posted on Jul, 26 2009 @ 10:52 PM
This being skunkworks, please allow me to play "let's suppose" for a moment...
A few years after the fall of communism, America suddenly started hearing a lot about the "Russian Mafia," both in Russia and in the USA. They
quickly acquired a fearsome reputation and seemingly set up shop all over the world.
The whole thing seemed to happen so rapidly ...before the early 1990s. I had never even HEARD of a "Russian mafia." Then all of a sudden, they were
everywhere, from New Jersey to New Delhi.
Imagine a post-collapse USA, or one in a deep and enduring depression. I can contemplate a condition where some sort of organized crime syndicate
takes over to fill a power vaccum...perhaps through black markets at home, or through dirty deeds abroad. This need not be the traditional "mafia,"
either. In fact, my guess is it probably wouldn't be. Imagine, for example, if the military collapsed and a rogue colonel set up his own private
"for-hire" mafia-like organization dabbling in all sorts of dark deeds. This is exactly what happened to the parts of the Kuomintang after the fall
of Republican China, by the way. When the Communists took over China, a certain number of Kuomintang soldiers fled to the highlands of South East Asia
and began to produce and export narcotics in great quantities.