With worrying global trends like climate change, pollution, increasingly divided or radical governments, economic woes, misinformation and disinformation everywhere, dangerous health crises and so on, what do you think - how much time do we have before “it all comes crashing down”? What will end life or our way of life as we know it first?
Or do you think we’ll make it? If so, how?
The “collapse” is a cope. A non denominational version of the rapture. It being “all over” is something people dream of because oblivion also means an end to pain.
Society won’t “collapse”.
Life will just get shittier and shittier in such a slow, gradual manner that most people won’t even realise it is happening. More work for less pay, less rights and freedoms, more repression, more wars, etc.
I think this is the more accurate take. I think the world at large is more likely headed toward a world in chains or world war 3 disaster scenario more so than anything.
Yes, exactly. I lived in a collapsing society as a child and mostly life goes on, it just gets harder and there are less luxuries.
Societal collapse can happen; it happened to us in the Bronze age, several times in fact. War and famine causing enough chaos to destabilise and destroy cities or empires that took centuries to recover, if they recovered at all.
I don’t know what the Sea People event of the modern era would be. I do know that bombing a handful of factories around the world will set us back a couple of decades when it comes to computers and integrated devices. A second COVID hitting us right now while the world is still recovering would probably do a number on the world as well. Plus, nuclear war would ruin civilisation as we know it pretty quickly.
Unless Putin or Trump start launching nukes, I don’t expect any sudden collapses within one lifetime, but societal collapse is something that can happen eventually.
I think people tend to underestimate human resilience. To use the bronze age collapses as an example, sure, it brought down existing polities, the names drawn on maps changed.
But most of the cities were still there. People still lived in them. Does changing the rulers while keeping a similar paradigm ultimately matter that much? I’m reminded of accounts of the experiences of some Afghanis during the American intervention there. First they paid their taxes to the Taliban, then the govt we set up, then the Taliban again. shrug.
While supply chains could be disrupted, any time that happens it opens the door for another profitable enterprise to rise in its place. People suffer, some die, but life goes on. If the knowledge of how to build those supply chains is still around, it will be done, and swiftly.
To the millions of girls in college in Afghanistan, I do think society has collapsed. They’ve been thrown back into the dark ages. If it weren’t for the extreme brevity of democratic Afghanistan, I would call the takeover by the Taliban societal collapse for sure.
Not all cities are still there. The ones that died out don’t appear in stories and ended up being swallowed up by the ground. Farms were deserted, cities disappeared from maps, entire civilisations vanished.
Just because humans still exist doesn’t mean society didn’t collapse. Humans existed before society did, and humans will continue to exist even if society doesn’t, until new societies will be formed by the survivors.
I think that’s a little sensationalist. For instance, we do find the ruins of ancient cities in archeological digs and can link them to where we do have surviving records of their appearance in stories.
Your point is taken, though. I do, however, remain convinced that people massively overestimate how many people would die in some form of collapse though, unless it somewhat swiftly took down major portions of the Earth’s biosphere.
Two failed harvests. That’s what it takes to strip away the thin varnish of civilisation.
Considering the global integration of the world today, in that case much of the effects can be temporarily cushioned by spending lots of money, thereby letting the ones without money starve. Either way, it won’t be pretty.
At some point, even money can’t help anymore, because you can’t eat it. If there is no food, there is no food.
Yes but also we can stop turning food into fuel or into less efficient luxuries like meat etc
While most here are probably not wrong about changes that could well happen and our societies adapting to them, I can’t help but worry about food shortages.
We aren’t very far away from the point where insect populations start to collapse. If we can’t reverse that or even slow it down, food will follow quite quickly.
The implications are horrifying and even if humanity survives, it won’t be pretty.
If by about 2035 the causes aren’t controlled and the problems slowed down enough to prevent insect extinction, the following 10 - 20 years will see food decrease to levels that won’t sustain us.
After that, the decline will be so rapid and so brutal that no one will be making notes.
I hope that doesn’t happen.
Fun thing about large scale food scarcity. If you have a calorie deficit for a few months, you don’t anymore.
On a serious note. Habit destruction, warming, pollution poses a very serious risk to food stability and could very well lead to famine.
Yes, and global famine is a terrible prospect.
Personally, I’ll miss the birds.
Nothing’s going to collapse. Prior generations had their own share of problems and so do we and we will find some way to get through it all just like they did.
We have exactly 9 years, 3 months, 1 week, 2 days, and a couple hours
Societies may collapse but pockets of humanity will survive. We saw how quickly nature started to rebound when we slowed down during the pandemic. I have hope that we’ll either sort our shit out soon or most of us will die and then the natural world can begin to heal again. This is like the sixth mass extinction event so it’s not the first time this has happened. Life finds a way…
People now be like “there use to be megafauna”
People soon will be like “remember when we use to have mediumfauna?”
I’d thought it’d be a while, but the timeline keeps constricting. I don’t have a number for you, but it seems sooner than it did four years ago.
Exactly four years sooner, according to my math.
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
It always has.
Some time this century most likely. Climate change along with China/Russia’s pursuit of empire along with their global campaign to seed and normalize autocracy will result in collapse eventually.
Damn bro take it easy with the crack
Denial won’t help anyone.
it’ll help Egypt.
