The destruction is absolutely apocalyptic and the personal hardships of several million people are incredible. There will be little infrastructure such as electric, roads, etc for months if not years.

I've watched some youtubes of a guy with a camera phone walking around with a chainsaw to do cleanup work... interstates and many blacktopped roads look like they've turned into rivers of mud with no sign of civilization. I-40 (a major artery comparable to I-75 or I-80 in spots) is just mud as far as the eye can see.

There is a constant thrumming of helicopters dropping supplies wherever. The guy showed a scattered bunch of boxes, probably food, and paper products like toilet paper rolls that were just dropped into a clearing and were tumbling down a hill until locals could find the stuff and take it. Amateurs (pilots) are taking it on themselves to airlift supplies. The local police are so paranoid about looters apparently that they block most volunteers from coming in unless they are with an NGO like the Red Cross.

It will require a "Marshall plan" scale investment (with the US already groaning under an inflationary $40T debt) to rebuild the region to anywhere near normal.

I foresee extreme hardship, poverty, lack of opportunity, and almost total lack of tourism resources for a a few years. Tourism is an easy boost and the area had plenty - but the storm damage makes things very ugly visually and again, no infrastructure. These peoples' jobs were wiped out in most cases, and their homes are wrecked.

Many TN, GA and NC residents from the region are literally refugees, starting from scratch.

Fuck the illegals hard. This drain on resources will probably force the issue of illegals being evicted from the US.

I'm thinking in the current fiscal climate of the US where there is no money available to reinvest, TN and NC are not fully rebuilt and most locals have to move out just to find work and a place to live. This region has been a very prosperous, clean, touristy area - the exact opposite of depressed Appalachian areas like West Virginia. If the area stagnates under the burden of rebuilding you could see it become lawless and desolate.

And also... this is the extreme kind of hardship that breeds even crazier political sentiments than we have now. The US almost went communistic under the Great Depression conditions and FDR, as much of a bastard as he was, put fingers in the dike with some light socialist programs to stave off outright communism for the time being.

I believe totally in the American people (I sound like a politician) and I believe that this will be a wake up call for many to dig in. But the structural and financial issues that the US has created are a hindrance to rebuilding. We've already blown our collective wad on dumbassed wars on multiple fronts.

Dickensian is the word for what people in that area now face.