The second book in R.A. Mathis’ SHTF series has just gone live on Amazon. I was fortunate enough to have read an advance copy (after nagging the author a little bit–that’s how much I liked the first one: Falling Down), so I’m ahead of the curve.

I reviewed the first book here; then the author and I had a conversation about our books and TEOTWAWKI in general here and here, if you want to get up to speed. You can also read an excerpt.

Executive Orders follows the three main characters from Falling Down as order is established from the chaos. But order isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be–especially when the chaos was purposely orchestrated to bring it about.

Unfortunately, I think the author’s take on how easy it is to manipulate the masses is spot-on (which is to say: even easier, when they’re facing starvation and other severe hardships, than it is now).

America’s “second founding” is how characters in this story refer to the whole order-from-chaos/pheonix-rising-from-the-ashes plan to swallow the USA into the globalist dictatorship certain insiders have referred to as the New World Order . They have utterly destroyed the US economy; taken down the power grid; hijacked the Armed Forces; implemented martial law; begun to kick off their population reduction and relocation initiatives; blamed the patriot resistance for all the above; obliterated what individual rights Americans had left; and made the average Joe beg for servitude by using food shortages as a weapon. This is all right out of the globalist playbook.

I was a bit surprised at how much freedom and initiative Sheriff Hank was able to enjoy, given the stranglehold Big Brother has on everyone and everything. In retrospect, perhaps he was merely given enough rope to hang himself. And scapegoats are always needed in situations like this.

The stranglehold was achieved very quickly. The author has illustrated just how fast our way of life can permanently change. (The same government/media complex that so expertly herds the population using the Hegelian dialectic before the fall will have an even easier time herding with the simple carrot-or-the-stick paradigm.) They waste no time weaponizing the surviving population (now reduced to property of the State), starting with the very youngest.

I got irritated with Sheriff Hank a couple times, due to his naivite`…but, to be honest, he’s no more naive than most people are, or will be, in real life. Will normalcy bias linger on, even after normalcy has been shredded, napalmed and nuked into oblivion? Yes, it probably will, while evils are sufferable.

This is a dark vision of the near future. However, there were just enough glimmers of hope to read on. And Mathis has set the stage for the resistance to bring some major smoke on the bad guys in the third book.