The old prepper rule was that you have 72 hours after a collapse before people turn on each other. Former intelligence officer Drew Miller told me that number is dead. He thinks it's now closer to 72 minutes. When I asked him why, he gave me a figure I can't stop thinking about: the three million people who become marauders the moment the grid goes down. It's the one million known gang members. Two million more in jails. Because as Miller puts it, you "cannot keep jails operating when the grid goes down" with no power and no guards willing to risk the safety of their own families. In a real crisis, the gates holding the worst offenders from your neighborhoods are effectively flung open. The police you'd call won't come either. They get pulled to guard elected officials, because the first priority of government is protecting government. He says in a real pandemic like H5N1 bird flu, the collapse would happen with little warning – and implores us to stay prepared.