Obviously (or maybe not) after a collapse the whole point of surviving is to rebuild society and retain as much knowledge as possible as quickly as possible to avoid a dark age, but first you have to survive. Democracy and decision making by committee are not conducive to survival. The whole war lord thing is exactly what happened in Europe after Rome fell, and it lasted centuries. Lord of the Flies devolved because they did not have a military hierarchy, but rather a pseudo democracy that resulted in deadly factionalism. The dark ages lasted so long because no one was interested in rebuilding, and the Church used the feudal system to become powerful rather than for the good of mankind. The best thing is that with the American blueprint and guaranteed civil rights I think we could bounce back a lot faster than if we got trapped in feudalism, which could happen, but would be very bad.
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remmynikon.308 , what I saw in Former Yugoslavia, and how people survived a brutal and protracted civil war is precisely why I say that numbers are what wins. Whoever has the bigger gang or tribe simply has more hands to work, survive, or fight. Looking at it as a lone survivor assumes there won't be a lot of people. In a deadly pandemic or mass contagion the lone survivor is probably king of the wasteland, in almost any other type of collapse all they are is an easy meal (hopefully they have nice guns that I don't already have!).
I don't think it matters because I don't think it's going to turn out anywhere near like you think it will.
The only time your plan would actually have a chance longer term is if there was some actual real natural disaster and extinction level event.
Think for a moment about the nationwide chaos, looting, rioting, destruction and rampaging out of control mobs and lack of law enforcement stopping anything that was rampant in many big cities back in 2020. Notice how fast all that suddenly stopped once they had done their job?
Notice how in the new "horrible crime" cities like NYC or Chicago or places in California, the police are powerless to stop criminals...
Right up until the "criminal acts" are something against what the powers that be want, or someone is forcefully defending themselves from crime or tyranny, not being a good little sheep for the slaughter, not cowering to the government...
Police are suddenly front and center to shut it down with maximum force and the DAs and judges magically are suddenly interested in public safety and keeping the "criminals" behind bars.
The Global Elites who are going to make the collapse happen aren't interested in letting a bunch of warlords run around what they consider their private reserves for any longer than it takes to herd the animals where they want them to go.
The plan that has been carried out since long before our grandparents were born, is to one end and one end only.
Enslave the world into a brutal one world government that controls all of humanity, under the "benevolent rule" of the true Global Elites and their religion of worship and obedience of the Illuminated One.
There may very well be a short period of apparent lawlessness and starvation and chaos.
If you want to kill off 6 billion people so you have an easily controlled number of humans left, why do all the hard work yourself?
Have your forces sit back and wait while everybody else does the job for them along with natural causes and such.
Then when it's time, your forces roll out, with all the crazy cool high tech weapons that folks today haven't seen yet
And you have: "Who is like unto the Beast and who is able to make war on Him?"
Unlike the stupid movies and books that are popular, there is no stopping the Evil that has been meticulously planned for centuries and had generations of dedicated adherents working hard to progress. No silly little young misguided person is suddenly going to go into hero mode and by sheer luck happen to defeat all evil.
The Global Elites who worship The Illuminated One, WILL one day have their time in the sun as masters of most of whatever remains of the world.
We may not be the generation that lives to see their plans come to fruition, but more than likely it won't be too far off.
All that being said:
It's inevitable that despite whatever plans you have of doing things for the good of society or humanity, your plan won't turn out any better or different than the Dark ages.
You'll start as a brutal warlord just like everybody would and then become a despotic dictator.
Most likely eventually have some religious leaders eventually team up with you to make sure everybody knows that obeying you is morally the right thing to do. Which you'll accept because it's eventually easier to make a deal with some religious leaders to have them keep the serfs in line, rather than having to murder people all the time and risk eventual overthrow when your elite guards and henchmen get fed up.
Your own opening statement of everybody will do what they are told by me or get killed pretty much is standard for the history of humanity. It's almost unavoidable, everybody who ever tried it with good intentions always wound up the same.
If you read your own plan, it's pretty much the same feudal system, except you are the "benevolent" king and you have your elite guards and everybody does what you say, when you say it or gets killed on the spot. Top down controlled society that in the end will (just like every other time in history) get nowhere special, until it gets moderated into a more civil society where intelligence has a chance to blossom rather than force.