As you can imagine, when the energy resource shortages hit the United States and the economy started to go into a tailspin (it's interesting that I still use that word: only the oldest among us, such as myself, have ever seen an airplane tailspin, nose-dive, or even fly), people became angry and started looking around for someone to blame. Of course, the government didn't want to be the culprit, so those bastards in power (sorry, I still don't have much sympathy for them) did what political leaders have always done - they created a foreign enemy. They sent warships, bombers, missiles, and tanks off across the oceans for heaven knows what grisly purpose. People were told that this was being done to protect their "American Way of Life." Well, there was nothing on Earth that could have accomplished that. It was the American Way of Life that was the problem!

The generals managed to kill a few million people. Actually, it could have been tens or hundreds of millions for all I know; the news media were never very clear on that, since they were censored by the military. There were antiwar protests in the streets, and persecutions of the antiwar protesters - some of whom were rounded up and put in concentration camps. The government became utterly fascistic in its methods toward the end. There were local uprisings and brutal crackdowns. But it was all for nothing. The wars only depleted what few resources were still available, and after five horrible years the central government just collapsed. Ran out of gas.