"Is It Thunderdome Yet?" A Rolling Looming Apocalypse Thread

More than 400 Turn Out for Town Hall Meeting on Drought

DURHAM, N.C. – A capacity crowd of more than 400 people turned out Tuesday night, Jan. 8, for “Will the Water Run Out?” a public town hall meeting on water conservation and the drought hosted by the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

Nicholas School Dean William L. Chameides moderated the meeting. He noted that although Durham has weathered worse droughts in the past, including those in the 1920s and the historic 1932-34 Dust Bowl, there is a key difference today.

“The Triangle is now home to millions, not thousands,” Chameides said. “The demand for water has grown along with our population.”

A panel of local experts from Duke, the City of Durham and government agencies joined Chameides at the meeting. They made brief presentations and then fielded nearly an hour and a half of questions from the crowd.

Jerad Bales of the U.S. Geological Survey Water Science Center in Raleigh, explained that although current rainfall deficits are much less than they were in some past droughts, the Flat River, which feeds into Durham’s main water supply, experienced its lowest recorded flows ever in 2007. He said the drought’s sudden onset last fall makes it especially problematic, because a water deficit is easier for cities to deal with if it accrues slowly over a long period of time.

Jackson said that although scientists can’t predict with 100 percent certainty that the hot, dry trend will continue, it is consistent with what global warming models have been showing for the last 10 to 20 years. “Climate change is relevant. It’s coming and perhaps it is already here,” he said.

Miller emphasized that easing off on conservation measures would be a mistake, even if rainfall amounts increase in coming months, because it is likely that area reservoirs will drop rapidly again next summer. He praised the city for its attempts to secure extra water from the City of Cary’s supply in Jordan Lake and said such cooperation between the Triangle’s water systems will be critical to meet future demand and manage limited water resources.

Voorhees said recent rainfalls and the addition of the Teer Quarry reservoir to the city’s water supply has allowed Durham to delay imposing Stage V water restrictions, which could have serious economic impacts on businesses, but he said city officials are closely monitoring conditions and will call for more stringent conservation if needed.

Many in the crowd voiced their concern that voluntary conservation is not enough, and that more needs to be done to prevent the water supplies from running out. Numerous questions focused on the possibility of imposing tiered water rates to penalize heavy water users, or on the impact more than a decade of steady development in the Triangle was having on water quality and availability.

We face some “great challenges” in both the short and long term, Chameides said.

tl;dr amirite

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/10/165845/92

don't actually wanna post any of the text of that piece cause that shit will ruin your day/month/year/life if you're not prepared for it.

before i clicked that: i just read the road, i can handle anything.

after i clicked that: oh shit.

Yeah I read it when it first ran and was depressed for like three weeks.

Consciously chose not to re-read before posting the link here.

http://arianeb.com/dategame.htm

lol

After I first read that piece linked to above I spent like an hour googling the author going "This guy is just a wack-job, right? He's just a fringe loony, right? Right?"

dudes trying to sell his doomsday books. hes not even a climatologist.

gotta be zen about that shit. besides theres always a chance we could start a nuclear war first.

Climate-change, government disarray, cybersex & nuclear war.

I'd say this thread is off to a proper start.

gotta be zen about that shit.

i do what i can dawg. : )

lol @ research triangle. Future generations will suffer so we can play golf and have bright green lawns year-round

gather yr apocalypse teams and fuck distraction and self-involvement

TIME TO BUY SOME GOLD EVERYBODY!

But that means you must renounce TV, rrrobyn!

Q: if i was to go to live in the country and grow my own food will i need guns? all the movies i've seen tell me yes.

Of course you'll need 'em. How else will you keep the zombies at bay?

;)

zombies are so fast these days!

dude i just started reading novels again! o_O
we will make our own tv. when we're not too busy dealing with the violence aagh
xpost

i really don't want to be doom & gloom or believe in wackjob ideas but clearly the shit is already going down

T/S SAVE OURSELVES VS. SURVIVALISM

there won't be any apocalypse, just mass death

TOMBOT SATISFIED @ LAST

ive been listening to this in preparation:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ENK8PF0DL._AA240_.jpg

it will lead to a scenario that eventually gets made into a very bad Kevin Costner movie....

^^^ For that reason alone, it's worth avoiding. I don't want to see that urine recycling scene from Waterworld again.

The Postman is another uniquely terrible post-apocalyptic Costner film.

Kevin Costner in...

"Montana Showdown"

Mel Gibson IS

Dakota: Gun Runner

In like really dark moments I feel like the best reason to keep going despite the shit is that we need hospice nurses for the death throes of civilization.

But fuck me and my melodrama.

ick you just reminded me of that scene from The Day After....

If it bleeds, it leads...

we are fast approaching 2012 people

as my father will tell you the bibles says the world will end in a war w/the yellow race

http://www.cyber-cinema.com/british/SimpsonsThe_BRT.jpg

my favorite movies of the last 18 or so months are: children of men, cloverfield, 28 weeks later, i am legend and war of the worlds

i am legend was really properly unsettling in that respect, def.

I don't think anything's fucking up our nation more than millenarian thinking. It's a big part of the problem, peeps like Bush srsly avoiding change bcz it's "the end times" so why worry anyway. Well, the end times are never, ever coming, folks!

Not them end times anyhow.

No, NONE of them.

I mean if you act like they are it's way more of a self-fulfilling prophecy I think.

Put it this way: I try not to act/think like the sky is falling tomorrow, and nothing would make me happier than dying an old man in a futuristic society happily humming along. But just in case, I'm trying to focus on making people (in my personal life and in small ways at work) happy and comfortable.

I'm also preparing to teach. Assuming some shit goes down in the near future (pre-22nd Century), worst case scenario is that I'll have passed along some of the best work human civilization has produced to one of the last generations. For me, that's a worthy goal.

i hope a super intelligent alien race intervenes before things get too bad

if shit really gets heavy i'm going underground to live w/the mole people

yeah i'm kinda holding out hope for these dudes to save the day

http://transhumanlaw.org/images/singinst.jpg

guys i was an extra in The Postman

/braggin' 08

also we need a 2012 thread

btw i am not entirely joking re: singularity institute.

only mostly

Well that is well smart and kind, and laudable, but I srsly doubt any of us will have to become 'books' ala F. 451.

People, I think, will mostly keep barely getting by and some will get by comfortably, such as it has been. There will be all the same psychological clouds raining on every generation that have been since the '60s or before – basic Maslow's pyramid shit, nuclear weapons aplenty, war, environment going to shit, what if we run out of resources, 'red queen' race of bacteria/parasites and our cures for them, new diseases & epidemics, fear that people are getting dumber and more boorish, shit economy, $$$ in general. These aren't new worries by any means and it's unlikely they'll ever become old ones (nice as that would be), but just reincarnate themselves into new, exciting variations on: 'shit, me and my family/generation/progeny may be anywhere from uncomfortable to stupid to dead.' But basically, I think, you and I and everyone on this board are okay and will never face any "The Stand" or (hopefully) even "Children of Men" type shit.

It's easy to feel like shit in the face of all this stuff we have no control over, but that's just the thing. The thought of getting nuked makes me as queasy as anyone else, but can I do anything about it? No. Is it going to happen? The odds are way fucking slim. So whould I fret? No, serenity prayer shit, man.

Are we facing a horrible energy crunch? Well, yeah. Is this my fault? No, not really. Is there anything I can do about it? I am doing the small things I can, okay, check that one off the list. Has my life been impossible or helpless because this shit has been going on before I was born and will continue? No, actually, this stuff is impacting me very little. Okay. etc etc etc 'til every little niggling worry can be conceived of. I really doubt anyone is doomed here!

thanks for breakin it down

b-b-b-b-break it down

The whole thing is just red queen stuff, both humans and all the things that scare humans matching one another at the same rate, but no one's really the worse for it, It's all scary bcz it is new and in the news constantly.

abott otm

Also do you guys like that these two competing evolutionary hypotheses are called 'Red Queen' and 'Vicar of Bray'? I do.

there is no reason there couldn't be a bubonic plague or asteroid or magnetic field shift whatever in the next 50 years that would totally change human civilization.

not saying there will be

Yeah but change ≠ destroy.

I don't think anything's fucking up our nation more than millenarian thinking.

Yeah, exactly. I said this elsewhere the other day:

"...I have long been intrigued by/aware of the sense of apocalypse in American sociocultural/political life and rhetoric. There's always a sense of 'all is vanity, we're going down' somewhere, over the centuries -- consider the talk a few years back with the Y2K bug as a recent instance, specifically from those doommongers who essentially made their living at it and used the bug as a new framework for such stuff. But the full list of examples, drawing on any number of political and religious and other stances, goes on forever. So the use of that kind of language in any form has to be recognized as the rhetorical move it is -- the question is, is it justified?"

On various points I think some of it can be, but you have to keep this in mind, this sense of "OMG THE END!" and its grip on the American psyche.

the question is, is it justified?

this is my concern: it seems to be.

when it comes to climate change at least.

One of my favorite examples of said thinking at work -- the Millerites.

We just need all the robots to fart at one. I learned this from the TV.

xp

HOOS it is zero degrees in Green Bay today-- i can see it on NFL coverage. There's is no way global warming is real.

bahahahahahahahahahaha

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/images/final-images/g-pop-growth-chart-map-sm.gif

I think it is actually great and beautiful that without humans, the exponential population growth model would be purely a theoretical idea. (Tho obv it will level off eventually!) (Is this graph not pretty & nicely designed?)

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_pop/worldpop.jpg

That tiny dip before it zooms up = the black plague.

BP = before present, 'present' being 1950, the year they discovered radiocarbon dating! HAHAHAHahahahaha

Beginning in 1954, metrologists established 1950 as the origin year for the BP scale for use with radiocarbon dating using a 1950-based reference sample of oxalic acid.

When faced with these sorts of depressing global possibilities it is important to emphasize which kinds of positive steps an individual can take to strengthen their own future prospects. I've already participated in enough doomster discussions (think Y2K) to have formed my own thoughts on this sort of hell-in-a-handbasket scenario.

First off, it is important to realize that you shouldn't dismiss doom-laden scenarios out of hand, just because they are drastic and hypothesize futures that do not resemble the present. Similarly, just because there are so many flimsy, unbelievably stupid conspiracy theories doesn't mean there are no successful conspiracies. You have to sift through them and decide what is plausible and what is not. Luckily, the crazy-stupid ones don't require much thought before you can reject them.

I would rate certain kinds of doomsday projections that are kicked around presently as worth serious consideration: the twinned trends of climate change and species extinction are extremely serious imo. The peak oil scenario would seem to be a mathematical certainty. Lastly, the notion that the global economy could enter a seriously unstable period of correction, with a contraction of wealth in the USA and Europe, seems very plausible to me.

All these scenarios have either a large stack of persuasive evidence, major historic precedents, or an undeniable basis in physical reality. It does no good to just cross your fingers and hope they will go away.

So what do you do?

First, you accept the idea that you can't control anything outside of your own actions. You can't play King Knut and turn back the tide. Instead, you make yourself a stronger person. You evaluate your skills and abilities, your tool set, your habits, your resources to meet adversity. As you do this, you identify your weaknesses and strengths.

Then, you address the weaknesses. It might be as simple as acquiring a few hand tools, paying down debt, or learning to sew. It might be getting to know your neighbors better, so you live in a stronger community. It could be seeking out a leader who understands what needs to be done, or becoming a leader yourself. Or, for many people, it may include limiting your excessive and self-harmful desires.

The good thing about this generalized approach is that it works across all kinds of problems. It makes you a better person, parent, neighbor and citizen. And it shows others the right way, too. By example.

So, don't give in to despair. It is a demon that eats your heart. Become wise and life will be good, no matter what else it is.

^^^ flowing straight from the survival scroll

I like the way Stan Goff put it: "Women. Community. Improving your skills. Every day, from here forward."

Been wandering around lego blogs today, there's even a contest for post-apoc lego creations

is apocalyptic thinking a particularly male fantasy?

it's particularly geeky, to be sure.

Or at least, the mental exercise of "ok, when the zombies come, where do i hide out?" is. A good local answer to this is the CostCo.

So you could topple 30-foot high stacks of merchandise onto the zombies, crushing them?

I am lacking in ammo for the coming zombie plague.

but I live around a lot of old people, so taking them out and hoarding their supplies shouldn't be a problem.

let it be known that i only read insurgent american irregularly.

"The name is not meant to call up visions of gun nuts in the back alleys. We like a bit of irony."

big hoos aka the postapocalypse-jeep-driver

Read Max Brooks' two books. As he points out, the problem with zombies ain't so much the zombies, but the millions of refugees fleeing an outbreak. In World War Z, the three or four waves of refugees heading north completely deforested parts of Canada, and the amounts of shit people had to burn after the wood was gone put so much contaminants into the atmosphere than nuclear winter set in. In other words, it's like in Dawn of the Dead, where the zombies were overcome quite easily, but 'twas the biker gang that caused all the problems.

That's kinda the cool thing about those books, where the premise of a zombie outbreak is the metaphor/allegory Max uses to talk about the problems of how to survive or cope when mass society breaks down.

Some of their "practical" suggestions are a bit 0_o ("start a blog"?), and they do have a survivalist bent to them ("become a gunsmith," "start a worm farm: worms are crucial for rebuilding soil").

Realistically though? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes to Aimless's post.

xp to self, obv

I grew up Mormon, where it is a commandment from God (!!!) to have a year's supply of food, water, necessities. So my parents had giant barrels of water in this bedroom-sized storage facility in the basement, and like 100 pounds of wheat sitting there. Wheat stores better than flour, but even with a wheat grinder and everything, my parents never used the goddamn wheat. They never used the 20 lb. bags of powdered milk (well, sometimes my mom would use it for cooking).

Advantages: always lots of food around, easy to make a snack (pot of pasta or rice, bowl of cereal from those non-brand giant 5-lb. bags). Never having to go to the store if you run out of TP. And that's stuff that's worn on me but srsly it is at least 2/3 a waste of space.

I mean, if you move, how the hell are you going to empty all those 50 gallon barrels of water?

kingfish are the zombie books funny? i've gotten mixed signals. i was initially under the impression their intent was to be "serious" comedy.

I didn't think they were funny at all. They were completely fucking grim! (And medically inaccurate, about situs inversus at least, but I am a pedant.)

i did not know that about mormons!
i ran out of toilet paper today
some survivalist i am

the drugstore is a few blocks away and it has not fallen to the zombies yet unless you count metaphorical zombies i guess

Yeah in Utah/Idaho most of the houses have a room bigger than a walk-in closet but smaller than a bedroom simply assumed to be for your year's supply.

They are all about growing gardens too, but that shit is just sane and it is impossible to buy a decent tomato at all. Gardens, good.

blurrg soaaap bllarr toilet paper nnrrg dish detergent

xpost that was zombies talking

Yeah, the Mormon one-year supply is pretty excessive.

I do keep a pantry with enough to stay fed for a month, and about a week's worth of drinking/cooking water. The pantry stuff is nothing I would not normally eat throughout the year so it all gets used within about 15 months of purchase.

No, they're written completely straight, which really helps in the believability. There's some political jokes in WWZ(like what happens to an ex-Admin figure named "Grover Carlson" and the job he's assigned to do after everything settles down and the world starts up again), but a lot of the stuff is straight ahead socio-economic analysis. I recommend them, and especially the WWZ book on tape.

I ran out of ketchup today! Seriously, panic city.

But the thing about zombie outbreaks, as Max Brooks has stated outright and I think George Romero has alluded to, is that they're a good way to address the concerns of what happens when modern civilization breaks down, only you use this completely impossible event(zombies going apeshit and eatin' brains) as a starting off point. I got a kick out of how much of WWZ was actually Brooks discussing the problems of how wasteful & destined-to-fail(which is how insustainable things should actually be described) too much of our current life is, and how he goes at solving the problems in his book with an almost New Deal approach.

well yeah zombie books/movies/etc are never actually about zombies

not to be all film studies 101 or anything

When will zombies get a proper non-stereotypical treatment by the mass media?

HOARD NOW, GET RICH LATER: noize board post-apocalyptic flea market

Too many people, including a substantial majority of so-called survivalists, get caught up in ideas of apocalypse as a romantic fanatasy of heroic struggle and chest-beating triumph, a'la zombie wars.

In fact it would be a grinding lot of work and worry, interspersed with very small victories and pleasures. Read about the Russian Civil War and the consequent famines, or about refugees in eastern Europe during WWII and after if you want to get the proper flavor of survival when the usual structure of society is ripped up and inoperative. Then hope for a gradual descent into genteel poverty, instead.

Too many people, including a substantial majority of so-called survivalists, get caught up in ideas of apocalypse as a romantic fanatasy of heroic struggle and chest-beating triumph, a'la zombie wars.

Seriously. Anyone remember reading Interdictor, who was some IT guy who decided that he'd ride out Katrina in the building he worked in and documented what happened in downtown New Orleans in the subsequent. Check the comments on the posts during the period; dude had a seriously slathering fanbase going, all sorts of geeks & nerds jealous at the dude's chance to play out his post-apoc exercise.

Yup, i use grammar good and never words drop.

I remember that guy! Nothing seems to wind up the nerds like having to keep the servers up while the world is going to hell.

Yeah. Dude was a goon and had people falling all over themselves on the sa forums to post about him.

So apparently big chunks of this story are fabricated or something, Julian Robertson didn't even say most of the stuff that attributed to him here, but this seemed like the right thread for this story.

Legendary Funds Manager Predicts Utter Global Collapse Stemming From Bursting of Property Bubble

Blames Bush-Cheney "regime"

In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the "old-timer" funds manager, Julian Robertson, predicted "utter global collapse" as a consequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble.

Often called "Never Been Wrong Robertson", the former head of Tiger Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the speculative bubble in real estate.

Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property bubble bursts.

Even more worrisome, he thinks central banks around the globe out of desperation will try to re-inflate the world economy with more liquidity that will create an inflationary spiral unseen in the economic history of mankind.

"Where does it end?", Insana asked Robertson. "Utter global collapse," he answered. But not just economic collapse ... collapse of epic proportions.
Collapse and disintegration of all infrastructure, including government.
Inflation will run into the double and triple digits. "Food production will fall. People will be carrying around U.S. dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany," he said.

There will be "total collapse of public infrastructure. Total collapse of medical care systems. All public pension plans, Social Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse."

"The American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the planet," he continued. "Consumption rates in all other nations are falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to governments, that the business and industries those nation states are providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service and public cost, that this exists in virtually every nation state on the planet now."

And for much of this "doom", interestingly, he blames the Bush-Cheney "regime".

"They have now consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible. The planet's net liquidity, that is its, net free cash flow. Is now a negative number. The planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don't realize it yet," he said.

According to Robertson, "the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a dictatorship will be necessary to control, in 5 years time, food and water riots." He said "the federal government, that part of Patriot II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or more citizens that will be in financial ruin."

In 10 years time, whoever is left will be effectively starting again, he said.

"More importantly, and I'm trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from 1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet," he said.

Robertson ended the interview by saying that he hopes he is not alive to see this.

"The lucky ones are the ones who are my age now," he said.

this seemed like the right thread for this story.

I'd also like to emphasize that the thread title (rolling looming apocalypse + flippant thunderdome ref) is intended as much to take the piss out of constant doom & gloom propositions as anything else. Thread is Rolling cause they're always coming and never coming true. Or something.

Instead of all this sturm und drang over the coming economic apocalypse, maybe we should all just relax, crack open a few brewskies, and enjoy a few good chuckles over the coming avian flu pandemic. amirite?

avian fluskies

i'll have a wheaty avian fluskie plz

I like mine hoppy and peaty.

Forget oil, the new global crisis is food

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

full

Hooray @ headline/lede alarmism. Point of the article: what with more people on earth, we probably oughta be growing more food, eh? Let's get on that right quick.

HOOpocalypse now

The US has many flavors of hucksters working the doom industry. Some are crackpots. Some are our leaders. Some are scholars pimping books. It's a great racket and I've covered it for a number of years in print. It's hard to lose money predicting doom.

See a Lexis search I did a couple years ago on prediction of terror attacks.

Or flogging it.

A running tabulation of invocations of imminent mushroom cloud in daily newspapers.

Ack, mushroom clouds in the press.

'but it's got electrolytes!'

xposts

lol rrobyn

Ethanol Fuel Will Kill Us All

"Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," concludes the study published in Science magazine.

RUN TOOOO THE HILLLLLLLLS

Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood

Skyrocketing oil prices, a falling dollar, and collapsing financial markets are the key ingredients in an economic brew that could end up in more than just an ordinary recession.

RUN FOOOOOOOOR YOOOOOOOUR LIIIIIIIIFE

Richard Dawkins is Optimistic About Something

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color and bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?"
- Richard Dawkins

tl;dr

BIG KINS aka the cheerleader

<a href=http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803u/uranium-smuggling>;Russian Uranium Smuggling</a>

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but who can resist panicking about Russian Uranium Smuggling?

two pieces in this month's Harper's bring the o_O

"Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Think"
"Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits" about how teh center can't hold cause of peak oil omg

Rolling UK Economy Into The Shitbin Thread
Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread
Real Estate bubble bust may be worse than Dot Com bubble bust

eeg so i guess i'm kinda glad this month's harpers has become buried in a pile of random objects on my desk
xpost

The Economy piece in Harper's didn't really include any new information.

I mean most of what it says was true ten years ago, granted that it's important to remember that all that is true.

Last month's Harper's cover about the potential contagious cancer made me laugh a little. They should just change their name to Looming Apocalypse Monthly.

If the "Numbers Racket" article is about how the US gov skews its own economic statistics in order to manipulate markets, understate unemployment, and circumvent the intent of certain US laws (eg indexing Social Security benefits to the CPI), then I would like to read it.

haha
xpost

confession: i never read any of the american politics/economy articles in harpers

i try sometimes but

the "Numbers Racket" article is about how the US gov skews its own economic statistics in order to manipulate markets, understate unemployment, and circumvent the intent of certain US laws (eg indexing Social Security benefits to the CPI), then I would like to read it.

-- Aimless, Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:13 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

That's what it's about, but your post pretty much sums up everything that's in the article.

There was a time when these numbers weren't corrupt. It is good to keep track of how widespread the area of corruption has grown and who benefits from it, if only to keep one's sense of reality from becoming too distorted by the powerful Untruth Waves bombarding us from all sides.

It has some neat graphs.

Yeah, I see your point. It is important to stop once in a while and remind yourself that the statistics you're hearing have little bearing on whether the typical American living standard, or even your own living standard, is actually getting better.

Got any faith in humanity left? Trash it.

Wait, sorry, I'm supposed to lose faith in humanity because someone did something kind of stupid and got killed?

I guess you're right, but it still pisses me off real good.

I do think it's a little saddening that this woman undertook a project that relied on a certain degree of basic human decency, and then those expectations were horribly violated. I'm also a little saddened by the jaded reactions I'm seeing all over the place.

Was it a naive project? Maybe. But it's depressing nonetheless.

lol Gawker's scifi blog (lol) had a roundup today on "12 Ways to Prepare for Our Dystopian Near-Future" or something, and even I thought it was some alarmist bullshit.

and i'm already stockin up on non-perishables and shit

man drop in a reference to ghostface and that's the most in-character pair of posts i've ever had

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_cox/2008/04/precautionary_principles.html

lol

CIA chief: 'Get ready for Children of Men-style funnies'. Admittedly I paraphrase.

I think it's just wonderful that the deterioration in the world situation from overpopulation will occur at a slow enough pace that we can adjust to each new level of chaos as normal and expected. This means that, however bad things get, life will still seem commonplace and acceptable. Humans are amazingly good at this.

Was it Obvious Day at the CIA?

i kinda suck at it
but yknow, go humans
xpost

Debates, debates.

lol just had a half hour convo w/an old friend about how we're both getting a creeping sense of doomq

but fuck it i'm happy today

doomq

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/as-diesel-price.html

Earlier this week in Houston, Texas, a veteran driver was carjacked at gunpoint and his diesel tanker stolen. The truck was recovered today, undamaged, but minus its liquid cargo.

"is it thunderdome yet" indeed

I should have put this on this thread to begin with, but this story just kills me. they just caught the kid yesterday, he came back a third time and security jumped him. crawling under cars and powerdrilling into fuel tanks should have earned him a darwin award.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6117572

Police say the thief drilled a hole into the gas tanks of two SUVs and stole the gas. The first time it was a Chevy Silverado pick up truck, the second hit was on a Jeep Liberty SUV - that time the thief got scared off and left a bucket of gas just sitting there.

There have been a total of 10 reports of gas thefts in San Jose. Police in Daly City are just shaking their heads - they can't believe this has happened. They say it's a wonder that the thief or thieves didn't kill themselves because using drills around gas is not the safest idea.

One guy stealing gas seems a bit lightweight for a thread about the looming apocalypse, don't you think?

right now it's certainly just a curio story. I know the first guy who was hit, which made it personal. imagine an entire building's office chatter revolving around steel lined gas tanks for 12-gallon cars the week gas cleared $4 in SF.

but you're absolutely right, it smacks of recreational panicking

I think that one guy may be indicative of larger anxieties about the price of gas, though.

esp with regard to tom's highlighted stolen tanker story.
glad i don't drive.
not even going to take the subway much anymore once i get a few parts for my bike.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/13/flood.jpg

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, June 13 -- The sun finally broke through the layers of clouds on Friday, a reassuring presence after a week of rain. But as residents in and around this eastern Iowa city surveyed their waterlogged landscape, they did not like what they saw.

"It looks like Katrina," said a man in a pickup truck who declined to give his name. He was stuck in traffic that was at a standstill for 10 miles on the interstate north of the city, gazing at the Quaker Oats factory and buildings sitting in several feet of water.

Locals said the flood that hit Iowa's second-largest city is far worse than the deluge of 1993. About 25,000 residents have had to leave, and hundreds of homes and businesses have been damaged, many of them severely.

More than 400 blocks of downtown were evacuated, including a jail and a major hospital. Water flowed like a river through downtown streets blocked off by National Guard members, and warehouses along the Cedar River were nearly submerged. Floodwater gurgled around treetops and lapped just feet below electrical wires and billboards. The Cedar River crested at 31.2 feet Thursday, 15 feet above flood stage and breaking the record from 15 years ago.

"We thought the crest would be 20 or 22 feet, and we thought we would be okay, but it was 31," Cedar Rapids Mayor Kay Halloran said.

The flooding that hit this city of more than 120,000 is just part of the hammering the Midwest has received from severe storms during the past week. Floodwaters have submerged parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Authorities have been forced to close a nearly 300-mile stretch of the upper Mississippi River to all traffic. According to the Associated Press, scores of bridges across nine overflowing rivers have been weakened or swept away.

The floods have destroyed acres of corn, soybeans and other crops, prompting worries about a spike in food prices at a time when they already have been rising. "I have real concerns about our agricultural sector," said Gov. Chet Culver (D), who declared 83 of Iowa's 99 counties disaster areas. (...)

Carpenter Phil Leidigh, 53, a Cedar Rapids native, wondered where homeless people downtown would go and said flooding hit low-income areas of the city the hardest.

"Where the flooding is, it hit the people who are already struggling, who worked their whole lives to get where they are and now have to start over," he said. "It could take years for the city to recover.

What was that film with Tina Turner where she wore all that leather and studs? Did I dream that? Are we talking about the same film? I'm really drunk.

It had to do with the apocalypse so I'm not THAT drunk.

When I went to a William Gibson reading/signing the other night, somebody asked him about the tendency to describe his books as "dystopian." He gave pretty much the same answer in this interview to io9:

"None of us ever live in dystopia. That's an imaginary extreme, a literary device. No one lives in dystopias, they just live in shitty cultures. And these societies [in my books] seem dystopian to middle class white people in North America. They don't seem dystopian if you live in Rio or anywhere in Africa. Most people in Africa would happily immigrate to the Sprawl."

"None of us ever live in dystopia?"
LOL LOL LOL

Most people in Africa would happily immigrate to the Sprawl.

this seems a salient point

The US does seem fairly prone to "extreme weather events" as the news people seem to love calling them, so maybe as that increases then it might encourage a particularly recalcitrant country to do something concrete about climate change. Not that I'm wishing them ill or anything, but New Orleans-style events are more likely to prompt action than Bangladesh vanishing under the sea.

i think the signs are pointing very much to the obvious.

The extreme weather in the USA is muchly related to the north-south orientation of N. America's mountain ranges. They present no barrier to funneling arctic air to the mid-continent.

despite science being in agreement about climate change and global warming, I think there is also agreement that recent weather events aren't actually related to that.

Yes, well, it's certainly true that no specific event can be pointed to as being because of climate change. It's more the increasing average frequency/seriousness of such events that's an indicator. And that mountain range thing is also true: isn't that why almost every tornado in the history of the modern world happened in North America?

Interesting article re running out of various elements: http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0806/ref.shtml

Although it's annoying the way he says "extinct" when he means "locked up in consumer goods".

Always nice to see this thread rising to the top. Like cream in fresh milk.

Fla. man dials 911, complains his sub had no sauce
2 days ago
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The sauce for a spicy Italian sandwich was apparently a must have for one Florida man. The man, Reginald Peterson, called 911 twice after a sandwich shop left off the sauce.
Peterson initially called the emergency number Thursday so that officers could have his subs made correctly, according to a police report. The second call was to complain that police officers weren't arriving fast enough.
Subway workers told police that Peterson, 42, became belligerent and yelled when they were fixing his order. They locked him out of the store when he left to call police.
When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed, and he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.
Peterson did not have a listed phone number.

When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed,

The urine bottles of eastern Oregon

When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed,

hearing this in john walsh's voice makes it even better.

What? An entire thread to discuss the apocalyptic threats hanging over our heads and no mention of supervolcanoes? Or Congress?

We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3141428/Financial-Crisis-Now-Germany-takes-hot-seat-as-Europe-falls-into-the-abyss.html

Hold on to your hats bitches

after the apocalypse: lots of guys starving to death with piles of gold.

The newspapers really piss me off right now. They love this situation, because they can go around scaremongering to sell papers.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/gallery/2006/11/03/eliotcarver1.jpg
There's no news like bad news

what to buy if there was a coming financial collapse
http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/hexayurt/disaster-shopping-with-gupta-1003

beef jerky and hand sanitizer, yup, got it.

This "survival list" bullshit is basically all the same stuff as those "what to do when the Y2K bug ends civilisation" lists from nine years ago. All the tinned beans people bought back then should probably still be buried in the back yard.

"I planted five rows of tinned beans and NOTHING came up. :("

I love how these lists for surviving a couple weeks of civil disruption are longer and include more extraneous crap than most people would take on a two-week camping trip, which itself is usually way more than they ever need.

Hand jerky and beef sanitiser would be about as much.

hur hur hur... "Mysterious Ways" just came on in WinAmp... "you've been living underground, eating from a can"

Hand jerky and beef sanitiser would be about as much use (fu-huck...)

after shit gets heavy we'll all starve in a month and there will only be mormons left

today i was sitting between two girls and they were having a conversation over me. both were listening to ipods at the same time and kept saying "what?" to each other.

my disgust made me feel 50 yrs old

hey look guys here is a magazine article that pertains to my interests

http://men.style.com/details/features/full?id=content_7476

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081031/D945EQT80.html

http://www.matusiak.eu/numerodix/blog/wp-content/uploads/robocop3_poster.jpg

# breast milk [Started by paulhw (paulhw) in January 2004, last updated 27 seconds ago by creator of 2008's most successful meme (velko) on I Love Everything] 95 new answers

Guys I didn't read this thread I just want to let you all know that I am - quite seriously - working on a musical based on Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome called THUNDERDOME.

SNEAK PEEK SNEAK PEEK

I hear Tina is going to sing "We Don't Need Another Hero" @ inaugural

New Yorker has Indian slums followed by Robotic Warfare. I will sleep great now.

india piece is really good btw

ENCLAVE by Kit Reed — The world is in chaos: war, plague, global ecological collapse. Parents everywhere seek sanctuary for their precious children, the future of mankind. For those who are rich and powerful enough, safety can be found — for a price — at the Clothos Academy. Run by a mysterious man known only as Sarge, set in a former monastery atop a sheer cliff on a tiny island somewhere in the Mediterranean, Clothos will admit only 100 students before it is sealed off — perhaps permanently — from the terrors outside.

Choose your own Apocalypse!

I went with Unilateralism, Megadrought, Bureaucracy, Default On Debt, and Laziness

As a result, I'm "a humanitarian internationalist. You're convinced mankind will terminate America—but at least we won't off ourselves in the process. You'll know you're right when: Everyone on Earth pledges allegiance to a world government; the feds default on the national debt."

Suicidal Tyrant + India/Pakistan + Isolation of Elites + Overpopulation + Ocean Acidification =

You are a bloodthirsty misanthrope. You believe mankind is stupid and fallible and that America will destroy itself in a bloody mess. You'll know you're right when: The United States succumbs to a torrent of Russian nukes; we clone ourselves, get bum genes, and die.

Wow, you can use this thing to come up with a zillion movie plots!

I went with: Suburban Slums, Oldocracy, Megadrought, State Bankruptcies and Neo-Colonialism

Ice Age + Super AIDS + The Rapture + Asteroids + Ocean Acidification =

You are a Gaia-hating doomsayer. You're sure the natural world will destroy us, and there's nothing we can do about it. You'll know you're right when: America gets crushed by an asteroid; a new ice age buries us under a glacier.

I'm really into the idea of making movie plots out of these choose your own apocalypse scenarios. If I made a thread for this, would it be good or would it languish, unloved?

I'm really into the idea of making movie plots out of these choose your own apocalypse scenarios. If I made a thread for this, would it be good or would it languish, unloved?

Do it: Character names provided by this thread: The simple joy of stupid spam names

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100921/ts_csm/327178

That slate list missed one of my favorite megadisaster scenarios, the collapse of the western flank of Cumbre Vieja volcano on Las Palmas (Canary islands) along the 20km fault that appeared during the 1947 eruption:

http://www.tsunami-alarm-system.com/uploads/pics/la_palma_erdrutsch_tsunami_01.jpg

More likely, though, is something like the centuries long collapse seen on Rapa Nui.

holy shit xp

watching a marathon of THE COLONY on discovery

scratchin all my end-of-the-world itches

I'd never heard of this, now I find myself wanting to torrent and watch a "reality" show for the first time in my life.

yeah i heard of it for the first time today and watched the entire first season ~on demand~

Between the Mexican cartels' building tanks, Colombian drug smugglers making homemade submarines, and the gonzo mechanic genius of Libya's rebels, is it possible that the world predicted in Mad Max has actually come to pass and no one noticed?

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/10/el_monstruo_the_cartels_have_a_tank

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jqTdAd3hBRw

y didnt the video embed :(

best comment

QUE PEDO, QUE ES ESTO

 ni Batman hace estas mamadas

chicharito12531 8 months ago 15

WHAT FARTING, WHAT IS THIS

batman doesn't need this sucky shit

In a post titled, "This Really Is Beginning To Look Like 1931," Knowles argues that we could be witnessing the transition from recession to global depression that last occurred two years after the 1929 market collapse, and eight years before Germany invaded Poland, triggering the Second World War:

"The difference today is that so far, the chain reaction of a default has been avoided by bailouts. Countries are not closing down their borders or arming their soldiers – they can agree on some solution, if not a good solution. But the fundamental problem – the spiral downwards caused by confidence crises and ever rising interest rates – is exactly the same now as it was in 1931. And as Italy and Spain come under attack, we are reaching the limit of how much that sticking plaster can heal. Tensions between European countries unseen in decades are emerging."

Knowles wrote that posts three days ago. Since then it has become abundantly obvious that Europe will soon become unwilling or unable to continue bailing out every country with a debt problem. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy continues to chug along, to the extent it is chugging at all, on the false security offered by a collective distaste for one ratings agency and its poor mathematics.
That can't continue forever. The next few months will show S&P's downgrade to have been too little and too late, rather than too drastic and too soon. The Eurozone will fall apart. The American political crisis will will only worsen; the "super-committee" will utterly fail, true to design. Soon enough, we may all wake up to a "reckoning" truly deserving of the name.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/serious-people-are-starting-to-realize-that-we-may-be-looking-at-world-war-iii-2011-8#ixzz1USnBjr1F

this whole event falls into the thread category, insane freak storm in August:

Belgium's Pukkelpop festival on hold at the moment - short storm during first day, 1 of the stages collapsed, 1 dead, 7 seriously injured

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY&feature=player_embedded

^^ Quite likely this was chosen as the most entertaining and impressive of a large number of trials. But it was certainly entertaining and impressive.

Yeah, pretty awesome.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/11/07/super-typhoon-haiyan-closes-in-on-philippines-among-strongest-storms-ever/?hpid=z5

"The Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimates maximum sustained winds are 190 mph."

nb: sustained winds, not just wind gusts

was just coming here to post that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/files/2013/11/650x366_11071317_page.htm_.jpg

I thought of you when I saw the article, ZS

i mean coming here to post about Haiyan. i'm not sure about the gusts vs. sustained wind. one part of the link mentions 190 mph "max sustained winds", another mentions 190 mph "max winds", and another says "Close to the storm center, sustained winds will exceed 100 mph with gusts over 150 mph possible"

at any rate, people with wigs should apply extra krazy glue tomorrow

it's so sad that the story is currently buried on the WashPo front page beneath such important columns as George Will's "Obama’s feast of failures - Cash for Clunkers foreshadowed the HealthCare.gov fiasco"

Srsly, winds like that can make very heavy objects fly. Until they hit something.

shame that the potential damage is so horrible--this photo is quite beautiful

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/files/2013/11/1401869_676143355737038_348445040_o1.jpg

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/08/typhoon-haiyan-philippines-death-toll

195mph is fucking insane

welcome back my friends to the show that never ends unless its actually the apocalypse

Though she works on fundamental oceanic changes every day, the Dutkiewicz study on the impending large-scale changes to plankton caught her off-guard: "This was alarming to me because if the basis of the food web changes, then . . . everything could change, right?"

Alin's frank discussion of the looming oceanic apocalypse is perhaps a product of studying unfathomable change every day. But four years ago, the birth of her twins "heightened the whole issue," she says. "I was worried enough about these problems before having kids that I maybe wondered whether it was a good idea. Now, it just makes me feel crushed."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-change-nightmares-are-already-here-20150805#ixzz3i2fqCtQO

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/60-000-antelope-died-four-days-no-one-knows-why-n421056?cid=sm_fb

sad but the first thing i thought of was http://www.clickhole.com/article/6-amazing-pictures-deer-melting-we-published-looki-2614

well this is the scariest & most apocalyptic 90 seconds i've ever seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lVPB3HI9Wg

(^^^ this was taken TONIGHT, hours ago)

I could smell the wood smoke watching that. yeesh

i know this was posted on other threads but: http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/08/24/everything-is-on-fire-and-no-one-cares/

jesus christ that video is fucking terrifying

it looks like some insane fairground ride, especially with the reversed 'ANDERSON SPRINGS' sign

I live not that far from Sandpoint, mentioned in that Morford article, and know people who live there and such. I don't know what he's missed in the past but basically every August since I moved here in 2006 has had a defined "fire season" with at least a couple of days of smoke and haze. This year is definitely dramatically worse, but still.

Where I live isn't woody enough to have actual fire dangers, but prevailing winds and so much of Washington on fire led to horrible air quality for a couple of weeks, like measurably hazardous and at least one day it was the worst in the country by far. A couple of weeks ago it was super dire - sun blotted out, eyes watering when you went outside, constant smoke smell, burning lungs, not being able to see houses a couple blocks away, etc. Thankfully we have central air conditioning and could just hole up inside for a couple of days, though we did have to change the furnace filter which had basically turned very dark gray.

I swear there's something in human evolution that makes you edgy and stressed when it constantly smells like smoke, like you're constantly preparing to flee for your life.

The basic tenor of the article was extremely heightened fear and anxiety, verging on paranoia, but on the other side of the coin, humans seem to have a very limited ability to imagine a future as anything other than a duplicate of the past. That article challenges that myopia and tries to convey a sense of a drastically changed and intimidating future, and even if it isn't accurate in detail (predictions seldom are) I'm glad it tries to penetrate our complacency about climate change.

take your pick:

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2015/12/50-doomiest-graphs-of-2015.html

"animal mass mortality events, 1940-2012" is always the one that freaks me out the most, but lately I've been reading a lot of trend studies about future heat waves in the Middle East and India making large areas uninhabitable.

oh, you mean this one?

http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gQP9Miz3nAA/VXh4L7oYBfI/AAAAAAAAbyw/zXSCYHUqZ2E/image%25255B7%25255D.png?imgmax=800

If India is the 2nd most populous nation on earth and a large percentage of its land area becomes "uninhabitable", I wonder what is expected to happen to the hundreds of millions of people who currently inhabit the land that becomes "uninhabitable"?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/science/intolerable-heat-may-hit-the-middle-east-by-the-end-of-the-century.html
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/extreme-heatwaves-could-push-gulf-climate-beyond-human-endurance-study-shows

bump

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/

i always do the 'i'll probably be dead by then' math when i hear these stories

I always think about my wife's granddaughters :(

fortunately i have no offspring or roots and don't intend to, too young

human innovation will always find a way to outpace ecological degradation. that's why the fertile crescent is such a great place for farmers right now

Monkeys in Florida have deadly herpes, so please don’t touch them

alternatively: floridians, keep touching those monkeys

(honorable exceptions for alfred and neanderthal obv)

http://mimg.ugo.com/200901/22094/cuts/Klaus_288x288.jpg

wheeeeee

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the symbolic Doomsday Clock a notch closer to the end of humanity Thursday, moving it ahead by 30 seconds after what the organization called a “grim assessment” of the state of geopolitical affairs.

“As of today,” Bulletin president Rachel Bronson told reporters, “it is two minutes to midnight.”

In moving the clock 30 seconds closer to the hour of the apocalypse, the group cited “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”

The organization — whose board includes 15 Nobel Laureates — now believes “the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” Bulletin officials Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert Rosner wrote in an op-ed published Thursday by The Washington Post. “In fact, the Doomsday Clock is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”

obligatory

https://images.genius.com/d9a3002a29dbe437b351788a2bfb18db.1000x1000x1.jpg

geoff johns does not need the publicity

this is what happens when you fuck with alan moore, geoff

love how old this thread is

rmde re Trump 'not dealing with' an impending nuke threat he is the major cause of

In this instance, I took 'not dealing with looming threats' to essentially mean 'failing to correct the mistake nature made by allowing him to be born in the first place'.

what rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards etc

there are threads like these all the time. apocalyptic imagery is found throughout history. it is popular fiction. we love feeling so special.

it is getting old as fuck though. i read a review of the new Cornelius song on Stereogum and it was like "I can't believe he can even imagine a future". give me a break.

okay guys shut it down adam is, like, so over it - the united opinion of the world's experts that we are heading for drowned cities, failed crops, and millions of people literally cooking alive around the equator within decades is a popular fiction

T/S: 15 Nobel laureates vs Adam

When next the poles change places, the consequences for the electrical and electronic infrastructure that runs civilization will be dire. The question is when that will happen.

https://undark.org/article/books-alanna-mitchell-spinning-magnet

at this point it's hard not to think that the earth itself is trying to kill us all

The general idea is, justified through truly painful torture and dismembering of modern physics, mathematics and geology (primarily by the methods of ignorance and blatant denial), that the Earth’s crust sometimes shift suddenly in relation to the rotational axis, causing massive changes to the crust. And as with all true crankery, the hypothesis predicts an immanent cataclysmic event.

http://americanloons.blogspot.fr/2014/04/988-richard-noone.html

5/5/2000 we are...er were...doomed

“Recalculating”

I read 5/5/2000 around 1990 or so, sometime between sequels to Chariots of the Gods & Foucault's Pendulum, & I remember the author urging people to join his cult crew in rural Illinois where he was gonna build a hovercraft to survive the floods caused by the polar ice caps melting. I wonder if anyone took him up on it, and what happened?

i can guarantee this much: they survived the floods

lol

at this point it's hard not to think that the earth itself is trying to kill us all

self defense

I’ve watched enough science television to know that the earth is in the universe and the universe is nothing if not a giant engine of destruction that wants to blow itself up again and again so actually our death drive as a species is even deeper than our genes, it’s in our elements, man

you can't fight entropy dude

that's why i don't go to the gym

"When next the poles change places" will be the opening number of Hair 2

something something screen doors

If the earth ever talks with the other planets they probably say “why you still got that life all over you, dude?” And Earth goes “I know I know it just happened by accident” And Mars is like “...OK, lady”

Jupiter constantly giving its moons the eye to make sure they aren’t even thinking about having some life

Fun to think of the biosphere as basically like a bad case of athlete's foot that the earth has allowed to get wildly out of control.

at least any life which might be hanging in there under the ice on europa has had the good sense to keep it basic and sustainable so far, let's hope they don't get too ambitious

Mars gonna feel pretty stupid when one of our probes turns out to not have been sterilized correctly

mars, the bringer of war and the forgetter of condoms

Japan heatwave declared natural disaster as death toll mounts

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/rising-temperatures-linked-to-increased-suicide-rates

Brazil museum fire: ‘incalculable’ loss as 200-year-old Rio institution gutted

War, Famine, Death and badly maintained public buildings with dodgy wiring.

Someone connected with the museum completely broke down into sobbing anguish on bbc WS earlier. Some talk that it could be related to underfunding - shock horror - Building with priceless cultural/historic/archaeological treasures, rather than poor ethnic minorities burns to the ground because of austerity.

I'm gonna bet the meteorite is probably the only recoverable thing from that infographic

The least they deserve for what they're doing to their rainforests tbh

Where are the crowds of weeping citizens at illegal logging sites?

how does that take measure up against the core temp of the building atm

xp That's equivalent of US conservatives constantly asking why muslims aren't denouncing terrorists on a 24-hour a day basis. why don't you go weep at illegal logging sites, imago?

there is a maybe real possibility some previously unseen nazi archives just got reduced to dust, again. But it was a free museum apparently, so perhaps lots of poor kids from Rio De Janeiro occasionally had a good day out there before returning to their lives of standard grinding inequity.

seems unlikely

look obviously this is terrible but...i mean, on this thread? really?

did you read the article, though

A key element of any worthwhile dystopia is the destruction of a society's history.

If it happens in large part because the government just stops giving a shit, even better.

That Brazil fire is a huge tragedy. Lives are spent collecting specimens, with only some researchers fortunate enough to find some of enduring interest. Somewhere in that Rio museum were the last relics of now extinct species, many with enough intact DNA that there was at least hope of resurrecting the species.

In the future, I hope important museums and libraries are well enough funded to look like this, impervious to fire or earthquake or sea-level rise or global thermonuclear war:

http://baseengr.com/images/uploads/02-portfolio-images/MILCON%200660-med.jpg

We're living near some sort of apex for humanity (albeit at a cost to all other life), but we shouldn't expect it to last. The heroes of this era will be the curators and librarians who preserve the biodiversity and knowledge and cultural product of recent eras for future, often distant generations.

yeah and it's a terrible loss but

“The tragedy this Sunday is a sort of national suicide. A crime against our past and future generations,”

the elephant in the room on this of all threads is too poignant for me to handle this talk

but i guess you guys are right

this thread is reserved for the actual apocalypse

let me know when jesus comes back on with a flaming sword to make me suffer

No need. He'll be in touch.

Just re-read the 2008 climate doom op-ed that originally inspired this thread and it's almost funny how normalized its existential despair has become for me

The meteorite survived

incredibly sad video from inside Brazil's gutted National Museum — only the meteorites withstood the fire pic.twitter.com/6BoTJqanSd

— Matthew Champion (@matthewchampion) September 4, 2018

called it

After surviving the long plunge through the earth's atmosphere and the landing afterward, a little thing like a fire wouldn't phase it.

the state of that wooden banister suggests that the fire perhaps wasn't so intense near the charred lumps of rock section, sods law.

feel like this belongs here, great piece from Douglas Rushkoff

https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

that is good, thanks for posting that here

That was an excellent essay and condenses a lot of excellence in a fairly few words. Rushkoff is completely correct in his assessment of the prevailing attitudes among the super-rich and his analysis of what is necessary to stave off the worst possible human future that capitalism and the super-rich seem to be driving us toward willy-nilly.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13047

eyy

can't believe the earth is gonna fart us all to death smdh

shhhhh, don't tell anyone or nasa might lose their funding for this research! the trump administration is doing everything they can to increase methane emissions. they really frown upon research that says that's a bad thing

nice nice

https://www.adn.com/arctic/2018/09/24/across-the-arctic-lakes-are-leaking-dangerous-greenhouse-gases/

Steak-umm...OTM?

why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention? I'll tell you why. they're isolated from real communities, working service jobs they hate while barely making ends meat, and are living w/ unchecked personal/mental health problems

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) September 26, 2018

waht

The whole thread is something.

lmao i appreciate you putting that in here ned

barely making ends meat

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/

the biomass (the dry weight of all the captured invertebrates) had significantly decreased from 1976 to the present day. The sweep sample biomass decreased to a fourth or an eighth of what it had been.

When the base of the pyramid shrinks, what do you think happens to the top?

it migrates to the cloud and some genius invents perpetual motion and saves the day, nothing to worry about

moving over from the Left-wing Drift thread:

I think about prepping sometimes. The biggest problem I have is understanding what exactly I would be prepping for. I could buy a few acres of cheap farmland somewhere, but what's going to protect it from roving gangs of bandits in a true "mad max" type scenario? How will I get water to irrigate it? You can't really grow enough food to feed a family in a small garden plus a little chicken coop. Do I buy guns? Are they really going to be enough to fend off a militia on my own? Better than nothing I guess? I could learn to survive in the woods, but which woods, and how many people are woods really going to support? I tend to think being part of a group is probably the best defense, but what group, where?

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, October 29, 2018 10:09 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm also not completely convinced "collapse" is a thing. Societies reach various states of organization/disorder, but I don't think there's really such a thing as a permanent "collapse." Things would reorganize in some form or other.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, October 29, 2018 10:10 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I ask myself very similar questions. To not do anything when I see #doom on the horizon seems foolish but it's unclear what I should do. Someone pointed out to me that surviving the apocalypse is a booby prize since now you have to live in post-apocalypse, which seemed mildly compelling at the time. Learning certain areas of knowledge seem potentially useful (electrical, HVAC, carpentry, agriculture) but the best way to go about acquiring that knowledge is difficult to discern.

― Mordy, Monday, October 29, 2018 10:12 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

over on the Chapo subreddit they've pinned a thread of tips/info resources for Brazilians to either get safer or get out and it's a lovely effort but it all just makes me so sad and angry that it's even necessary

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Monday, October 29, 2018 10:12 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man alive those are good questions, my answers would be:

food: what you need is a 6-month supply of MREs for yr family. cooking food wastes valuable energy if there's no power. thinking about living off the land is def into "fantasia" territory imo and not productive as short term strategy (but worth some long term thought, sure)

water: use water purifiers, and iodine tablets if necessary. have extra filters for the purifiers, there are hand-pumped ones for camping that are cheap.

guns: shotgun for home defense, handgun for personal defense, .22 for game hunting if u are rural. ymmv, obviously. no, you won't fend of a militia, yes it's better than nothing.

going to the woods: not until your food runs out

other: backup medical supplies if needed

― sleeve, Monday, October 29, 2018 10:20 AM (two hours ago)

The whole subject of how to strengthen one's position to endure economic hard times, or a natural disaster, or a full blown apocalypse, deserves its own thread. The idea that MREs are a universally apt answer to fit anyone's particular needs is extremely simplistic at best. Really, it comes down to sound risk assessment and assigning some part of your (usually tiny) surplus of resources (time and money) to whatever makes the most sense in your personal situation.

― A is for (Aimless), Monday, October 29, 2018 12:50 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we do have 'rolling looming apocalypse'

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, October 29, 2018 1:03 PM

and also

The idea that MREs are a universally apt answer to fit anyone's particular needs is extremely simplistic at best.

I was addressing man alive and his needs specifically.

let's stay here unless someone really wants a prep-specific thread?

There is a certain, um, coloration attached to putting the subject of preparation into an apocalypse thread. Preparing for more ordinary hard times is of far more use than trying to tackle the whole how-to-survive-the-apocalypse scenario and less associated with survivalists and the paranoid fringe.

eyeroll.jpg

I'm also not completely convinced "collapse" is a thing. Societies reach various states of organization/disorder, but I don't think there's really such a thing as a permanent "collapse." Things would reorganize in some form or other.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, October 29, 2018 10:10 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean like, despecialization and destructuralization are characteristics we'd apply to any significant social change we'd call collapse: the agreed-upon governing structures unwind & the horizon of life necessarily remodels itself around a decentralized & local way of living. This kind of world, where we're all relying on our mechanical skills to get by on a local basis while the ghost of the US government recedes, isn't one I'd recognize as contiguous with our own society.

have you guys seen THREADS?
there is such a thing as collapse!

^ ya this is what i'm getting at, center cannot hold etc

everybody here has read Octavia Butler's "Parable" books, yeah?

i haven't, actually

I've been worrying about collapse for 17 years (since I first stumbled upon dieoff.org). I was primed to accept the conclusions there, without much resistance, because I saw The Day After, Threads, Testament, and Special Bulletin upon their release as a teen. In decades since, I've read Jared Diamond, Joseph Tainter, David Montgomery, et al.

Civilizational collapse has happened dozens of times in the historical literature. Sometimes by invader, sometimes by resource exhaustion, sometimes by salinity due to irrigation, sometimes by climate change. There's precious little about our civilization that prevents a recurrence. Our collective fictions are no better than those that bouyed the Romans or Persians for millenia.

In the event of civilizational collapse, no one will survive long term without 1) skills valued by others, or 2) a supportive community. Basement dwellers collecting arms and MREs are just a resource to be exploited. We'll pump exhaust down their ventilation. So, be useful to others. And collect heirloom seeds.

Don't worry about guns, worry about water. In the sort of localized collapse many of us will experience in our lifetimes, potable water will be the most likely resource to distinguish survivors from those who died from contagious disease. And as the bottleneck centuries progress, potable water will remain the preeminent resource. A youngster studying potable water civil engineering now may be an important person in a few decades.

Don't worry about guns, worry about water.

this is the best advice i've heard about the future tbh

All collapse scenarios are borderline 'whatever, we're dead anyway' to me, given the nuclear arsenal. If we hit Visigoths sacking Rome levels of collapse and decay, I assume the planet will be obliterated by ICBMs.

no way, i'm confident that every single one of the 10,000+ active nuclear warheads worldwide will be safely disarmed and disposed of in an environmentally friendly way without ever being used, nothing to worry about

eyeroll.jpg

you're rolling your eyes at a guy who has at least 6 months of food (canned, dried, or freeze-dried), about 150 gallons of stored water, plus 6 water filters on hand at all times. We have a cord and a half of wood, a kerosene heater, lots of tents and other camping gear, etc. We have mainly aimed at getting through the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake (predicted at ~9.1 richter) with the minimum achievable travail and dislocation, but we started discussing major societal risks back during Y2K. One irony is that preparing for the earthquake has probably required more planning and expense than our Y2K preparations, which were maybe a third of what we now maintain.

But the idea of "prepping" in the general population is widely contaminated by the belief that it only pertains to the survivalist contingent, the types who wear camouflage to the grocery store. Getting them to a more reasonable sense of the fragility of the consumer machinery that keeps them comfortable, without sounding like a wingnut, is a worthwhile and strategic approach.

I hope to die right away in any kind of major disaster scenario. In the event of a slower, broader societal collapse I hope to go swiftly in an anti-Jewish pogrom and it looks like that's getting going so I really have no incentive to prep for anything.

xp -btw, a fair bit of our supplies are intended for our neighbors, should they need them.

silby, you can't rely on some convenient falling brick or obliging bigot to do a competent job. if you do plan to check out, I suggest you do some research and prepare to do the job yourself, in a pinch.

I’m not planning on it per se I just have no interest in surviving any such thing, too much work

Aimless: you miss the point again, the eyeroll was w/r/t your pedantry as to the proper thread for this discussion.

I also learned a lot during the Y2K dry run, your setup sounds pretty solid, and I agree with your overall take aside from your usual air of detached omniscience.

Perhaps it would be helpful to delineate some preparedness levels:

1. grab-and-go kit or "bugout bag", something you can take with you that's all in a bag or backpack. Food, water purifier, toilet paper, etc.

2. weathering an extended period of supply disruption or power outage, a.k.a. earthquake prep as per Aimless's setup and what I aspire to be prepared for.

3. trying to survive the end times, which as Sanpaku notes probably has more to do with overall water access than anything else.

I'm mainly interested in the first two, the 3rd is largely speculative at this point aside from, like, thinking about where you live and why.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/03/so-much-land-under-so-much-water-extreme-flooding-is-drowning-parts-of-the-midwest

I see these stories (or those about farmers suffering under the trade war) and immediately think, which candidate did they vote for, did their elected reps support disaster relief after Sandy, etc. This political era is costing me my humanity.

Same here. Part of me is glad the people who've helped this all happen are actually starting to feel the consequences, rather than it all happening to Bangladeshis, etc.

https://voiceofaction.org/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/

climate scientists otm

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/07/vietnam-records-highest-ever-temperature-of-441c

we've reached the beginning of Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For The Future cool cool
(I am not as hopeful as KSR about how that turns out)

Yeah iirc he has a lot of faith in India really coming through politically which, lol

https://kval.com/news/offbeat/sriracha-bottles-selling-as-high-as-80-on-ebay-amazon-amid-shortage-crazy-prices-sauce-hot-huy-fong-food-ridiculous-07-13-2023#

that link might seem flippant but imho this is just the tip of the iceberg re: shortages and unavailability

yeah, people who want to sneer at it 'just being sriracha bottles' now will have a rude awakening in a few years

My understanding is they tried to defraud a supplier and that led to their current problems, this isn't a polycrisis story.

Just make your own chili garlic sauce, fresh is best.

I thought I'd read that the sriracha people not only got into a conflict with distributors, but attempted to grow their own supply of peppers and failed, or at least fell short. Anyway, this isn't the first sriracha shortage in the last few years, iirc, and reportedly no other hot sauces or pepper sauces are facing the same supply issues, so I suspect this is indeed something internal.

good to know!

otoh this doesn't sound so great

Tornado damages Pfizer plant in North Carolina, will likely lead to long-term shortages of medicine

Drought affecting Panama Canal threatens 40% of world's cargo ship traffic