AMERICAN APOCALYPSE : The Second American Civil War

by Kurt Schlichter

From Kurt Schlichter, the author of the bestselling Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of action novels and THE ATTACK, comes his most terrifying and controversial conservative novel. American The Second Civil War tells the story of America ripped apart by conflict after assassinations allow America’s left to take control of the government and weaponize it against the American people to ensure it never loses power again. It is the story of Americans of all walks of life, Red and Blue, trying to survive against the backdrop of a brutal conflict in the cities and the countryside, where soldiers and armed citizens battle to recover their freedom. From murderous leftist terrorists to heroic Appalachians defending their homes against foreign mercenaries, from regular citizens trying to avoid starvation and terror to patriotic submariners risking it all to protect the homeland from foreign threats, from professional warriors to citizens called to arms, American Apocalypse is a violent gut-punch, a fast and sometimes grimly funny novel that unsparingly describes the hell awaiting at the bottom of America’s slippery slope.

Genres: Fiction, Politics, Alternate History

340 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 17, 2025

About the author

Kurt Schlichter is a trial lawyer, and a retired Army infantry colonel with a degree from the Army War College who writes twice a week as a Senior Columnist for Townhall.com. His new novel "People's Republic" is now available!

Kurt was personally recruited by Andrew Breitbart in 2009 to write for Big Hollywood. He is often on the air as a news source, an on-screen commentator, and as a guest on nationally syndicated radio programs discussing political, military and legal issues, including Fox News, HLN, CNN (Well, maybe not anymore), the Hugh Hewitt Show, the Dennis Miller Show, Geraldo, the Greg Garrison Show, the John Phillips Show, the Tony Katz Radio Spectacular, PJTV's The Conversation, The Delivery with Jimmie Bise, Jr., the Snark Factor, and WMAL's Mornings on the Mall with Larry O'Connor, among others.

He appears weekly on the Cam and Company Show with his own brand of caring conservative cultural commentary.

His previous book "Conservative Insurgency: The Struggle to Take America Back 2009-2041" was released in 2014 from Post Tree Press

As a stand-up comic for several years, he has gathered a large and devoted following in the world of social media for his amusing and often biting conservative commentary. He is an active user of Twitter (@KurtSchlichter) with over 71,000 followers, which led to his #1 selling Amazon "Political Humor" ebooks "I Am a Conservative: Uncensored, Undiluted and Absolutely Un-PC," "I Am a Liberal: A Conservative's Guide to Dealing With Nature's Most Irritating Mistake," "Fetch My Latte: Sharing Feelings With Stupid People," and "50 Shades of Liberal."

Kurt is also a successful trial lawyer based in the Los Angeles area representing companies and individuals in matters ranging from routine business cases to confidential Hollywood and entertainment industry disputes and transactions. A member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, which recognizes attorneys who have won verdicts in excess of $1 million, his litigation strategy and legal analysis articles regularly run in such legal publications such as the Los Angeles Daily Journal and California Lawyer.

Kurt is a 1994 graduate of Loyola Law School, where he was a law review editor. He majored in Communications and Political Science as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, where he also edited the conservative student paper California Review while writing a regular column in the student humor paper the Koala. He also drank a lot of Coors.

Kurt rose to the rank of Army infantry colonel on active duty and in the California Army National Guard. He wears the silver "jump wings" of a qualified paratrooper and commanded the elite 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry Regiment. A veteran of both the Persian Gulf War and Operation Enduring Freedom (Kosovo), as well as the Los Angeles riots, the Northridge earthquake and the 2007 San Diego fires mobilizations, he is a graduate of the Army's Combined Arms Staff Service School, the Command and General Staff College, and the United States Army War College, where he received a master of Strategic Studies degree.

He loves military history, red meat and the Second Amendment. His favorite caliber is .45.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most somber of Schlichter's novels. It shows not only the real threat of civil war in our deeply fractured nation, but an unvarnished assessment of what civil war looks like.

It's ugly.

His "People's Republic" series manages a more upbeat tone. It ridicules blue-state woke culture and gets great smack talk out of tough-guy hero Kelly Turnbull, who pulls off daring missions behind blue lines.

Here, though, Schlichter shows people—including his mostly right-wing readers—the true cost of civil war: starvation, disease, death, social breakdown, more death, and consequences that extend far beyond the two or three years this war takes.

Millions die.

There's little in the way of stirring battle sequences. Later in the book Schlichter focuses on that—how submariners and fighter pilots get through the war, what it looks like to regular army units and organized militias on either side of the lines. But he doesn't glamorize it. Some of the characters see little, or are somewhere in the logistics chain.

Our military protagonists are troubled by the killings they've done—or that they're not troubled by them. Some have finished off the wounded Just Because.

There's no sugar-coating the war or its aftermath. The patriots, having suffered deeply during a far-left presidency and then during the war, are not magnanimous in victory. They purge the blue from every avenue of power or influence to make sure the republic would never again be taken over by revolutionary forces.

Many characters never recover in life.

Some are still wanted by the new government.

Young veterans—soldiers, militia members, guerrillas—can't readjust to peacetime living as their only skill is fighting.

A retired officer who becomes a respected red-state general afterwards finds his old veterans pension worthless.

A genteel Southern woman taken political prisoner loses an eye and is raped repeatedly.

Our narrator, a young officer, is wounded in the battle to take Washington D.C.

Schlichter shows what civil war really means, particularly on the home front. Neighbors turn against each other. Families fall apart or dwindle. Allies, driven by hunger and stress, turn on each other. The starving steal food from each other. People inform on each other for food.

Most of our characters—Schlichter does the oral history thing again, giving us a wide range of viewpoints—lose loved ones to starvation, disease, militias, or secret police.

He also gives us the view of unrepentant leftists, including revolutionaries now on the run, in the U.S. or abroad, but determined, if they live, to fight what they see as war against fascism. Schlichter writes them without sarcasm or snark, seamlessly picking up their woke revolutionary patter.

At war's end, many enemies are shot, or allowed to starve, and bulldozed into mass graves. Too many victors have lost too much.

The real subtext here is that our republic—its customs, understandings, and balances—are fragile. They may not be recoverable after a civil war.

And that means those who would plunge into it—extremists on the right or the left—are fools, and dangerous ones.

[cool breeze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kurt Schlichter knows when he is on to a good thing. He found in his fine 2024 novel The Attack that the oral history format gave him some advantages over his Kelly Turnbull serial novel format. For one thing, in Schlichter’s words, “it could take them to many different places across a wide narrative without having one character hopscotch around and just happen to be at the most important places at all the key plot points”. For another, it greatly reduces the risk of the series timeline getting trashed when it misses an important development in the real world such as Trump beating Hillary or the Covid lockdowns.

Many important elements are here: good writing, characters, settings, action. Unfortunately, it is lacking in nearly any dramatic tension. All of the events depicted have already happened, and all of the characters know the outcomes, so there is not much suspense after a character mentions something the first time. This could be remedied in a future book by allowing the oral history to unfold over time, instead of being entirely retrospective. There is a decent amount of Schlichter’s delightful political humor (“Chad Guevara”), but not as much as in some previous books.

Schlichter makes one point throughout the book – that after a Civil War 2.0, a victorious right would not simply go back to the status quo ante, but would instead construct a more woke-resistant, but arguably more repressive, political structure. Is that true, or even plausible? I don’t know. After Franco’s death, Spain promptly went leftist and remains so today. After 9/11, America elected Obama seven years later, went crazy woke, and is about to elect a full-blown communist Islamic radical as mayor of New York City. So, I am skeptical.

Although I am a Schlichter fan and have bought nearly all his books, I rate this one just a little under 4 stars. For a better book by him, published at nearly the same time, I highly recommend Lost Angeles: Silver Bullets On The Sunset Strip, a noir fantasy novel co-written with his wife, Irina Moises, 5 stars.

[Leon Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It could happen to you!

As Abe Simpson from the cartoon "The Simpsons " quipped about getting old and out of touch: It could happen to you!

Civil war would be bad. But the toddler's on both the left and right seem hell bent on taking us down this road.

American Apocalypse shows very probable ways it can happen. The writer didn't have stretch imagination much because many of these things have happened, especially with radical left attitudes and radical right responses.

Both groups have the attitude of a toddler building a sand castle. If it doesn't go their way they are more than happy to tear it all down.

They're more than happy to throw their food across the room if it tastes funny.

They're more than happy to flip over game boards because they don'thave the skill to compete or feel the rules are unfair.

This nonsense has to stop, because if it doesn't, we're going to get the situations described in this book.

Thanks again Kurt.

[Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book games out the unintended consequences of unbridled power when combined with implacable ideology, in this case, from the Left. Following the assassination of President Trump and Vice-President JD Vance, the Speaker of the House unleashes all the fantasies of the Left, including violations of the 1st Amendment and the 2nd Amendment, the outlawing of unpalatable opinions, packing the SCOTUS, and granting of statehood to Washington DC and Puerto Rico, with predictable resistance from ordinary Americans. What follows is horrific and devastating, both for individual Americans and the America as a whole. Don’t think it could not happen. If Mr. Schlichter’s aim was to warn us of the possibilities, I’d say he succeeded. We are living through history.

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel reminds me of a conversation I had with friends back during Jimmy Carter's presidency. They, husband and wife, were government employees working in the District. They were concerned about the possibility of Reagan becoming president, and they expressed the view that someday, sooner or later, the conservative cause would need to be stamped out once and for all. In those days such talk felt mostly theoretical, without the intense passions we see today. My friends knew I leaned conservative, and yet we still enjoyed spending time together. In response to the above comment I told them I for one would resist any attempt to being stamped out--to the point of resorting to guerilla warfare if it came to that. They said if I succeeded a right-wing dictatorship might result, and I said if so I would oppose that too. They laughed, and we found something else to talk about.

American Apocalypse is about a very serious attempt to fulfill my friends' prophesy. It begins with the situation we are now experiencing in 2025. Journalists and other Democrats are in a state of perpetual outrage over having lost the majority. The intensity of their outrage increases until both Trump and Vance are assassinated and replaced in the order of succession by a leftwing House Speaker who then moves quickly to declare all opposition an illegal insurgency and to begin eliminating constitutional rights. Troublesome individuals are targeted for removal, they fight back, and in May 2028 the country erupts in a second civil war.

This is clearly meant as a cautionary tale, something no sane person would want to happen. On the day of the book's publication, Schlichter wrote an online article making that point explicit. The end result of such a war would not be the restoration of what we had before. The old norms would be gone, perhaps forever. It would be a different country.

Like The Attack, which I read quite recently, this is told from multiple points of view. The principal narrator, a veteran of the fighting, is going around the country (and beyond) interviewing people who'd seen it from both sides. Near the end, one of those subjects is the new president. My old friends from the 70s might call him the dictator they'd warned about. But here's his perspective:

"Option One was a free society where everyone got to participate in the government, where everyone's rights were respected, and where dissent was broadly tolerated. That's the kind of Pollyanna view of the United States around the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Then there was Option Two, where the leftists ruled, and if you were a conservative or even a normal citizen, you were essentially a serf or worse. ... And then there was Option Three. Option Three is that American patriots rule unapologetically and refuse to allow themselves to ever be oppressed by the left again."

Option Three is accomplished here by financially ruining and disenfranchising everyone who enabled the aggression against ordinary Americans, at least until such time as they've clearly learned the error of their ways.

I think the author makes at least a token effort to give his various narrators different voices. Some are obsessed with certain topics, such as the doctor who cannot stop talking about minimum caloric input. (The fighting caused so much disruption that many people starved.) There's also a Hollywood producer who's clearly lying when he swears up and down that he never really supported all the woke nonsense his studio had been responsible for. Maybe he has even convinced himself of that. It sounds like he's being given the benefit of the doubt. And both sides of the conflict include young anarchists who actually welcomed the opportunity to go on killing sprees, and who look back on the war as the best part of their lives. Postwar, they're not doing so well. One's in prison and the other is a fugitive.

In reading this, I began to wonder about America's global adversaries. Surely, I thought, they would make some kind of move while we were sorting out our internal problems. I was glad to see a chapter explaining how Russia and China are given a convincing reason not to attack us. Even so, I would expect them to pull off a few stunts while we were otherwise engaged. I guess that would just be another part of how everything would be different when the smoke cleared.

In his conclusion, the narrator tells us: 

"Historians say nearly 4,000,000 people died during the Second Civil War. That's an estimate. It could be more. We kept track of our dead, but how do you count civilian casualties, the paramilitaries killed in a thousand forgotten firefights, the people who just got sick and died or who starved? Nearly a decade later, they are still digging bodies out of mass graves and finding corpses in the woods. Whole towns are gone; whole families were wiped out. ... A lot of soldiers went home to find nothing waiting for them but ruins and graves."

Also, "None of this had to happen."

Let's hope it doesn't.

[Stuart Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Cautionary Tale with thought provoking consequences.

Straight from some recent headlines, American Apocalypse is a Cautionary tale which hopefully will cause some retrospection among those advocating violence in our politics. Much in the same vein as General Sir John Hackett's "The Third World War" from the Cold War era. As the rhetoric continues to heat up, and the news reports tell more stories of street violence, along with the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, the probability for outright Civil War increases, with a very sobering potential for no real winners. The author prefaces this work with the sincere hope it does not come to pass, and but presents his story as a series of vignettes, interviews with the survivors in the aftermath. No spoilers here, but the storytelling has some brutal time examples of how the chain of events might propel the US into roving bands of paramilitaries, committing atrocities, and opposing forces taking revenge. The author creates realistic scenarios of how events escalate, tactics and mindsets of both sides, and ultimately how the conflict is decided and comes to an end. Those who are concerned with the sincere increasingly heated political rhetoric and mindsets incidents of political violence would do well to read American Apocalypse.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the best Kurt book in my own opinion. What I did like about it is that these are stories of made up characters for each chapter, explaining what happened leading up to this Second Civil War, during and after the main conflicts. Each person recalls certain points of the conflict, no food, internet down, banking system in ruins, etc. All things that could really happen if we fought against each other in real life.

I will say this gives gravity on those who claimer for Civil War, the whole system we built would kill off a lot of people if it was turned off for a month let a lone years. I also give Kurt here props on finding a solution to possible outside influences getting involved, by the Red government threatening the other powers with total nuclear war if they were to get involved, so it keeps the story clean and just focused on the American vs American aspect of it.

If you don't catch it he does mention a certain character in one of the chapters...but hey no spoilers here.

It was a fun read, but not a favorite. Something to break me off the fantasy world for a bit.
Let's pray this never happens, cause a lot of what Kurt writes usually does...

[denise hodges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary good

Like his previous book "The Attack" once again Col. Schlichter has cost me some sleepless nights, emotional turbulence and at this point a sense of gratitude the events portrayed haven't happened. What I got out of this story: All it's going to take is for a few events to cause this novel to go from fiction to fact. I would encourage anyone no matter which side of the fence they are on to read this novel. It is true there are none so blind as those who will not see. The author has a unique talent to hold up a mirror to the liberal factions of our society and truly reflect how irresponsibly dangerous and destructive they are. At the risk of repeating myself, while interesting and entertaining, I hope with the most sincere prayers, Mr. Schlichter is never in the position to say "I told you so!" Very well done Sir.
Bill Hodges

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a genre of writing which is "what if" histories. This is one of the best and one of the scariest. American Apocalypse is a series of vignettes (in the model of World War Z) which describe the Second American Civil War. It is riveting, and at the same time very sobering. Where many read political thrillers because there is a hero who faces overwhelming odds to save the world, this actually asks, "what would probably happen?" By using the stories of an extremely diverse group of characters, the author is able to fill in the gaps of how a war would actually play out and what are the side effects that more traditional thrillers ignore. Schlichter is a clever writer and he has put out a lot of fun beach reads from a patriotic point of view. But here he shows how it could happen and what the impact could really be if we do not pull back from the path we are on as a nation.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit that I started this book with a bit of trepidation. When the author explained in the preface that he was using the oral history format and specifically referred to Studs Terkel, I thought that’s a high bar. I recently finished Terkel’s “The Good War” about World War 2, which won the Pulitzer Prize. I was pleasantly surprised. Kurt Schlicter did an amazing job using this format. The book was another chilling reminder at what could happen in the US. I hope and pray it doesn’t, but applaud this book. It’s well written and gripping. Highly recommend.

[C R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels too painfully real to enjoy

This was painful to read…as it should be…a civil war would be a very bad idea…but far too many on the left are pushing all the buttons to make it happen…if the left manages an assassination and then goes nuts along the lines Schlichter lays out it will a mean a whole lot of dead folks and a wrecked country…in fact, his is an optimistic scenario with the deterrent nuclear forces keeping our foreign enemies at bay…

[Scott D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a novel, a series of vignettes. Some better than others. But the scenario doesn’t seem as impossible as it might have been just a couple of years ago. Regardless of your political leanings, if we don’t get both sides to dial back the rhetoric it’s not implausible that something similar to this could happen.

[Greg Luce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and frightening

I am frightened at how prophetic this story sounds. A great balance in talking about the war from both sides. I pray that no portion of this story becomes reality but admit to the fact in many respects it seems highly probable that the "blue" will push America to its destruction.

[Michael Jauch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, although very realistic in what may happen if our country continues to split. Just watching what’s happening today in Portland, Chicago, New York and California shows we are headed to a split in our Country that only will end in Civil War. The death of Charlie Kirk is the match that has lit the fuse.

[Doug Caldwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grim story of millions who die and new type of American government takes over. Story unfolds with a series of interviews of various civilian and military participants by the author who also fought in this 2 year war. Most casualties died from injury, illness and starvation as nothing was working as we know it now. Europeans got involved to a certain extent.

[Manuel Vergara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frightening and plausible vision of our country

Interesting read and totally plausible. The author weaves a story about a potential civil war in the US that’s in equal parts frightening and entertaining. Highly recommend.

[Mark Phinney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Frighteningly Great Book

Very well written speculative fiction about the Second American Civil War, a war between the Red and Blue states. Multiples short chapters telling the stories of various types of active participants in the war. A frightening prophesy.

[Andre Mazeron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a good book, but it fails to maintain a consistent narrative tone. At times it's extremely serious, at others it leans toward the over-the-top woke commentaries of the Kelly Turnbull series, by the same author.

[L M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Factual read

Whom would I recommend this book to? Everyone. Especially those who haven't seen enough of life to understand the pain and suffering we as a nation could experience. I hope it never happens....

[Scott Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

It Could Happen

Schlicter is insightful and prophetic. As a student of history this fictional story could very easily become reality. Indeed, the precursors to a civil war in America today are aligning as we speak. God help us.

[e greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIP Charlie Kirk

After the violence by the left these last couple of years this book becomes alarmingly possible. With his military background Schlichter makes the war angles of the story realistic. His sarcasm is biting my accurate when dealing with blues.

[Michael J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kurt Does It Again

Kurt has a way of producing works of fiction that somehow don't seem very fictional. This account of a second American Civil War and what led to it could very well happen in the not so distant future.

[Barb Martino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right vs Left

Another great read from author Kurt Schlichter. A must read , I read it in 2 days. Its hard to think something like this could happen, but you could only push people so far without them taking action. I definitely recommend this book.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another warning

This was a too real work of fiction and another warning for the direction our country is heading.
I usually feel stressed and frightened after reading this author. Mr. Schlichter writes well so I can't help but read his books.

[Randy Pope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very scary view of America's possible future

lot of folks see this coming. It's not fiction but a real prophecy of our future if we do nothing to stem the tide of woke stupidity and put this country back on track to our foundational documents. We are forewarned.

[John Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

looking forward to the new Kelly turnbull book

We’ll written accounts from differing perspectives that seem to give a more realistic perspective about the results of simmering tensions in our country

[Juanabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Apocalypse

Good read. Great food for thought, especially for anyone who has a “…it couldn’t happen here…”; daily news & the constant drumbeat in the media of how bad one side or the other is acting makes the theme in the book wholly believable

[Mark Ely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful variety

Wide ranging personal perspectives of what a civil war would be like: hell. Best not to go the extremes that would start it, but this is the logical result of what persons who want to get and keep all centralized power.

[William Hess · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Excellent Book!

A good look at what can happen by Government stupidity and blind obedience to insane policy by halfwit politicians! Maybe every Leftwing politician needs to read and reconsider their insane positions!

[Mike Glaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please do not let us end up here.