Summary
Internal unrest rarely appears without warning. History shows a recurring pattern before internal conflict: Trust in institutions erodes, economic pressure intensifies, political divisions harden, and government responses relying on force accelerate instability. Recognizing these conditions does not predict collapse, but helps you identify systemic stress early and prepare thoughtfully rather than react in fear.
What’s Really Going On?
With political distrust rising, tensions flaring across ideological lines, and law enforcement visible in many American cities, people are asking an uncomfortable question: How close are we to internal conflict?
This piece doesn’t attempt to answer that outright.
Instead, it looks at the patterns—recurring conditions that have preceded unrest in other places and other times.
These conditions don’t always lead to collapse, but they tend to follow a familiar arc.
Trust in institutions wears thin. Economic pressure builds beneath the surface. Divisions deepen, harden, and begin to shape identity. And when those in power respond with force instead of listening, the damage often accelerates.
Understanding those patterns gives us a better chance to stay ahead of them—and prepare with purpose, not fear.
The Erosion of Trust
If there’s one warning sign that shows up again and again before a nation comes undone, it’s this…
People stop believing that institutions work for them.
Let’s start with Nepal in September 2025, where a youth-led uprising brought the government to its knees in just 2 days.
Trust didn’t vanish overnight.
It eroded slowly under the weight of corruption, cronyism, and a government that seemed deaf to the frustrations of a younger generation.
And when the ruling party tried to silence online dissent by banning social media platforms—it backfired spectacularly.
In September 2025, what began as peaceful protests over corruption and censorship exploded into a nationwide movement.
Parliament was burned. Courts were torched.
Protesters, many still in school uniforms, faced live fire from government forces.
In less than 48 hours, the entire state machinery collapsed.
Why? Because faith in it had already disappeared.
Online platforms didn’t cause the collapse—they simply revealed how deep the disillusionment already was.[1]
Rewind a few hundred years to the events that led up to the French Revolution.
In France, long before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the people had already lost faith—not just in the monarchy, but in the entire structure of power that had kept them poor, unheard, and overtaxed.
It wasn’t just bread prices or bad harvests.
It was something deeper: A growing awareness that the system had been designed for someone else.
The nobility paid no taxes, yet controlled the courts, the land, and the army.
The clergy owned 10% of French land and were exempt from many laws.[2]
Meanwhile, commoners bore the weight of royal wars and aristocratic excess.
When Louis XVI called the Estates-General for the first time in 175 years, it wasn’t seen as hope.
It was seen as proof that the elites were out of touch, and the damage was already done.
Reform was promised, but trust had already collapsed.
When trust in institutions breaks down, people don’t just disengage, they eventually push back.
Whether it's a revolution in powdered wigs or in school uniforms, the pattern is the same…
When the system stops working for the people, the people stop waiting for it to fix itself.
Economic Instability Lights the Fuse
Economic trouble alone doesn’t always cause unrest.
But when people feel as if they are being crushed by a system that’s rigged—or worse, indifferent—that’s when things start to shift.
Take Sri Lanka in 2022.
By mid-year, the country was down to less than $2 billion in usable foreign reserves.[3]
Inflation passed 50%. The power grid faltered. Fuel stations dried up. Lines for food stretched for hours.
But what pushed people into the streets wasn’t just the hardship—it was the feeling that they were suffering while the political elite stayed protected.
The president’s family held nearly a dozen senior posts, and corruption had been tolerated for years.
But when survival itself became uncertain, patience ran out.
A protest camp outside the president’s office turned into a nationwide movement.
Within weeks, the palace was stormed. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country.[3]
In Bangladesh in 2024, it was a different kind of squeeze.
The government brought back a public sector hiring policy that favored elite families and political insiders.
Students who had worked for years preparing for civil service exams suddenly saw those doors slammed shut.
Then a journalist revealed the exams had been manipulated for over a decade.
That was the breaking point.
Protests erupted, calling not just for reform, but for the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
She stepped down soon after.[4]
Again, Nepal saw a similar pattern the next year.
The economy had been stagnant.
Nearly 23% of young people were unemployed, and more than 75% of households depended on remittances just to stay afloat.[1]
Growth had flatlined, opportunity was scarce, and corruption was quietly bleeding billions from public funds.
For an entire generation, the future didn’t just feel uncertain…it felt outsourced.
When a government makes survival feel like luck, people stop trusting the system.
And eventually, they stop waiting for it to change.
Political Polarization Takes Hold
Sometimes, collapse doesn’t come from the top.
It comes when people no longer see each other as part of the same country.
Start with Spain in 1936.
Tensions had been building for years between left-leaning Republicans and right-wing Nationalists.
One side wanted reform. The other wanted tradition, order, and the church.
When a fragile democratic government failed to hold them together, each side turned inward…and then turned on the other.
It wasn’t just political. It was personal.
Communities broke apart. Cities chose sides.
The violence was fast and brutal.[5]
Now look at Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
For decades, it held together as a federation—different republics, ethnicities, and religions, all under one government.
But after Tito’s death, that unity began to slip.
The economy weakened. Trust in the central government faded.
And nationalist leaders filled the vacuum.
Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and others were no longer just neighbors or political opponents—they became threats.
Politicians stopped trying to hold the country together and started drawing lines between who belonged and who didn’t.
The result was nearly a decade of separate wars.[6]
When identity replaces institutions, conflict stops being about who’s right and starts being about who belongs.
When Force Replaces Listening
Sometimes it's not the protest that pushes a country toward collapse.
It’s the way the government responds.
On the first day of protests in Nepal in 2025, police opened fire on unarmed students.
19 people were killed. Dozens more were injured.[1]
There was no warning, no attempt to de-escalate—just immediate, lethal force.
But the violence didn’t end the uprising. It spread it.
The killings turned a student protest into a national crisis.
More people joined. Rage deepened.
Within 48 hours, the military had been deployed, the prime minister had resigned, and the government had effectively fallen.
Bangladesh saw a similar pattern the year before.
In July 2024, students were protesting a reinstated hiring quota that favored political elites.
Police and paramilitary forces responded with tear gas, rubber bullets—and then live ammunition.
Over 300 people were killed in the first 2 weeks.
What was meant to end the movement only made it stronger.
The deaths unified opposition groups, triggered a nationwide shutdown, and led to the collapse of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government within weeks.[4]
And in Sri Lanka in 2022, it started the same way.
Peaceful protests against inflation and corruption were met with curfews and police crackdowns.
When that didn’t work, the military was brought in.
But the use of force backfired.
Images of soldiers confronting unarmed civilians only fueled public anger.
The protests didn’t stop…they intensified.
By July, the president had fled the country.[3]
In each case, the government believed that force would restore control.
Instead, it revealed how little control they had left.
Unrest Doesn’t Erupt out of Nowhere
It’s easy to look at unrest as a moment—something that arrives suddenly and without warning.
But history tells a different story.
What looks like a flashpoint is almost always the final result of a long, slow breakdown—one that began long before anyone noticed.
Systems stretch past their limits. People lose trust in the institutions that were meant to hold things together. And small disruptions begin to feel permanent.
Eventually, something gives.
This isn’t about fear. It’s about paying attention and being ready if things shift.
Notice the patterns.
Read between the lines.
And prepare wisely.
In liberty,
Elizabeth Anderson
Preparedness Advisor, My Patriot Supply
Sources
[1] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.From Streets to Discord: How Nepal’s Gen Z Toppled a Government.
Published September 2025. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/nepal-gen-z-topple-government?lang=en
[2] Sorbonne Université.A Brief History of the Long-Standing Mistrust Between the French People and the Elites.
Published 2023. https://www.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/news/brief-history-long-standing-mistrust-between-french-people-and-elites
[3] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.The Aragalaya Protest Movement and the Struggle for Political Change in Sri Lanka.
Published August 2025. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/sri-lanka-aragalaya-protest-movement-oust-wickremesinghe-rajapaksa?lang=en
[4] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.The Disproportionate Reservation Practice and the Fall of Hasina in Bangladesh.
Published December 2024. https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2024/12/30/the-disproportionate-reservation-practice-and-the-fall-of-hasina-in-bangladesh/
[5] Encyclopaedia Britannica.Spanish Civil War: Definition, Causes, Summary, & Facts.
Accessed January 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Spanish-Civil-War
[6] International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).The Conflicts.
Accessed January 2026. https://www.icty.org/en/about/what-former-yugoslavia/conflicts
