I voted on the Chinese. Hawkins HAS to be a mole, probably Russian (although given the ham hand of plot crafting in Hollyweird he might be a member of the Hezbollah for all we know), as for Jake's passport being flagged, criminal activity can get it flagged, as well as maybe (GASP!) someone in the beauracracy made a mistake. (Sits down and fans myself to offset the shock of saying a gov't makes mistakes.)
I discounted any terror organization being behind this, simply put: Not enough resources. I figure a nuke plot would take a decade to plan and prepare for and that is a LONG time w/o Intell finding SOMETHING out.
Plus there has been rumours of 'suitcase bombs' in either theory or practice in several inventories, again mostly referenced in the realm of Nuke capable nations.
Then there was that retalitory strike. One really doesn't think that we'd waste ICBMs on a terrorist enemy due to the colateral damage to non-involved targets plus the fact that no terror organization is that centralized to be truly harmed by a strike like that.
Then you ask "What about that report about the NYPD and the van?" Ever see the movie Telephon? Or the (in my case) probable use of WarPact Spec Ops forces to disable NATO in the event of WWIII in Europe?
Why the Chinese and not the Russians: Simply put, I think the russian military is unwilling to start WWIII, UNLESS there was a coup there and some (fanatic or crackpot) just launched the ICBMs. Besides, they rely a bit more on our economy than they can really afford to wreck it.
Mars. (I'll take this to mean ANY extraterrestrial aliens). We be so very screwed if ET wanted to hose us. Then there is the niggling little trouble of: Why the US? Why not All the World?
Civil War: Possible, but not enough information to support it.
Women: Depends on what time of the month it was... ROFLMAO! Sorry, bad joke.

Hint's it is IMHO, the Chinese: That news show was AIMED at the US.
The airdrop of "relief supplies".
The possibility that Hawkins is actually a Chinese agent and using the Russian sites as a cover, IN THE EVENT OF HIS BEING COMPROMISED.
The Chinese have a fairly robust economy and yet can handle the collapse of a western economy better than a western industrial economy as most of hina is still pretty much low tech.

Just my thoughts. I am waiting for more episodes to unravel the spaghetti dinner they have tossed at us.

DonP

Well the new episode is out, and it did awnser a lot of questions. Anyone have any thoughts?

Ahhhh, bugger.
New season hasn't started here in Oz yet.

it's even hard to guess who is behind this, but as the folks from Jerico start venturing out more and more, answers are coming slowly.

I think it's definately a civil war...why would china send supplies if they were the ones who attacked?

this is a theory... it could be.. but who is behind the civil war?

FBI? Someone who was high up in the goverment, maybe knew a person who wanted to take over the goverment, so he planned the attacks so that when he tried to take over there wouldnt be a strong federal gov. to stop him...As they said arn't there four presidents or something like that, each with their own army?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
-Abraham Lincoln

I think it is obvious that there was some sort of domestic terrorist conspiracy here, I haven't seen Episode 15 yet (getting the chips and salsa ready as we speak so I can watch it on the innertube) but I am still leaning towards Civil War, kind of. The whole six presidents thing is a bit of a pickle, the US Constitution is pretty clear on order of secession so I don't see how there could really be any issues there unless someone wanted there to be. (Doesn't the constitution make provisions via several amendments on order of secession all the way down to the most junior Representative?) Apparently in episode 16 the Marines are going to invade, pretty long ways from the ocean if you ask me, but it goes along with my theory that whenever a movie comes out where the US military dropped the ball the Army is chosen as the poster boy and whenever it comes time to glorify the US military the Marines are chosen. Liberal bias obviously.

Welllll, when there is no goverment to enforce the constitution, and when hell breaks loose there could be some people who assume the president's dead, cause nobody can get a broadcast out, so I suppose they're all gonna fight for presidency...then again they could divide the US up and rule them seperately

Dang I didn't even realize I missed episode 15

I'm just curious, is micro-scaled civil war like situation `Jericho vs. New Bern` possible if scenario like `Jericho` happen?