“Here you have a clear picture of Nephite society. Separate ‘lands’ living their own lives, now in this last crisis terribly reluctant to move and join the swelling host in the retreat to the north. Those who refused to pull up stakes were one by one completely wiped out by the Lamanites. This was no planned migration but a forced evacuation, like dozens of such we read about in the grim and terrible times of the ‘Invasion of the Barbarians’ that destroyed the classic civilizations of the Old World. … The fitful but continual falling back of the Nephites towards the north … became something like a rout, with speed the only hope of survival” (Nibley, Approach to the Book of Mormon, 267).