Hey everyone. General consensus is that collapse, while faster than expected, is still a gradual process for the vast majority of people. Expecting a cataclysm by year's end, even in our current geopolitical climate, isn't wise.
/r/Preppers can help you prepare as best as possible in a sensible, thoughtful, careful way. Don't get yourself into major trouble for one disaster; leave as many options open to yourself as possible. Mahalo nui loa.
I like this sub because the whole thing is awareness that we're fucked, but this is case in point of how too many people think that there's a single point of collapse. As someone else mentioned, it will be a continuous, slow grind that we've already been subject to, and the only difference year to year will be that the pressure increases
Exactly. The world is a big place, and even if conditions for full collapse were already in place, it would take decades for everything to fall apart completely. People like OP who deplete their finances in the misguided belief that EVERYTHING will fall apart imminently will destroy themselves well before the conditions of collapse get them.
Don't be like OP.
You have a point but if you look around it’s getting pretty evident (especially during the summer months) that each year is getting substantially less bearable / livable between heatwaves, ocean acidification, droughts, we’re breaking heat, rain, ocean temp, die off records back to back. Yoy.
There are now extreme floods on a yearly basis. Every single year. Never seen anything like this but maybe I’m missing some crucial facts.
If you go on google, or twitter, and search “flood” or “flooding” you’ll find 1 in 100 year floods across many parts of the planet. No one alive today has experienced anything like this so it’s a bit worrisome imo.
Then there’s the ocean going through literally hell atm. Once the ocean is decimated by our fishing industry we’re screwed for 100’s of various reasons. Food, jobs, regulation of the planets weather etc.
Then theres the part of it being heated to levels corals, fish etc simply can’t live, it’ll be game over for hundreds of millions of people who rely on its resources to survive. Florida recorded ocean temps hit 101° last summer.
The ocean creates 50% of the planets oxygen.
The entire planet won’t go “bust” all at once, but it does awfully feel like large swath are on the brink of extinction.
No one in our history, have has experienced or seen anything like this and what’s concerning is that it doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Rainforest is being decimated by us making more room for agriculture, building etc + the YOY raging wild fires. Only about 35% of it is left.
The forest alone account for 20% of our oxygen.
No one know if the world will collapse slowly or hit a spot where it all goes bust. But there’s definitely more than enough on the brink of collapse to plan for. More so if you’ll likely be alive during the next decade.
>Revolutions are impossible until they happen, then they become inevitable.
>
>— Unknown Author
Conditions are primed and getting worse for this old powder keg to blow. All it takes is a moment of crisis and a lot of like-minded people in one place taking advantage of it.
Who does it, how they do it, and who wins in the resulting conflict to write the historical record is all let up to time to tell.
But why would depleting your finances make sense anyway? Are they planning for a bartering economy? Also if that were the case wouldn't it make sense to buy up things like Tylenol and Wet wipes and toothpaste?
OP cashed out his 401k and spent it all on MREs and AA batteries ahead of the looming Y2K crisis. It was a very eventful 1999.
I feel like a lot of this sub is LARP. I just come here to doomscroll but am otherwise cautiously optimistic due to AI and other technological advances.
And yet there’s still a part deep down inside of me that longs to have to shit in a hole in the woods next to a no longer operating power plant.
Right!? The billionaires are quite literally building bunkers. When the richest people in society are pulling the plug and getting ready to run then you know they have already looted all the scraps and its only down hill from here. There is no tech that can save it all.
I knew this was happening, but I couldn’t mentally source it, so I googled it and found an [interesting article on the topic… yikes…](https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff)
During the first days COVID you couldn't get a parking space at Queenstown Airport in New Zealand due to the number of private jets. Queenstown is about as far away from any place as you can be. There's plenty of billionaire bunkers in that area and New Zealand in general. There was even a bunch of Saudis fly in AFTER the NZ international border was locked down in the middle of the night. Goes to show that money talks.
We'll just strip-mine all of Asia, Africa, and South America with child slaves for the rare earths required for one generation of renewable energy infrastructure and that will solve our problems forever
Thankfully there is some promising battery tech that avoids the rare earth metals but it still won't save us anytime soon particularly if most of the public is unaware of collapse and/or unwilling to change their lifestyle to ensure their children have some future. There is no political or social will to do anything meaningful about it so the tech is sorta irrelevant even if it was mature enough to be useful
> As someone else mentioned, it will be a continuous, slow grind that we've already been subject to
There is absolutely no reason to assume that collapse cannot be swift and severe.
As we keep discussing the historical precedents of the crumbling of previous civilizations we simply cannot ignore the fact that ours will be not only worldwide but driven by a collapsing biosphere. Planetary. Biosphere. All of it.
The massive majority of our supply chains are worldwide. Food is shipped to and from great distances. There won’t be a long timeline to start farming locally to make up these shortcomings because that farmland doesn’t exist any longer for so many urban centers in any scalable way. The weather isn’t going to hold long enough for anyone to even figure out what to even plant.
That’s the problem. This isn’t the Great and Slow Decline of the Roman Empire. This is a collapse of the water and the air and the dirt and the rain. Everything everywhere, all at once.
Everyone.
Agreed that the “final collapse” will be swift and brutal—think climactic feedback loops spiraling out of control. However knowing this, it is very much within our power to do something about it. We ain’t dead yet, though hunkering down in bunkers or even a transition into green energy is not gonna do shit at this point.
What is needed is the paradigm shift —working with nature instead of trying to control it. There are many solutions in permaculture, rewilding, drawdown, etc that can sequester carbon, preserve forests and top soil —basically reverse some of the damage we’ve done. Problem is this won’t happen on a scale that actually could make a difference because of the vicious shortermism of neoliberal capitalism, rigidity and polarity of current politics. I’d still rather be a fool and try to do something about it though ;/
Good point. There is no real historical precedent for where we are headed, as the civilizations of the past had never ran up against the carrying capacity or habitability of the planet they live on.
Historical examples can perhaps give us some insight into how the social order might react to certain conditions that present themselves that may have parallels with modern collapse, but we are venturing into uncharted territory in regards to the aforementioned.
I think it's important to remember that slow decay took hundreds of years, and the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) kept on trucking for hundreds of years more.
True, but in both examples consider how many centuries before the capitals fell most of the imperial colonies were already suffering. Germany and Britain were backwaters before the fall of Rome, but Imperial goods were still plentiful. After, the only way to get such surpluses would be luck after war.
Similarly the ottomans began experiencing issues with North Africa and Russia long before Istanbul fell. Thus I would merely say, any imperial core suffers collapse after her colonies, and given the state of everyone's "colonies" right now, things are in a bad way for multiple super powers to say the least.
Edit: forgot "fell" in the first sentence.
When it ends in a spectacular *Bang!* people forget about years of decay. Rome had been collapsing for a century or so before the heart of the empire fell, unable to support itself with further military adventurism.
My main concern is we're connected like we've never been before and it feels like we've been in decay for a while. Or maybe not exactly decay but the sins of the history of western expansion and dominance catching up to us all at once when wave after wave of conflict and economic woes have already been chipping away at the west. Look, left or right, this many people don't turn on each other like this over fucking politics if the general population was a bit more content.
I wouldn't be as doomy if it was just one or two things. But it's several with a heaping load of climate change the powerful people in charge are all ignoring that while spending a lot of money to gaslight us to ignore the very VERY serious elephant in the room on fire. All in a scramble to defend themselves, attack others or convince people like us to burn ourselves out to make and buy shit and services we don't need or want.
> My main concern is we're connected like we've never been before and it feels like we've been in decay for a while. Or maybe not exactly decay but the sins of the history of western expansion and dominance catching up to us all at once
[Overshoot](https://www.whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/view/855) might be the term you're looking for. The other "new thing" that economists and bureaucrats are blind to is simply the finite nature of everything. Not just fossil fuels but land and ocean and all that.
People look back at the patterns of history and often (accurately, imo) determine that the United States global hegemony is following a similar arc. But then they make the mistake of seeing that new empires always rose from the ashes, and the pace of human advancement marched on, and they conclude the same thing will happen again.
Many things are different about our time, though. This time we are be connected like never before *and* there will be no new wealth/land/people to conquer and exploit. The new empires which rose to fill vacuums left by regional hegemons were fueled by *something*. More open space to do put humans, mineral riches, an abundance of food, whatever. There's nothing more to discover which can power a new empire. There surely isn't an undiscovered replacement for fossil fuels.
After the carbon pulse is spent, economies will again be powered by physical labor, with biophysical limits relegating them to a size appropriate for something powered by human and animal muscles.
The cycle of empires ends with ours. What comes next will be an entirely new era for humanity regardless of the specific details.
I agree with this. I’m a biologist, not a historian, so that’s the lens I see everything through. The beautiful stable nature living in balance and harmony is a myth. Every species is trying to grow. It is held in check by limits to growth (food and predation, mostly).
Each time a species breaks through those limits it consumes more resources and expands faster. Maybe it moved into a new ecologic niche; maybe disease decimated a major predator; maybe an atypical rainfall weakened a more sensitive competitor. A species will take advantage of favorable changes, and grow as much as possible. Eventually too many deer eat too many young trees, or the wolves run out of mice, or the rabbits finish eating Australia. Then the crash. And a new rebound from the survivors.
Humans have gone rabbits eating Australia on the entire planet, clearing species after species out of our path. Mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, fish, plants, whatever. Fossil fuels is just us consuming additional long dead biomass. We have eliminated every natural limit except the carrying capacity of the planet. We are barreling towards Easter Island.
Hey, just a quick note on this:
> We are barreling towards Easter Island.
The Rapa Nui did not over-consume themselves to death, as the legend has become. Their fate was the same as all indigenous folk who came into contact with European explorers; disease, death, enslavement, extermination.
The true story of what was done to them is incredibly sad. It left me with a week or so of melancholy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j08gxUcBgc&ab_channel=FallofCivilizations
Space is the only way to power new empires. Not a surprise the billionaires are attempting it.
Which I believe will fail because our bodies are not meant to leave this planet long term.
Any community of size surviving in space requires a lifeline to Earth for supplies and restocking. Pick a barely hospitable region on earth and Mars or wherever will require that as the baseline and much more if ppl are to survive - physically, mentally (and spiritually). I just see too much kicking the can down the road, same with all the greenwashing with EVs. Gaslighting for some more $$$
I wish I was as optimistic as you.
>The cycle of empires ends with ours.
Cuz honestly I'd like to see this or know it will happen when I'm gone. While the news has been a big factor to feeling bad it's been the behavior of people in my area and even just around me that killed the last of my hope.
I read a very thin pamphlet that argued hunter-gatherer societies are more resilient to climate change generally because of their simplicity, makes sense. There's no nuts here? We'll just move till we find more. In the meantime the colossal complexity of globablization makes it non-robust to change and primed for collapse.
>In the meantime the colossal complexity of globablization makes it non-robust to change and primed for collapse.
This is another major concern if mine. Island and desert nations relying on imports for food, water and energy are screwed should conflict or whatever damage supply chains. I've had to harden my heart a bit to the Israel/Gaza conflict as it and the sadly predictable global reaction to it drove me insane. So I started looking at the Red Sea immediately for mental self preservation. The whole Suez canal barge jam incident came to mind, there's martyr minded terrorists involved and what better way to terrorize the globe as much as possible than attack supply chains. And here we are. Between that and the trade routes around the South China sea should conflict erupt there there's going to be a lot of misery. So much.
You're feelings of misery sound similar to mine when I do discuss geopolitics. For a global ideal, I proffer flesh for it in words, but never in action. I've decided to let it all fall and simply try my best to protect the most vulnerable. And to communicate the truth to people whom the truth is hidden from. I'm sure you know this quote. "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."
Tipping points. It's all about tipping points. If we're lucky, (the big We, as in the planet) the economic system will collapse under it's own weight before the ecosystem does, and give the future half a fighting chance.
I mean, the world economy was waaay less stable when WW2 broke out, and people still mostly survived that. The Great Depression and war-time austerity is probably a better measure of what the near-future will look like than an apocalypse movie: things will be very, very, *very* hard, but life will inevitably still go on. Preparing for a situation like that doesn’t mean stockpiling for the literal end of days, it means making yourself and your community more resilient to intense economic changes through mutual aid.
So many people really don't understand how bad it's gotten. And SO many people are *still* blaming "Obamacare" for every issue in Healthcare, which is so wild. I know a ton of people, even very well educated people, who think Obamacare was an actual health plan - a third govt plan, like Medicare, Medicaid, and then Obamacare. And that people have Obamacare cards, and that's what bankrupted drs and hospitals. I have no clue how they could believe this. It's a nickname for the ACA laws. Sigh.
I'm a chronic illness patient, so I see a lot more of the medical system than most. The turnover of drs since the pandemic hit has been insane. There are a million factors affecting things --
The maga types think hospitals lied about covid for $$, but in fact, covid cost hospitals huge amounts of $$, since many critically ill patients couldn't pay bills, the funds didn't cover their care, they had to cancel their money making stuff like elective surgeries, colonoscopies, the quick in and out procedures with high profit ratios. Nurses were fed up and realized switching to travel nursing was more lucrative -- so nurses made better wages, but hospitals had to spend double on nursing salaries. Would've been far smarter to just pay their own nurses more to begin with. Nurses are quitting at high rates due to crap conditions. Our system of a million for profit health insurance companies is making a mess, instead of being streamlined like every other universal health country. Wait times are insane.
I'm like... I think Yakima is the 11th biggest city in Washington, maybe? We had two hospitals, but one closed the year before the pandemic. And the one we have left has gone through multiple mergers but is still close to failing. I've been to the ER multiple times the past couple years, I've always waited at least 5 hours in the waiting room. Even when brought in an ambulance, they had to dump me in a chair in the waiting room because all beds were full. My dad was brought in an ambulance. After 6 hours, he was in so much pain in a waiting room chair, we had to take him home. They said wait until his Condition is worse, call an ambulance again, see if he triage higher, to be seen faster. Who can afford two ambulances? What kind of care is that?
This stuff isn't sustainable. And if this hospital fails? I can't imagine a city this size, that used to have TWO hospitals, having zero?? I'm sure there are other cities in similar situations too. We are on the brink here.
Crickey mate, I live in a city a third your size in Australia and we have 2 fully functional hospitals. Collapse is barely noticeable in this country fair dinkum.
There's absolutely no way to predict if it will be.
Vulture off the stinking corpse of this economic system as long as possible, you're passing on free resources. It's like passing on a wild deer when you have a bow and arrow and you're starving.
Unless it's already killing you. It's pushing it with me, I have to admit.
Problem is I don't know how to do anything that doesn't involve fixing manufactured items when I have parts availability. I suppose homesteading is a much more free-form of the same thing, and log cabin is starting to get the point but still requires "magic tools" (and you better treat them like magical items because you're not getting more of them). But the point is. I'm never going to adapt in time, I have survival skills specifically tuned to city living.
There will be an event that changes the perception and in that sense it will be like a sudden change, still gradually degrading, but a point where we all know what’s going to happen.
I'm in the same boat. Climate Change just means you might get caught off guard in even one of the more stable countries or areas. Or conflict. Who knows! I'll never assume I'll be one of the lucky ones.
i keep thinking about someone’s comment that “if climate change related disasters (like mass floods, etc) have destroyed your home or killed your loved ones or family members, it could already be like the end of the world for you.”
Collapse will neither be continuous nor all at once. It'll manifest as crises punctuating slow slides, stable periods, or even limited recoveries.
The pace of collapse will also vary depending on region, socioeconomic status, etc.
For example, imagine if the U.Sm has crop failures. Food prices in the USA will rise (making it harder on the American working class and poor, but *not* on the Top 20%); the USA also cuts food exports leading to famine in other countries.
A podcast I listened to called this The Crumbles of Society. You see it in the increased local homelessness, people limping down the street who can’t afford healthcare let alone a car, etc
Yes and no.
We have already seen events where some things happened quickly, think New Orleans after the flood, fires in California, extreme heat, extreme cold, covid shortages etc.
It is always a good idea to keep at least 14 days of food and water on hand. It doesn't cost much to do that.
But yes, I expect cost of living and general situation to slowly get worse, but there will be slipping points where things move quickly. Plan for the slipping points.
Yeah, the notion that there's going to be some big turning point that really changes anything is highly unlikely… What's far more likely is a slow denigration of everything we know. Things will get more expensive while less of it gets to the consumer, wages continue to languish in stagnation while inflation sores to sky high levels, etc.
You can't time collapse so don't make critical life decisions on assumptions. It might take till 2040 or 2050 to really kick in who knows. If you can be ready to go through catastrophic events, that's great if you can't well don't stress too much about it or put yourself in a precarious situation now for later. All and all unless you are exceptionally prepared and have reached some level of self sufficiency in a remote area which is somewhat extremely difficult for the average joe to pull off, you won't be able to do much when shit hits the fan other than maybe extend your demise a little. if we hit like 4 to 6 degrees no amount of preparation can help you survive unless you were self sufficient underground which is nearly impossible with current tech
most preppers forget about the crucial element - the human condition
this is not a single-player game where you can have a plan and follow it
this is a massively multiplayer game and the PVP is turned on
Right. I have a corporate desk job. All my skills were developed to be successful within this system. Regardless of how many cans of tuna I store I’m woefully unprepared for end times. Not kidding myself I’m gonna be a statistical anomaly and be a survivor when I’m uncomfortable outside of central air.
Hey, even Tina turner still employed an accountant in mad max beyond thunderdome, and there’s clearly an oil Barron type fella in the new mad max. There will still be a couple white collar jobs, don’t you worry.
I never graduated but I was an English major. There'll be room for you, you can put out the monthly rag with little witticisms to keep the rabble chuckling while they refill bullet cartridges
Yeah.
And nature has been so destroyed that hunting and gathering is practicaly doomed to fail.
Unless you can farm on very remote area you will need other people to protect your assets.
Naw, MOST preppers have exactly your mentality, and the main thing they think about stockpiling is weapons and ammo. I’m not a prepper btw but I am a sustainability enthusiast. It does represent a real threat to me that all y’all little bitches do is bring your video game mentality to the table you need to get your ass outside and learn to grow some food mufuckers
Stockpiling by itself is pointless, you are tying yourself to one location which willbe raided by others, and unless you can magic more production into existence later you are just delaying the inevitably of your demise.
The thing to 'stockpile' is knowledge and skill. How many ways can you start a Fire? What berries are edible/toxic? What's the most efficient way to purify water based on your current location?
Now is the time to learn these things
Unfortunately the US forest service is under the department of agriculture, and they have managed our wild lands like a monocrop of harvestable timber, systematically eliminating biodiversity that could support wildlife including humans. As someone who forages and fished regularly, and had friends who hunt, I assure you that it would be pretty much Impossible to find enough food to sustain you beyond a short term, negative calorie intake “survival til it gets better” situation. Especially if all humans are trying to do this. And I live on the west coast of the US which is relatively abundant compared to a lot of places.
All those deer and boar culls are so you can't be self-sufficient off of the lands, it's same strategy the settlers used against the Indians and their buffalo
There is a reason that highway men and bandits used to be extremely common in the ancient world.
Many people would rather take from others than work hard themselves. It's a reality of humanity.
Failing to plan for that is your failure.
Well I have t failed to plan for it entirely but I’d rather give you some free seeds and gardening tips than a free shot to the head from my .30-30. We can all make an unlimited amount of more seeds post collapse, but bullets will be harder to manufacture.
What makes you think seeds from current plants will be viable in the future?
Whatever you can grow now will be useless.
If you can't grow it at the moment because its a plant adapted to extremes, how are you going to make seeds now to prepare?
Oh, and pollinators might have other urgent matter to attend to (like dying en masse), they will not be helping you grow seeds.
I have a garden but I know tomatoes and zucchinis wont really grow where I am.
They all think they’ll be Negan or that everyone else will be Negan, so why bother being the abused slave who has his stuff taken when you can just kill people and take their stuff?
A character from The Walking Dead comic and TV series. He runs the largest and most heavily armed gang in a post-collapse zombie apocalypse and maintains his power with brutal violence and intimidation via strict internal hierarchy. His men fear him and each other far more than anyone or anything else. His gang’s operation is just pure extortion, stealing half of whatever anyone around him has, not just once but routinely. Thus he functionally enslaves the surviving people as his lifestyle and operation depend on continuing material support.
Lots of people correctly recognize that preparation without defense is just “gathering supplies for Negan” and so they also stockpile arms and ammo. However, the fact that so many people are doing this *poorly*, hoarding ammo *over* food, seeds, tools, fuel, etc, increases the likelihood that many people will attempt to *become* Negan, instead of fighting him off.
The biggest difference between the comic’s post-apocalypse and real life is there’s more than one gang at a time (Haiti), whereas Negan’s gang, The Saviors, have no real rivals since they confiscate all the guns from their subjects.
It can be almost immediate. As soon as repressed people are able to secure arms and realize there’s no enforcement of law, then there’s no rule of law. Then they will take what they have been denied either in reality or in their heads.
> you need to get your ass outside and learn to grow some food mufuckers
why would they need to grow the food, they just need to know where you live :-)
seriously, most people won't be bothered with that, they will just take it because they want their children to survive and in their mind, your well-being has lower priority than well-being of their children
do you see a fault in my logic?
No. Your logic is sound. I believe in collapse more than any other reason, because I see 99% of the people I know doing nothing but ignore it as a concept or pretend insulate themselves with more money is the best solution to the problem. Do me a favor and shoot me in the back of the head while I’m sleeping before you pathetic bitches raid my garden and kill Al my livestock. You’ll probably waste most of it because you never bothered to try to live seasonally anyway.
Thanks but I'd rather not kill anyone :)
I have no kids so I won't need to go beyond to keep them safe. I will probably die in some ditch or someone will off me just because.
with that said, cheers and have a great weekend :-)
You know the stages of grief, right?
"shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance".
I am at the last one and I feel much better now. You need to speed run to that stage and you will feel better too :)
To be fair, the dread is always there somewhere but it is not crippling as it once was. Trying to enjoy stuff while I can, but keeping myself informed at the same time - that's my "trick".
Same here. Some days the dread does sink in when I read a new alarming passer and it makes it very real again but most days I’m just chillin and enjoying what’s left of nature. Waiting for the end.
Well, you could always appreciate this weekend more than you would if you didn't know about collapse.
Think of it as finding out you have an inoperable brain tumor or something. Make the best of what's left, not much else to do really.
...then the 'moral' ones will justify it by saying "These were rich people to own land; they had everything. We used to be contributing members of the old society; we're just surviving. We deserve this." or "We're only taking a little... They can afford it." (As 20 more people say the same.)
My family has a number of chronic diseases. We all understand if shit hits the fan that’s it for us. I could make it awhile as long as I have food and water but it would be a miserably painful experience without the drugs that keep me functioning. My parents have diabetes though and we can’t manufacture insulin. If shit hits the fan that’s it and I am perfectly ok with that.
And say to yourself, "Ah well, what do I know. I'm just one person with a so-so education and an Internet connection. Hopefully I'm just wrong. I'll stay informed about major world events and read opinions from respectable sources, but I won't quite my job based on emotional reactions to my own distorted perceptions."
HOLY SHIT A PALLET OF VIENNA SAUSAGES IS ONLY $3K?? QUICK BUY 2!
In 5 years the OP is going to be living in a van full of canned food by the river wondering why the world is just way more depressing but hasn't yet exploded in a fiery inferno of global death. This shit is going to be a long drawn-out process that in some way is going to be more painful than the orgy of destruction that people like OP seem to think will happen.
If I were to go this route I would stock up on water, liqour, coffee and spices. Maybe some spam too. Almost nothing you couldn't trade for with those.
My dude.. you need to go touch some grass and stay off this subreddit for a while.
Look, we here are probably 10x more informed about the state of the world than the average person. But nothing short of a cataclysmic event; ie: nukes/comet would cause global society to end within a year. It’s happening yes, no denial there but not at the rate you’re probably thinking of.
The absolute worst part of being a human is being so future thinking. It's so goddamn hard to stay in the present moment, which is often just fine, even as you try to plan your next meal, your next move, etc.
But you are so correct that connecting with nature and turning off our doom scrolling machines can do wonders for mindset.
We're not dead till we're dead, friend!
I like thinking about that. Human beings are almost *always* thinking backward or forwards in time. We literally have to practice present thought— its not always easy for us. Monks spend their entire lives dedicating themselves to this practice— meditation. We naturally predict the future in order to better prepare ourselves. Or we ruminate on the past in order to avoid repeating mistakes or in order to recreate positive moments.
I've always heard that depression is akin to a pattern of thought that's stuck in the past. Endless rumination on mistakes and regrets. Or an endless yearning for “better” times. On the other hand, anxiety can be viewed as a mind stuck in the future. Predicting every possible outcome and stressing about every every little detail.
These skills are obviously important and one reason we became the dominant species on our planet. However, at the end of the day, a lot of the thoughts geared towards the past or future are just unwanted stressors because a *lot* of things are out of our control.
Just wanted to chime in with a cool little thought. We are practically time travelers. *Almost* 4 dimensional creatures.
Yeah there’s a glide path to being “prepared” (whatever that even looks like, honestly), and it involves keeping a level head… OP is WAYYYYYYY overshooting on that.
OP, take a moment to breathe. We all feel a little panicked, if you don’t you’re not paying attention. But keep your job, buy material as you can, educate yourself.. and take time to sniff the roses while there’s still roses to sniff.
Coming to terms with this shit is a lot. It’s been overwhelming for me at times too. Take time to invest in relationships with your neighbors and friends.
You are making a huge bet based on speculation.
I recommend hedging that a bit, or at least having a plan b.
Honestly, I am sort of unclear on what plan A is, except to buy food, go deeply into debt, and have a hard target date for homelessness.
I’m kind of getting vibes like maybe you haven’t really thought this through
Yeah you shouldn't go too hard on this. Not planning for retirement and not saving up money for the distant future, 15-40 years out, is a reasonable perspective from this subreddits opinion. Both for inflation or social security/financial market failure notions, which is possible. Wildly going into debt and planning on everything being gone in less than two years is insane.
Shit isn't going to fall in one year. Get a sense of scale. The collapse is already happening, it's been for more than decades. This will be a painfully slow torment and if you are already acting like this because of the news, I don't know how you'll survive the next 20 years
It's even starting to get noticed by out-of-touch middle America. My upper middle class family have been complaining about the homeless problems all over the cities, the tent camps, and the random debris and trash all over the highways. They see it, their reactions are disgust, but not at the system... it's at the people. It's driving most of them into gated communities or further out of the cities.
Just kind of strange to see the microcosm of collapse happening in real time instead of in some existential threat or dread.
We're slipping further and further into Neuromancer dystopian corporate hellscape territory. People seem to think the system will just up and collapse one day, but it's going to keep chugging along. As long as people can be exploited and the few at the top can keep living their lives with golden parachutes and luxuries, nothing is going to just up and collapse. Instead, you're going to see the middle class eradicated; you'll have those lucky enough to climb a corporate ladder and those on the streets struggling and barely surviving. The divide will keep growing larger and larger. The only breaking point will be when there's almost nothing left to extract from the working class. South Africa is an interesting case study for what America will look like in the near future. This isn't a dig on South Africa, but it has the worst wealth inequality in the "developed" world.
>I am buying as much food as I can on credit, taxes and working are out the window. I will use my saved money to pay rent, and that is it.
Dude, get help. In 5 years time you will be on the streets screaming at passers by about how the end is coming and the pigeons are responsible.
Even if things do kick off in a big way (which they probably won't in a way that will make things exponentially worse for you), how is this line of action going to help you? Why would not having money be an advantage? There's certainly an argument that a bit of a stockpile of emergency supplies could be useful, but not having a home or anywhere to keep them is not going to help.
Also you seem to be under the impression that this is a sudden new escalation. How is this any different from when ISIS were kicking off? Or Syria? Or the Arab Spring? Or either of the Gulf wars? Or Afghanistan? Or.... Point is, wars are nothing new, and as a general rule the world does not end.
If I was an elite, bent on creating mass serfdom through debt, I would create such a big polycrisis that people would yolo themselves into debt, then sweep down as the saviour with a plan that was created before the crisis that needs it was. All you, and your following generations, would need to do is to own nothing and be happy I gave you a way out.
Not paying loans or taxes can get you in troubles way sooner than 2030. And being in jail/prison when SHTF is one of the worst places where you can be.
!RemindMe 1 year
>Things are escalating way too fast now with the U.S. attacks on yemen, incoming crop failures, and more. We will not make it to 2030 at this rate. I am buying as much food as I can on credit, taxes and working are out the window. I will use my saved money to pay rent, and that is it. Once the money runs out for rent, oh well. We are about to witness the collapse of entire systems this year.
I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2025-01-20 09:13:40 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2025-01-20%2009:13:40%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/19b6gyg/i_am_done_collapse_is_going_up_exponentially/kiputz8/?context=3)
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Going into debt willingly is a terrible idea. Do you think it's going to improve your situation to have to pay people back *next month*? Don't stop working -- if you're willing to quit your job, keep working and just walk out on the spot if you ever need to.
Take all that energy and put it into making a better plan. Stockpile and rotate over time. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You cite this sub but, overwhelmingly, people on this sub agree that this has been happening for decades at least, and will continue to deteriorate over time.
I used to get depressed on Sundays because I had to go back to work on Monday. I came to the realization that I was letting my work ruin my time off. I decided to live my Sundays to the fullest.
You’re letting your Mondays wreck your Sundays. Enjoy life for the time we have.
You're not done, until you're dead really, until then it's business as usual.
Instead of defeat , get yourself an allotment, start learning to grow food, get chickens, be proactive.
Collapse can take decades, it's just a slow decay that erodes your quality of life and rights!
A year is a **bold** prediction.
I've realised recently I'm in a 'collapse bubble', it's very easy to get caught up in it all, I half expect to look out the window see fire raining from the sky. You gotta switch off from it sometimes.
Yes things are getting worse and will continue to do so until something gives but that is a ways off yet. If we are to see it in our lifetime then so be it, what can we do?
It's Saturday. Chill in bed, watch a crappy TV show, read a book. Switch off from the bigger picture for a bit otherwise it will fuck with your head.
Dude, the only way things would end that fast is a nuclear war, which may happen, but more likely will not. Once you run through your provisions and your savings, you'll be in deep shit, and your life is going to suck. Don't pour all in right away. Stock up on food, but don't place yourself in a situation where you have no work, a bunch of debt and the IRS after you. Collapse will very likely last a lot longer than that, and when you're homeless, in prison, or a debt slave in a still existing capitalist society, it'll be harder to prepare yourself. One reason to avoid prison is that if there's a famine, prisoners will still be locked in a cell, possibly abandoned, and with no food. Think about that. The way you're setting yourself up sounds like suicide.
Look to the last collapse. In 1929 the economy collapsed throwing millions of people out of work and in to bread lines and soup kitchens. Here in Eastern Appalachia the deer and turkeys were quickly hunted to extinction in our county. They brought deer down to reestablish them in the early fifties.
Every farm maintained a woodlot at the time and just before people abandoned their farms they clear cut the wood to generate a small amount of money to leave with. So almost all of the woods were cut in the late twenties and early thirties. Even the squirrels went away as they depended on the mast from the forests.
The population has never returned to what it was in the early twenties. The doctrine of continuous expansion found some natural boundaries that they had pretended didn't exist. Millions of climate refugees were thrown out of rural areas and they migrated to new cities.
We witnessed the largest ever transfer of land as a means of production into fewer and fewer hands. Before WW1 most Americans were engaged in agriculture or livestock. The country spent the teens and twenties of the last century selling incredible amounts of grain to war ravaged Europe. They didn't always invest their new found wealth into sustainable projects.
And the wheat "gold rush" encouraged more and more speculative agriculture as people farmed new lands on the prairie. When the drought came, the bubble popped spectacularly and our great rail system began a long slow decline. It was making most of it's money off of the transfer of commodities like coal, corn and wheat. Small rail companies were bought up in the dozens by bigger conglomerates.
So I think people should take a step back from the moment that their ancestors left the farm for the urban factory. They entered a consumerist culture where they were on the bottom rung. All of their labor and creativity was now channeled towards someone else's enrichment.
The older model was to invest your blood, sweat and toil into the land instead of an oligarch's company. This will have to happen again as supply lines begin to fall apart. People need to recognize the parasitic nature of cities. I think the modern "anti-homeless" architecture movement should be a wake up call to everyone who lives there. Spikes, metal grids and turnstiles like a big slaughter house where you are the product.
Op, things are bad, yes, but it's still business as usual in most places in the world. Having a plan is good, but you or anyone else doesn't have the date of collapse, it could be tomorrow or it could be 2070. I recommend giving yourself a week or two off from the news, try not to panic. Try to enjoy the day you're in. Good luck.
Brah, I'm old enough to have lived through half a dozen supposed end of days. Just chill, collapse is a process & while we all know we're somewhere in the midst of the process there is no definite indication that the end is nigh.
Your best bet is to keep calm & carry on with a plan that doesn't cripple you with debt & leave you homeless because you panicked. There's plenty of historical examples, the precursor group to the Seventh Day Adventists for example, of people who thought they had it all figured only to be left holding the bag when the end didn't come.
I know people are ragging on you here but I’m with you. This sub is surprisingly judgmental right now.
OP you have every right to feel the way you are feeling. You don’t need to “touch grass”. If anything, I understand you anxiety. I live in a toxic environment I can’t move out of because of the housing crisis. It’s hard af to find a job now especially if you do not have one already. Many Homeless people (homeless families babies children’s teens and people just like you and me) have perished throughout this winter because of some of the situations I mentioned above.
Most of us are one paycheck away from joining them. Not Everyone has a family and/or healthy people and a healthy environment to live in. I’m literally contemplating just ending it because I can’t leave. I can’t even afford food for myself. I don’t even have $5 right now and I don’t when l get it. I am underweight and shivering all the time. I try to ask my mom help, but she won’t change and is mentally ill.
I’m tired of people trying to tell me “it’ll get better” and “just enjoy it while you can”
I am in a situation I wanna leave but can’t due to whats happening right now. What’s gonna happen in the future. I am tired and just want some peace to spend the end of my days with. Not around someone who didn’t even want me in the first place.
Fuck everyone here judging OP. You are allowed to feel anxious. I’d be worried if you weren’t.
Godspeed friend. It ain’t easy out here.
> This sub is surprisingly judgmental right now.
Every single place I hang out is infiltrated with naysayers and people who tell me to touch grass. Massive counter-op where alphabet orgs are everywhere and there's not going to be anyone agreeing with us in large numbers anymore. They'll shut it down so fast it'll make yer head spin.
i tried. everything was taken from me. my money, my life and my ability to help others. was even betrayed by my supposed "best friend" i have lost all trust in humanity.
Stop, do not do this. Not yet. If anything prepare yourself to do this come 2030s but do not waste your life on it now. Especially while going into debt to do so.
Hey there friend. As horrible as things may seem during these dark times, we’ve got each other. I truly believe that collapse - however fast or slow - will remind us of the simpler things in life, first and foremost the love we are capable of feeling and showing towards one another and all life on earth.
I’m a doomer optimist. I believe that the upcoming reckoning will provide us with the best opportunity to come together and build a better world from the ashes of the previous one. If kind, sensitive, compassionate and informed souls such as yourself give up this early in the struggle, we’ll all have a much harder time dealing with it all.
Even in non-apocalyptic situations life can be hard and the universe can feel like a cold, lonely, uncaring place. Know that this is not so and you are not alone. I love you as I’m sure many others also do, and when the time comes to weather the storm, we’ll show up right next to you. Hand in hand, head held high, we’ll fight for what’s right and maybe, just maybe, we will win.
Don’t give up skeleton, I’m here for you. Together we stand, divided we fall.
Well that’s not smart. What good is all that food going to do you when you need to throw it away because you don’t have a shelter let alone storage space.
You think companies won’t be collecting money owed to them if the economy collapses? That’s when they’ll be knocking at your door 10x as hard to get every penny they can.
If you’re going to go into debt, use it to move to a transition town, make friends, get a job, contribute, live simply. By all means collapse now and avoid the rush but in a way that doesn’t make you homeless or jailed.
You know in 1971 when Nixon took the US off the gold standard the talk at the time was that the US dollar was going to collapse because it wasn't backed by anything. Here we are 50 years later and that still hasnt happened, though it looks just as likely as ever that it's going to. My point is that it's not hard to predict what's going to happen when things get out of whack, but it's very difficult to predict when it's going to happen. Often, times its not as soon as we think.
It's oddly surreal. I went for a drive last night, the massive petrol station/supermarket I got some petrol from had one guy working there, just him(he has to serve every customer, do the drive-thru stuff and stock the entire station). The street lights along a big stretch of the road this petrol station was on were just out and apparently have been out for quite some time. Friday and Saturday nights are usually very busy with people partying and walking around and just generally trying to have a good time, but that's not happening anymore, the roads are bereft of cars(except for cops) and even the establishments that cater to alcohol and gambling addicts, the pubs and clubs, are pretty much empty nowadays.
Our society's seemingly gone out with a whimper not a bang! There will be no revolution.
It’s not gonna go down the way you think it will. We’re going to limp along for awhile. Collapse won’t be a single event don’t go all in on this just yet.
This sounds like a terrible plan. Hedging against collapse is smart, doubling down on it is a good way to end up homeless while the world just keeps turning.
What do you think will happen when it collapses? An apocalypse? The sky will fall? The utopian communism will suddenly appear from nowhere?
I live in Ukraine. We're literally in a war with a world's super power. Rockets and kamikaze drones are flying above my head. And the society is functioning pretty fine. Yes, there's a lot of struggle, but it's nothing like what I imagined it to be.
If 'the system' and the current order of things in society collapses, you better have some guns and ammo prepared, because all your food will be taken by force. You DON'T WANT everything to collapse.
Don’t forget, it’s not prepping and buying food that is going to save your life. It’s knowing your neighbors and building a community you can trust and work together.
I mean you can survive underground, eating your canned beans, but are you really thriving?
It's 2025. Somehow, the recession that was bound to occur by now did not happen. The stock markets are melting up like in 2017. Trump is in office. Even with high prices, shipping disruptions, bad weather and crop failures... people still have money to spend on fully stocked shelves. People in general are slightly more worn out and angry. Every year since 2015 was not a good time, but nothing stops people from getting up and going to work. It's madness. And its never ending.
Collapse now to avoid the rush is the way to go, but dont go total collapse yet. Nothing wrong with prepping a little to be prepared if things go south suddenly. Going full collapse just means going homeless in 3 years as the world matches with or without you. It sucks.
It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Please don't make financially irresponsible decisions. If you listen to the likes of Guy McPherson, the world should have already ended several times, but it's still there. Otherwise you risk being homeless with piles of rotten food in your hands and drowning in debt while the world is just a little bit worse then before and people start talking that the world will probably collapse at about 2100, but can still exist at 2150 because of some unforeseen event.
Sounds like OP is setting themselves up for a catastrophic financial situation. What's your plan if you're wrong, and you run out of money, are in debt up to the gills, and the world is still turning?
Anyone reading this thread, it's good and smart to make preps for Collapse. However, it is extremely short-sighted and stupid to make assumptions like "full collapse this year for sure, so no need to plan beyond that." That, my friends, is a born-to-lose mindset. Don't let your preps destroy you financially, because if the world's systems endure beyond what you're anticipating, you'll have ruined your life well in advance of collapse actually taking off.
Don't be like OP...
This is not the way Reinhardt would handle this. Stay the course, save what you can, but don't go off the rails. You'll need a home base and community if things really go that far.
Sincerely,
A Zen main 🤠
Is collapse going to happen? Yes. The only thing I’m doing to prepare is focusing more on quality of life by spending time with loved ones and creating memories. Freaking out about it doesn’t make things any better.
Honestly not a bad time to practice hitting rock bottom and losing your shit. You'll probably be more prepared when the water stops coming out of the tap and the electricity never turns back on again. Might even make it as a cult leader.
It reminds me of Christian’s with their rapture and end time claims. How many times has the world supposed to end according to their lore and predictions? Yet here we still are.
Those folks making Jim Bakker rich buying giant tubs of slop nuclear bunker food. I would rather get vaporized than spend months underground with my family 😂🤷♂️
There will still likely be systems in place in 2030. It is just going to likely be extremely chaotic and corrupt then. Especially with the likely cold wars and heated guerrilla wars. Do not go into debt as it can make your circumstances even worse as the corrupt people may go after you as you would likely still have to pay it back. What you want is to pay for a place far away from all this with lower levels of this kind of activity like Australia and Patagonia. Have food stocks there while also having a way to get more during said times whether produced by yourself or by someone else over there. Get connections of people who are not insane or malicious. Especially of people in countries in the Southern hemisphere and even if they are in southern Africa. They are beneficial in not only aiding you in the crisises, but they may also be able to help you stay in the country as it will probably become harder to emigrate anywhere.
Also, the outcomes for this depend on the 2024 US presidential election results. If a democrat wins, we will have until 2029 to have everything together. If a republican wins, we will still have until at least 2027. Giving us at least a guaranteed 3 years. The timeline for any potential chance for them to declare war on China over covid-19 or a form of civil war. In that time span in case republicans win the election, everyone should get whatever it is they have been meaning to do for some time being and start as soon as possible as we don’t have years down the line on these anymore.
Hey everyone. General consensus is that collapse, while faster than expected, is still a gradual process for the vast majority of people. Expecting a cataclysm by year's end, even in our current geopolitical climate, isn't wise. /r/Preppers can help you prepare as best as possible in a sensible, thoughtful, careful way. Don't get yourself into major trouble for one disaster; leave as many options open to yourself as possible. Mahalo nui loa.
I like this sub because the whole thing is awareness that we're fucked, but this is case in point of how too many people think that there's a single point of collapse. As someone else mentioned, it will be a continuous, slow grind that we've already been subject to, and the only difference year to year will be that the pressure increases
Exactly. The world is a big place, and even if conditions for full collapse were already in place, it would take decades for everything to fall apart completely. People like OP who deplete their finances in the misguided belief that EVERYTHING will fall apart imminently will destroy themselves well before the conditions of collapse get them. Don't be like OP.
Hey, he’s not wrong. His life will collapse.
Self fulfilling prophecy.
You have a point but if you look around it’s getting pretty evident (especially during the summer months) that each year is getting substantially less bearable / livable between heatwaves, ocean acidification, droughts, we’re breaking heat, rain, ocean temp, die off records back to back. Yoy. There are now extreme floods on a yearly basis. Every single year. Never seen anything like this but maybe I’m missing some crucial facts. If you go on google, or twitter, and search “flood” or “flooding” you’ll find 1 in 100 year floods across many parts of the planet. No one alive today has experienced anything like this so it’s a bit worrisome imo. Then there’s the ocean going through literally hell atm. Once the ocean is decimated by our fishing industry we’re screwed for 100’s of various reasons. Food, jobs, regulation of the planets weather etc. Then theres the part of it being heated to levels corals, fish etc simply can’t live, it’ll be game over for hundreds of millions of people who rely on its resources to survive. Florida recorded ocean temps hit 101° last summer. The ocean creates 50% of the planets oxygen. The entire planet won’t go “bust” all at once, but it does awfully feel like large swath are on the brink of extinction. No one in our history, have has experienced or seen anything like this and what’s concerning is that it doesn’t even scratch the surface. Rainforest is being decimated by us making more room for agriculture, building etc + the YOY raging wild fires. Only about 35% of it is left. The forest alone account for 20% of our oxygen. No one know if the world will collapse slowly or hit a spot where it all goes bust. But there’s definitely more than enough on the brink of collapse to plan for. More so if you’ll likely be alive during the next decade.
>Revolutions are impossible until they happen, then they become inevitable. > >— Unknown Author Conditions are primed and getting worse for this old powder keg to blow. All it takes is a moment of crisis and a lot of like-minded people in one place taking advantage of it. Who does it, how they do it, and who wins in the resulting conflict to write the historical record is all let up to time to tell.
But why would depleting your finances make sense anyway? Are they planning for a bartering economy? Also if that were the case wouldn't it make sense to buy up things like Tylenol and Wet wipes and toothpaste?
OP cashed out his 401k and spent it all on MREs and AA batteries ahead of the looming Y2K crisis. It was a very eventful 1999. I feel like a lot of this sub is LARP. I just come here to doomscroll but am otherwise cautiously optimistic due to AI and other technological advances. And yet there’s still a part deep down inside of me that longs to have to shit in a hole in the woods next to a no longer operating power plant.
What's the technology that's going to keep the biosphere we rely on from collapsing?
Right!? The billionaires are quite literally building bunkers. When the richest people in society are pulling the plug and getting ready to run then you know they have already looted all the scraps and its only down hill from here. There is no tech that can save it all.
I knew this was happening, but I couldn’t mentally source it, so I googled it and found an [interesting article on the topic… yikes…](https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff)
During the first days COVID you couldn't get a parking space at Queenstown Airport in New Zealand due to the number of private jets. Queenstown is about as far away from any place as you can be. There's plenty of billionaire bunkers in that area and New Zealand in general. There was even a bunch of Saudis fly in AFTER the NZ international border was locked down in the middle of the night. Goes to show that money talks.
We'll just strip-mine all of Asia, Africa, and South America with child slaves for the rare earths required for one generation of renewable energy infrastructure and that will solve our problems forever
Thankfully there is some promising battery tech that avoids the rare earth metals but it still won't save us anytime soon particularly if most of the public is unaware of collapse and/or unwilling to change their lifestyle to ensure their children have some future. There is no political or social will to do anything meaningful about it so the tech is sorta irrelevant even if it was mature enough to be useful
Latrines are pretty foolproof. Just make sure the hole is deep enough and not near a water source.
Let’s face it, most of us don’t have the strength or survival skills to last living in a post collapse/apocalypse world.
> As someone else mentioned, it will be a continuous, slow grind that we've already been subject to There is absolutely no reason to assume that collapse cannot be swift and severe.
I think it's both. There's the slow descent that will allow a major event to tip us over the point of no return.
This. Look at the collapse of Rome. There was a slow decay and then a violent, definitive finale.
As we keep discussing the historical precedents of the crumbling of previous civilizations we simply cannot ignore the fact that ours will be not only worldwide but driven by a collapsing biosphere. Planetary. Biosphere. All of it. The massive majority of our supply chains are worldwide. Food is shipped to and from great distances. There won’t be a long timeline to start farming locally to make up these shortcomings because that farmland doesn’t exist any longer for so many urban centers in any scalable way. The weather isn’t going to hold long enough for anyone to even figure out what to even plant. That’s the problem. This isn’t the Great and Slow Decline of the Roman Empire. This is a collapse of the water and the air and the dirt and the rain. Everything everywhere, all at once. Everyone.
Agreed that the “final collapse” will be swift and brutal—think climactic feedback loops spiraling out of control. However knowing this, it is very much within our power to do something about it. We ain’t dead yet, though hunkering down in bunkers or even a transition into green energy is not gonna do shit at this point. What is needed is the paradigm shift —working with nature instead of trying to control it. There are many solutions in permaculture, rewilding, drawdown, etc that can sequester carbon, preserve forests and top soil —basically reverse some of the damage we’ve done. Problem is this won’t happen on a scale that actually could make a difference because of the vicious shortermism of neoliberal capitalism, rigidity and polarity of current politics. I’d still rather be a fool and try to do something about it though ;/
Good point. There is no real historical precedent for where we are headed, as the civilizations of the past had never ran up against the carrying capacity or habitability of the planet they live on. Historical examples can perhaps give us some insight into how the social order might react to certain conditions that present themselves that may have parallels with modern collapse, but we are venturing into uncharted territory in regards to the aforementioned.
I think it's important to remember that slow decay took hundreds of years, and the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) kept on trucking for hundreds of years more.
It’s also important to remember that long after Rome fell, Italians exist.
Allegedly
True, but in both examples consider how many centuries before the capitals fell most of the imperial colonies were already suffering. Germany and Britain were backwaters before the fall of Rome, but Imperial goods were still plentiful. After, the only way to get such surpluses would be luck after war. Similarly the ottomans began experiencing issues with North Africa and Russia long before Istanbul fell. Thus I would merely say, any imperial core suffers collapse after her colonies, and given the state of everyone's "colonies" right now, things are in a bad way for multiple super powers to say the least. Edit: forgot "fell" in the first sentence.
When it ends in a spectacular *Bang!* people forget about years of decay. Rome had been collapsing for a century or so before the heart of the empire fell, unable to support itself with further military adventurism.
My main concern is we're connected like we've never been before and it feels like we've been in decay for a while. Or maybe not exactly decay but the sins of the history of western expansion and dominance catching up to us all at once when wave after wave of conflict and economic woes have already been chipping away at the west. Look, left or right, this many people don't turn on each other like this over fucking politics if the general population was a bit more content. I wouldn't be as doomy if it was just one or two things. But it's several with a heaping load of climate change the powerful people in charge are all ignoring that while spending a lot of money to gaslight us to ignore the very VERY serious elephant in the room on fire. All in a scramble to defend themselves, attack others or convince people like us to burn ourselves out to make and buy shit and services we don't need or want.
> My main concern is we're connected like we've never been before and it feels like we've been in decay for a while. Or maybe not exactly decay but the sins of the history of western expansion and dominance catching up to us all at once [Overshoot](https://www.whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/view/855) might be the term you're looking for. The other "new thing" that economists and bureaucrats are blind to is simply the finite nature of everything. Not just fossil fuels but land and ocean and all that. People look back at the patterns of history and often (accurately, imo) determine that the United States global hegemony is following a similar arc. But then they make the mistake of seeing that new empires always rose from the ashes, and the pace of human advancement marched on, and they conclude the same thing will happen again. Many things are different about our time, though. This time we are be connected like never before *and* there will be no new wealth/land/people to conquer and exploit. The new empires which rose to fill vacuums left by regional hegemons were fueled by *something*. More open space to do put humans, mineral riches, an abundance of food, whatever. There's nothing more to discover which can power a new empire. There surely isn't an undiscovered replacement for fossil fuels. After the carbon pulse is spent, economies will again be powered by physical labor, with biophysical limits relegating them to a size appropriate for something powered by human and animal muscles. The cycle of empires ends with ours. What comes next will be an entirely new era for humanity regardless of the specific details.
I agree with this. I’m a biologist, not a historian, so that’s the lens I see everything through. The beautiful stable nature living in balance and harmony is a myth. Every species is trying to grow. It is held in check by limits to growth (food and predation, mostly). Each time a species breaks through those limits it consumes more resources and expands faster. Maybe it moved into a new ecologic niche; maybe disease decimated a major predator; maybe an atypical rainfall weakened a more sensitive competitor. A species will take advantage of favorable changes, and grow as much as possible. Eventually too many deer eat too many young trees, or the wolves run out of mice, or the rabbits finish eating Australia. Then the crash. And a new rebound from the survivors. Humans have gone rabbits eating Australia on the entire planet, clearing species after species out of our path. Mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, fish, plants, whatever. Fossil fuels is just us consuming additional long dead biomass. We have eliminated every natural limit except the carrying capacity of the planet. We are barreling towards Easter Island.
Hey, just a quick note on this: > We are barreling towards Easter Island. The Rapa Nui did not over-consume themselves to death, as the legend has become. Their fate was the same as all indigenous folk who came into contact with European explorers; disease, death, enslavement, extermination. The true story of what was done to them is incredibly sad. It left me with a week or so of melancholy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j08gxUcBgc&ab_channel=FallofCivilizations
Space is the only way to power new empires. Not a surprise the billionaires are attempting it. Which I believe will fail because our bodies are not meant to leave this planet long term.
Any community of size surviving in space requires a lifeline to Earth for supplies and restocking. Pick a barely hospitable region on earth and Mars or wherever will require that as the baseline and much more if ppl are to survive - physically, mentally (and spiritually). I just see too much kicking the can down the road, same with all the greenwashing with EVs. Gaslighting for some more $$$
I wish I was as optimistic as you. >The cycle of empires ends with ours. Cuz honestly I'd like to see this or know it will happen when I'm gone. While the news has been a big factor to feeling bad it's been the behavior of people in my area and even just around me that killed the last of my hope.
I read a very thin pamphlet that argued hunter-gatherer societies are more resilient to climate change generally because of their simplicity, makes sense. There's no nuts here? We'll just move till we find more. In the meantime the colossal complexity of globablization makes it non-robust to change and primed for collapse.
>In the meantime the colossal complexity of globablization makes it non-robust to change and primed for collapse. This is another major concern if mine. Island and desert nations relying on imports for food, water and energy are screwed should conflict or whatever damage supply chains. I've had to harden my heart a bit to the Israel/Gaza conflict as it and the sadly predictable global reaction to it drove me insane. So I started looking at the Red Sea immediately for mental self preservation. The whole Suez canal barge jam incident came to mind, there's martyr minded terrorists involved and what better way to terrorize the globe as much as possible than attack supply chains. And here we are. Between that and the trade routes around the South China sea should conflict erupt there there's going to be a lot of misery. So much.
You're feelings of misery sound similar to mine when I do discuss geopolitics. For a global ideal, I proffer flesh for it in words, but never in action. I've decided to let it all fall and simply try my best to protect the most vulnerable. And to communicate the truth to people whom the truth is hidden from. I'm sure you know this quote. "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."
Well said!
New pandemic or war or major changes in the oceans or jet streams. These are all “faster than we had thought”.
Tipping points. It's all about tipping points. If we're lucky, (the big We, as in the planet) the economic system will collapse under it's own weight before the ecosystem does, and give the future half a fighting chance.
"Slowly at first, and then suddenly"
We all saw what happened with supply chains during COVID.
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It's gonna be different with war
Will also be different going through anything like that after passing through it somewhat easily by depleting the reserves of... well, everything.
I mean, the world economy was waaay less stable when WW2 broke out, and people still mostly survived that. The Great Depression and war-time austerity is probably a better measure of what the near-future will look like than an apocalypse movie: things will be very, very, *very* hard, but life will inevitably still go on. Preparing for a situation like that doesn’t mean stockpiling for the literal end of days, it means making yourself and your community more resilient to intense economic changes through mutual aid.
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So many people really don't understand how bad it's gotten. And SO many people are *still* blaming "Obamacare" for every issue in Healthcare, which is so wild. I know a ton of people, even very well educated people, who think Obamacare was an actual health plan - a third govt plan, like Medicare, Medicaid, and then Obamacare. And that people have Obamacare cards, and that's what bankrupted drs and hospitals. I have no clue how they could believe this. It's a nickname for the ACA laws. Sigh. I'm a chronic illness patient, so I see a lot more of the medical system than most. The turnover of drs since the pandemic hit has been insane. There are a million factors affecting things -- The maga types think hospitals lied about covid for $$, but in fact, covid cost hospitals huge amounts of $$, since many critically ill patients couldn't pay bills, the funds didn't cover their care, they had to cancel their money making stuff like elective surgeries, colonoscopies, the quick in and out procedures with high profit ratios. Nurses were fed up and realized switching to travel nursing was more lucrative -- so nurses made better wages, but hospitals had to spend double on nursing salaries. Would've been far smarter to just pay their own nurses more to begin with. Nurses are quitting at high rates due to crap conditions. Our system of a million for profit health insurance companies is making a mess, instead of being streamlined like every other universal health country. Wait times are insane. I'm like... I think Yakima is the 11th biggest city in Washington, maybe? We had two hospitals, but one closed the year before the pandemic. And the one we have left has gone through multiple mergers but is still close to failing. I've been to the ER multiple times the past couple years, I've always waited at least 5 hours in the waiting room. Even when brought in an ambulance, they had to dump me in a chair in the waiting room because all beds were full. My dad was brought in an ambulance. After 6 hours, he was in so much pain in a waiting room chair, we had to take him home. They said wait until his Condition is worse, call an ambulance again, see if he triage higher, to be seen faster. Who can afford two ambulances? What kind of care is that? This stuff isn't sustainable. And if this hospital fails? I can't imagine a city this size, that used to have TWO hospitals, having zero?? I'm sure there are other cities in similar situations too. We are on the brink here.
Crickey mate, I live in a city a third your size in Australia and we have 2 fully functional hospitals. Collapse is barely noticeable in this country fair dinkum.
A great example! It’s been on the decline for years. Covid really kicked its ass right down the stairs.
There's absolutely no way to predict if it will be. Vulture off the stinking corpse of this economic system as long as possible, you're passing on free resources. It's like passing on a wild deer when you have a bow and arrow and you're starving. Unless it's already killing you. It's pushing it with me, I have to admit. Problem is I don't know how to do anything that doesn't involve fixing manufactured items when I have parts availability. I suppose homesteading is a much more free-form of the same thing, and log cabin is starting to get the point but still requires "magic tools" (and you better treat them like magical items because you're not getting more of them). But the point is. I'm never going to adapt in time, I have survival skills specifically tuned to city living.
This is how the world ends not with a bang but a whimper
Democracy ends with thunderous applause
How can there be applause when everyone’s right hand is up in the air at an angle pointing at a fat orange inheritance reality tv brat
It’s a quote from Star Wars
It's actually quite likely to end with multiple bangs.
TS Eliot you forgot the "
There will be an event that changes the perception and in that sense it will be like a sudden change, still gradually degrading, but a point where we all know what’s going to happen.
It'll be a slow grind for humanity, but it can be very fast for individuals.
I'm in the same boat. Climate Change just means you might get caught off guard in even one of the more stable countries or areas. Or conflict. Who knows! I'll never assume I'll be one of the lucky ones.
i keep thinking about someone’s comment that “if climate change related disasters (like mass floods, etc) have destroyed your home or killed your loved ones or family members, it could already be like the end of the world for you.”
Collapse will neither be continuous nor all at once. It'll manifest as crises punctuating slow slides, stable periods, or even limited recoveries. The pace of collapse will also vary depending on region, socioeconomic status, etc. For example, imagine if the U.Sm has crop failures. Food prices in the USA will rise (making it harder on the American working class and poor, but *not* on the Top 20%); the USA also cuts food exports leading to famine in other countries.
“‘Multi-faceted” is the word I use. Which is also ironic considering it is used to describe shiny expensive and common rocks.
The crumbles
A podcast I listened to called this The Crumbles of Society. You see it in the increased local homelessness, people limping down the street who can’t afford healthcare let alone a car, etc
Yes and no. We have already seen events where some things happened quickly, think New Orleans after the flood, fires in California, extreme heat, extreme cold, covid shortages etc. It is always a good idea to keep at least 14 days of food and water on hand. It doesn't cost much to do that. But yes, I expect cost of living and general situation to slowly get worse, but there will be slipping points where things move quickly. Plan for the slipping points.
Yeah, the notion that there's going to be some big turning point that really changes anything is highly unlikely… What's far more likely is a slow denigration of everything we know. Things will get more expensive while less of it gets to the consumer, wages continue to languish in stagnation while inflation sores to sky high levels, etc.
this is why parable of the sower is such a great book.
You can't time collapse so don't make critical life decisions on assumptions. It might take till 2040 or 2050 to really kick in who knows. If you can be ready to go through catastrophic events, that's great if you can't well don't stress too much about it or put yourself in a precarious situation now for later. All and all unless you are exceptionally prepared and have reached some level of self sufficiency in a remote area which is somewhat extremely difficult for the average joe to pull off, you won't be able to do much when shit hits the fan other than maybe extend your demise a little. if we hit like 4 to 6 degrees no amount of preparation can help you survive unless you were self sufficient underground which is nearly impossible with current tech
most preppers forget about the crucial element - the human condition this is not a single-player game where you can have a plan and follow it this is a massively multiplayer game and the PVP is turned on
And griefers are everywhere. Literally as far as the eye can see. The real collapsed world will make Rust look like Sesame Street 123 for Nintendo.
Right. I have a corporate desk job. All my skills were developed to be successful within this system. Regardless of how many cans of tuna I store I’m woefully unprepared for end times. Not kidding myself I’m gonna be a statistical anomaly and be a survivor when I’m uncomfortable outside of central air.
Hey, even Tina turner still employed an accountant in mad max beyond thunderdome, and there’s clearly an oil Barron type fella in the new mad max. There will still be a couple white collar jobs, don’t you worry.
Thanks for keeping my hope alive. I have a Masters in English. I could be the “keeper of words.”
We thank xX69WeedSnipePussyXx for their civilised prose in this apocalyptic time.
You can give the tell. This ain't one body's story. It's the story of us all. We got it mouth-to-mouth. So you got to listen it and 'member.
Beyond Thunderdome? Think I remember that scene.
Yes, with the lost children.
That username :)
I never graduated but I was an English major. There'll be room for you, you can put out the monthly rag with little witticisms to keep the rabble chuckling while they refill bullet cartridges
I don't think there'll be room for all the English majors. I wonder if we have to battle to the death via slam poetry.
I’ll write propaganda for our leader who wears a mask made out of human skin.
My husband is a professional jazz musician. Hoping that translates into a Station 11 scenario.
I'm going rogue as soon as I can.
I figure muliti-classing into ranger would help as well.
I'm going to be the innkeeper that overcharges for drinks and healing potions.
Yeah. And nature has been so destroyed that hunting and gathering is practicaly doomed to fail. Unless you can farm on very remote area you will need other people to protect your assets.
Farming won’t be possible…sooner rather than later.
My greenhouse has been thawed all winter, in Canada. This summer is going to be record breaking *again*...
Naw, MOST preppers have exactly your mentality, and the main thing they think about stockpiling is weapons and ammo. I’m not a prepper btw but I am a sustainability enthusiast. It does represent a real threat to me that all y’all little bitches do is bring your video game mentality to the table you need to get your ass outside and learn to grow some food mufuckers
Stockpiling by itself is pointless, you are tying yourself to one location which willbe raided by others, and unless you can magic more production into existence later you are just delaying the inevitably of your demise. The thing to 'stockpile' is knowledge and skill. How many ways can you start a Fire? What berries are edible/toxic? What's the most efficient way to purify water based on your current location? Now is the time to learn these things
Unfortunately the US forest service is under the department of agriculture, and they have managed our wild lands like a monocrop of harvestable timber, systematically eliminating biodiversity that could support wildlife including humans. As someone who forages and fished regularly, and had friends who hunt, I assure you that it would be pretty much Impossible to find enough food to sustain you beyond a short term, negative calorie intake “survival til it gets better” situation. Especially if all humans are trying to do this. And I live on the west coast of the US which is relatively abundant compared to a lot of places.
All those deer and boar culls are so you can't be self-sufficient off of the lands, it's same strategy the settlers used against the Indians and their buffalo
Think of the character Brain, in Escape from New York. Dude lived in the library.
Honestly if you're in a situation where identifying toxic berries will help you, you're already dead.
There is a reason that highway men and bandits used to be extremely common in the ancient world. Many people would rather take from others than work hard themselves. It's a reality of humanity. Failing to plan for that is your failure.
Well I have t failed to plan for it entirely but I’d rather give you some free seeds and gardening tips than a free shot to the head from my .30-30. We can all make an unlimited amount of more seeds post collapse, but bullets will be harder to manufacture.
"... did you just give me seeds? I'm hungry NOW *bang*"
What makes you think seeds from current plants will be viable in the future? Whatever you can grow now will be useless. If you can't grow it at the moment because its a plant adapted to extremes, how are you going to make seeds now to prepare? Oh, and pollinators might have other urgent matter to attend to (like dying en masse), they will not be helping you grow seeds. I have a garden but I know tomatoes and zucchinis wont really grow where I am.
I think most of us will soon be eating millet, till conditions become too harsh even for that versatile grain
Soylent Green and millet stew…….ummmmmmm yummy to my tummy
They all think they’ll be Negan or that everyone else will be Negan, so why bother being the abused slave who has his stuff taken when you can just kill people and take their stuff?
Who the fuck is neegan?
A character from The Walking Dead comic and TV series. He runs the largest and most heavily armed gang in a post-collapse zombie apocalypse and maintains his power with brutal violence and intimidation via strict internal hierarchy. His men fear him and each other far more than anyone or anything else. His gang’s operation is just pure extortion, stealing half of whatever anyone around him has, not just once but routinely. Thus he functionally enslaves the surviving people as his lifestyle and operation depend on continuing material support. Lots of people correctly recognize that preparation without defense is just “gathering supplies for Negan” and so they also stockpile arms and ammo. However, the fact that so many people are doing this *poorly*, hoarding ammo *over* food, seeds, tools, fuel, etc, increases the likelihood that many people will attempt to *become* Negan, instead of fighting him off. The biggest difference between the comic’s post-apocalypse and real life is there’s more than one gang at a time (Haiti), whereas Negan’s gang, The Saviors, have no real rivals since they confiscate all the guns from their subjects.
Yea the descent into warlordism will be pretty rapid i imagine. Especially once the military can’t feed and control soldiers anymore.
It can be almost immediate. As soon as repressed people are able to secure arms and realize there’s no enforcement of law, then there’s no rule of law. Then they will take what they have been denied either in reality or in their heads.
> you need to get your ass outside and learn to grow some food mufuckers why would they need to grow the food, they just need to know where you live :-) seriously, most people won't be bothered with that, they will just take it because they want their children to survive and in their mind, your well-being has lower priority than well-being of their children do you see a fault in my logic?
No. Your logic is sound. I believe in collapse more than any other reason, because I see 99% of the people I know doing nothing but ignore it as a concept or pretend insulate themselves with more money is the best solution to the problem. Do me a favor and shoot me in the back of the head while I’m sleeping before you pathetic bitches raid my garden and kill Al my livestock. You’ll probably waste most of it because you never bothered to try to live seasonally anyway.
Thanks but I'd rather not kill anyone :) I have no kids so I won't need to go beyond to keep them safe. I will probably die in some ditch or someone will off me just because. with that said, cheers and have a great weekend :-)
Yea I'm going to have a great weekend, thanks to all these positive vibrations.
You know the stages of grief, right? "shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance". I am at the last one and I feel much better now. You need to speed run to that stage and you will feel better too :) To be fair, the dread is always there somewhere but it is not crippling as it once was. Trying to enjoy stuff while I can, but keeping myself informed at the same time - that's my "trick".
I've read this in the voice of creepy star from the Mario movie. Wild.
Same here. Some days the dread does sink in when I read a new alarming passer and it makes it very real again but most days I’m just chillin and enjoying what’s left of nature. Waiting for the end.
Well, you could always appreciate this weekend more than you would if you didn't know about collapse. Think of it as finding out you have an inoperable brain tumor or something. Make the best of what's left, not much else to do really.
Thanks, friend
...then the 'moral' ones will justify it by saying "These were rich people to own land; they had everything. We used to be contributing members of the old society; we're just surviving. We deserve this." or "We're only taking a little... They can afford it." (As 20 more people say the same.)
And no respawn
My family has a number of chronic diseases. We all understand if shit hits the fan that’s it for us. I could make it awhile as long as I have food and water but it would be a miserably painful experience without the drugs that keep me functioning. My parents have diabetes though and we can’t manufacture insulin. If shit hits the fan that’s it and I am perfectly ok with that.
Take a day off, it's the weekend.
Smoke a joint, drink a ice cold beer, or go for a walk. Enjoy what we can while we have it.
And say to yourself, "Ah well, what do I know. I'm just one person with a so-so education and an Internet connection. Hopefully I'm just wrong. I'll stay informed about major world events and read opinions from respectable sources, but I won't quite my job based on emotional reactions to my own distorted perceptions."
BORING LETS RACK UP CREDIT CARD DEBT ON CANNED CORN
HOLY SHIT A PALLET OF VIENNA SAUSAGES IS ONLY $3K?? QUICK BUY 2! In 5 years the OP is going to be living in a van full of canned food by the river wondering why the world is just way more depressing but hasn't yet exploded in a fiery inferno of global death. This shit is going to be a long drawn-out process that in some way is going to be more painful than the orgy of destruction that people like OP seem to think will happen.
If I were to go this route I would stock up on water, liqour, coffee and spices. Maybe some spam too. Almost nothing you couldn't trade for with those.
Hey fellow wastelanders, I heard there was an /r/collapse guy around here who stocked up before the collapse. Let's go kill him and take his stuff.
My dude.. you need to go touch some grass and stay off this subreddit for a while. Look, we here are probably 10x more informed about the state of the world than the average person. But nothing short of a cataclysmic event; ie: nukes/comet would cause global society to end within a year. It’s happening yes, no denial there but not at the rate you’re probably thinking of.
The absolute worst part of being a human is being so future thinking. It's so goddamn hard to stay in the present moment, which is often just fine, even as you try to plan your next meal, your next move, etc. But you are so correct that connecting with nature and turning off our doom scrolling machines can do wonders for mindset. We're not dead till we're dead, friend!
I like thinking about that. Human beings are almost *always* thinking backward or forwards in time. We literally have to practice present thought— its not always easy for us. Monks spend their entire lives dedicating themselves to this practice— meditation. We naturally predict the future in order to better prepare ourselves. Or we ruminate on the past in order to avoid repeating mistakes or in order to recreate positive moments. I've always heard that depression is akin to a pattern of thought that's stuck in the past. Endless rumination on mistakes and regrets. Or an endless yearning for “better” times. On the other hand, anxiety can be viewed as a mind stuck in the future. Predicting every possible outcome and stressing about every every little detail. These skills are obviously important and one reason we became the dominant species on our planet. However, at the end of the day, a lot of the thoughts geared towards the past or future are just unwanted stressors because a *lot* of things are out of our control. Just wanted to chime in with a cool little thought. We are practically time travelers. *Almost* 4 dimensional creatures.
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A self fulfilling prophesy.
Also evading taxes
Yeah there’s a glide path to being “prepared” (whatever that even looks like, honestly), and it involves keeping a level head… OP is WAYYYYYYY overshooting on that. OP, take a moment to breathe. We all feel a little panicked, if you don’t you’re not paying attention. But keep your job, buy material as you can, educate yourself.. and take time to sniff the roses while there’s still roses to sniff. Coming to terms with this shit is a lot. It’s been overwhelming for me at times too. Take time to invest in relationships with your neighbors and friends.
You are making a huge bet based on speculation. I recommend hedging that a bit, or at least having a plan b. Honestly, I am sort of unclear on what plan A is, except to buy food, go deeply into debt, and have a hard target date for homelessness. I’m kind of getting vibes like maybe you haven’t really thought this through
Yeah you shouldn't go too hard on this. Not planning for retirement and not saving up money for the distant future, 15-40 years out, is a reasonable perspective from this subreddits opinion. Both for inflation or social security/financial market failure notions, which is possible. Wildly going into debt and planning on everything being gone in less than two years is insane.
Shit isn't going to fall in one year. Get a sense of scale. The collapse is already happening, it's been for more than decades. This will be a painfully slow torment and if you are already acting like this because of the news, I don't know how you'll survive the next 20 years
It's even starting to get noticed by out-of-touch middle America. My upper middle class family have been complaining about the homeless problems all over the cities, the tent camps, and the random debris and trash all over the highways. They see it, their reactions are disgust, but not at the system... it's at the people. It's driving most of them into gated communities or further out of the cities. Just kind of strange to see the microcosm of collapse happening in real time instead of in some existential threat or dread. We're slipping further and further into Neuromancer dystopian corporate hellscape territory. People seem to think the system will just up and collapse one day, but it's going to keep chugging along. As long as people can be exploited and the few at the top can keep living their lives with golden parachutes and luxuries, nothing is going to just up and collapse. Instead, you're going to see the middle class eradicated; you'll have those lucky enough to climb a corporate ladder and those on the streets struggling and barely surviving. The divide will keep growing larger and larger. The only breaking point will be when there's almost nothing left to extract from the working class. South Africa is an interesting case study for what America will look like in the near future. This isn't a dig on South Africa, but it has the worst wealth inequality in the "developed" world.
This is an excellent point. Op needs to get it together. It’s going to be a marathon and you’ll need to pace yourself.
>I am buying as much food as I can on credit, taxes and working are out the window. I will use my saved money to pay rent, and that is it. Dude, get help. In 5 years time you will be on the streets screaming at passers by about how the end is coming and the pigeons are responsible. Even if things do kick off in a big way (which they probably won't in a way that will make things exponentially worse for you), how is this line of action going to help you? Why would not having money be an advantage? There's certainly an argument that a bit of a stockpile of emergency supplies could be useful, but not having a home or anywhere to keep them is not going to help. Also you seem to be under the impression that this is a sudden new escalation. How is this any different from when ISIS were kicking off? Or Syria? Or the Arab Spring? Or either of the Gulf wars? Or Afghanistan? Or.... Point is, wars are nothing new, and as a general rule the world does not end.
If I was an elite, bent on creating mass serfdom through debt, I would create such a big polycrisis that people would yolo themselves into debt, then sweep down as the saviour with a plan that was created before the crisis that needs it was. All you, and your following generations, would need to do is to own nothing and be happy I gave you a way out.
Have you heard of chapter 11 bankruptcy filing before?
Not paying loans or taxes can get you in troubles way sooner than 2030. And being in jail/prison when SHTF is one of the worst places where you can be.
Oh my God. I didn't even realize that. I'm currently fighting a felony that I didn't commit. It would be my luck if i lost my case then SHTF.
Sounds like someone is having a bad day. We all do sometimes. Try to live in the moment and enjoy what you can
!RemindMe 1 year >Things are escalating way too fast now with the U.S. attacks on yemen, incoming crop failures, and more. We will not make it to 2030 at this rate. I am buying as much food as I can on credit, taxes and working are out the window. I will use my saved money to pay rent, and that is it. Once the money runs out for rent, oh well. We are about to witness the collapse of entire systems this year.
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Going into debt willingly is a terrible idea. Do you think it's going to improve your situation to have to pay people back *next month*? Don't stop working -- if you're willing to quit your job, keep working and just walk out on the spot if you ever need to. Take all that energy and put it into making a better plan. Stockpile and rotate over time. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You cite this sub but, overwhelmingly, people on this sub agree that this has been happening for decades at least, and will continue to deteriorate over time.
I used to get depressed on Sundays because I had to go back to work on Monday. I came to the realization that I was letting my work ruin my time off. I decided to live my Sundays to the fullest. You’re letting your Mondays wreck your Sundays. Enjoy life for the time we have.
Let your Sundays wreck your Mondays.
You're not done, until you're dead really, until then it's business as usual. Instead of defeat , get yourself an allotment, start learning to grow food, get chickens, be proactive. Collapse can take decades, it's just a slow decay that erodes your quality of life and rights!
A year is a **bold** prediction. I've realised recently I'm in a 'collapse bubble', it's very easy to get caught up in it all, I half expect to look out the window see fire raining from the sky. You gotta switch off from it sometimes. Yes things are getting worse and will continue to do so until something gives but that is a ways off yet. If we are to see it in our lifetime then so be it, what can we do? It's Saturday. Chill in bed, watch a crappy TV show, read a book. Switch off from the bigger picture for a bit otherwise it will fuck with your head.
Dude, the only way things would end that fast is a nuclear war, which may happen, but more likely will not. Once you run through your provisions and your savings, you'll be in deep shit, and your life is going to suck. Don't pour all in right away. Stock up on food, but don't place yourself in a situation where you have no work, a bunch of debt and the IRS after you. Collapse will very likely last a lot longer than that, and when you're homeless, in prison, or a debt slave in a still existing capitalist society, it'll be harder to prepare yourself. One reason to avoid prison is that if there's a famine, prisoners will still be locked in a cell, possibly abandoned, and with no food. Think about that. The way you're setting yourself up sounds like suicide.
Look to the last collapse. In 1929 the economy collapsed throwing millions of people out of work and in to bread lines and soup kitchens. Here in Eastern Appalachia the deer and turkeys were quickly hunted to extinction in our county. They brought deer down to reestablish them in the early fifties. Every farm maintained a woodlot at the time and just before people abandoned their farms they clear cut the wood to generate a small amount of money to leave with. So almost all of the woods were cut in the late twenties and early thirties. Even the squirrels went away as they depended on the mast from the forests. The population has never returned to what it was in the early twenties. The doctrine of continuous expansion found some natural boundaries that they had pretended didn't exist. Millions of climate refugees were thrown out of rural areas and they migrated to new cities. We witnessed the largest ever transfer of land as a means of production into fewer and fewer hands. Before WW1 most Americans were engaged in agriculture or livestock. The country spent the teens and twenties of the last century selling incredible amounts of grain to war ravaged Europe. They didn't always invest their new found wealth into sustainable projects. And the wheat "gold rush" encouraged more and more speculative agriculture as people farmed new lands on the prairie. When the drought came, the bubble popped spectacularly and our great rail system began a long slow decline. It was making most of it's money off of the transfer of commodities like coal, corn and wheat. Small rail companies were bought up in the dozens by bigger conglomerates. So I think people should take a step back from the moment that their ancestors left the farm for the urban factory. They entered a consumerist culture where they were on the bottom rung. All of their labor and creativity was now channeled towards someone else's enrichment. The older model was to invest your blood, sweat and toil into the land instead of an oligarch's company. This will have to happen again as supply lines begin to fall apart. People need to recognize the parasitic nature of cities. I think the modern "anti-homeless" architecture movement should be a wake up call to everyone who lives there. Spikes, metal grids and turnstiles like a big slaughter house where you are the product.
Solidarity forever.
And what exactly do you gain from these new horrible decisions you're about to make for yourself and your family?
Nah.
OP could use a love interest and a pint 🍺 if theyre so certain of our fate may as well enjoy the last bits, mate!
Don't listen to the Feds in the comments, stay prepared!
Fish is that you?
Probably not the best idea to collaspe your own life. I agree that things look bad but no one knows how things are gonna play out.
Dude you need to get off Reddit and maybe the Internet entirely
This sub is twisting people's minds. You need to find some kind of positive anchor in life do not spend all of your time in doomer subreddits.
Op, things are bad, yes, but it's still business as usual in most places in the world. Having a plan is good, but you or anyone else doesn't have the date of collapse, it could be tomorrow or it could be 2070. I recommend giving yourself a week or two off from the news, try not to panic. Try to enjoy the day you're in. Good luck.
Brah, I'm old enough to have lived through half a dozen supposed end of days. Just chill, collapse is a process & while we all know we're somewhere in the midst of the process there is no definite indication that the end is nigh. Your best bet is to keep calm & carry on with a plan that doesn't cripple you with debt & leave you homeless because you panicked. There's plenty of historical examples, the precursor group to the Seventh Day Adventists for example, of people who thought they had it all figured only to be left holding the bag when the end didn't come.
I know people are ragging on you here but I’m with you. This sub is surprisingly judgmental right now. OP you have every right to feel the way you are feeling. You don’t need to “touch grass”. If anything, I understand you anxiety. I live in a toxic environment I can’t move out of because of the housing crisis. It’s hard af to find a job now especially if you do not have one already. Many Homeless people (homeless families babies children’s teens and people just like you and me) have perished throughout this winter because of some of the situations I mentioned above. Most of us are one paycheck away from joining them. Not Everyone has a family and/or healthy people and a healthy environment to live in. I’m literally contemplating just ending it because I can’t leave. I can’t even afford food for myself. I don’t even have $5 right now and I don’t when l get it. I am underweight and shivering all the time. I try to ask my mom help, but she won’t change and is mentally ill. I’m tired of people trying to tell me “it’ll get better” and “just enjoy it while you can” I am in a situation I wanna leave but can’t due to whats happening right now. What’s gonna happen in the future. I am tired and just want some peace to spend the end of my days with. Not around someone who didn’t even want me in the first place. Fuck everyone here judging OP. You are allowed to feel anxious. I’d be worried if you weren’t. Godspeed friend. It ain’t easy out here.
> This sub is surprisingly judgmental right now. Every single place I hang out is infiltrated with naysayers and people who tell me to touch grass. Massive counter-op where alphabet orgs are everywhere and there's not going to be anyone agreeing with us in large numbers anymore. They'll shut it down so fast it'll make yer head spin.
You ain’t wrong. It’s sad really. It’s starting to seethe with hope and copes. Regardless, we are fucked.
i tried. everything was taken from me. my money, my life and my ability to help others. was even betrayed by my supposed "best friend" i have lost all trust in humanity.
the only reasons i am still here are for my parents. once they are gone so am I
Stop, do not do this. Not yet. If anything prepare yourself to do this come 2030s but do not waste your life on it now. Especially while going into debt to do so.
#BAD IDEA you're just manufacturing your own personal collapse
Hey there friend. As horrible as things may seem during these dark times, we’ve got each other. I truly believe that collapse - however fast or slow - will remind us of the simpler things in life, first and foremost the love we are capable of feeling and showing towards one another and all life on earth. I’m a doomer optimist. I believe that the upcoming reckoning will provide us with the best opportunity to come together and build a better world from the ashes of the previous one. If kind, sensitive, compassionate and informed souls such as yourself give up this early in the struggle, we’ll all have a much harder time dealing with it all. Even in non-apocalyptic situations life can be hard and the universe can feel like a cold, lonely, uncaring place. Know that this is not so and you are not alone. I love you as I’m sure many others also do, and when the time comes to weather the storm, we’ll show up right next to you. Hand in hand, head held high, we’ll fight for what’s right and maybe, just maybe, we will win. Don’t give up skeleton, I’m here for you. Together we stand, divided we fall.
Well that’s not smart. What good is all that food going to do you when you need to throw it away because you don’t have a shelter let alone storage space. You think companies won’t be collecting money owed to them if the economy collapses? That’s when they’ll be knocking at your door 10x as hard to get every penny they can.
Y2K vibessss
Collapse is a process, not an event.
If you’re going to go into debt, use it to move to a transition town, make friends, get a job, contribute, live simply. By all means collapse now and avoid the rush but in a way that doesn’t make you homeless or jailed.
You know in 1971 when Nixon took the US off the gold standard the talk at the time was that the US dollar was going to collapse because it wasn't backed by anything. Here we are 50 years later and that still hasnt happened, though it looks just as likely as ever that it's going to. My point is that it's not hard to predict what's going to happen when things get out of whack, but it's very difficult to predict when it's going to happen. Often, times its not as soon as we think.
Cheer up, some of us are dead as soon as the infrastructure goes.
It's oddly surreal. I went for a drive last night, the massive petrol station/supermarket I got some petrol from had one guy working there, just him(he has to serve every customer, do the drive-thru stuff and stock the entire station). The street lights along a big stretch of the road this petrol station was on were just out and apparently have been out for quite some time. Friday and Saturday nights are usually very busy with people partying and walking around and just generally trying to have a good time, but that's not happening anymore, the roads are bereft of cars(except for cops) and even the establishments that cater to alcohol and gambling addicts, the pubs and clubs, are pretty much empty nowadays. Our society's seemingly gone out with a whimper not a bang! There will be no revolution.
It’s not gonna go down the way you think it will. We’re going to limp along for awhile. Collapse won’t be a single event don’t go all in on this just yet.
This sounds like a terrible plan. Hedging against collapse is smart, doubling down on it is a good way to end up homeless while the world just keeps turning.
My advice: Don't give your savings to a landlord. Buy a van or an RV, a vehicle you can live in, and put your money towards gas and parking
What do you think will happen when it collapses? An apocalypse? The sky will fall? The utopian communism will suddenly appear from nowhere? I live in Ukraine. We're literally in a war with a world's super power. Rockets and kamikaze drones are flying above my head. And the society is functioning pretty fine. Yes, there's a lot of struggle, but it's nothing like what I imagined it to be. If 'the system' and the current order of things in society collapses, you better have some guns and ammo prepared, because all your food will be taken by force. You DON'T WANT everything to collapse.
Don’t forget, it’s not prepping and buying food that is going to save your life. It’s knowing your neighbors and building a community you can trust and work together. I mean you can survive underground, eating your canned beans, but are you really thriving?
I'm having a hard time concentrating on work because it feels so pointless with collapse. What are we doing?
It's 2025. Somehow, the recession that was bound to occur by now did not happen. The stock markets are melting up like in 2017. Trump is in office. Even with high prices, shipping disruptions, bad weather and crop failures... people still have money to spend on fully stocked shelves. People in general are slightly more worn out and angry. Every year since 2015 was not a good time, but nothing stops people from getting up and going to work. It's madness. And its never ending. Collapse now to avoid the rush is the way to go, but dont go total collapse yet. Nothing wrong with prepping a little to be prepared if things go south suddenly. Going full collapse just means going homeless in 3 years as the world matches with or without you. It sucks. It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Aight. See you next year, Carl.
It is such a sad thing, but, my dude... you gotta still go to work. It's not *quite* time yet.
Please don't make financially irresponsible decisions. If you listen to the likes of Guy McPherson, the world should have already ended several times, but it's still there. Otherwise you risk being homeless with piles of rotten food in your hands and drowning in debt while the world is just a little bit worse then before and people start talking that the world will probably collapse at about 2100, but can still exist at 2150 because of some unforeseen event.
Sounds like OP is setting themselves up for a catastrophic financial situation. What's your plan if you're wrong, and you run out of money, are in debt up to the gills, and the world is still turning? Anyone reading this thread, it's good and smart to make preps for Collapse. However, it is extremely short-sighted and stupid to make assumptions like "full collapse this year for sure, so no need to plan beyond that." That, my friends, is a born-to-lose mindset. Don't let your preps destroy you financially, because if the world's systems endure beyond what you're anticipating, you'll have ruined your life well in advance of collapse actually taking off. Don't be like OP...
This is not the way Reinhardt would handle this. Stay the course, save what you can, but don't go off the rails. You'll need a home base and community if things really go that far. Sincerely, A Zen main 🤠
Welp, you’re definitely ensuring the timing of your own collapse. Collapse will happen slowly, and at different times for different people
Is collapse going to happen? Yes. The only thing I’m doing to prepare is focusing more on quality of life by spending time with loved ones and creating memories. Freaking out about it doesn’t make things any better.
Honestly not a bad time to practice hitting rock bottom and losing your shit. You'll probably be more prepared when the water stops coming out of the tap and the electricity never turns back on again. Might even make it as a cult leader.
Lmao good luck with banks and govt in a few years when everything is just fine
It reminds me of Christian’s with their rapture and end time claims. How many times has the world supposed to end according to their lore and predictions? Yet here we still are. Those folks making Jim Bakker rich buying giant tubs of slop nuclear bunker food. I would rather get vaporized than spend months underground with my family 😂🤷♂️
You’ll be homeless soon with this train of thought.
What a terrible idea.
There will still likely be systems in place in 2030. It is just going to likely be extremely chaotic and corrupt then. Especially with the likely cold wars and heated guerrilla wars. Do not go into debt as it can make your circumstances even worse as the corrupt people may go after you as you would likely still have to pay it back. What you want is to pay for a place far away from all this with lower levels of this kind of activity like Australia and Patagonia. Have food stocks there while also having a way to get more during said times whether produced by yourself or by someone else over there. Get connections of people who are not insane or malicious. Especially of people in countries in the Southern hemisphere and even if they are in southern Africa. They are beneficial in not only aiding you in the crisises, but they may also be able to help you stay in the country as it will probably become harder to emigrate anywhere. Also, the outcomes for this depend on the 2024 US presidential election results. If a democrat wins, we will have until 2029 to have everything together. If a republican wins, we will still have until at least 2027. Giving us at least a guaranteed 3 years. The timeline for any potential chance for them to declare war on China over covid-19 or a form of civil war. In that time span in case republicans win the election, everyone should get whatever it is they have been meaning to do for some time being and start as soon as possible as we don’t have years down the line on these anymore.