I knew a BBS sysop (Big Brother Sam, if anyone remembers) from Miami back in '92 when Hurricane Andrew went through. Took a week for the BBS to get back online and boy did he have stories! He spent four nights on the roof of his home with a rifle and many magazines. Never got into a firefight but he heard them all around him.

It's a bigger storm coming, friend.

Still, you make a go of it where you are. I'm in the outer range of a tank of gas from Chicago so I'm mindful that we might get some traffic through here in an event. There's an awful lot of country folk between here and there that will help sort out the trouble makers. They would have to make a decision to head up the road that I'm on so hopefully it's because they have a destination in mind, a checkpoint would go a long ways to help that out.

My guess is that most people leaving Chicago would head south in a grid down scenario, especially in the face of winter. After a couple of months, the people with the resources to flee would have likely done so. The ones left in the cities would have to adjust to some new normal. What that looks like is anyone's guess. There might be some kind of government left, some level of utility services. I rather like Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" as an example of what it might look like. Local communities forming walled enclaves against the endemic gangs. Some people have chickens, another has a television that everyone comes to watch for special occasions. All of this takes place against the backdrop of the US landing a manned mission on Mars.

Anyways, I'm rambling.