Shopping

It is rare in this country that the thin veneer of civilization, that precious and frail illusion that keeps us from acting on our more brutal and baser impulses, falls away.

During times of war, necessity dictates that we draw on the violent nature that society requires we repress during times of peace. Our survival depends our ability to summon up the dark, vicious feelings that lay dormant in the heart of every person, but in this country, war has not broken down that precarious border between order and chaos since the Civil War.

On occasion though, our superegos need minimal provocation to burst like some poorly constructed damn, loosing the rapids of aggression and indiscriminate animal rage. When that happens, the mass of rioting humans must be treated like an out-of-control fire that only begins to die down once it has consumed all things that can fuel it.

But there are few places that you can so consistently see humanity's true, animalistic nature as a shopping mall on Christmas Eve.

Shopping on the day before Christmas is as close as you can get to training for the chaos that will come with the apocalypse: men, women and children clamoring over each other, avoiding eye-contact as they scramble for scarce resources, trying to beat one another to the last Nook or portable wine bag set in the store, their eyes glazed over like feeding sharks (and with the same moral compunctions as feeding sharks).

Though, honestly, I'd probably stab someone for this.
You know, if I had to.

When society falls apart, there will be no lines, no order and the only authority will be brute force. And mark my words, the seasoned last minute Christmas shoppers will have an edge on the rest of us who have grown soft with years of planning ahead and not having to scratch out someone's eyes in order to get what they need to make sure their children have the perfect Christmas.

Yes, they will have the advantage -- them and the hardened inmates of maximum security prisons.