re: How close do you feel we are to a full societal collapse as a nation?

Many people have said that society will begin to crumble in a matter of 4-5 days in the absence of basic services. I saw it happen on a small scale in less than 3 in SE New Mexico about 8 years ago. Area was hit with an all time record snow event...24 inches in places and stayed on the ground about 8 days and in ditches and gullies from late December until July. There are 2 state highways into and out of this town of about 20,000 full time residents. At the time there were probably an additional 25,000 temporary residents in the immediate area working in the oil patch. There is a sizeable rail yard in the town but they do not deliver staple items they merely switch sections of trains to send them somewhere else. The first day of the snow fall folks were fine...in fact happy as clams to be out of school and work. By mid day of the second day the three grocery stores in town shelves were nearly bare. By the time they closed the police had to be present to direct traffic and keep people from fist fighting over what was left. When they re-opened the next day, with almost nothing on the shelves, I would say at least 5000 people were in the parking lot of those 3 stores. The police were allowing them in in small groups but eventually they had allowed enough in that trouble started happening inside...trouble consisting of people pushing and shoving and actually throwing punches. The police left the outside of the store to deal with the shite going on inside and of course the remaining people outside rushed in and added to the mayhem. When the police finally managed to get the crowd out of the store and back into the parking lot the inside of the stores looked like you'd expect. The store managers closed for the day until they received shipments. The next day the same thing happened and some windows were busted and fights broke out. They finally got some trucks in on the evening of the fourth day and they were steadily arriving by the fifth day. It took about 72 hours for a small town to resort to violence over their inability to buy some staple items at the grocery store. I had left town the minute it started snowing to hunt ducks and wound up stranded with me, my dog and my duck hunting stuff for 4 days so I did not witness this but I saw the papers and the news reports and of course the hyperbolic gossip that spread through town, about 10% of which was probably true. It does not take long in modern society for order to break down for certain.