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

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