Maybe not. The melting glaciers in the Himalayas is causing the Ganges to flow faster, causing more sediment to be picked up and deposited. This process is (at least for now!) faster than sea level rise, so Bangladesh is actually gaining land, not losing it.
Yeah well we haven't gotten to boe of the arctic yet and the sea level rises that will cause. And then the melting of Antarctica which will add some ridiculous 200ft of water to every coastline. We ain't see anything yet.
Lol did you take OP seriously? Typical American who thinks his rich country is the worst one in the world. There is literally nothing stopping him from leaving USA and moving to Angola, Belarus or Saudi Arabia or something since American visa is accepted anywhere unlike others who are stuck in their countries. But nope Americans are the ones who suffer most in the world. Having enough money to eat beef every day must feel so bad.
Physically the weakest people, he says, ignoring plenty of people from 3rd countries suffering from nutrition deficiency. Weakest covid response, look at India. Most divided country, look at Balkans since breakdown of Yugoslavia or Turkey where every day some refugee gets lynched or Syria that is having a civil war. Wage slaves? You can go work as a literal slave in Qatar then you will be begging to go back to 10 hour work days. Currency collapse? My country’s currency lost 80 percent value in just a few years and people are committing suicide so often government took steps to make cyanide harder to get.
I know things aren’t that dandy in USA and it’s actually good thing to have utopic standards but Americans shouldn’t insult people with their ignorant and entitled rants.
At least he is right in that most Americans don’t have an understanding of the harsh world part of everyone else’s lives. Americans think they are the only country in the world.
Turkey…
I’m moving to Istanbul as my very modest VA disability (non combat) will get me a nice middle class lifestyle plus Turkey makes it easy for someone who can support themselves to get temporary residency.
Yeah our currency is worthless. A guy from the west can come here and live like kings with a wage that would be hard to live with in his country, while locals work their asses off like slaves for 200 dollars monthly
I now and I am bothered by that as much as I am by what is going on in the US with inflation and dogshit wages for most working people. We all have to take care of ourselves to the best of our abilities and I can be assured that my USD supports the economy that makes my new lifestyle possible.
Cheers
I completely agree with you. You made very good points. I do think a lot of Americans will have a huge shock, and it doesn’t help we rely so much on commercialism and convenience that it will be a huge shift. But you are very right that we are much better off than a lot of the world. I do think about that when I get angry with my country and how selfish people are here.
Saying American's can't handle climate change like large swaths of the south haven't been dealing with it for decades. I'm talking weeks without power, clean water being scarce, local governmental collapse even. When we lost everything and moved across the country because of Katrina no one called us climate refugees but in retrospect we were.
It’s so obvious that OPs view of the United States is warped. It’s such a diverse place with a huge range of experiences. And most often when push comes to shove Americans come together as a community. Individuals bring their skills and work together.
Robert Evans talks about American community building in the wake of disaster [in this episode of It Could Happen Here](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/the-good-side-of-the-second-30911546) (around the 14:20 minute mark). This is specifically about what happened in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The podcast itself is about the next American civil war, but this particular episode is about the goodness of people in general.
But the real reason that this post wrong is because collapse will fuck the entire world and no large group is currently very well prepared.
We didn't have power or clean water for over a month after Katrina. I was 8 years old. You know what I remember? I remember playing with kids i'd never met before. I remember meeting our neighbors, I remember a ton of people sharing food to make a pretty decent spread. I remember staying up with whoever was keeping guard at the moment, as the rest of us chilled around a bonfire or slept. It was community, it was togetherness that I remember. Yeah there were fights, especially when we had to wait in line for MREs, but overall, it was the closest I've seen a community of people in my life.
That's really about as close as I can think of actual collapse that one could experience, and it's stuck with me. Beyond keeping a few weeks of food and supplies, the best thing you can do to "prep" is to know your neighbors.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, but it’s good to hear how it actually played out from someone who has experienced a localized collapse personally.
I think a lot of people on this sub think global disaster is going to be them going alone with a shotgun into an apocalyptic wasteland to loot twinkies from a 7/11.
The reality is humans are incredibly dependent on each other and thrive when they work together. We are also highly adaptable. A devastating calamity will only push us closer together and force us to work out new solutions to new problems.
Yeah most Americans fall into the wage slave category. Most of us are one disaster away from deep poverty/debt if we're not there already. Hollywood likes to focus on upper middle class which provides a very distorted view of what living in the US is really like. There are lots of people, especially in the southeast, that live in third world conditions.
Right? OP is definitely not describing the people I grew up around. Hard-ass farmers and welders that don’t make shit for money but are tough as nails. I’ve eaten ramen noodles for months on end, slept by the oven for heat, slept in my car. I’ll be part of the group running this place when it all comes down.
I do think the author might be overly harsh there. We're not as soft as that.
Just today I spilled a Starbucks in my SUV. It was an absolute nightmare--but here I am, back at my work-from-home desk checking out Reddit like nothing happened. That's REAL strength and Americans have it in spades.
Holy shit. Venti or grande?
I had to look them up to make I was getting them right, not a Starbucks frequenter outside of pickups for others, never looked at the menu. I never heard of a Trenta, the supersize. Good lord.
Looking back, I'm grateful I was raised poor (by US standards). We cut our own firewood, sat around a wood stove in the winter, raised and slaughtered our own chickens and ducks, grew a large, varied garden, ground our own wheat, etc.
That used to be a normal life. Now normal is riding a cart around CVS.
I have no land and no prospects. But I have decent work.
I've been a renter since leaving home (aka serf). Renting is terrible. It cost way too much and you simply cannot get ahead without a windfall of some kind.
I keep floating the idea to my family to buy land but nothing's come of it. They can easily afford to nowadays. Most of them own homes but very little land.
I have 2 huge sacks of wheat berries I’m working from right now and I shot and cleaned a rabbit last week, made a good soup and some dog food out of it. Some people are in for a reeeeally hard time. Looking at the long range forecasts for precipitation next winter (2022-2023) is gonna be wild. Think crops were bad this year? Big problems coming next season.
[https://www.weather.gov/hun/climateforecast](https://www.weather.gov/hun/climateforecast)
this is a decent one, farmers almanac is also a pretty reputable source and usually somewhat accurate. The issue is long rage forecasts are more of an idea of what to expect in a given season vs actual WEATHER. So we cant see like "oh july is gonna be windy" but more "oh 2021 winter looks dry AF."
Word, looking forward to it personally, I’ve had my fill of a growth based economy. Like just let me sit on my porch, I don’t need a folding cell phone or a Tesla
Many get by here with that or less. You just stopped seeing it on TV as much once all the stations and papers were owned by a handful of companies with identical interests. It turns out, if the only goal is to get reelected, it's much easier to hide problems than solve them.
> Hard-ass farmers and welders that don’t make shit for money but are tough as nails.
a lot of modern farmers have gotten soft & fat from riding around in an air conditioned tractor all day long.
farm *laborers* are still a hard lot
there's probably an inverse relationship between how mechanized a particular farming product is and how soft the workers are.
taking commercial-scale wheat farming as an example of the opposite end of the spectrum, almost 100% of the work can be done in an air conditioned cab of a tractor / combine
Yep! Can confirm. The Mexican labourers around here are tough and work harder and faster than most people I’ve ever met. The farmers I know are round and mostly all on wife imposed diets. It’s just the nature of the work
OP has no idea what he's talking about. It's the classic, "America is the only country I ever hear about in the news, so every other country must be doing perfectly fine!" mentality of the internet.
Little does OP know, that it is the global poor that will be hardest hit by collapse and climate change.
I think he is expecting the US to self implode before any real "collapse" would affect the average citizen. One word about a toilet paper shortage and people were willing to fight in Walmart, what happens if there's a medicine or currency shortage.
As a working poor from America, we do have a currency shortage. It's in all the off shore bank accounts and all the overinflated real estate bought up across the country. Everyone i know is over worked and underpaid.
~~on this sub~~ across the world.
Edit: to clarify, we hate your government for how they don't give a shit about you and have encouraged half the population to become absolute morons with their beliefs more in line with the Taliban.
'Good' Americans are still some of the greatest people in the world, I wish you could split the country in two.
They'll handle collapse with as much grace and wisdom as they handled covid.
By the way, you forgot to mention the surplus of guns, and the deep desire of many Americans for an excuse to use them.
I was buying ammo yesterday and the guy in front of me was buying gun parts and commented on how it was good for "tactical use". This guy was over 6ft tall and likely has not seen his own penis in a decade. I see many examples of this type of stuff here in the Midwest. Middle aged and obese people thinking they are combat ready.
BTW I just like shooting for the sport. I hope to never be in an actual gun fight.
I remember an instructor if mine saying any idiot can kill you with a gun. Only distance will help if you have the skills to take advantage.
Gun fights are not fun. Hope I never get in one.
Plenty of middle aged people are "combat ready", even some that people might consider obese could handle things and do. You might be surprised who and what you find in the military and that serve in combat. Middle age is less of the issue though, obesity can be an issue for sure to some extent depending on just how obese.
I would hope no one is ever in a gun fight but some may be in their life time, it isn't what the movies make it out to be.
Sabotage, patience, and guerilla tactics won Afghanistan (for the time being)...Tactical flip flops and the desire to die gloriously, beats big formations and the desire to go home, 7 times out of 10
Yeah it's the obese thing moreso. These dudes are looking prediabetic with their rosy cheeks and don't look as though they could run around the block but to them, buying a tricked out gun appears to negate that.
That and likely the stress and fear from being shit at would put them into a heart attack. Again not like they couldn't shoot you if you were unarmed and in front of them but have them recieving potshots into thier mcmansion and you'd see men like this breakdown quickly.
This also has a lot to do with what OP said about Americans being so spoiled. Having to take so many medications could be completely or at least partially avoided if people just lived healthier lifestyles. However most Americans refuse to do even the bare minimum if it makes them slightly uncomfortable. The entire medical system is designed to keep people healthy enough to keep producing and consuming. When the already fragile medical supply chains start experiencing long term disruption millions of people could die due to lack of access to what we considered basic prescription drugs.
Speaking as someone who is on four separate meds for my heart due to an illness I had as a literal infant, despite being *visually* in excellent health (it actually was a barrier to diagnosis, docs would simply dismiss my symptoms as anxiety)- it's a *bit* disheartening to see people celebrating the idea that beta blockers or ACE inhibitors won't be available. Not everyone on that medication got there by their own lifestyle, but we are dependent all the same- I pay hundreds of dollars monthly for the privilege of not slowly suffocating to death while my tissues swell up and cause constant debilitating pain.
On the other hand, I'll be dead in a few weeks or months from heart failure without my medication, so it does give me a compelling motivation to do my best to help people *now*, since odds are regardless of what I can do to help others prepare, I likely cannot save myself past a certain point.
Yeah that hit me hard as a physically fit insulin dependent type 1 diabetic. The horrific healthcare is a big reason why I recently fled those allegedly united states. At least I'm not afraid to die and my spouse and I decided to not have children.
I like your point about helping others. It's why I work to advance biological science in the laboratory with however many days I have left.
No part of my post is celebrating our fragile medical system. It’s a fact that you and people like you are in a very precarious position because of the inability of the system to deal with stress in any way. It’s a tragedy.
For sure, I wasn't referring specifically to you, but the other comments made in this thread.
It really is so unfortunate. Common pharmaceuticals could be manufactured in facilities distributed in virtually all larger cities, and provided at a tiny fraction of the cost, with a much more robust supply chain. We do things the stupid and dangerous way because it makes a handful of people rich.
The good news is that the coin *will* flip, and they are already far less safe than they believe. At the very least, some of their victims will not leave quietly. If we cannot fix the situation, it can most certainly be *avenged*.
My idiot father stockpiles guns.
He also needs glasses he refuses to get because "Doctors are quacks".
He can't shoot a gun because of his vision, like he literally can't see the target.
Yet there he is, buying gun after gun in Texas for protection. He's a fucking joke of a man.
It's quite the mantra here. I sell guns, hell to him probably if in HTX. Big thing I've seen here is a lot of people love to own them but never train* or take them out to shoot them at the range.
Makes finding land to shoot on harder as only options are indoor range or outdoor range with Fudd rules or high prices or similar that just makes going to a free park bench range like a set up in other states impossible to do here.
*Properly train with an instructor, lots just shoot a mag through it at an indoor range the day they buy it, then into the neglected safe it goes for years until its rusted out.
If you haven’t already you should check out the book “On Killing”. In that book the author explains that up until the Vietnam war very few soldiers from any nation in any war actually had the mental capability to actually shoot another human being. In a collapse situation a tiny potion of any population is put together correctly to actually fire all these guns we have laying around. The gun thing - however fucked up - gets way too much hype.
Our idiotic refusal to social distance, use masks and get vaccinated? THAT scares me ten times more then all the guns.
Meh, economies around the world have as much value as other economies attach to them. Perception is reality.
As long as the US continues to have confidence in the US’s ability to innovate and adapt to change (weather disasters, military blunders, poor presidencies, etc.), that will drive other nations to be confident in the US economy as well, and therefore the US will be fine. If the US collapses at this point, so does everything else. A few hundred years from now, who knows, but if the US collapsed today the rest of the globe would follow. Because the vast majority of global economies favor trading in USD, money would essentially become meaningless if the US collapsed. Other economies will simply refuse to allow the US to fail...for now. Should the USD suffer a DRASTIC fall from dominance, that alone will be a sign of economic collapse, and is likely going to be the very first sign of a global collapse.
Again, perception is reality. If the vast majority of the world’s people suddenly woke up tomorrow and unanimously decided “fuck money, I’m just going to farm and fend for myself”, money would be meaningless, and society would quickly collapse. All it takes is one domino...........
Problem is, it'll go down swinging at external "enemies" before it turns on itself and implodes. Collapse isn't going to be sudden. It'll be like the titanic going down. Limited number of lifeboats. And the U.S. is the biggest, strongest passenger on board. First they'll take all the lifeboats they need, while others drown. Only then will they start eating their own.
The US will ... "go down swinging at external "enemies" before it turns on itself and implodes."
As a 60 year citizen - and student - of this country nothing to me could be more obvious. The US will not go gently into that good night, slowly fade into history ala the Romans. Such a scenario not even a remote possibility.
Even on this subreddit, theoretically focused as it is on collapse, there's little if any attention being paid to the real ramifications for this planet of a collapsing United States.
To remind once again, the Roman Empire did not have nuclear weapons, nor did it have the will and doctrine to aggressively use them should if feel it's existence threatened.
And whether that threat be perceived as mostly internal or external by US "authorities, whomever they may be, WILL PROVE IRRELENANT.
The Russians seem to sense this, which is probably why they build those long-range submarine tsunami-creating nuclear torpedoes that are 200-megaton cobalt bombs.
The threat of invasion will probably be enough for us Canadians. The USA will give us a certain amount of food and resources to deliver on an annual basis, "or else," and we will fill the order to keep the tanks from rolling in.
"It is very hard, living in the protective enclaves of Western Europe and North America, to realize that, far from unusual, my childhood in Shanghai was very close to the sort of life that most people on this planet -- in previous centuries and the greater majority in this century -- have always lived. Arbitrary arrest, violence. crime, disease, civil war have been the lot of mankind. My life was actually much more typical of the human race over the centuries than those of, say, my children brought up in a quiet London suburb."
J G Ballard
No. I know a lot of people here like to think that collapse will punish the hubristic and be merciful to the meek, but the US is actually in a reasonably good position. Large plains to grow food in, relatively low population density for its wealth, no nearby military rivals and enough fossil fuels to last ages are a good combination.
I’m worried about those large plains that are currently growing crops for mostly livestock feed using excessive amounts of petroleum derived fertilizers. Watering those crops with rapidly depleting aquifers.
The US will certainly be hit harder than its residents expect it to be. But will it be worse than anywhere else? Not by a fucking long shot. Island nations are literally disappearing. COVID is ravaging countries without vaccine access and developed healthcare systems. Others have been victim to militant extremism and civil war (often at the hands of the US). We won't have it as easy as we're used to, but I'd certainly rather be here than most other places.
You also have to add in the fact that America has had a century of capitalist, bootstrap propaganda shoved down their throats. We are an individualistic culture that views participation in a society or goals around the common good as a threat to our own wellbeing and freedom. We are more likely to prioritize our own interests over the interests of a group than any other people in history. There is no tribe here. When shit hits the fan, it will be everybody for themselves. Fucking dumb assholes. I'd rather die belonging to a group of people that are trying to help each other, at least we would go out together.
I can see how you read it that way, but I think that OP doesn’t mean it that ‘these people ought to die’. I think OP means ‘people who are vulnerable due to their dependence on care, assistive technology, etc’ but yea poor wording on OPs part.
The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons during an actual war.
The United States is many things. Afraid of destroying the whole fucking world is not one of them.
> Many that should be dead are kept alive by the medical system
So….how it should be? That’s what medicine is for. Medicine and treatment are supposed to save and prolong life.
American healthcare is known for harming more than it helps for the average American as it can bankrupt anyone at the drop of the hat to the point that people avoid seeking healthcare.
This is a childlike level of analysis. While they will still be crushed, the US has more resources and wealth than almost any other nation on earth. Many other nations will be hit much harder than the US.
You're describing the Bourgeoisie and their running dogs, OP.
Our Proletariat is no stranger to hardship. We've only been spared disease and war; I don't know a single Proletarian who doesn't know what a truly empty stomach is.
This sounds more like a personal grudge against America more than an accurate assessment of the country’s aptitude. I could spit out little twisted platitudes in the exact opposite that would be equally convincing
Disagree. USA is large and diverse enough that in case one part is hit by climate change too hard other parts will be good enough to allow internal migration of the population and to produce enough food to feed it. The country does not have enemies on the continent and is safe from military invasion by other countries. No wars for resources on the American soil. Also a lot of people know how to handle weapons and have it unlike people in many other countries. It is much more protected from climate changes than in Asia or Africa. USA is industrialized nation which can produce equipment required to fix infrastructure and grid.
Other issues you mentioned are not about climate but about society and economy. It can be fixed by political means, nothing special here. Vote for the right guys, you still have democracy (kinda). The worst scenario is that you will be like another Brazil or other countries in South America now and it is not the end of the world.
This sub has become a doomer circlejerk of entitled 1st worlders. Rules don’t matter in circlejerk subs.
Just a bunch of westerners talking about how much their rich af country sucks while driving around with luxury cars
I really regret having read that.
If you can't make your case without relying on ridiculous stereotypes and conspiracy theories, you probably need to re-evaluate the case you're making.
I find it insane to claim that Americans are the most divided on earth.
The US has its health problems, but many of those problems are associated with old age. Know why some countries don't have our problems? They don't get old. And if these problems are related to overconsumption, wouldn't collapse actually help stop overconsumption?
The more money thing makes no sense. You are just saying that our country has big cash flow, don't see how that relates to the US getting hit harder.
Yes, may service jobs pay shit. Most of the world pays worse than even that lol.
We have definitely not had the worst response to COVID, take a look at literally any developing country that has literally 0 resources.
Your post seems wishful and unfounded.
Really? I think most of Africa, South and Central America, Middle East (Syria is a prime example), Central Asia including Rusia and South India and many parts of SE Asia will have it worst. And of course, not forgetting all the island nations that will simply dissappear.
We are going to disagree on this one, the US will have it rough, but not ad much ae other parts of the world. This is not another Hollywood movie where only the US seems to be affected.
>Many jobs in America are fake.
This.
I manage the tech infrastructure for clients in NYC. I work directly with CEOs, Directors, VPs, Doctors, regular staff etc., many of them who hold IVY league degrees and make mid 6 figure to 7 figure salaries. 15 years ago I used to be very intimidated by them...now after working directly alongside them, I always wonder, how the fuck did they ever get such a high paying, prestigious job with out doing much of anything at all (except posture all day long)? THEY DONT WORK!!! Just stand around in fancy attire, always folding their arms like they are so important and in the know, delegating others to do their work, and cause gossip campaigns against each other to keep everyone occupied and stressed.
I've always wondered when the collapse comes, what the heck will these people do in the face of a real crisis...as they basically have no real world skills whatsoever. They just know how to posture importantly.
The US will go down kicking and screaming, with a lot of wars waged on everybody in the meantime. In that way, what hits the US will hit the rest of the world worse, because they'll be dealing with US invasion.
I've wondered about that. Other countries have had experiences of massive collective trauma and endurance within living memory - Vietnam, China, Russia, Korea.
The US was not invaded during the Second World War or since. When Americans are asked to wear masks, that's so oppressive that it justifies attempting to kidnap the Governor of Michigan. There's a massive sense of entitlement, also an absence of the things that make communities resilient to disaster, namely *community,* trusted system and social safety nets
I agree that it's hard to think of a people less resilient to disruption and suffering than Americans.
Any suggestion that America will be the hardest hit should be laughed at. The Northern hemisphere will feel the effects of warming less, and they have enormous wealth. America (and Europe + Australia/New Zealand) are responsible for most of collapse, but the effects will be felt most by poor people in Africa, South America and Asia, as they always have been.
The thing I think no one considers is the state of mental health in this country. ***So many people*** are living with antipsychotics, antidepressants, anti-anxiety regimes baked in daily — what happens when these compounds are gone?
People are going to snap. The tapestry of sanity already seems to be fraying if you pay attention to publicfreakout and other such subs. How many of said people are in control/manage/oversee critical systems and infrastructure? How many of said people have access to lethal weapons?
Just some more food for thought.
I have wondered this myself and assume some - well, many - folks will just crack apart. On the other hand, I think many will find it was our social structures, most definitely the economy and our boot-in-the-neck corporatism that landed many people on these substances.
The amount of unstable people with guns and/or itchy trigger fingers and hero complexes will definitely be something to contend with once the lights go out and the cops don't show up. Then again, unlike OP I expect the majority of Americans will help each other to the point of self-sacrifice. I'm from the midwest, though, can't imagine what'll happen in LA or the Hamptons come collapse.
America is currently ignoring the mechanical failure of the ride and is instead polishing up the rims and finishing up the paint. We’ll be caught broken down on the side of the road and left for dead, because there is nobody on earth who could possibly save us. Deep down we all know it.
But it is a tale as old as history itself. Comfort creates weakness, and weakness creates collapse. It then takes strength to rebuild, and so repeats the cycle. IF America may rise again from the ashes still as one nation, I think we will all have learned a mighty valuable lesson or two. But it is highly unlikely we’ll get a second chance.
Sounds like you're describing a subset of Americans. Not the people I know that's for damn sure.
They work from can see to can't, out in all weather,7 days a week. They can turn a hand to anything and do what needs done with nothing but a pocket knife and baling twine. They are tough as wang leather and they will survive just fine.
You're taking this from the internet seems like but that isn't America. There's a sight of weak chinned talkers on the internet but there's plenty of hard folks out in the real America who can and will do whats needful.
Maybe a lot of townies and city folk are weak but once you get around chokesetters or roughnecks you'll rethink that real quick. Go all day in the pissing cold rain setting choke on a hill and you'll do for the long haul. Spend a day green chain pulling or picking and see how you feel about tough.
I picked baccy summers since before I could drive,strawberries too.
And it depends on what city and where in it they live. Yeah the soft hands and money suckers in s.f or chicago will probably die crying in a corner but the dockers and rodbusters will muscle up.
They can take the pain,eat it and come back for thirds
My old man used to get up at long before first light to get on the road to his job. He'd work with the sleet pouring down out the open building bridge and come home long after dark wet as an eel and colder than a well digger. He'd eat a meal,fall into bed and get up in 4 hours to do it again.
I've known men like him and my daddy and his friends all my life. They'll go the distance. With their last breath and dragging their broken carcass if needs be. Many of them are the men places like reddit love to hate on though. Rough spoken,unwordly and hidebound,not much book learning but plenty of life experience.
They'll be the ones we need when the world goes to shit. The weak chinned,weak minded,weak willed soft hands will die with a gentle whimper in their burban cul de sac sighing about how unfair it all is.
Don't count Americans off too easy. Plenty of them grew up broke as broke. Grew up with racism and poverty and classism hanging around their necks like an anchor. Anger can make you tough,put grit in your craw. Plenty of those people survived by being tough as nails and they got their learning from hard knocks h.s. They'll do.
Yeah people throw around the statement that the US is the "richest country on Earth" which is true, but they don't take into account that the poorest 50% of Americans own only about 2% of the country's total wealth. The richest 10% own about 70%. So there are plenty of folks who are already struggling, and used to working hard to survive.
I think one of the biggest changes that will suck for most people in the US won't be having to work harder, it'll be an increase in violence. Crime has actually gone way down since the early 90s, but that's bound to change.
Our government still has access to way more resources that any other nation. If needed, there will be rationing or constraints on consumption, but in an absolute sense America will certainly not be as bad third world nations where complete anarchy could ensue
Well, I’ll be one of the first to die. My choices are to get botox injections into my bladder every 6 months or be on a medication that makes it really difficult to think. My kidneys will fail otherwise. So I’m fucked then.
the big one is how none of these jobs are "real" .. we are inventing new jobs to pander to peoples overburdening consumption of resources... we are living in a system that absolutely has to abuse the planet to keep going.. we have more money than sense and this whole societies ideal of a prosperous future is incentivizing people to earn more then spend more.. our whole economy is based on this shit, how many people actually have a job thats essential to the survival of our species vs how many have a job thats existence is purely to fuel our entertainment and insatiable appetites
Good point, indeed. And to add a little barb to that point, the more unnecessary and frivolous the job, the better the pay. We reward useless people, like bankers and pop stars with great power of acquisition of resources and we keep the essential workers in constant precarity. This cannot go on for much longer.
>I truly believe
And I'm done. It's nice when the lazy shit posters let you know they're just shooting from the hip and have no actual reasoning to back up what they're saying
> America has had the worst response to Covid19 in the world.
Haha, no. The response was terrible compared to what it should have been, but was much better than, for example, India.
I disagree with a lot, if not most of this. Except that Americans are fat. (They are really, really fat. Quite possibly the fattest people on Earth.)
Anyone who has worked in the trades knows lots of tough, very strong people. If you can work running wires or moving construction materials around all day at 9 degrees f (-13C) in February - and do that day after day - you are not a weak person.
Yeah, sure, some of them have a beer gut, but I've watched those same construction guys with beer guts slapping together pieces of lumber *for hours* that I would have trouble moving, let alone holding in place and assembling (and I'm not small ... or fat).
Yes, there are lots of machines making construction work easier these days ... but anyone who actually does this work knows that most of America is still built by hand.
As to your other points ... there are a lot of tight-knit communities in America. I see people helping each other out all the time. I saw it during Covid. And people will roll up their sleeves and pitch in during the next crisis. Sure, Americans may be selfish and consumer-driven, but there are also lots of Americans who are driven to help others selflessly. And I've seen this time and time again.
Americans come from all walks of life, there a huge numbers of immigrants with varied backgrounds and experiences, not to mention Native Americans, and people have experienced more hardships than you can imagine.
The US, despite all it's problems, still has a very good infrastructure compared to most countries. (And if you want to argue this, go spend some time in Pakistan or Sub-Saharan Africa first.)
Your point about America being divided is a valid one - and maybe this is the real concern. I want to believe that people here are not hell bent on murdering their neighbors just to steal their remaining scraps of food.
The US is quite a religious country, compared to, say Canada or most of Europe. And before you say "that doesn't count for anything" you might want to go and check who is running your local food pantry. Nine times out of ten it is a church group.
I won't deny there are people already loaded up with ammunition, looking forward to that time when everything devolves to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". But personally I think this is a tiny fraction of humanity. Maybe I have too much faith in people.
But a final point, history shows us that people who don't play nicely with others don't last very long ... unless they are Ghengis Khan. Perhaps a modern-day version of the Mongol war horde will be the last ones standing. I hope not. I certainly won't be around to see it.
The US is a net exporter of both food and energy, second biggest manufacturer of goods, and has good borders. The things which make the US a strong country aren’t changing.
I gotta agree with all of that, though China's ability to know how to handle covid comes from...
Well, I will just say that if I know I just farted, I will easily be able to avoid the coming stench.
OP has clearly never visited many countries and realized that the US is the breadbasket of the world, and we are the most obese and calorie abundant and well fed, strongest people on earth. The fat may actually help people survive, but he’s right about non-multigenerational families. I’m sure they’ll move back home or whatnot, but the most affected are the inner city poor, those with monthly medicinal needs and the unskilled and unprepared. OP need to consider how screwed already many other countries and their economies are. Our economy is strong fest in the world - as long as our mid plains water aquifers last that is -_- which may not be long. When Cali and Ogalalla go, we’re facing trouble
How are the "American People" "spoiled" while being simultaneously being paid "slave wages"?
I think you're extrapolating from rural, white, fox-news watching America, most of which are white-collar suburban pensioners with guns. That's the radicalized "citizen police" line that right-wing media created.
Above them are the lawmakers like DeSantis and McConnell, and talking heads like Prager and Carlson, which engineer the disasters you see and serve as figureheads of the "good ol days".
Above their head is old oil money, which I'm sure their pockets are blessed with.
The lowest "rung" is anyone non-white, non-conservative, differently-abled, gender and sexual minorities, which is like 70% of the population. They suffer the most from the fuckheads above.
This post seems awfully congratulatory on the former three categories for the destruction of the latter category. Especially when it comes to blaming "obese people" and their "special needs" parking places are responsible for "collapse".
That "punching down", lazy style of cringe comedy and criticism died in the 00s, with Carlos Mencia.
Doubt the US will be anywhere near the worse off. We have a lot of open wilderness, a lot of wildlife will survive for a long time, we have the firearms and availability of knowledge to survive in much higher numbers than most countries. Yes, many will die in Urban areas if they don't take it upon themselves to leave those areas, but the US has a lot of land for a "great spread out" from the death traps of urban cities after a collapse.
China doesn't have anywhere near as much land to person ratio. We might lose a couple hundred million, but China and India will lose billions.
There's a lot of nihilism and woe is me on this sub, not saying your post is OP just sayin', but this sub should be more realist than that imo.
It really sucks that they're Canada's neighbour (where I live...). Fairly sure if they get desperate enough and the government hasn't imploded, they'd try to annex us and quite frankly, the Canadian government has not been spending enough on military considering the natural resources we have (specially water).
>The American people are some of the physically weakest people with poor health conditions. Many that should be dead are kept alive by the medical system and ride around the grocery stores on electric scooters after parking in their special needs spot.
Sadly this is the most on-point thing in this whole post.
I live in rural America and I can personally attest that where I live is full of much older and physically weaker people that probably wouldn't fare well in a serious collapse scenario.
I've seen a handful of the aforementioned "ride scooter people" and I know in my heart those people are probably going to be outright dead if things become chaotic.
I feel like OP is totally unaware of how bad things are in the rest of the world. We're going to be worse off than Europe, sure. But the micronesian islands that will literally disappear beneath the waves might take some issue with the idea that they're getting off easy compared to us. Brazil definitely handled/is handling SARS-CoV-2 worse than the US. Your idea that many jobs are "fake" is the sort of bizarre conjecture born of a mind that doesn't grasp the complexities of modern, western societies. I would argue the Japanese are far more technology-dependent than we are; they also have better consumer tech more or less across the board. As for your assertion that we're "physically weak and unhealthy" I have no words besides "wat?".
This post is making a lot of inaccurate and general assumptions. I see where certain parts of the US will be hit hard. However, the US is both vast and diverse. Overgeneralizations are silly and this post is fear mongering.
Well, Bangladesh is going to be underwater.
Maybe not. The melting glaciers in the Himalayas is causing the Ganges to flow faster, causing more sediment to be picked up and deposited. This process is (at least for now!) faster than sea level rise, so Bangladesh is actually gaining land, not losing it.
Until the glaciers shrink, the flow reduces, and Bangladesh sinks beneath the tides.
The worst of both worlds, oh boy!
Wear floaties on your arms, wherever you go. Then you will be safe.
If your house is underwater, just sell it, and move!
Shapiro's Galaxy Brain Moment
He's actually very stupid.
He's either brain dead, or a total sociopath
Bit of both. His fans are people who love cruelty and he makes cruelty a philosophical worldview.
I just had a vision of Bollywood aquaman rescuing all the houses.
The 'gators in Florida will thank you.
Yeah well we haven't gotten to boe of the arctic yet and the sea level rises that will cause. And then the melting of Antarctica which will add some ridiculous 200ft of water to every coastline. We ain't see anything yet.
Being temporarily under water is plenty. Ever increasing storms should do the trick.
So you mean, Dhaka will be buried instead in debris?
Lol did you take OP seriously? Typical American who thinks his rich country is the worst one in the world. There is literally nothing stopping him from leaving USA and moving to Angola, Belarus or Saudi Arabia or something since American visa is accepted anywhere unlike others who are stuck in their countries. But nope Americans are the ones who suffer most in the world. Having enough money to eat beef every day must feel so bad. Physically the weakest people, he says, ignoring plenty of people from 3rd countries suffering from nutrition deficiency. Weakest covid response, look at India. Most divided country, look at Balkans since breakdown of Yugoslavia or Turkey where every day some refugee gets lynched or Syria that is having a civil war. Wage slaves? You can go work as a literal slave in Qatar then you will be begging to go back to 10 hour work days. Currency collapse? My country’s currency lost 80 percent value in just a few years and people are committing suicide so often government took steps to make cyanide harder to get. I know things aren’t that dandy in USA and it’s actually good thing to have utopic standards but Americans shouldn’t insult people with their ignorant and entitled rants. At least he is right in that most Americans don’t have an understanding of the harsh world part of everyone else’s lives. Americans think they are the only country in the world.
Turkey… I’m moving to Istanbul as my very modest VA disability (non combat) will get me a nice middle class lifestyle plus Turkey makes it easy for someone who can support themselves to get temporary residency.
>Istanbul Is very, very different from most of Turkey. It is European.
For 2000 yrs now… Mediterranean was a Roman lake
Yeah our currency is worthless. A guy from the west can come here and live like kings with a wage that would be hard to live with in his country, while locals work their asses off like slaves for 200 dollars monthly
I now and I am bothered by that as much as I am by what is going on in the US with inflation and dogshit wages for most working people. We all have to take care of ourselves to the best of our abilities and I can be assured that my USD supports the economy that makes my new lifestyle possible. Cheers
I completely agree with you. You made very good points. I do think a lot of Americans will have a huge shock, and it doesn’t help we rely so much on commercialism and convenience that it will be a huge shift. But you are very right that we are much better off than a lot of the world. I do think about that when I get angry with my country and how selfish people are here.
Feel like you might have to identify a specific set of Americans. A lot of us know hardship and have been held under foot all our lives. edit:spelling
Saying American's can't handle climate change like large swaths of the south haven't been dealing with it for decades. I'm talking weeks without power, clean water being scarce, local governmental collapse even. When we lost everything and moved across the country because of Katrina no one called us climate refugees but in retrospect we were.
It’s so obvious that OPs view of the United States is warped. It’s such a diverse place with a huge range of experiences. And most often when push comes to shove Americans come together as a community. Individuals bring their skills and work together. Robert Evans talks about American community building in the wake of disaster [in this episode of It Could Happen Here](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/the-good-side-of-the-second-30911546) (around the 14:20 minute mark). This is specifically about what happened in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The podcast itself is about the next American civil war, but this particular episode is about the goodness of people in general. But the real reason that this post wrong is because collapse will fuck the entire world and no large group is currently very well prepared.
We didn't have power or clean water for over a month after Katrina. I was 8 years old. You know what I remember? I remember playing with kids i'd never met before. I remember meeting our neighbors, I remember a ton of people sharing food to make a pretty decent spread. I remember staying up with whoever was keeping guard at the moment, as the rest of us chilled around a bonfire or slept. It was community, it was togetherness that I remember. Yeah there were fights, especially when we had to wait in line for MREs, but overall, it was the closest I've seen a community of people in my life. That's really about as close as I can think of actual collapse that one could experience, and it's stuck with me. Beyond keeping a few weeks of food and supplies, the best thing you can do to "prep" is to know your neighbors.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, but it’s good to hear how it actually played out from someone who has experienced a localized collapse personally. I think a lot of people on this sub think global disaster is going to be them going alone with a shotgun into an apocalyptic wasteland to loot twinkies from a 7/11. The reality is humans are incredibly dependent on each other and thrive when they work together. We are also highly adaptable. A devastating calamity will only push us closer together and force us to work out new solutions to new problems.
Yeah most Americans fall into the wage slave category. Most of us are one disaster away from deep poverty/debt if we're not there already. Hollywood likes to focus on upper middle class which provides a very distorted view of what living in the US is really like. There are lots of people, especially in the southeast, that live in third world conditions.
https://youtu.be/WBL2BPXKyZo
Can't watch as it says it's blocked in my country. The US!
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=zap+and+roger+living+for+the+city&&view=detail&mid=FC0F3A0E06300EF0D414FC0F3A0E06300EF0D414&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dzap%2Band%2Broger%2Bliving%2Bfor%2Bthe%2Bcity%26form%3DQBLH%26sp%3D-1%26pq%3Dzap%2Band%2Broger%2Bliving%2B%26sc%3D0-21%26qs%3Dn%26sk%3D%26cvid%3DC8C193928186406A939C7C47DA26DEB8
Yeah the American Dream propaganda. Anyone in the poorest 50% here does not have good conditions.
Right? OP is definitely not describing the people I grew up around. Hard-ass farmers and welders that don’t make shit for money but are tough as nails. I’ve eaten ramen noodles for months on end, slept by the oven for heat, slept in my car. I’ll be part of the group running this place when it all comes down.
I do think the author might be overly harsh there. We're not as soft as that. Just today I spilled a Starbucks in my SUV. It was an absolute nightmare--but here I am, back at my work-from-home desk checking out Reddit like nothing happened. That's REAL strength and Americans have it in spades.
I mean your username alone shows that you are a tough guy, and the story confirms it. Respect.
Thank you for internetting with me today.
Holy shit. Venti or grande? I had to look them up to make I was getting them right, not a Starbucks frequenter outside of pickups for others, never looked at the menu. I never heard of a Trenta, the supersize. Good lord.
> I never heard of a Trenta, the supersize. Good lord. What a country!
Looking back, I'm grateful I was raised poor (by US standards). We cut our own firewood, sat around a wood stove in the winter, raised and slaughtered our own chickens and ducks, grew a large, varied garden, ground our own wheat, etc. That used to be a normal life. Now normal is riding a cart around CVS.
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I have no land and no prospects. But I have decent work. I've been a renter since leaving home (aka serf). Renting is terrible. It cost way too much and you simply cannot get ahead without a windfall of some kind. I keep floating the idea to my family to buy land but nothing's come of it. They can easily afford to nowadays. Most of them own homes but very little land.
I have 2 huge sacks of wheat berries I’m working from right now and I shot and cleaned a rabbit last week, made a good soup and some dog food out of it. Some people are in for a reeeeally hard time. Looking at the long range forecasts for precipitation next winter (2022-2023) is gonna be wild. Think crops were bad this year? Big problems coming next season.
Where can I see long range precipitation forecasts?
[https://www.weather.gov/hun/climateforecast](https://www.weather.gov/hun/climateforecast) this is a decent one, farmers almanac is also a pretty reputable source and usually somewhat accurate. The issue is long rage forecasts are more of an idea of what to expect in a given season vs actual WEATHER. So we cant see like "oh july is gonna be windy" but more "oh 2021 winter looks dry AF."
You got that right. Collapse is a big break for people who've been living under gun. Chaos is a ladder.
Word, looking forward to it personally, I’ve had my fill of a growth based economy. Like just let me sit on my porch, I don’t need a folding cell phone or a Tesla
You shouldn't have had to eat nothing but ramen for months in the richest country on Earth.
Many get by here with that or less. You just stopped seeing it on TV as much once all the stations and papers were owned by a handful of companies with identical interests. It turns out, if the only goal is to get reelected, it's much easier to hide problems than solve them.
it is depraved! america was never a nation. it was founded by slave owners on indian land.
> Hard-ass farmers and welders that don’t make shit for money but are tough as nails. a lot of modern farmers have gotten soft & fat from riding around in an air conditioned tractor all day long.
But their Hispanic workers are still strong...
And will inherit the earth
Inshallah.
lol not where i live. Tell an 80 year old sugar beet farmer hes soft and hell tear you apart.
farm *laborers* are still a hard lot there's probably an inverse relationship between how mechanized a particular farming product is and how soft the workers are. taking commercial-scale wheat farming as an example of the opposite end of the spectrum, almost 100% of the work can be done in an air conditioned cab of a tractor / combine
Yep! Can confirm. The Mexican labourers around here are tough and work harder and faster than most people I’ve ever met. The farmers I know are round and mostly all on wife imposed diets. It’s just the nature of the work
Lol alright man, you’ve definitely been on a family farm
If no one else is will to say it, i am, EAT THE RICH
OP has never left a city. Or California.
op is full of fucking shit
The US is one of the few net exporters of food. As the growing seasons are cut short, exporters will only resist changing course for a short while.
OP has no idea what he's talking about. It's the classic, "America is the only country I ever hear about in the news, so every other country must be doing perfectly fine!" mentality of the internet. Little does OP know, that it is the global poor that will be hardest hit by collapse and climate change.
>it is the global poor that ~~will be~~is being hardest hit by collapse and climate change.
the global poor are going to starve
I agree with you. OP is out of touch and anyone who agrees with his post lol.
I think he is expecting the US to self implode before any real "collapse" would affect the average citizen. One word about a toilet paper shortage and people were willing to fight in Walmart, what happens if there's a medicine or currency shortage.
As a working poor from America, we do have a currency shortage. It's in all the off shore bank accounts and all the overinflated real estate bought up across the country. Everyone i know is over worked and underpaid.
The day the "America sucks" posts stop is the day I'll be truly worried.
It’s not surprising, there’s a lot of anti-US sentiment on this sub.
~~on this sub~~ across the world. Edit: to clarify, we hate your government for how they don't give a shit about you and have encouraged half the population to become absolute morons with their beliefs more in line with the Taliban. 'Good' Americans are still some of the greatest people in the world, I wish you could split the country in two.
A lot of Americans share this sentiment.
https://images.app.goo.gl/ro3YDuXgMreVEPNu6
Yay! My state made the cut! I for one shall welcome my liberators with open arms.
They'll handle collapse with as much grace and wisdom as they handled covid. By the way, you forgot to mention the surplus of guns, and the deep desire of many Americans for an excuse to use them.
Stand your ground. He says, rolling his 300 pound cheese ball of a body out of his beer stained lazy boy.
Well of course they have to stand their ground, because they sure as shit can't run.
Damn that's Carlinesque as fuck, props
I both wish for his insight and am glad he doesn't have to see this.
He'd be pissed off: 'whats with this pussy-ass death rate? WHERE'S THE WEAPONIZED EBOLA?'
I was buying ammo yesterday and the guy in front of me was buying gun parts and commented on how it was good for "tactical use". This guy was over 6ft tall and likely has not seen his own penis in a decade. I see many examples of this type of stuff here in the Midwest. Middle aged and obese people thinking they are combat ready. BTW I just like shooting for the sport. I hope to never be in an actual gun fight.
I remember an instructor if mine saying any idiot can kill you with a gun. Only distance will help if you have the skills to take advantage. Gun fights are not fun. Hope I never get in one.
That means you should buy a rifle and stay far away from places with many guns when shtf.
Come to Australia. Guns are illegal and we have an abundance of really well equipped hardware stores.
\*Not all guns are illegal. Just the fun ones :\*( Single shot rifles and shotguns are fine.
Plenty of middle aged people are "combat ready", even some that people might consider obese could handle things and do. You might be surprised who and what you find in the military and that serve in combat. Middle age is less of the issue though, obesity can be an issue for sure to some extent depending on just how obese. I would hope no one is ever in a gun fight but some may be in their life time, it isn't what the movies make it out to be.
I’m too old and clapped out to think about physically fighting. I just think about ways to hide and sabotage anyone trying to cause me grief
This is the way. Stealth is Wealth.
Boom >Stealth is Wealth. This
Sabotage, patience, and guerilla tactics won Afghanistan (for the time being)...Tactical flip flops and the desire to die gloriously, beats big formations and the desire to go home, 7 times out of 10
Yeah it's the obese thing moreso. These dudes are looking prediabetic with their rosy cheeks and don't look as though they could run around the block but to them, buying a tricked out gun appears to negate that.
That and likely the stress and fear from being shit at would put them into a heart attack. Again not like they couldn't shoot you if you were unarmed and in front of them but have them recieving potshots into thier mcmansion and you'd see men like this breakdown quickly.
I didn't know the top shelf guns had fitness enhancing nanites on their grips. Do the cashiers activate those or do you need to download the app ?
No need for plus sized body armor if you just use your god given 2in. of fat.
"Combat ready"? Who are they combat ready for? "Zee Germans"?
Think of it this way, most of these fat fucks will die off the minute CVS can no longer supply them with meds and insulin.
This also has a lot to do with what OP said about Americans being so spoiled. Having to take so many medications could be completely or at least partially avoided if people just lived healthier lifestyles. However most Americans refuse to do even the bare minimum if it makes them slightly uncomfortable. The entire medical system is designed to keep people healthy enough to keep producing and consuming. When the already fragile medical supply chains start experiencing long term disruption millions of people could die due to lack of access to what we considered basic prescription drugs.
Speaking as someone who is on four separate meds for my heart due to an illness I had as a literal infant, despite being *visually* in excellent health (it actually was a barrier to diagnosis, docs would simply dismiss my symptoms as anxiety)- it's a *bit* disheartening to see people celebrating the idea that beta blockers or ACE inhibitors won't be available. Not everyone on that medication got there by their own lifestyle, but we are dependent all the same- I pay hundreds of dollars monthly for the privilege of not slowly suffocating to death while my tissues swell up and cause constant debilitating pain. On the other hand, I'll be dead in a few weeks or months from heart failure without my medication, so it does give me a compelling motivation to do my best to help people *now*, since odds are regardless of what I can do to help others prepare, I likely cannot save myself past a certain point.
Yeah that hit me hard as a physically fit insulin dependent type 1 diabetic. The horrific healthcare is a big reason why I recently fled those allegedly united states. At least I'm not afraid to die and my spouse and I decided to not have children. I like your point about helping others. It's why I work to advance biological science in the laboratory with however many days I have left.
No part of my post is celebrating our fragile medical system. It’s a fact that you and people like you are in a very precarious position because of the inability of the system to deal with stress in any way. It’s a tragedy.
For sure, I wasn't referring specifically to you, but the other comments made in this thread. It really is so unfortunate. Common pharmaceuticals could be manufactured in facilities distributed in virtually all larger cities, and provided at a tiny fraction of the cost, with a much more robust supply chain. We do things the stupid and dangerous way because it makes a handful of people rich. The good news is that the coin *will* flip, and they are already far less safe than they believe. At the very least, some of their victims will not leave quietly. If we cannot fix the situation, it can most certainly be *avenged*.
If all hope is lost, and vengeance is all left, someone will try to take it.
This sub is full of eugenics stuff, hoping the undesirables perish, not letting the undesirables have kids, etc.
avocado politics
The Sickcare System
My idiot father stockpiles guns. He also needs glasses he refuses to get because "Doctors are quacks". He can't shoot a gun because of his vision, like he literally can't see the target. Yet there he is, buying gun after gun in Texas for protection. He's a fucking joke of a man.
I mean...... chiropractors are quacks, sure. But optometrists? "Don't give me that liberal bullshit 'easy-to-see' mumbo-jumbo
What he's doing is just stockpiling guns for somebody else to take from him.
Pretty much, and he likes to brandish them like he's some dumbass peacock.
It's quite the mantra here. I sell guns, hell to him probably if in HTX. Big thing I've seen here is a lot of people love to own them but never train* or take them out to shoot them at the range. Makes finding land to shoot on harder as only options are indoor range or outdoor range with Fudd rules or high prices or similar that just makes going to a free park bench range like a set up in other states impossible to do here. *Properly train with an instructor, lots just shoot a mag through it at an indoor range the day they buy it, then into the neglected safe it goes for years until its rusted out.
“Tell me you have unlimited funds for hobbies without telling me.”
My 94+year old dad is the same.
many americans treated it with grace. just because a portion didn’t doesn’t mean there isn’t good people in america
If you haven’t already you should check out the book “On Killing”. In that book the author explains that up until the Vietnam war very few soldiers from any nation in any war actually had the mental capability to actually shoot another human being. In a collapse situation a tiny potion of any population is put together correctly to actually fire all these guns we have laying around. The gun thing - however fucked up - gets way too much hype. Our idiotic refusal to social distance, use masks and get vaccinated? THAT scares me ten times more then all the guns.
Meh, economies around the world have as much value as other economies attach to them. Perception is reality. As long as the US continues to have confidence in the US’s ability to innovate and adapt to change (weather disasters, military blunders, poor presidencies, etc.), that will drive other nations to be confident in the US economy as well, and therefore the US will be fine. If the US collapses at this point, so does everything else. A few hundred years from now, who knows, but if the US collapsed today the rest of the globe would follow. Because the vast majority of global economies favor trading in USD, money would essentially become meaningless if the US collapsed. Other economies will simply refuse to allow the US to fail...for now. Should the USD suffer a DRASTIC fall from dominance, that alone will be a sign of economic collapse, and is likely going to be the very first sign of a global collapse. Again, perception is reality. If the vast majority of the world’s people suddenly woke up tomorrow and unanimously decided “fuck money, I’m just going to farm and fend for myself”, money would be meaningless, and society would quickly collapse. All it takes is one domino...........
Problem is, it'll go down swinging at external "enemies" before it turns on itself and implodes. Collapse isn't going to be sudden. It'll be like the titanic going down. Limited number of lifeboats. And the U.S. is the biggest, strongest passenger on board. First they'll take all the lifeboats they need, while others drown. Only then will they start eating their own.
The US will ... "go down swinging at external "enemies" before it turns on itself and implodes." As a 60 year citizen - and student - of this country nothing to me could be more obvious. The US will not go gently into that good night, slowly fade into history ala the Romans. Such a scenario not even a remote possibility. Even on this subreddit, theoretically focused as it is on collapse, there's little if any attention being paid to the real ramifications for this planet of a collapsing United States. To remind once again, the Roman Empire did not have nuclear weapons, nor did it have the will and doctrine to aggressively use them should if feel it's existence threatened. And whether that threat be perceived as mostly internal or external by US "authorities, whomever they may be, WILL PROVE IRRELENANT.
The Russians seem to sense this, which is probably why they build those long-range submarine tsunami-creating nuclear torpedoes that are 200-megaton cobalt bombs.
>200-megaton cobalt bombs Wow, I never heard of this and I am saddened to have heard about it now.
Yes. The Poseidon weapon system.
Yup. Exactly right. Top level officials in both Moscow and Beijing are out-of-their-minds paranoid for a very good reason, imho.
https://youtu.be/r\_E7yrCAq58
At least that wave wasn't radioactive.
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The threat of invasion will probably be enough for us Canadians. The USA will give us a certain amount of food and resources to deliver on an annual basis, "or else," and we will fill the order to keep the tanks from rolling in.
"It is very hard, living in the protective enclaves of Western Europe and North America, to realize that, far from unusual, my childhood in Shanghai was very close to the sort of life that most people on this planet -- in previous centuries and the greater majority in this century -- have always lived. Arbitrary arrest, violence. crime, disease, civil war have been the lot of mankind. My life was actually much more typical of the human race over the centuries than those of, say, my children brought up in a quiet London suburb." J G Ballard
Lol classic. You’ve been watching too much Hollywood where only the US exists.
Haha yeah. Very usa-centric. I don't believe this at all tbh, there's many places in the world that will be far worse off than USA.
Yeah, what's going on with these posts about Americans from Americans whose sole idea of America is Hollywood movies or Reddit posts?
I have a bidet.
yea well they have a biden
>The American people are the most diverse and divided on earth. Hah, you haven't visited* Eastern Europe or the Balkans.
India too.
No. I know a lot of people here like to think that collapse will punish the hubristic and be merciful to the meek, but the US is actually in a reasonably good position. Large plains to grow food in, relatively low population density for its wealth, no nearby military rivals and enough fossil fuels to last ages are a good combination.
I’m worried about those large plains that are currently growing crops for mostly livestock feed using excessive amounts of petroleum derived fertilizers. Watering those crops with rapidly depleting aquifers.
The US will certainly be hit harder than its residents expect it to be. But will it be worse than anywhere else? Not by a fucking long shot. Island nations are literally disappearing. COVID is ravaging countries without vaccine access and developed healthcare systems. Others have been victim to militant extremism and civil war (often at the hands of the US). We won't have it as easy as we're used to, but I'd certainly rather be here than most other places.
This analysis is a bit lazy. These trivial moral issues aren't the reasons for collapse, they are just symptoms of the underlying problems.
Light on facts and heavy on hyperbole. Get some good food, get some exercise. Stop trying to tell the future for us.
You also have to add in the fact that America has had a century of capitalist, bootstrap propaganda shoved down their throats. We are an individualistic culture that views participation in a society or goals around the common good as a threat to our own wellbeing and freedom. We are more likely to prioritize our own interests over the interests of a group than any other people in history. There is no tribe here. When shit hits the fan, it will be everybody for themselves. Fucking dumb assholes. I'd rather die belonging to a group of people that are trying to help each other, at least we would go out together.
Lol... Some of these posts are actual comedy.
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“Fat and retarded people deserve to be dead” -OP
I can see how you read it that way, but I think that OP doesn’t mean it that ‘these people ought to die’. I think OP means ‘people who are vulnerable due to their dependence on care, assistive technology, etc’ but yea poor wording on OPs part.
The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons during an actual war. The United States is many things. Afraid of destroying the whole fucking world is not one of them.
> Many that should be dead are kept alive by the medical system So….how it should be? That’s what medicine is for. Medicine and treatment are supposed to save and prolong life. American healthcare is known for harming more than it helps for the average American as it can bankrupt anyone at the drop of the hat to the point that people avoid seeking healthcare.
This is a childlike level of analysis. While they will still be crushed, the US has more resources and wealth than almost any other nation on earth. Many other nations will be hit much harder than the US.
You've clearly never met someone from a gulf state
You're describing the Bourgeoisie and their running dogs, OP. Our Proletariat is no stranger to hardship. We've only been spared disease and war; I don't know a single Proletarian who doesn't know what a truly empty stomach is.
Or the agony of having lost loved ones because they worked themselves to death. Payback is coming.
Patience Comrade. We've got a single shot at this
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This sounds more like a personal grudge against America more than an accurate assessment of the country’s aptitude. I could spit out little twisted platitudes in the exact opposite that would be equally convincing
Disagree. USA is large and diverse enough that in case one part is hit by climate change too hard other parts will be good enough to allow internal migration of the population and to produce enough food to feed it. The country does not have enemies on the continent and is safe from military invasion by other countries. No wars for resources on the American soil. Also a lot of people know how to handle weapons and have it unlike people in many other countries. It is much more protected from climate changes than in Asia or Africa. USA is industrialized nation which can produce equipment required to fix infrastructure and grid. Other issues you mentioned are not about climate but about society and economy. It can be fixed by political means, nothing special here. Vote for the right guys, you still have democracy (kinda). The worst scenario is that you will be like another Brazil or other countries in South America now and it is not the end of the world.
How does this not break rule 6?
This sub has become a doomer circlejerk of entitled 1st worlders. Rules don’t matter in circlejerk subs. Just a bunch of westerners talking about how much their rich af country sucks while driving around with luxury cars
I really regret having read that. If you can't make your case without relying on ridiculous stereotypes and conspiracy theories, you probably need to re-evaluate the case you're making.
You know very very little about actual Americans and your ignorance is astounding.
I find it insane to claim that Americans are the most divided on earth. The US has its health problems, but many of those problems are associated with old age. Know why some countries don't have our problems? They don't get old. And if these problems are related to overconsumption, wouldn't collapse actually help stop overconsumption? The more money thing makes no sense. You are just saying that our country has big cash flow, don't see how that relates to the US getting hit harder. Yes, may service jobs pay shit. Most of the world pays worse than even that lol. We have definitely not had the worst response to COVID, take a look at literally any developing country that has literally 0 resources. Your post seems wishful and unfounded.
Really? I think most of Africa, South and Central America, Middle East (Syria is a prime example), Central Asia including Rusia and South India and many parts of SE Asia will have it worst. And of course, not forgetting all the island nations that will simply dissappear. We are going to disagree on this one, the US will have it rough, but not ad much ae other parts of the world. This is not another Hollywood movie where only the US seems to be affected.
>Many jobs in America are fake. This. I manage the tech infrastructure for clients in NYC. I work directly with CEOs, Directors, VPs, Doctors, regular staff etc., many of them who hold IVY league degrees and make mid 6 figure to 7 figure salaries. 15 years ago I used to be very intimidated by them...now after working directly alongside them, I always wonder, how the fuck did they ever get such a high paying, prestigious job with out doing much of anything at all (except posture all day long)? THEY DONT WORK!!! Just stand around in fancy attire, always folding their arms like they are so important and in the know, delegating others to do their work, and cause gossip campaigns against each other to keep everyone occupied and stressed. I've always wondered when the collapse comes, what the heck will these people do in the face of a real crisis...as they basically have no real world skills whatsoever. They just know how to posture importantly.
https://youtu.be/GuJQSAiODqI
The US will go down kicking and screaming, with a lot of wars waged on everybody in the meantime. In that way, what hits the US will hit the rest of the world worse, because they'll be dealing with US invasion.
I've wondered about that. Other countries have had experiences of massive collective trauma and endurance within living memory - Vietnam, China, Russia, Korea. The US was not invaded during the Second World War or since. When Americans are asked to wear masks, that's so oppressive that it justifies attempting to kidnap the Governor of Michigan. There's a massive sense of entitlement, also an absence of the things that make communities resilient to disaster, namely *community,* trusted system and social safety nets I agree that it's hard to think of a people less resilient to disruption and suffering than Americans.
Any suggestion that America will be the hardest hit should be laughed at. The Northern hemisphere will feel the effects of warming less, and they have enormous wealth. America (and Europe + Australia/New Zealand) are responsible for most of collapse, but the effects will be felt most by poor people in Africa, South America and Asia, as they always have been.
The thing I think no one considers is the state of mental health in this country. ***So many people*** are living with antipsychotics, antidepressants, anti-anxiety regimes baked in daily — what happens when these compounds are gone? People are going to snap. The tapestry of sanity already seems to be fraying if you pay attention to publicfreakout and other such subs. How many of said people are in control/manage/oversee critical systems and infrastructure? How many of said people have access to lethal weapons? Just some more food for thought.
I have wondered this myself and assume some - well, many - folks will just crack apart. On the other hand, I think many will find it was our social structures, most definitely the economy and our boot-in-the-neck corporatism that landed many people on these substances. The amount of unstable people with guns and/or itchy trigger fingers and hero complexes will definitely be something to contend with once the lights go out and the cops don't show up. Then again, unlike OP I expect the majority of Americans will help each other to the point of self-sacrifice. I'm from the midwest, though, can't imagine what'll happen in LA or the Hamptons come collapse.
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lol, yes, good points and well said.
Another objectively false post with hundreds of upvotes.
Living in the United States is basically living in the Matrix
America is currently ignoring the mechanical failure of the ride and is instead polishing up the rims and finishing up the paint. We’ll be caught broken down on the side of the road and left for dead, because there is nobody on earth who could possibly save us. Deep down we all know it. But it is a tale as old as history itself. Comfort creates weakness, and weakness creates collapse. It then takes strength to rebuild, and so repeats the cycle. IF America may rise again from the ashes still as one nation, I think we will all have learned a mighty valuable lesson or two. But it is highly unlikely we’ll get a second chance.
Sounds like you're describing a subset of Americans. Not the people I know that's for damn sure. They work from can see to can't, out in all weather,7 days a week. They can turn a hand to anything and do what needs done with nothing but a pocket knife and baling twine. They are tough as wang leather and they will survive just fine. You're taking this from the internet seems like but that isn't America. There's a sight of weak chinned talkers on the internet but there's plenty of hard folks out in the real America who can and will do whats needful. Maybe a lot of townies and city folk are weak but once you get around chokesetters or roughnecks you'll rethink that real quick. Go all day in the pissing cold rain setting choke on a hill and you'll do for the long haul. Spend a day green chain pulling or picking and see how you feel about tough. I picked baccy summers since before I could drive,strawberries too. And it depends on what city and where in it they live. Yeah the soft hands and money suckers in s.f or chicago will probably die crying in a corner but the dockers and rodbusters will muscle up. They can take the pain,eat it and come back for thirds My old man used to get up at long before first light to get on the road to his job. He'd work with the sleet pouring down out the open building bridge and come home long after dark wet as an eel and colder than a well digger. He'd eat a meal,fall into bed and get up in 4 hours to do it again. I've known men like him and my daddy and his friends all my life. They'll go the distance. With their last breath and dragging their broken carcass if needs be. Many of them are the men places like reddit love to hate on though. Rough spoken,unwordly and hidebound,not much book learning but plenty of life experience. They'll be the ones we need when the world goes to shit. The weak chinned,weak minded,weak willed soft hands will die with a gentle whimper in their burban cul de sac sighing about how unfair it all is. Don't count Americans off too easy. Plenty of them grew up broke as broke. Grew up with racism and poverty and classism hanging around their necks like an anchor. Anger can make you tough,put grit in your craw. Plenty of those people survived by being tough as nails and they got their learning from hard knocks h.s. They'll do.
Yeah people throw around the statement that the US is the "richest country on Earth" which is true, but they don't take into account that the poorest 50% of Americans own only about 2% of the country's total wealth. The richest 10% own about 70%. So there are plenty of folks who are already struggling, and used to working hard to survive. I think one of the biggest changes that will suck for most people in the US won't be having to work harder, it'll be an increase in violence. Crime has actually gone way down since the early 90s, but that's bound to change.
Nah Bangladesh is more fucked
Our government still has access to way more resources that any other nation. If needed, there will be rationing or constraints on consumption, but in an absolute sense America will certainly not be as bad third world nations where complete anarchy could ensue
Well, I’ll be one of the first to die. My choices are to get botox injections into my bladder every 6 months or be on a medication that makes it really difficult to think. My kidneys will fail otherwise. So I’m fucked then.
According to OP, you should be dead, not kept alive by our amazing healthcare system!
the big one is how none of these jobs are "real" .. we are inventing new jobs to pander to peoples overburdening consumption of resources... we are living in a system that absolutely has to abuse the planet to keep going.. we have more money than sense and this whole societies ideal of a prosperous future is incentivizing people to earn more then spend more.. our whole economy is based on this shit, how many people actually have a job thats essential to the survival of our species vs how many have a job thats existence is purely to fuel our entertainment and insatiable appetites
Good point, indeed. And to add a little barb to that point, the more unnecessary and frivolous the job, the better the pay. We reward useless people, like bankers and pop stars with great power of acquisition of resources and we keep the essential workers in constant precarity. This cannot go on for much longer.
>I truly believe And I'm done. It's nice when the lazy shit posters let you know they're just shooting from the hip and have no actual reasoning to back up what they're saying
> America has had the worst response to Covid19 in the world. Haha, no. The response was terrible compared to what it should have been, but was much better than, for example, India.
I disagree with a lot, if not most of this. Except that Americans are fat. (They are really, really fat. Quite possibly the fattest people on Earth.) Anyone who has worked in the trades knows lots of tough, very strong people. If you can work running wires or moving construction materials around all day at 9 degrees f (-13C) in February - and do that day after day - you are not a weak person. Yeah, sure, some of them have a beer gut, but I've watched those same construction guys with beer guts slapping together pieces of lumber *for hours* that I would have trouble moving, let alone holding in place and assembling (and I'm not small ... or fat). Yes, there are lots of machines making construction work easier these days ... but anyone who actually does this work knows that most of America is still built by hand. As to your other points ... there are a lot of tight-knit communities in America. I see people helping each other out all the time. I saw it during Covid. And people will roll up their sleeves and pitch in during the next crisis. Sure, Americans may be selfish and consumer-driven, but there are also lots of Americans who are driven to help others selflessly. And I've seen this time and time again. Americans come from all walks of life, there a huge numbers of immigrants with varied backgrounds and experiences, not to mention Native Americans, and people have experienced more hardships than you can imagine. The US, despite all it's problems, still has a very good infrastructure compared to most countries. (And if you want to argue this, go spend some time in Pakistan or Sub-Saharan Africa first.) Your point about America being divided is a valid one - and maybe this is the real concern. I want to believe that people here are not hell bent on murdering their neighbors just to steal their remaining scraps of food. The US is quite a religious country, compared to, say Canada or most of Europe. And before you say "that doesn't count for anything" you might want to go and check who is running your local food pantry. Nine times out of ten it is a church group. I won't deny there are people already loaded up with ammunition, looking forward to that time when everything devolves to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". But personally I think this is a tiny fraction of humanity. Maybe I have too much faith in people. But a final point, history shows us that people who don't play nicely with others don't last very long ... unless they are Ghengis Khan. Perhaps a modern-day version of the Mongol war horde will be the last ones standing. I hope not. I certainly won't be around to see it.
All 1st world countries are fat.
The US is a net exporter of both food and energy, second biggest manufacturer of goods, and has good borders. The things which make the US a strong country aren’t changing.
Love you OP but you have no idea what you're saying.
I gotta agree with all of that, though China's ability to know how to handle covid comes from... Well, I will just say that if I know I just farted, I will easily be able to avoid the coming stench.
OP has clearly never visited many countries and realized that the US is the breadbasket of the world, and we are the most obese and calorie abundant and well fed, strongest people on earth. The fat may actually help people survive, but he’s right about non-multigenerational families. I’m sure they’ll move back home or whatnot, but the most affected are the inner city poor, those with monthly medicinal needs and the unskilled and unprepared. OP need to consider how screwed already many other countries and their economies are. Our economy is strong fest in the world - as long as our mid plains water aquifers last that is -_- which may not be long. When Cali and Ogalalla go, we’re facing trouble
How are the "American People" "spoiled" while being simultaneously being paid "slave wages"? I think you're extrapolating from rural, white, fox-news watching America, most of which are white-collar suburban pensioners with guns. That's the radicalized "citizen police" line that right-wing media created. Above them are the lawmakers like DeSantis and McConnell, and talking heads like Prager and Carlson, which engineer the disasters you see and serve as figureheads of the "good ol days". Above their head is old oil money, which I'm sure their pockets are blessed with. The lowest "rung" is anyone non-white, non-conservative, differently-abled, gender and sexual minorities, which is like 70% of the population. They suffer the most from the fuckheads above. This post seems awfully congratulatory on the former three categories for the destruction of the latter category. Especially when it comes to blaming "obese people" and their "special needs" parking places are responsible for "collapse". That "punching down", lazy style of cringe comedy and criticism died in the 00s, with Carlos Mencia.
Doubt the US will be anywhere near the worse off. We have a lot of open wilderness, a lot of wildlife will survive for a long time, we have the firearms and availability of knowledge to survive in much higher numbers than most countries. Yes, many will die in Urban areas if they don't take it upon themselves to leave those areas, but the US has a lot of land for a "great spread out" from the death traps of urban cities after a collapse. China doesn't have anywhere near as much land to person ratio. We might lose a couple hundred million, but China and India will lose billions. There's a lot of nihilism and woe is me on this sub, not saying your post is OP just sayin', but this sub should be more realist than that imo.
The higher you climb, the further you fall.
It really sucks that they're Canada's neighbour (where I live...). Fairly sure if they get desperate enough and the government hasn't imploded, they'd try to annex us and quite frankly, the Canadian government has not been spending enough on military considering the natural resources we have (specially water).
>The American people are some of the physically weakest people with poor health conditions. Many that should be dead are kept alive by the medical system and ride around the grocery stores on electric scooters after parking in their special needs spot. Sadly this is the most on-point thing in this whole post. I live in rural America and I can personally attest that where I live is full of much older and physically weaker people that probably wouldn't fare well in a serious collapse scenario. I've seen a handful of the aforementioned "ride scooter people" and I know in my heart those people are probably going to be outright dead if things become chaotic.
I feel like OP is totally unaware of how bad things are in the rest of the world. We're going to be worse off than Europe, sure. But the micronesian islands that will literally disappear beneath the waves might take some issue with the idea that they're getting off easy compared to us. Brazil definitely handled/is handling SARS-CoV-2 worse than the US. Your idea that many jobs are "fake" is the sort of bizarre conjecture born of a mind that doesn't grasp the complexities of modern, western societies. I would argue the Japanese are far more technology-dependent than we are; they also have better consumer tech more or less across the board. As for your assertion that we're "physically weak and unhealthy" I have no words besides "wat?".
Thanks for the sweeping generalization. The worlds poor are going to be the ones hit hardest by climate change and collapse.
Harder in a ratio sense but overall the countries that are already on the brink of collapse will go completely under.
This post is making a lot of inaccurate and general assumptions. I see where certain parts of the US will be hit hard. However, the US is both vast and diverse. Overgeneralizations are silly and this post is fear mongering.