My first entry in some sort of log.
I make notes all the time, especially these days. Notes concerning recipes, potential menu ideas, etc. Notes about one of the most important things we do each day – eat.
So … I don’t know why I started this, maybe I understand, I just don’t know the point in keeping a log at a time like this.
Someone I knew, a friend, once told me “keeping a log while I was overseas kept me sane”; my friend was a retired U.S. Marine and had spent years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. So I’m here recording my thoughts. The thermometer on the deck of my apartment reads 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s 11:00 AM and my day off from work at the diner. The water is still flowing from the tap, though the city has announced a schedule of weekly shut offs and steps to conserve water. Lake Mead is past dead pool, and the systems for purifying polluted water are failing as well. There’s still food at the grocery store, but none of it is fresh or frozen. There’s still bottled water, at $10 a bottle. There was the weekly convoy of US government support trucks, sparser each time, shipping water and food into Vegas. This was Saturday the first of June.
A new word is bouncing around the internet right now and it’s surprising the WWW is still working. The word is MEXODUS … MEXICAN+EXODUS.
“MEXODUS” … a new word since Memorial Day Weekend.
Over the course of the weekend, an estimated 100,000 Mexican citizens and other immigrants packed up their vehicles and left, mostly heading south to Mexico. There was no chaos. There was no violence. It was oddly organized given how unexpected it was, like seeing a flock of birds move as one, imagining some gang leader or king … but there’s no one in charge. “Just a murmuration”, I thought. Only a few days ago, just a bunch of people feeling the times making a decision to go home. I think that’s the stuff we need to be aware of, that’s the warning, but even if I decide to leave I wouldn’t know where to go.
Fuel shortages across the United States are becoming more common. There is no rationing, there’s just days when the nearby SHELL or ARCO stations do not have gasoline. Consumer diesel? – that’s been unavailable at most pumps for 2 years. President Vance, winning a narrow victory a couple of years ago as the leader of the NEW AMERICAN PARTY or NAP, had worked to redirect all diesel supplies to major industry, mining, agriculture, prioritized for corporations. Ordinary people with diesel vehicles still have the black market or biodiesel, but it’s hard. I have an 20 year old TOYOTA COROLLA, manual transmission, in good shape. I keep the tank full and I have 2 full 20 gallon gas cans, in a cool place in my storage closet, ready to take with me if I have to leave. I don’t know if I have to leave. The VEGAS city government is telling us, each day, on the radio and local TV and websites, social media, that it’s going to be okay … “we are Vegas” is how the messages end. And I walk to work, about a mile away, and I pass by the homeless baking to death on the sidewalks … I see the old and discarded in the rare shadow corners, like ghosts and skeletons, and I keep walking … thinking … “WE ARE VEGAS”.
The diner I work at still gets deliveries of freshly processed chicken and pork. We get beef once a month, but last month’s deliveries were “delayed due to flooding” and other circumstances.
Other circumstances means disruptions due to civil unrest.
In the space of a few months after winning the 2028 election, President Vance nationalized all US oil production, camouflaging the move as “public utility investment”, putting the ownership in the “hands” of the American people. It was all very financial and corrupt, and within a few months every barrel of oil refined in the US was “legally” owned by the US government. Problem was: many state governments that made revenue from the oil industry said NO … loudly said no … unions went on strike … oil rig workers held work stoppages … as a result of all THIS crazy, a kind of SOFT or COLD civil war evolved, grew.
Multiple states invoked the 10th Amendment, reserving for themselves the management of oil reserves, production. President Vance mobilized the NATIONAL GUARD and RESERVES, what was left of them after several years of ground combat in Iran. The Marine Corps was currently down to one division, and that division was at 50%. The various state governments activated the National Guard themselves, and many of these states, TEXAS being the leader of the opposition, were building up their own military forces and local militia.
These “other circumstances” that showed up on the billing statements at the diner. You never knew the real reason. There might be a note next to some undelivered, and yet billed, item saying: “delayed”, “delayed by storm”, “delayed by fire”, “delayed by transportation”. We generally learned that “delayed” really meant “not coming”. It’s not something most people think about, but most of the food that is consumed by Vegas is produced hundreds if not thousands of miles away. It is shipped in. The population of Vegas peaked, a few years ago, at around 800,000. Nobody knows the population now, my guess is, ignoring tourists, roughly 400,000 people are left in Vegas following the Mexodus, but who knows. I don’t know. The tourists are mostly gone, Vegas is becoming a liminal space.
All I know is 400,000 is 1.2 million meals a day.
A ton of food is about 1,500 meals …
That’s Vegas eating, right now, roughly 800 tons of food each fucking day.
Every day …
Lake Mead is no longer providing water.
Polluted water is being redirected to emergency agricultural production.
But there is NO WAY a magical city in the desert is suddenly going to feed itself. The very moment the major trucking lines stopped shipping to Vegas 6 months ago, locals were muttering under their breath “it’s over”. It is over. Food, water, shelter … shelter in VEGAS requires air conditioning. The water is primarily recycled and the recycling requires electricity. President Vance has said he will “keep the lifeline going” with US contractors and military truckers and fuel, but this is a long haul now and no one is driving through Texas or Wyoming or Pennsylvania or Louisiana … and other states are threatening to blockade US government traffic as well. So, yeah, President Vance says he’ll do the best he can, and it is probably irrelevant. I once heard someone say “Mayor of Kabul”, now they say “Mayor of Washington”. Vance is the mayor of WA DC.
Mexico and the United States were still using diplomacy instead of outright military force to settle disputes, but this was fraying as well. The Mexodus, some say, was facilitated by the Mexican government sending out notices to Las Vegas residents: “Leave, it is unsafe, food and water will not be available”. I don’t speak Spanish, Facebook still works so I saw someone I followed decode it in his social media timeline. Unsafe was right, but it was becoming deserted … it was deserting … it’s gonna be a desert soon enough.
I was walking a few days ago, to the bus stop, grabbing a ride to the only WALMART left open. At the bus stop I heard a man say something strange …
The man was angry, talking on his phone, it seemed like his vehicle was getting worked on by a local auto shop. His anger was palpable, with the sweat whisking off his face with each angry shake and wince. He hung up on the guy, and then said:
“FUCK IT … FUCK IT … I don’t need a car … we’ll all be walking soon.”
And the homeless man nearby chimed in with “damn fucking straight”.
We’ll all be walking soon.
The last few nights, mainly since the Mexodus, there’s been more gunfire. The police were strained, understaffed because of layoffs and many police just quitting; perhaps the best cops started retiring, quitting, leaving, about a year ago. They say there are still 2,000 cops in Vegas, with some support from the Nevada National Guard. But mainly they’re not responding to anything but ongoing crimes. Property crimes? – you fill out a form on the website. They had a counter on the page up until a few months ago. It reached “10,000 un-initiated cases”, meaning 10,000 reports that were just sitting in a database. After that, they removed the counter.
My apartment complex is “gated” – meaning there is a steel fence, about 12 feet tall, around the complex with an electric (no longer working) main gate and two separate smaller sidewalk gates. There used to be 4 sidewalk gates, but the other two were difficult to monitor and so they welded them shut. There were cameras around the complex that stopped working months ago. It was in a part of Vegas still being serviced, reliably, by the police for ongoing violent crimes. But it seemed like there were fewer and fewer audible sirens the last few nights, and I don’t see this as a good sign. Gun shots up, cop sirens down. That is VEGAS right now.
The owner of the complex is a big corporation on the East Coast, New York State based or something. During the more normal times, many years earlier, they did a great job of keeping he place up. While the rents haven’t gone up in two years, the upkeep has noticeably diminished and there is only one onsite manager now, and they are only available part of the day. Because of the on/off water flow, there’s been more damage, more flooding, more pipes bursting, and this is in the absence of any maintenance support. So, a fella in our complex put up a sign “Plumber Available, Inquire: Unit 34”, he was old and retired and said “he wasn’t moving anywhere”. He was not fast. He was good, and this kept the normal things working.
The AC worked, but with rolling blackouts it was on/off and in general uncomfortable. We weren’t even in the heart of summer yet and the last few years the summers wore on till nearly November. No real Autumn, no real spring, and a lukewarm dry winter, this was becoming the new climate of VEGAS. The Monsoon season was changing, and expecting cooling rain during the summer was a thing of the past.