At age 78 it is late in the day for Donald Trump to be considering a career change, but let no one doubt the man’s willingness to serve his supporters in any capacity he can.

This week he has tried his hand at being a movie critic, with his first gig a review of The Apprentice, a warts and more warts dramatisation of his early property mogul and playboy years in New York. “A cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job,” said one D. Trump esq in a quote surely destined to go on the movie posters.

He was less successful in his role as a paramedic at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania on Monday night. No sooner had one person fainted and had to be stretchered out of the too warm hall, than another person keeled over. “Would anyone else like to faint?” he asked the crowd, perhaps treating the incident with more merriment than it deserved.

After that he gave up on the Q&A session and suggested organisers play music instead, thus leaving ABC News to report that “the former president stood on stage for nearly 45 minutes swaying to several songs on his playlist as the crowd sang and danced along”.

Just when you think you are through the looking glass with this presidential contest along comes another push deep into crazy territory. How does a country get back on track after an election that makes Duck Soup look like The West Wing?

It is testimony to American preparedness that some have been thinking ahead to what happens after the polls close on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. One might take comfort from that fact, if only the visions of what is to come were not quite so terrifying.

Showing now on BBC iPlayer is the documentary, War Game. Last year, on the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riots, filmmakers Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber brought together former government officials, ex-military personnel, and politicians to role play, or war game, a scenario in which history repeated itself in 2024. Only this time the mob was better organised, its ranks swollen by serving soldiers who had infiltrated the army to push a white supremacist cause. How might democracy fare against that level of attack?

At another time or in another place, it might have been easy to dismiss such a scenario as a liberal fever dream, a far-fetched imagining more suited to a TV drama. Yet the more one studies the 2021 invasion of the Capitol the more incredible it seems that greater carnage did not ensue. In some cases, only a door, or a good samaritan, stood between someone living and dying.

The producers of War Game set up two teams or “cells”: blue (good guys) and red (bad). Leading the blues in the role of president was Steve Bullock, the real former Democrat governor of Montana. In the scenario, he has won the election by six-tenths of one per cent. Again, this might seem hard to believe unless you have been reading the Trump-Harris polls.

The red team featured members of the Vet Voice Foundation, a group of former soldiers. They were head and shoulders above the blue team when it came to getting their message out, tactics, and taking control of a fast-moving situation. Compared to them the blues were Bambis in the headlights.

If nothing else, War Game was an eerily accurate study of how meetings work: who takes charge, who hangs back, who goes furthest quickest (you won’t believe the suggestion from one retired general). Now and then the directors would up the ante, adding to the pressure on the blues. Looming over everything was the Insurrection Act, legislation allowing the president to deploy military force to quell a rebellion or other serious disorder. Would it be used?

Decide for yourself how credible War Game is. Other scenarios are available, and there will be even more of them as the election nears. A mini-industry is flourishing on the back of people’s fears, and both candidates are not above stoking the fires. Most recently, Donald Trump has spoken of using military force against “the enemies within”, while Harris has accused him of being “increasingly unstable and unhinged”, adding that a second Trump term would be “a huge risk for America, and dangerous”.

Trump made his comments on Fox News, his media home. Harris will have her first interview with the network on Wednesday night - an event generating almost as much excitement as the pair’s televised debate. From the moment Joe Biden stepped back, the Republicans have been waiting for Harris to waffle her way into trouble. Thus far she has not given them the satisfaction, though she came close to serving one of her “word salads” in a recent 60 Minutes interview. The producers have since been accused of tightening Harris’s answers, which they deny. Even the interviews about rows are causing rows.

Candidates have been stoking fears about their opponents and offering reassurances about themselves for as long as there have been presidential elections. Yet it is rare for two candidates to do so much of the former and so little of the latter.

As to what will happen after a winner emerges - and assuming the result is not challenged - what can America and the rest of the world expect from the 47th President of the United States?

Trump is again playing the fear card, with talk of a purge of officials, mass deportations of illegal immigrants, and the general settling of scores among the first items on his to-do list. Reality might blunt those ambitions, as happened in the first Trump term. And Harris? Who knows? Without any clear positions of her own she comes across as the continuity candidate, which would be fine if voters wanted four more years of Biden but they did not. It is also worth saying that even if Harris is interviewed every day from here till the election she will still be the least scrutinised candidate in living memory, which brings its own concerns.

Two candidates, a few weeks left, and a lot of unknowns, chief among them whether the election will be over when it is over. I’m making one prediction and one prediction only: it is not going to be dull.

Alison Rowat is a columnist and critic for The Herald