Modern, overdeveloped societies in the West are already in a severe crisis, which will eventually turn into a long global emergency in the decades ahead.
A quite realistic asessment of our failing civilization. We have existing examples of how this process works. Haití, for instance, has been in population overshoot and state of collapse for ages. Government ceases to exist, and a more primitive, feudalistic local organization takes its place: local gangs. But we also have worse examples of present day collapse: Palestines in Gaza, crowded and desperate, make an attempt at breakout and are crushed brutally.
Haiti has not collapsed - I was there 6 months after the quake... they still had food.. and some electricity... petrol was available... flights into the country were available
I totally agree with your prognosis. Now, can we start building local networks of people who realize what is coming and start to collaborate in preparation? How can your readers in a geographical area connect with one another?
The Int'l Degrowth Network (and especially the group in Burlington VT, near where I live) are delusional. They want both sustainable communities AND open borders. Sorry, but you can't have fundamentally incompatible goals and expect to be at all effective let alone to be taken seriously.
I don't necessarily support any of the groups' aims in the link I gave. Nor frankly have I spent any time reviewing any of the material or groups on there other than one geographically close to me, and like you was a little disappointed. I simply offered it as an answer to your question "How can your readers in a geographical area connect with one another?"
This! Ive been working on this as well, trying to implement training in skills for surviving in austere conditions. People aren’t even thinking about community security.
I have signed up for short course in how to ambush farmers ... the focus is on being able to kill with a sniper rifle from 1km away.... what you do is the evening before the Kill Shot... is you and your gang of trained killers set up shop in a concealed position with a clear line of sight to the farmer's garden under the cover of night...
Then the next morning when the farmer steps into the garden to till the soil... you fire a bullet into his head...
Then you help yourself to his women and veggies and chickens... in whatever order you please.
Won’t a drastically reduced world population actually make a lot of these issues easier to deal with? As you rightly point out, population numbers are trending down for a host of reasons. One only needs to look at the population pyramids of the modern world to see that a 40%+ decline in population over the next 50 - 100 years is in progress. Seems like this will extend the useful life of energy reserves and make alternatives more viable because demand will be lower by default.
To be clear, I am not advocating for population control or anything of the sort. Nor am I saying that this means the proverbial Line can keep going up and to the right. Rather it seems that most decisions being made are to deal with these conundrums, not to actually solve them. It strikes me that the powers that be understand all of this and are trying (crudely and riddled with major issues) to manage through this in a way that doesn’t lead to catastrophe.
I agree that there is an element of government-approved corporate consolidation to keep the grift going. But I can’t help but think that physics will help bring an end to that. Not in some dramatic way, but in a reorienting of resources such that they are allocated based on underlying factors, not top down directives.
As you say, collapse isn’t some Event, but a long process of adjustment in which we all must deal with physical reality. Given this, it seems to me that the best thing a person can do is understand that this isn’t something to hide from in a bunker. Rather you must live actively and try and use this understanding to your advantage.
You say, "population numbers are trending down", and that is simply not the case. World population is increasing, and will continue to increase for many years.
The financial system tried to vaporize a few times in the past 20 years. It is always surprising how much money can be printed to plug the holes.
As Sorcerer writes, each time this happens, it introduces new inefficiencies and opportunities for the wealthy to claim more.
For now, at least, we do have enough food to feed most people. Maybe war changes that. But if tomorrow we had a 20-30% drop in the stock market, nothing would change about the reality that the economy does still have the capacity to function (food, gas, electricity). Yes, money printing would be necessary to prop it up for a while longer; and yes, each time we print, there's some loss of faith, price of gold goes up, etc, etc.
People will work hard to get food back into markets, etc. Yes, the poorest will suffer, and yes, over the past decades, especially, we have substantially reduced the resiliency of our systems, but barring nuclear war or a major electromagnetic event that destroys all the computers, probably most things will continue to muddle along, just always a little worse, and always more worse for the poor.
The supply chain requires letters of credit in order to function. So - a financial institution that can finance, email/internet for transactions, and credit-worthiness of the entity needing the letter of credit. I'm sure this is a vast over-simplification.
People may WANT to get the food and supplies back into markets, but how do they do that? The infrastructure must be able to reboot. Backup systems, commercial batteries, diesel generators, etc. must be able to be resupplied. Your financial transaction must have a way to get through.
B, Thank you, You have more of the collapse pieces assembled correctly than most. You have included some views of several unfolding futures. However, you have not put numbers on "who is going to get injured and when." Let me provide one view in the form of short animation-- Civilization's: "Running out of gas" story. youtu.be/b5z5R6xqEG0 9 minutes
There are several more short videos that may help with your project. They are posted at www.skil.org. I even suggest the design of a civilization that would not collapse. ”A non-injury producing Civilization” 55 minutes
The owners are likely to overlay war, famine and pestilence over the degradation taking place in the hyperfinancialized west.
Don't bite.
Grow vegetables; give away what you can't eat or store effectively. Be a friend. Have a good bike that is well fitted to your body that can carry modest luggage or groceries. Ride it at least 4 hours a week, though you may have to work up to that.
Pray and meditate, in a group if you can find one that you fit into.
I think a collapse is like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, “Slowly, and then all at once”. In the West, we have a debt-based financial system. It requires perpetual growth, or it will collapse. Growth means growth in capital, labor, and inputs.
(Why growth? - All money is loaned into existence at interest, so it requires $10 + interest to pay back the original $10 that was loaned out. The sum, greater than the original $10, must come from somewhere, must come from future growth.)
If fiat currency is a demand on future units of energy, then growth is based on the (unwarranted) assumption that future energy will be available to satisfy my demand. Right now, the economy runs on the delusion that this will be the case, i.e., the energy will be there to satisfy all of the existing claims.
So the question arises, what happens when it is clear that growth is no longer possible? Will I loan out $10, knowing that I will only get $8 back? Wasn’t this the issue in 2008, a potential locking up of the financial system? Banks did not want to loan out money because they weren’t sure that they were going to get paid back. Supply chains run on this liquidity, this willingness to loan out money. When the supply chains stop, and the workers go back to their villages (China), are they coming back? – I think that once the supply chains break, I am not sure that they will come back.
I think that the Western financial system will collapse, a bunch of people will starve to death, and then, depending on the bandit situation, regional supply chains may spring up to take up the slack, but these are big ifs. (FE would point to the spent fuel ponds scattered around and say that vaxxing (predominately) the Western world, was not an accident. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, amirite?)
recently i discovered there is a 'post-doom' wikipedia article - the concept was articulated by michael dowd, who died last october at the age of 64
in some ways collapse is already under way, but it might be like going bankrupt - slowly, step by step, and then suddenly all at once - the gradualness of what's going on now might have a major inflection point
This is very good. Ian Welsh has been hammering on these points for a long time. "ianwelsh.net", an excellent site. Others- William Gibson, the SF author, has a concept of "The Jackpot" which is a realistic simulation as outlined above, leading to a much smaller population of survivors.
I believe that railroads will re-emerge as the dominant form of transportation, due to economics of fuel use. But, they won't be the same mix of train sizes. Very small solar-powered/large-battery railcars are feasible today. If I was managing a "family office" for a multigeneration fortune today, I would buy railroads and rights-of-way.
Good overview. FIY, I often point out that "REAL downshifting is necessary for our own mental health anyway, even if limitless energy were available", but it is also something that would, in your words, "make collapse much more human".
How did you collapse? First slowly - then all at once.
The deterioration has been underway for decades... but the Central Banks have been fending off the implosion with stimulus.
Alas what cannot continue will stop .... actually it will not stop ... they will continue to try to delay the implosion --- but the the stimulus will push on a string at some point
We edge closer to that moment every day.
When it stops working --- the financial system will implode... the global supply chains will implode... there will be no food... you won't be able to buy a toothbrush....
Trade-Off Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse.
Fortunately The Men Who Run the World have worked out a plan to minimize the suffering... what's the point of hunting down your neighbour's kids and raping and murdering them when everyone is going to die anyway....
A breath of fresh air and honesty, thank you. One of the most serious consequences of this very likely scenario of a stop-start collapse, very unevenly distributed spatially and taking decades, is that it will make possible a wilful denial and deception (and self-deception) about the true nature of what is happening. The developed world establishment has always "accepted" that there are parts of the world and parts of our societies where poverty, social desperation, violence etc are "difficult to eradicate"; thus, under this likely scenario of a slow collapse, it will be relatively easy for people to simply enlarge the mental area of these problematic zones and thus avoid facing the bigger picture of what is happening, even as it engulfs more and more of our world.
Indeed, the tendency towards greater and greater economic inequality, with a super rich class who are more and more powerful and insulated from most of planetary reality and continue promoting high-consumption, high-exploitation visions, will counterintuitively become portrayed as the evidence that our human status quo can continue, and that the "problems" come from the growing numbers of people who defy the establishment and the law because they are forced into desperate measures to obtain the essentials of life such as food, housing, employment, etc. Hence the clear growth of the far right in many parts of the world. There are really only two possible directions for the social evolution in this process: either we (and especially the rich 20%) accept the global nature of our overshoot predicament, and that we must work collectively to find our way through it, with global justice and rights, and ecological realities as our guides; or we will head more and more directly into extremes of inequality, fascism and barbarism as the rich effectively "mine" the poor. Neither path offers a clear future for a human civilization but only the first option offers any hope for maintaining what we currently consider human values and human rights.
True, it will be nothing like the movies. You paint one possibility but there are many. However, I doubt that humans will eventually get back to a "truly sustainable way of life." I doubt humans ever could, once that first digging stick was invented. I also can't see the top 0.1% having holidays abroad if others can't because there would be no air traffic infrastructure without the requisite demand though I guess some may have the ability to use private jets on private runways without too much risk of air or ground collisions, provided they stocked up on jet fuel, so long as the craft don't need repairs or maintenance.
Lets take a look at what happened in NYC when the power went out - see the video -- reality check....
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
A quite realistic asessment of our failing civilization. We have existing examples of how this process works. Haití, for instance, has been in population overshoot and state of collapse for ages. Government ceases to exist, and a more primitive, feudalistic local organization takes its place: local gangs. But we also have worse examples of present day collapse: Palestines in Gaza, crowded and desperate, make an attempt at breakout and are crushed brutally.
Most people aren’t thinking about how to form community with robust security skills to stave off gang rule.
Probably because they are aware of this https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
Haiti has not collapsed - I was there 6 months after the quake... they still had food.. and some electricity... petrol was available... flights into the country were available
I totally agree with your prognosis. Now, can we start building local networks of people who realize what is coming and start to collaborate in preparation? How can your readers in a geographical area connect with one another?
This is the overriding question for me.
Check out this Degrowth Database, it has lots of local efforts and data
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Z7kTs0smhOU9S3DyGNJ_MBQeu3XKW2qdxa3unOEn6I/edit#gid=0
The Int'l Degrowth Network (and especially the group in Burlington VT, near where I live) are delusional. They want both sustainable communities AND open borders. Sorry, but you can't have fundamentally incompatible goals and expect to be at all effective let alone to be taken seriously.
I don't necessarily support any of the groups' aims in the link I gave. Nor frankly have I spent any time reviewing any of the material or groups on there other than one geographically close to me, and like you was a little disappointed. I simply offered it as an answer to your question "How can your readers in a geographical area connect with one another?"
Thank you Natasha.
The way to find the farmers is to watch for smoke coming out of the chimney.
Delusional Fools
hahahahaha... 8 billion .. without food... think about that
This! Ive been working on this as well, trying to implement training in skills for surviving in austere conditions. People aren’t even thinking about community security.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
I have signed up for short course in how to ambush farmers ... the focus is on being able to kill with a sniper rifle from 1km away.... what you do is the evening before the Kill Shot... is you and your gang of trained killers set up shop in a concealed position with a clear line of sight to the farmer's garden under the cover of night...
Then the next morning when the farmer steps into the garden to till the soil... you fire a bullet into his head...
Then you help yourself to his women and veggies and chickens... in whatever order you please.
Did I mention that https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
Where can you get one of those red houses?
Norway
They look Swedish to me. Very common here.
Sherwin-Williams
Thank you B🙏
Won’t a drastically reduced world population actually make a lot of these issues easier to deal with? As you rightly point out, population numbers are trending down for a host of reasons. One only needs to look at the population pyramids of the modern world to see that a 40%+ decline in population over the next 50 - 100 years is in progress. Seems like this will extend the useful life of energy reserves and make alternatives more viable because demand will be lower by default.
To be clear, I am not advocating for population control or anything of the sort. Nor am I saying that this means the proverbial Line can keep going up and to the right. Rather it seems that most decisions being made are to deal with these conundrums, not to actually solve them. It strikes me that the powers that be understand all of this and are trying (crudely and riddled with major issues) to manage through this in a way that doesn’t lead to catastrophe.
I agree that there is an element of government-approved corporate consolidation to keep the grift going. But I can’t help but think that physics will help bring an end to that. Not in some dramatic way, but in a reorienting of resources such that they are allocated based on underlying factors, not top down directives.
As you say, collapse isn’t some Event, but a long process of adjustment in which we all must deal with physical reality. Given this, it seems to me that the best thing a person can do is understand that this isn’t something to hide from in a bunker. Rather you must live actively and try and use this understanding to your advantage.
Justin Frank, you are mistaken:
You say, "population numbers are trending down", and that is simply not the case. World population is increasing, and will continue to increase for many years.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth-over-time
When the financial system vapourizes... the entire world will within hours ... descend into chaos.
The supermarkets will within a day or so be looted and permanently emptied.
There will be no power - so no water. There will be no petrol.
This is what collapse light looks like - black in NYC 1997
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4krDA1kjsP0
This was a temporary situation - and yet...
The coming collapse will be rapid - and global... and we will be killing and eating each other as we face starvation.
Fortunately the men who run the world will not allow it to come to this - they are exterminating us
https://www.headsupster.com/forumthread?shortId=220
The financial system tried to vaporize a few times in the past 20 years. It is always surprising how much money can be printed to plug the holes.
As Sorcerer writes, each time this happens, it introduces new inefficiencies and opportunities for the wealthy to claim more.
For now, at least, we do have enough food to feed most people. Maybe war changes that. But if tomorrow we had a 20-30% drop in the stock market, nothing would change about the reality that the economy does still have the capacity to function (food, gas, electricity). Yes, money printing would be necessary to prop it up for a while longer; and yes, each time we print, there's some loss of faith, price of gold goes up, etc, etc.
People will work hard to get food back into markets, etc. Yes, the poorest will suffer, and yes, over the past decades, especially, we have substantially reduced the resiliency of our systems, but barring nuclear war or a major electromagnetic event that destroys all the computers, probably most things will continue to muddle along, just always a little worse, and always more worse for the poor.
The supply chain requires letters of credit in order to function. So - a financial institution that can finance, email/internet for transactions, and credit-worthiness of the entity needing the letter of credit. I'm sure this is a vast over-simplification.
People may WANT to get the food and supplies back into markets, but how do they do that? The infrastructure must be able to reboot. Backup systems, commercial batteries, diesel generators, etc. must be able to be resupplied. Your financial transaction must have a way to get through.
How do you produce diesel when the global supply chains are gone - permanently?
There will be no petrol... cuz expensive energy is why the economy is going to collapse
B, Thank you, You have more of the collapse pieces assembled correctly than most. You have included some views of several unfolding futures. However, you have not put numbers on "who is going to get injured and when." Let me provide one view in the form of short animation-- Civilization's: "Running out of gas" story. youtu.be/b5z5R6xqEG0 9 minutes
There are several more short videos that may help with your project. They are posted at www.skil.org. I even suggest the design of a civilization that would not collapse. ”A non-injury producing Civilization” 55 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYR5Ix-1wMs. Jackalpert4@gmail.com
Hilarious!!!
The owners are likely to overlay war, famine and pestilence over the degradation taking place in the hyperfinancialized west.
Don't bite.
Grow vegetables; give away what you can't eat or store effectively. Be a friend. Have a good bike that is well fitted to your body that can carry modest luggage or groceries. Ride it at least 4 hours a week, though you may have to work up to that.
Pray and meditate, in a group if you can find one that you fit into.
I have nothing fancy since before Y2k.
Kindness is weakness in a collapsed world... I do not recommend that at all.
Someone will rip your face off for a can of beans
We shall see. It might be location-specific. I believe that you are mistaken.
I may bet my life on that.
We'll see...
I think a collapse is like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, “Slowly, and then all at once”. In the West, we have a debt-based financial system. It requires perpetual growth, or it will collapse. Growth means growth in capital, labor, and inputs.
(Why growth? - All money is loaned into existence at interest, so it requires $10 + interest to pay back the original $10 that was loaned out. The sum, greater than the original $10, must come from somewhere, must come from future growth.)
If fiat currency is a demand on future units of energy, then growth is based on the (unwarranted) assumption that future energy will be available to satisfy my demand. Right now, the economy runs on the delusion that this will be the case, i.e., the energy will be there to satisfy all of the existing claims.
So the question arises, what happens when it is clear that growth is no longer possible? Will I loan out $10, knowing that I will only get $8 back? Wasn’t this the issue in 2008, a potential locking up of the financial system? Banks did not want to loan out money because they weren’t sure that they were going to get paid back. Supply chains run on this liquidity, this willingness to loan out money. When the supply chains stop, and the workers go back to their villages (China), are they coming back? – I think that once the supply chains break, I am not sure that they will come back.
I think that the Western financial system will collapse, a bunch of people will starve to death, and then, depending on the bandit situation, regional supply chains may spring up to take up the slack, but these are big ifs. (FE would point to the spent fuel ponds scattered around and say that vaxxing (predominately) the Western world, was not an accident. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, amirite?)
Yes ... to repeat https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
recently i discovered there is a 'post-doom' wikipedia article - the concept was articulated by michael dowd, who died last october at the age of 64
in some ways collapse is already under way, but it might be like going bankrupt - slowly, step by step, and then suddenly all at once - the gradualness of what's going on now might have a major inflection point
This is very good. Ian Welsh has been hammering on these points for a long time. "ianwelsh.net", an excellent site. Others- William Gibson, the SF author, has a concept of "The Jackpot" which is a realistic simulation as outlined above, leading to a much smaller population of survivors.
I believe that railroads will re-emerge as the dominant form of transportation, due to economics of fuel use. But, they won't be the same mix of train sizes. Very small solar-powered/large-battery railcars are feasible today. If I was managing a "family office" for a multigeneration fortune today, I would buy railroads and rights-of-way.
hahahahahaha.... railroads.... hahahaha take a look at what happens when things unravel https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
Good overview. FIY, I often point out that "REAL downshifting is necessary for our own mental health anyway, even if limitless energy were available", but it is also something that would, in your words, "make collapse much more human".
See as example the central part of this post: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/a-nuclear-power-offer-that-you-cannot
Delusion is infinite
Wrong wrong wrong wrong.
How did you collapse? First slowly - then all at once.
The deterioration has been underway for decades... but the Central Banks have been fending off the implosion with stimulus.
Alas what cannot continue will stop .... actually it will not stop ... they will continue to try to delay the implosion --- but the the stimulus will push on a string at some point
We edge closer to that moment every day.
When it stops working --- the financial system will implode... the global supply chains will implode... there will be no food... you won't be able to buy a toothbrush....
Trade-Off Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/trade-off-financial-system-supply-chain-cross-contagion/
8 billion in the dark... starving ... and pissed off...
So NO it will not resemble a movie --- The Gates of Hell will Open.
Murder, rape, cannibalism - spent fuel ponds - extinction.
Fortunately The Men Who Run the World have worked out a plan to minimize the suffering... what's the point of hunting down your neighbour's kids and raping and murdering them when everyone is going to die anyway....
Here is the plan https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-extinction-plan-uep
A breath of fresh air and honesty, thank you. One of the most serious consequences of this very likely scenario of a stop-start collapse, very unevenly distributed spatially and taking decades, is that it will make possible a wilful denial and deception (and self-deception) about the true nature of what is happening. The developed world establishment has always "accepted" that there are parts of the world and parts of our societies where poverty, social desperation, violence etc are "difficult to eradicate"; thus, under this likely scenario of a slow collapse, it will be relatively easy for people to simply enlarge the mental area of these problematic zones and thus avoid facing the bigger picture of what is happening, even as it engulfs more and more of our world.
Indeed, the tendency towards greater and greater economic inequality, with a super rich class who are more and more powerful and insulated from most of planetary reality and continue promoting high-consumption, high-exploitation visions, will counterintuitively become portrayed as the evidence that our human status quo can continue, and that the "problems" come from the growing numbers of people who defy the establishment and the law because they are forced into desperate measures to obtain the essentials of life such as food, housing, employment, etc. Hence the clear growth of the far right in many parts of the world. There are really only two possible directions for the social evolution in this process: either we (and especially the rich 20%) accept the global nature of our overshoot predicament, and that we must work collectively to find our way through it, with global justice and rights, and ecological realities as our guides; or we will head more and more directly into extremes of inequality, fascism and barbarism as the rich effectively "mine" the poor. Neither path offers a clear future for a human civilization but only the first option offers any hope for maintaining what we currently consider human values and human rights.
True, it will be nothing like the movies. You paint one possibility but there are many. However, I doubt that humans will eventually get back to a "truly sustainable way of life." I doubt humans ever could, once that first digging stick was invented. I also can't see the top 0.1% having holidays abroad if others can't because there would be no air traffic infrastructure without the requisite demand though I guess some may have the ability to use private jets on private runways without too much risk of air or ground collisions, provided they stocked up on jet fuel, so long as the craft don't need repairs or maintenance.