to think so. For me, until Jan. 6, it was just a story cooked up while being sequestered by COVID. Suddenly, it feels a few inches closer to nonfiction.
If we treat Jan. 6 as a warning of something that could get bigger, we would be wise to engage in stronger foresight. Scenarios are “stories of the future” and scenario planning is a useful tool for rigorous comparisons between different possible futures.
DHL Express, General Electric, the Hudson Institute, Stanford Research Institute and many others have adopted scenario planning. Emergency management agencies use scenario work to prepare for catastrophic events. Shell Oil has used scenario planning to great effect for 45 years to hedge its energy bets.
There are many tools for strategic planning, but perhaps the moment has arrived to look at what might happen next if the mainland falls apart and we have to plan contingencies. Robust scenario work will help us sharpen analysis, dress-rehearse possibilities, and build social, political and economic resilience.
Peter Adler, Ph.D., is a mediator, organizational planner and author of four books.
