The following is an excerpt from "2084 and Beyond" (published 2014). The book is about a future person on Earth (in the 22nd century) looking back on human behavior of the early 21st century. The work is science fiction, but as recent events such as the Orlando massacre show, these descriptions of acts of terrorism have become all-too-real for America’s citizens.

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Demented Loners

Toward the beginning of the 21st century, many humans, especially those living in urban areas, began to suffer a common fear. They succumbed to a semiconscious, mass fright called the Drugstore Terrorist Syndrome, named after a man who visited several drugstores and doctored bottles of medicine with poison.

The Drugstore Terrorist Syndrome became a catch-all phrase for other kinds of attacks, such as subway assaults, movie-theater maimings, and school slaughters. As time passed into the mid 21st century, the effect of this syndrome was the inculcation into peoples’ minds of a subtle, yet ever-present fear of engaging their society. Faced with the prospect of dodging a sniper’s bullet, some people became reluctant to go shopping, take the train to work, attend a PTA meeting, or show up for a college class lecture. Reasonably enough, for civilians who did not receive hazardous duty pay, these tasks became burdensome to their spirit.

The emerging milieu was contrary to the humans’ gregarious nature and their need for social engagement with other people. If the syndrome had been related to drugstores only, it would not have become such a pervasive problem. Caps on medicine bottles had been designed to detect any tampering. Unfortunately for the human race, the Drugstore Terrorist Syndrome exemplified other well-founded fears.

Increasingly, a human, usually acting alone, but sometimes in concert with a few people, would stake claim to infamy by wiping out groups of people. The Tylenol bottle poisonings were a preface to hundreds of murderous incidents that took place over many decades.

Any public or private place became a potential killing field. Family members routinely polished off their relatives. Mom’s dressing-down remark to a seething son about his dress habits had to be uttered with much more caution. The child might have a Glock stored in his sock drawer.

As the acts of urban killers became more frequent, segments of the population became accustomed to gunshots. By mid 21st century, killing or maiming of groups of people living closely together in metropolitan areas began to be viewed as ordinary.

During coffee breaks at an office, instead of the heretofore usual banter about the local youth soccer league, the conversations came to focus on ways to lock down the local elementary school in hopes of keeping the youth inside the school safe from the outside world.

For many people, this Dodge City atmosphere became part of their daily lives, but at great cost to their psyches. They and their friends and relatives had become accustomed to living in secure and peaceful neighborhoods. Instead, they found themselves existing in an increasingly dysfunctional culture exhibiting violent traits. All the while, a phobic fear was instilled into societies’ children about their neighborhoods and schools.

Demented Loner vs. Disillusioned Idealist

The demented loner was often a bullied and/or alienated person. He was a social malcontent.

In contrast, the disillusioned idealist was usually not bullied by his peers, nor was he alienated from them. He was a political/religious malcontent. Both had grudges, but the sources of their rancor were different.

Neither of these personality types had their actions triggered by “losing it.” Indeed, their actions were far from snap judgments. They were well-planned. They had persuaded themselves that their grand grievances would send a message to the world. They exhibited aspects of narcissism, ego-centrism, and grandiosity in believing they could teach the world a lesson, and become famous (infamous) at the same time.

Their acts became grander as the scope of the effect of their killings took-in more victims. Thus, they might have targeted specific people initially, but after a while, many of them began shooting indiscriminately, a deadly example of further lowering the threshold for outright murder. But thus far, the mayhem was somewhat limited.

Societal Mayhem

This situation changed when weapons of mass destruction became available to non-nation factions. Where once an individual (or a group) who possessed a modest killing toolbox could murder only a few people, a group could now kill thousands of people, all in one attack.

Unlike the situation of a demented dictator who ruled a country, vengeful retaliation was usually not an option, because the bombers were careful not to align their cause with a nation. They were vague, amorphous factions.

Unlike the urban psychopath or the head-of-state sociopath, most of these people were sane. Some were paranoid but not demented. Indeed, many were well educated, intelligent, and children of well to-do families.

Initially, it was believed that members of these splinter groups were mentally unbalanced. However, later (and more accurate) findings claimed otherwise: “ ‘Schizophrenics and sociopaths, for example, may want to commit acts of mass destruction, but they are less likely than others to succeed.’ Researchers pointed out that large-scale dissemination of chemical, biological, or radiological agents require a group effort, but that ‘Schizophrenics, in particular, often have difficulty functioning in groups.’”

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I will not reveal the ending of this part of the story, in hopes that you will read the book. For now, if present trends continue, the people described in this scenario will come to possess weapons of immense destructive power. If our society continues doing the same things, we will continue getting the same results, but results that grow worse.

If so, eventually, one of more of these weapons will be stolen, bought, or manufactured by non-nation state groups. When this Black Swan swims by, the Orlando massacre, the Paris raids, and similar tragedies will take on the patina of modest mayhem.

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Uyless Black, a resident of Coeur d’Alene, has spent part of his career studying the origins and consequences of pathological aggression in the human race.