Drew Miller, a retired Air Force colonel who oversees a growing network of survival ranches, was a bit ahead of events when he decided this month to game out the 2024 election year on his new Collapse Survivor app used to test reactions to possible disasters.
Not too far into Miller’s 110 “exercise messages,” the National Guard is called out to handle political violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, just like some election veterans, including James Carville, have predicted. “It is not ‘zombie apocalypse’ nonsense. It is very plausible, realistic,” Miller said.
Shockingly, as about 1,000 users played the game over six days, news hit that New York was deploying the National Guard in subway stations and that Chicago was considering a similar move to deal with escalating violence.
“The timing was so ironic,” Miller told Secrets. “They already called it up in New York City. So it’s bad now. And it’s just gonna get worse and worse and worse.”
That established survivalists and preppers are gaming out the potential for violence before and after Election Day is bad. That cities and the FBI are already expecting it is worse.
Miller, whose network of Fortitude Ranch prepper resorts has reached seven and caught the eye of franchisers, told Secrets that his new Collapse Survivor app is meant to wake people up to the danger of a societal collapse.
As an Air Force intelligence officer, he wrote exercise scenarios to simulate wars. “It’s one of the reasons our military is so effective — we do very realistic training,” he said.
Miller has the same hope for his new project. “The app is not just to promote preparedness, but to hammer home the point that the federal government must start obeying the 10th Amendment and get back in constitutional limits and focus on national defense and homeland security — not divisive, unconstitutional social programs,” he said.
Players said the 2024 election scenario on the app was fun to play and educational. It also offered them a chance to make critical decisions throughout the game that Miller translated into an analysis of how the survivalists expected realistic violence to unfold this year.
For example, after completing the exercise, over 80% said they expected some form of national breakup or civil war in the United States before and after the election.
What’s more, over half said that former President Donald Trump’s try for another term would lead to civil war.
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Significantly, very few would give in to any demands from President Joe Biden to turn in their firearms or lay down their “assault weapons.” In fact, a huge majority of AR-15 pistol owners have already balked at a demand by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to register or even acknowledge ownership of their guns.
“When the election is over, the violence isn’t going to end this necessarily,” Miller said in interpreting the results of the simulation. “I think there’s at least a 50% chance — our poll numbers are a little higher than that — that we just go on to the next stage of a civil war. One of our last exercise messages basically says that election campaign violence is over but civil war has just begun,” he said.
