The largest, deadliest, and longest-running of the Burnout-era Marauders. The Blue Column has been more influential to the formation of Post-Burnout America’s political, economic, and social systems than even the Widow’s Passage. 

Martin Jwa was born in 1983 to a middle-class family. He studied history in college and secured a decent living by working at and providing tours of various small museums and historical sites around Appalachia. During the 2020 Pandemic, Martin found himself out of a job with a strong feeling that society would collapse soon. With this sentiment, he relocated to Texas and became one of the country’s millions of doomsday preppers. Already, Martin’s expectations for the collapse were unique. Unlike most other preppers (He was very active in various online and local communities), Martin believed in what he called “Offensive Survival”: basically, violent gangs of nomadic marauders would likely arise no matter what, and these groups would be the primary danger in a Post-Collapse society— at least for the first few months/years. Rather than trying to weather out this period in a bunker, improvised fortification, or actively trying to evade the Marauders, Martin supposed that a group would stand the best chance of short-term survival and long-term security if they became marauders themselves. More so, any group of marauders would need to hold its own against portions of the American armed-forces, or rogue fragments of it, so they would need to have strength in the thousands and access to similarly powerful weaponry. This was what occupied most of Martin’s time for the next decade. He was consumed with the end goal of what he called a “Mega-Marauding-Column”. To Martin, the most important elements of this Column would be the early-stage recruitment (when to actually start marauding), what routes the Column would take in its travels, and what to do when marauding for resources was no longer viable. To this end, Martin became an expert in the geography of the Southern United States as well as many of the battles that had been fought in the region. Martin also determined that it would be best to actively recruit young adults or people just below military age. These younger recruits would be easier to indoctrinate, fight at a level comparable to the average America, and would be viable soldiers for a longer period after the collapse. Martin only dedicated a fragment of his time and energies to what his Column would look like in the years and decades after the collapse. 

In 2029, as online rumors of U3C and sightings of various military convoys abounded, Martin knew it was time to enact his plans. He mustered a small force of 54 online radicals, local teens, and personal friends on the outskirts of fig-ridge, Texas with several trucks and small arms. The rest is history. 

The Column swept through the Southern United States, turning North after sacking Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Southern parts of Alabama and Florida. After travelling through Mississippi, they sacked Memphis and Nashville with some detachments razing Kansas City and Charlotte. While other Mega-Marauders may have traveled longer distances or sacked more “Major” cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia), the Blue Column resulted in the most raw death and destruction. The actual name “Blue Column” came from U3C’s tendency to utilize back roads for moving materiel while Martin’s column opted for the Interstates, with their blue crests. What further set the Column apart from its peers was the movement’s emphasis on thorough looting and aggressive recruitment. The Column was constantly splitting along intersections to “liquify” nearby communities to such a complete extent that they often experienced no further waves of Marauders. As part of this process, local teens would be rounded up and forced to choose between joining the Column or death. Martin and his lieutenants would then work to indoctrinate the newcomers in what he called “old school patriarchy” and a code of honor regarding the Column. Although this ideology was made simply to optimize a war-machine running on child-soldiers. Martin was technically the first major leader in America to practice some kind of Immersion. He was very blunt about the fact that the world was ending and that new societies would need a “new breed of man” to rule them.v With this rhetoric, Martin ascended from a warlord to a religious prophet, both within his movement and those outside of it. 

Because of its unusually intense stance on looting, the Blue Column was actually the slowest of the Mega-Marauders, finishing its “movement” in the December of 2030— almost an entire year after they started. In this time, the Column had amassed an unparalleled wealth of supplies, weapons, and equipment. They had also pioneered a new kind of vehicle. By heavily armoring semi-trucks and outfitting them with tank-treads, the Column had created a handful of “interstate Siegers” that were invaluable for prolonged conflicts, destroying road-blocks, or going off-road. Many of the earliest designs for vehicles in the Passage Lands were replicas of the Siegeers. Now, with the world collapsed and his people secured, Martin set about founding a new society in Sango, Tennessee. The first thing he did was order a mass culling of his troops to conserve resources and reduce the risk of an insurrection. He also invested more heavily in training with hand-to-hand weapons and becoming generally obsessed with ancient Hellenic culture. While they had hundreds of captive doctors, mechanics, and other specialists, there were few talented administrators or industrial managers. The largest problem was the population’s high gender-imbalance. Over 90% of the Column was male. Many women had been captured as sex-slaves, but Martin ordered them executed to “free the men of vice”. Within the few who served the Column willingly, there was Annaline Colbert, an old friend of Martin who studied medieval warfare and was no instrumental in training the Column’s army.

The faction survived off of agriculture and their hoard of supplies through much of the early 30’s. They were subject to a number of suicide-mission raids, sponsored by the early Triumverate and others to destroy their caches of Pre-Burnout weapons. Many succeeded, and the Column became more reliant on melee tactics. Because of their status as an extremely well-supplied mega-marauder, the Blue Column was excluded from many of the deals and alliances that shaped resource flows in the 30’s. Eventually Martin decided to treat with other factions by trading mercenary services for resources that the Column couldn’t produce itself. Through these arrangements, the Column was able to adapt to shifting combat-styles and avoid the need to develop domestic industry. However, they could not undo the resentment and fear they had incurred during the Burnout. When the Brimstone Cities started interacting with the Passage-Lands in the late 30’s, the Column found it was a poor match against the vehicular and better-Immersed ex-marauders. Because of Martin’s position as an absolute dictator, the Column’s leadership was unable to evolve or reassess their strategies, which led to a consistent decline throughout the 40’s that culminated in the formation of the Gorgons.

And with Martin’s death in 2050, the Blue Column was officially defunct. Many of its skilled leaders had already left to work for other Clans and develop their “Combat-Elite” programs. Most of their best fighters had turned into independent mercenary companies. 

Despite its out-of-touch leader and Regime’s aggression, scholars believe that the main reason for the Blue Column’s decline was its exclusion from the rest of the developing country. By making political and industrial networks that would resist the Column, the early leaders in the Passage Lands made it so the militaristic faction would perish in isolation. Counterarguments state that many other factions have been able to make radical alterations to their behavior and strategy in order to stay relevant, although none have faced as much coordinated hostility as the Column. There is a consensus that the Blue Column’s inception and underlying strategy was fundamentally alien to Post-Burnout America. Even though it influenced the region’s status quo more than any other Faction, the Column never belonged in the Passage Lands.

More important than its status as an outsider, the Blue Column is Post-Burnout America’s only real “Major Failed State”. While countless small communities and Free Clans have been absorbed, dissolved, or even exterminated, nothing near the size of the Column has fallen into complete irrelevancy. Such an occurrence has raised questions about the ultimate fragility of the country’s Post-Burnout states and the “ecosystem” they create. Have the Passage-Lands created such a balance where only the insignificant and alien entities can disappear while the major players are everlasting? Or is the system as a whole doomed by the fact that its most integral parts are unwilling to let each other fail?