In Elizabeth, New Jersey, a supermarket manager and his wife went down to their store as soon as Ed Hardesty’s programme was shown, taking with them a vacuum flask of coffee, two packs of sandwiches, two Colt AR-15s, and eleven boxes of 7.62 ammunition. Two local residents came and rattled the supermarket doors to see if they were open, but when the manager’s wife fired at them from the roof, they quickly retreated. The supermarket manager said, ‘I guess you could rightly say that I’ve always believed in overkill.’

In San Francisco, a Chinese couple opened the doors of their store on Sacramento Street and put up a sign saying, ‘Bad Times Are Coming. Help Yourself.’ Hardly anybody did, despite the fact that five blocks away, a mob was looting a Save-U supermarket, and setting fire to a drugstore.

But although the individual stories were easier to tell, it was the widespread mood of panic and betrayal that swept over the whole country that was the real story. The country had been through thin times before. The Depression had been a thin time, and plenty of people had had to go without. But now, everybody was going to have to go without, rich or poor, lucky or unlucky, unless they made damn sure they had a huge stockpile of canned and frozen groceries. Because of that, the frustration and resentment that boiled up on Sunday night were more explosive than any public feeling that had ever boiled up before. This wasn’t an upsurge of morality and conscience, like the protests over Vietnam. This wasn’t the rattling of political and ethical sensibilities, like Watergate. This was hysteria time, and if you didn’t grab you didn’t eat.

As Sunday night passed over the continental United States like a devouring and apocalyptic shadow, it left behind a trail of destruction and smoke and wrecked buildings. The whole country had changed overnight, from a buoyant and self-assured society with its first feelings of confidence about the 1980s, to a shattered and haunted land where hope seemed to be as scarce a commodity as food.

The National Guard were enforcing martial law in all but seven states. Everywhere you drove that Monday morning there were uniforms and jeeps and personnel carriers, and if you didn’t have a good reason for being in Rupert, Idaho, or Maple Shade, New Jersey, or any place at all that wasn’t home, then you were liable to immediate arrest. At 7.30 a.m. Central Time, on all channels, the President made a live television announcement about the events of the night.