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

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.