Interesting. I can see the play. The civilian grid fails. Military bases, equipped with independent power generation and 90 days of supplies, become islands of light in a dark country. State governments scramble while the federal installations hold out. Three months is a long time to go hungry in the dark. By the time the military opens its gates to the surviving civilian population, the terms have changed. Work for electricity. Loyalty for food. Cooperation for protection. Nobody has to declare martial law when they control the means of survival. The bases become nodes in a new federal network, bypassing state governments and local institutions that no longer have the resources to govern. Private contractors administer the rebuilding, consolidating control over energy, labor, and distribution. What began as military preparedness becomes the infrastructure of a new political economy. The federal government hasn’t conquered the states. It has simply outlasted them. The oligarchs get their resource extraction zone, the military gets its permanent emergency, and the population gets electricity on somebody else’s terms. Nobody planned the collapse, necessarily. Nobody has to. The machinery is already there, waiting for the circumstances that make its use seem reasonable. Most people understand what’s happened, but they’d like to eat supper and see after dark. And that’s how the Republic ends.