Could ‘The Purge’ Ever Actually Happen?

It’s Purge season again, friends. This October marks the premiere of Season 2 of USA’s thriller, The Purge. Based on the horror franchise of the same name, The Purge takes place in a world where most crime, including murder, is legal for 12 hours. But there’s a twist in this new season. Instead of focusing on Purge night and all the horror it holds, this year we’re diving into the other 364 days of the year.

Created by James DeMonaco, The Purge franchise has become a massive blockbuster hit. This crime free-for-all has spawned four movies and now two seasons on a cable network all about the worst night of every American’s life. But just how likely is this dystopian nightmare? Let’s explore… And remember, for the length of this article, all crime is legal.

Why Was the Purge Created in the First Place?

As insane as it is to type this, there is an actual mythology behind The Purge franchise more than “let’s murder.” According to Cracked, around the time the first Purge movie was released a marketing campaign connected to the movie released a site with a series of articles explaining the holiday from Purge advocates.

That website has since been lost to the internet. But thanks to Cracked we know this night of violence was conceived by The New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) as “a public outcry for protection and vengeance against the increasing number of homeless.” Basically the Purge is the most violent, most dangerous game approach to America’s homelessness problem.

Later, as the Purge became more popular, lower and middle class people were swept up as its victims. This is most clearly seen in The Purge: Anarchy, which shows people with jobs and homes being rounded up for the night to ensure the rich will have a “successful” Purge. We’ll get back to that development in a sec.

In addition to that terrifying poverty elimination argument, there are also two other benefits to the Purge that advocates highlight. This annual night of crime would theoretically increase the economy and decrease nationwide violence. But for the time being think of the original Purge as a 12-hour-long government approved genocide against the homeless.

How does the Purge Work?

The hard and fast rules change from Purge to Purge. For example, prior to The Purge: Election Year, government officials were protected from the Purge. This law was reversed because the NFFA saw a U.S. candidate promising to end the Purge as a threat. Though the finer details may change the general idea stays the same. For 12 hours every year most crime, including arson, theft, rape, and murder, is legal.

To enforce this the U.S. government has an intense country-wide surveillance system. If anyone is caught committing crimes even a second outside of Purge time they’re supposed to be caught and put on trial. So in the universe of the Purge, America has a perfectly functioning surveillance protocol that covers every inch of the country. Seeing as how many traffic lights still don’t have cameras and Apple’s Face ID can be tricked by sunglasses, those technical requirements seem a bit ambitious.

Would the Purge Actually Boost the Economy?

Let’s pretend the Purge actually happened. It would technically achieve its goal to reduce America’s homelessness problem because this fake holiday literally revolves around killing impoverished people. Grim, but that’s the truth of this horror franchise. So let’s move onto the NFFA’s second claim about the Purge, that this holiday would increase the economy.

As Cracked’s Adam Todd Bown points out, there is reason to believe this argument would hold weight, at least after the first couple of Purges. Assuming that America would spend the same amount of money on social services after the Purge was passed, it would be divided among a much smaller group. Instead of primarily focusing on programs to help the homeless, that government money would primarily benefit the next rung of the economic ladder, people on the brink of intense poverty. Again if you ignore the literally murdering innocent people part, on paper that could look like an economic win.

Even as the Purge continues to include more of the middle-class, that’s still a net win for unemployment. Every career-holding murder means there will be a wealth of new job postings that appear right after the worst time of the year.

And you can’t count out the spike in businesses that would emerge solely to support this holiday. We as a nation love dumb nonsense. Currently this costume of Katy Perry’s Left Shark has 375 ratings on Amazon. That means not only did someone try to profit from a funny Superbowl fluke from three years ago, hundreds of people validated their effort and paid actual money for it. Seconds after the Purge is even proposed, “My First Purge” sashes and “Purge You Later” shirts would start selling. That’s without even mentioning the plethora of security industries that would emerge in the wake of a holiday that legalizes murder. All of that translates to more money and more jobs.

But while all of this may look appealing for the economic short term (if you ignore all the MURDER), it’s not going to last. In 2018 Jeffery Ewing examined the economic implications of the Purge for Forbes. Ewing’s argument revolved around the idea that there would be a point of diminishing returns as the Purge continued.

The Purge truly only exists to further segregate the upper class from the lower classes; that’s just a fact. It wouldn’t just achieve that segregation through murder but also through insurance premiums. That’s a reality The Purge: Election Year explored. One of the main characters in the movie, Joe (Mykelti Williamson), is forced to participate in the horrible night because his insurance premiums have gone above beyond what he can afford. So thanks to actual murder and insurance rates, the Purge would create two systems to endanger and ultimately eliminate lower classes.

And as we know from The Purge: Anarchy, that pressure would eventually move up the economic ranks, targeting first the homeless, then the poor, then the middle class. Having a gradual new country completely composed of upper middle class and upper class people wouldn’t fix the economy in the long term. It would merely shift its problems with the middle class becoming the new poor.

Also as Ewing points out, a country under Purge rule would likely lean toward monopolization. As each holiday wipes out more and more businesses, that gives large online retailers and big corporations room to take up more of their markets. This kind of system would be unkind to startups and entrepreneurs, who go a long way in boosting the economy. So though the first couple of Purges may produce some promising numbers, a few years down the line America would likely be in an economically worse position than before.

Would the Purge Actually Reduce Violence?

But what about the violence of it all? The Purge operates under the assumption that everyone in the world has a core of repressed anger. By giving citizens a 12-hour window where all crime is consequence free, the NFAA argue that overall crime would go down.

Ignoring the giant fallacy in that argument — can you really claim that crime has decreased if you completely ignore all the murder that happened during those 12 hours? — that isn’t how people work. As sociologist Lester Andrist told Complex in an interview about the Purge, the idea that people would be able to hold onto their pent up anger and unleash it all on one night goes against good sociological theory. As a general rule, acts of violence in societies beget more violence. The example Andrist used is if there were to be a murder on Sixth Street, later that day that same street may see a robbery. By this idea, the Purge wouldn’t be a cleansing opportunity for repressed anger. It would simply be a time when typically upstanding civilians behaved more violently thanks to unconscious societal pressure. 

Then there’s the serial killer argument. Many captured serial killers throughout history have likened their killing sprees to a drug high. Mark D. Griffiths, Ph.D., even explored serial murder as an addiction for Psychology Today, arguing that anything that gives a person a positive response has the potential to become addictive. It’s very possible that the adrenaline of Purge night could turn into an addiction for some people. And if Mindhunter has taught us anything, once a serial killer starts going they don’t exactly stop. They also probably won’t wait until one special day to start killing again.

Have There Been Purge-like Occurrences Before?

It depends on how the Purge is defined. If the Purge is viewed as a consequence-free holiday, those have certainly existed. Saturnalia was an ancient Roman holiday where masters and slaves’ roles were reversed and most things that were deemed illegal were legalized. The Spartan institution Crypteia was an even more intense version of that. Believed to be part of military training, young Spartan men from the upper class were allowed to terrorize the helot population without fear of being chastised. 

But that’s not exactly what the Purge is, is it? The Purge is legalized genocide. That’s something the world has a lot of experience with. So yeah, Purge-like events have happened in the past but they’ve typically been a bit more manipulative and secretive than this horror franchise.

So Could the Purge Actually Happen?

We can sleep safe on this one. If you want the morality argument so you can feel good about people, it seems unlikely that America would vote for the legal genocide of the homeless. Our country has a lot of problems, but hopefully we can clear that very, very low bar.

If that leaves you feeling doubtful, there’s still the fact that the Purge requires a lot of work for very little gain. For the Purge to actually be effective, America would have to have a near-flawless country-wide surveillance system created, updated, and maintained by the government. Have you been to the DMV? That’s not happening anytime soon. But the Purge wouldn’t even get to that stage because it just doesn’t make sense. This holiday from hell isn’t good for the economy in the longterm nor would it decrease violence. It would be destroyed within minutes of being proposed, both by academics and pearl-clutching moralists who think murder is *spoiler alert* bad.

The bottom line? Like Jigsaw’s elaborate traps in Saw, the Purge is a very cool horror premise. But the minute you start thinking about it, everything falls a part.

Season 2 of The Purge premieres on USA Tuesday, October 15 at 9/8c with new episodes premiering every Tuesday.

Where to stream The Purge