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After the Roman Empire imploded which was arguebly the foundations of Western civilization there was a massive reversion of civilization, things in Europe went backwards.
^^^
Quote:
Originally Posted by itsMeFred
Actually, no. Though this is an excellent example of my point.
Despite the Roman Empire being but one example of a civilization's collapse, it's not even true that the entirety of it reverted. The eastern half of the empire, the Byzantine (Greece, Turkey, Egypt, etc) carried on pretty much unchanged for another 1000 years or so after the western half collapsed.
The collapse of the Roman Empire is always a popular one to trot out in conversations like this (probably because the absorption and evolution of other societies, like Egypt, are rather unimpressive in comparison), but people always forget about the half that *didn't* collapse.
Why is that?
Exactly right, IMF. Moreover, the "collapse" of the Roman Empire -- as you noted, actually the Western Roman Empire, took place over 2 or 3 centuries. The outer reaches of the Empire, like Britain, were abandoned first, but Roman culture lasted much longer closer to Roman. It's kind of hard to "prep" for an event that takes 200 years to happen.
Roman culture lasted much longer closer to Roman. It's kind of hard to "prep" for an event that takes 200 years to happen.
Ancient Rome wasn't faced with virulent bird flu strains, North Korean nuclear missiles, or hyperintelligent artificial intelligence.
Call me a pessimist, but there's no way human civilization as we know it lasts another 200 years. Because we have three enormous threats that people will underestimate until one of them kills most or all of us.
1. Nuclear weapons: didn't even exist 75 years ago.
2. Overpopulation and airplane travel: the next plague will spread much more easily.
3. Artificial intelligence: not even here yet but Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking are afraid.
Bible says we will be conquered by Arabs and women will need to wear burqua to market. The civilized waves of conquerors have already hit - Asians, Indians, Mexicans...The rest is incredibly violent if you watch the African Muslim treatment of kids/women...That's where corruption leads us.
Wait, so peaceful and legal immigrants from East and South Asia are going to force us to treat our children like African Muslims?
Ancient Rome wasn't faced with virulent bird flu strains, North Korean nuclear missiles, or hyperintelligent artificial intelligence.
Call me a pessimist, but there's no way human civilization as we know it lasts another 200 years. Because we have three enormous threats that people will underestimate until one of them kills most or all of us.
1. Nuclear weapons: didn't even exist 75 years ago.
2. Overpopulation and airplane travel: the next plague will spread much more easily.
3. Artificial intelligence: not even here yet but Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking are afraid.
There have always been "plagues". The Black Death (bubonic plague) killed off 25-35% of the population of Europe in the 14th century. Something like 1/4 of the US population was affected by tuberculosis in the late 19th century. At least we know how to deal with infectious diseases these days even if it takes a while to figure out how to prevent them!
Poop on North Korea. An impoverished Third World country is not going to end world civilization because they don't have the firepower. I grew up in the 1950s when the US and the USSR did have the firepower to do and were enemies.
"Hyperintelligent" artificial intelligence??? What the hell is that? "Hyper" is apparently the favorite word in the vocabulary of every fear monger and doomsday prophet these days whether they're huckstering their pseudo economics or their Luddism.
BTW, American "civilization" does NOT equal "world civilization".
A misconception of nuclear arms is that a country like North Korea would have to get their missiles to the U.S. to end world civilization. Nuclear winter means that even a few nukes of modern size (500x bigger than Hiroshima) between Iran and Israel will put enough ash in the sky for three years to starve 99% of the world population.
No crops will grow, even if a nuke never makes it to the U.S.
OK, when things go south, what's the timeline? How fast is the S going to HTF?
Let's say markets don't get their nightly delivery. By the next night shelves will be showing the signs. A second day without delivery - will people panic when shelves strart selling out of popular items. Will the media cause panic. By day three will a buying frenzy take place when people realize there is no more coming?
Or will premptive looting cause a cascade effect?
How long before people start rioting and attacking others for food?
It's not going to be like in the movies where everything happens at once. In parts of the world, the SHTF quite a while ago. That's why rafts full of people are drowning at sea trying to reach Europe from Africa.
In other parts of the world the changes are coming more slowly and subtly. During the recent Baltimore riots, I was watching Fox News. They were talking about how social media traffic analysis was being applied to tweeter accounts from Ferguson, showing that provocateurs and out-of-town troublemakers were converging on the area. It suddenly occured to me that our own CIA manhunt techniques developed to blow up militant Muslims were being re-imported to the United States to track US citizens.
That's a flavor of S (the hot war between global capital and anti-modernity warriors in Asia) H'ing TF right here at home. You'll see more and more of this. Little things eroding the world you grew up in. No big satisfying, day of judgment style collapse where sinners finally pay the piper and the righteous sit smugly on their stores of MREs. That's more a classic American fantasty--ultimately rooted in our history as Protestants--than anything. The reality is slow, horrible, niggling change and degeneration.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cds333
Overpopulation will most certainly result in societal collapse.
Its simple math and it is inevitable.
The planet cannot sustain our rate of population growth. Anyone who says otherwise in in denial.
Without even looking it up I would confidently say we have less than 100 years before it reaches critical levels. Given our pitiful budgetary allocations for space exploration, establishing colonies on other worlds is not a probable outcome (the freak scientific discovery of FTL travel or artificial wormholes notwithstanding.)
That said, the best outcome that we can hope for is an epidemic that will kill the majority of the population. Assuming there are a small percentage of people with a natural immunity, it will also serve to cull the weak, genetically inferior among us, who have been allowed to flourish with no natural predators and abundant sources of food in developed nations. The result will be a better, stronger, albeit smaller world population that will continue on after cleaning up the billions of dead. If we are lucky we will not lose too much in the way of technological advancements and will be able to rebuild our society and life will go on.
Oh, there's a way to stave off the threat of overpopulation without anything nasty like pandemics or war. If you think about it, the two world wars and the Spanish Flu between them killed millions of people in the space of less than 30 years, and yet the world population suffered not so much as a glitch:
The nations of the current world which have the least population growth, even negative, are in Western Europe and Japan. Wealthy countries with social security and other pensions, universal health care and good public health systems, and other safety nets. That way people don't have to raise large families to support them in disability or old age, so they voluntarily choose to use birth control to limit their children.
The solution to overpopulation is bring up poor countries to the level of those low population growth countries, not to hope for disasters to strike the third world.
The nations of the current world which have the least population growth, even negative, are in Western Europe and Japan. Wealthy countries with social security and other pensions, universal health care and good public health systems, and other safety nets. That way people don't have to raise large families to support them in disability or old age, so they voluntarily choose to use birth control to limit their children.
The solution to overpopulation is bring up poor countries to the level of those low population growth countries, not to hope for disasters to strike the third world.
Unfortunately, while doing so, these countries go through the consumption increase equivalent to ours. They will not have enough resources to survive long enough to get to the point where Sweden or Norway are (to make decisions not to have children).
Look no further than USA - while certain segments of society (well to do, educated) are choosing to forego children, there is a steady supply of people in the lower ranks swelling in population, multiplying like rabbits. They all need homes, cars, appliances, food, water etc. and use these in disproportionate amounts when compared to African countries (the environmental footprint is much higher). Bringing people in USA up to speed education-wise is a huge and expensive effort and the student-debt cartel will never allow it to become free. At the same time the two ruling parties have no interest in doing so either - after all, the ignorant voter who has never left his hometown or state is perfect - he/she doesn't have a clue what lives are lived in Norway or Sweden - what he/she doesn't know cannot hurt his senator. Same with the corporations that own the senators/congressmen - why on Earth would someone like Monsanto be interested in selling to an educated population? They wouldn't - an educated population wants to protect the land and eat non-GMO/non-chemical food.
Unfortunately, while doing so, these countries go through the consumption increase equivalent to ours. They will not have enough resources to survive long enough to get to the point where Sweden or Norway are (to make decisions not to have children).
Look no further than USA - while certain segments of society (well to do, educated) are choosing to forego children, there is a steady supply of people in the lower ranks swelling in population, multiplying like rabbits.
...and of course thise are the people without good social security, universal healthcare or decent public health.
Interesting point.
(I wonder how many third world nations have high birth rates because of old-age support vs. how many have them because of the more common side-effect of poverty. Hopelessness, frustration and fatalism making one think they better live fast and hard while they can)
Last edited by itsMeFred; 05-09-2015 at 01:19 PM..
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,157,672 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ognend
Unfortunately, while doing so, these countries go through the consumption increase equivalent to ours. They will not have enough resources to survive long enough to get to the point where Sweden or Norway are (to make decisions not to have children).
Look no further than USA - while certain segments of society (well to do, educated) are choosing to forego children, there is a steady supply of people in the lower ranks swelling in population, multiplying like rabbits. They all need homes, cars, appliances, food, water etc. and use these in disproportionate amounts when compared to African countries (the environmental footprint is much higher). Bringing people in USA up to speed education-wise is a huge and expensive effort and the student-debt cartel will never allow it to become free. At the same time the two ruling parties have no interest in doing so either - after all, the ignorant voter who has never left his hometown or state is perfect - he/she doesn't have a clue what lives are lived in Norway or Sweden - what he/she doesn't know cannot hurt his senator. Same with the corporations that own the senators/congressmen - why on Earth would someone like Monsanto be interested in selling to an educated population? They wouldn't - an educated population wants to protect the land and eat non-GMO/non-chemical food.
Yes, good points. The roadblocks are formidable. What do you suggest?
Quote:
Originally Posted by itsMeFred
...and of course thise are the people without good social security, universal healthcare or decent public health.
Interesting point.
(I wonder how many third world nations have high birth rates because of old-age support vs. how many have them because of the more common side-effect of poverty. Hopelessness, frustration and fatalism making one think they better live fast and hard while they can)
Well, that's the case in the USA, but around the world it seems that most people don't have access to a fast and hard life, they live in traditional marriages, and the women are encouraged to have more children ...... or rather nothing is done to stop that - both for old age security and because some fearsome ancient deity demands that they be fruitful and multiply. Usually it is Yahweh (Jehovah) or Allah that commands this. But even in non-theistic Buddhism, adherents are multipying with the same enthusiasm as the theists.
It's interesting to note that in areas with high birthrates where women have been offered bc pills, they've been eager to take them, even if they live in great poverty ...... though they're even more likely to take them surreptitiously so that the men or the religious tw**s don't find out about it.
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Wait, so peaceful and legal immigrants from East and South Asia are going to force us to treat our children like African Muslims?
