Midwinter Marauders

Written on 7 April 2025.

Midwinter Marauders

The Unraveling

Jonas had always been called paranoid. A King James Bible believer, quiet and reclusive, he spent more time in the woods than in cafes. His small red cottage in the forests of central Sweden had no neighbors for kilometers. That was intentional.

When the demonstrations began in the cities—first over the cost of living, then over power shortages, then over failures in elderly care—he watched from afar. He kept shortwave radio logs, filled a handwritten journal with timelines and patterns. Electricity flickered often now. The freezer failed once, and he lost most of the meat he'd stored from the last hunt.

By December, the national power grid had gone down in multiple counties. Reports of planned sabotage never made it to the evening news, but Jonas heard it on amateur radio from someone near Linköping. Transformers exploded in Örebro. Whole towns went dark. And when the grid fails, so does law and order.

The Opportunists

In Sweden, there was no civil war—just the slow burn of domestic unrest. Police retracted inward, focusing on parliament buildings and power stations. "We can no longer respond to private break-ins," an official said on P4 Extra. It was stated plainly, like a weather forecast.

That very night, an aunt Jonas knew from church—a gentle, widowed woman in Sundbyberg—was beaten in her own home. They took her wood stove. Her food. Her life savings, tucked into a coffee can under the sink. A neighbor heard the screams but did nothing. He had family of his own to protect.

Small fringe groups tried to ride out the chaos—vegan off-gridders, spiritual communes, libertarian homesteaders. But when the grid failed in Skåne, the same thing happened: gangs roamed in four-wheelers, looting what they could, setting fires to distract, and moving on to the next unguarded place. Opportunists, not ideologues. They didn’t need a cause. Just desperation. Or thrill.

The Death of Light

Jonas held on. Candles, kerosene, and stored food kept him going. But even in the forest, drone sounds echoed sometimes. Cheap hobby drones at first, scouting cabins. Then the bigger ones. He took to covering his chimney with damp pine boughs, hoping to mask the heat.

His generator ran only thirty minutes a day—long enough to pump well water and charge his emergency radio. It was during one of these brief windows that he heard the broadcast from a panicked amateur operator: “Forty percent of the country without consistent power... Stockholm is falling apart... Do not trust aid convoys... some are decoys.”

Jonas read Psalm 91 by candlelight. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." But the shadow outside was growing darker.

The Marauders

They came on a Wednesday. A black SUV, no license plates. Five men. Two had machetes, one had a short pump shotgun. One wore a postal service jacket—likely stolen.

Jonas had prepared. He watched them from the cellar vents, heart pounding. They circled the cottage twice. One laughed. Then they began prying at the cellar doors.

A memory came to him—a sermon on separation. Come out from among them. Be ye separate. He clutched his old hunting rifle. Not to fire. Only to hold. He had no desire to kill. But he would not surrender.

He whispered: "For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion..."

A distant gunshot cracked. The men paused. Another shot. Someone was shooting at them from the woods. Perhaps a neighbor after all? Or another group protecting their turf?

The SUV tore off. Jonas waited three hours before emerging.

The Great Tribulation

The days that followed were worse. No more radio broadcasts. No more food shipments. Sweden didn’t collapse all at once—it bled out slowly. People in cities starved. Some froze. Fridge units at the ICA stores became tombs for rotten food. Cash meant nothing. Banking systems offline.

Jonas lasted longer than most, but the gangs found new routes. They grew more organized, patrolling like wolves. Reports surfaced of elderly patients left to die in hospitals as care staff vanished. Of wild dogs dragging off the weak. Of corpses rotting in roadside ditches, ignored by everyone who passed.

And when it was all too much, Jonas read Revelation. He knew this wasn’t the end. Not yet. But it was the beginning of the end.

"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."

Jonas closed the Bible and listened. The only sound now was the wind rattling the empty branches.