Cherish is a different kind of war story. Instead of describing the chaos and destruction inflicted by blowing things up, it centers on what happens when everything shuts down. The setting is a college town in rural Iowa as it adapts to a cyberwar where a massive national and global power outage paralyzes supply chains, communications, transportation, food production and other components of modernity. It focuses on the intimate dynamics of a challenging but essential transition from privatized lives to community resilience and renewal. This is not a distant prospect or purely hypothetical scenario. It is a clear and present danger, somewhere between possible and probable. And as such, it requires us to think clearly, plan accordingly, and prepare to be here for one another if or when it happens.

Faced with the sudden shutdown of the highly centralized systems that have provided convenience and apparent security but weakened our hands-on knowledge of how to function when those systems go down, we are thrown back on each other to make it through. We often discover the best side of ourselves when we’re forced to turn to one another rather than depend on vast, unaccountable institutions. In the process, we discover how much we need each other and learn to appreciate what each of us brings to the common effort. “Cherish” is a human-scale drama of breakdown, breakthrough and rebirth from our roots, with all the emotional struggle and intimate openings such transformations entail.

The war begins when adversaries in both superpower blocs paralyze each other’s critical services in continuous cyber strikes on prime military, technology and urban targets. Designed to disable rather than devastate, this kind of attack disconnects the fragile infrastructures of centralized modernity. The locales that function most effectively in such circumstances are those that have already created the components of resilience, self-reliance and mutual aid that enable them to come to the aid of one another in the absence of help from the outside.

This story focuses on how well-prepared communities and neighborhoods learn to work together in modes of cooperation that have atrophied in more ordinary times. But it also describes the more chaotic, destructive behavior of individuals, gangs, and repressive upper echelons of power alarmed by the breakdown of centralized power. And it dramatizes how well-organized communities respond to these attacks, by growing connections with resilient communities around the country and world.

This is an emotionally and spiritually complex portrayal of the best and worst aspects of human behavior under extreme duress. Cyberattacks won’t last forever, but in their limited duration they test our mettle by forcing us to realize that like it or not, we belong with one another. We either survive and thrive together or we die alone in isolation and terror.

More than their urban neighbors, long-settled rural residents usually grow up with customs and values of self-reliance and mutual aid that are indispensable when rescue from the outside is no longer available. Obliged to meet basic needs themselves, they largely set aside their divergent beliefs and roll up their sleeves to meet the moment. Thrust into a crucible of cooperation, their attitudes gradually shift from mutual suspicion to grudging appreciation. And an essential element of that resilience is their capacity to laugh, love and rediscover joy in being there for one another in the midst of their shared struggles.