Do you really believe this? Really?
I mean you could be right but how do you know? I’m not so much arguing with the ascendancy of “Chindia” (although that is by no means an absolute certainty) but the idea that currently thriving Western nations will be like Zimbabwe.
Just to let you know, at current technology and prices only about 40% of oil and gas is recovered so with an increase in either we have roughly double the amount of oil that has ever been produced left and that doesn’t count any of the major discoveries that are still being made, Canada just added almost 30% to their national reserves this year alone in a single discovery.
I’m rounding up to 100% chance.
I figure we’ve got a 99% chance of making it to the 22,210th millennium. We’re in our infancy.
Yes, I absolutely believe it. And if you don’t think that thriving Western nations could become like Zimbabwe, look at what happened to Rhodesia - a massive exporter of food, the highest standard of living in Africa, a strong economy - and it literally became Zimbabwe. In only a few years, it was reduced to a third-world hellhole.
It CAN happen here, if the right (or wrong, as it may be) people wind up in charge. And with a democratic system that puts the power in the hands of a population that’s as ignorant as America’s is becoming, it’s entirely possible. Europe is in the same situation. When aggressively-ignorant and corrosive cultures like inner-city American thug culture start infecting kids in Amsterdam and Paris and Berlin, these societies will not last long.
Just my opinion.
I went with 90%. Something could possibly f*ck us up to the point where we are all uncivilized savages or where we are all dead. Not likely, but it could happen.
As to what it would be like like, I don’t know. My favorite idea is the rise of mega-states, the five most prominent being: The Anglo-American Empire, comprised of all of the present-day USA, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, present-day Great Britain, Ireland, and Iceland; The Second Russian Empire, comprised of the former Soviet Union, Finland, Poland, and parts of some Balkan states; The United Republic of Europe, made up of all parts of Europe not already mentioned, and parts of North Africa; The Glorious Democratic People’s Republic of East Asia, all of East Asia, most of Southeast Asia, parts of Central Asia; The Global Caliphate, everything from North Africa to the present borders of India, possibly beyond. I have no reason to think this will come to pass, but it an interesting idea.
20%
Either sloppy inventory control (or free-black-market capitalism) in Russia lets a suitcase nuke go missing (and it turns up, in the bad way, in either London, Paris, Berlin, or D.C.), or Iran or N. Korea begins supplying them to all of the “Die Western Demons!” types, and everything goes downhill quickly from there.
Or an engineered bioweapon is “accidentally” released, gets quickly out-of-hand, and everything goes downhill quickly from there.
A hundred years from now, this dying planet will host a race of giant mutant radioactive cockroaches feeding on the bones of our descendants. After that food source is gone (it’ll last a while, you know; 7 billion+ dead people make for some good eatin’) will be the great insect die-off, and their few pitiful remnants will pass when O2 drops below survival levels.
Ain’t happening, bro.
I’ll defend the overwhelming probability of giant radioactive mutant cockroaches!
Everything else…eh.
Voted 90%, but hoping for giant mutant radioactive cochroaches. That’d be fucknig badass.
Wish I were that certain. What gives you such faith?
I can’t speak for Curtis, but using two (real) atomic bombs over 60 years ago didn’t send the world into a tailspin, so why would a lone nut using a suitcase nuke send the world into a panic now?
See the poster above me; also I trust that people are smart and rational enough not to destroy themselves over a few terrorist incidents.
Think it through. In 1945, one nation had exactly two nukes that no one knew about. They were used in a declared war between two acknowledged nation-states.
A suitcase nuke being detonated by a terrorist organization in a target city (1 mill. + pop.), followed by typical terrorist rhetoric…think about it. A lot of cities around the world could be potential targets for the next one when the terrorists “demands” are not met. Picture the panic and economic chaos that ensues as millions flee cities, as superpowers glower at each other with fingers “on the button” as accusations/counter-accusations fly over who is supporting whom, terrorist-wise ('cause you know, my violent activists are freedom-loving fighters of Truth, Justice, and Liberty; your violent activists are unmitigated evil, bent on the destruction of my peaceful, prosperous, civilization).
I’m not saying it’s likely, any more than a rogue group releasing bioengineered virus; I’m saying we’re too crowded, too divided, too well armed (at national levels; this ain’t about gun control at the individual level), old power blocks are dissolving (or have dissolved), and the EU seems to be the only new one to emerge, which isn’t saying much. Science and technology has put a lot of power in the hands of violent activists with money and political backing from nation-states.
We may, not too long from now, long for the good ol’ days of roadside IEDs made from old artillery shells.
Eh. Fuggin’ Fuhgeddaboutit. I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.
Thus far the world order at the beginning of the twenty-first century is far more peaceful than that facing us at the beginning of the twentieth.
Did this happen in 2001? Did this happen in 2005? How would a “suitcase nuke” that killed similar numbers be any different?
A little quick and dirty googling brings up three recurring points related to suitcase nukes…
A suitcase nuke attack would be a tragedy and a gamechanger, but it would not be the end of the world as we know it.
Oh please. 100%, or so close to it to leave for the possibility for some random unseen global catastrophic event that the difference becomes minuscule.
You completely ignored the third, most pertinent paragraph of my post, in which I said I didn’t think actual suitcase nukes were likely, any more than a super-virus.
So in that regard, we agree. I was using them (small, portable nukes/bio-weapons) as an example of the overall instability of a world full of pissed-off extremists with ready access to technology, money, and protection from sympathetic nations/populations.
There’s also the part where a suitcase nuke would be a low-yield weapon and due to ground detonation would have a limited scope of damage. It would suck for whatever population center were hit, and would ripple through the world economy but it wouldn’t end civilization by any stretch of the imagination.
I don’t think the current First-World nations will be like Zimbabwe, but they may be forced by economics to become more like China and India; which by all accounts have maybe a couple hundred million prosperous middle and upper class inhabitants supported by a couple billion peasants and wage slaves. Unless some kind of unionizing trend takes hold in that part of the world resulting better wages for those workers, I don’t see how the fall to the bottom here can be forestalled forever. Western Europe, with its strong ethos of social welfare may hold off longer and eventually be the last place on Earth where average people enjoy the simple pleasures of life in a prosperous society which we take for granted. Underlying all this is an ominous trend that I haven’t seen mentioned yet–the boundless and increasing supply of cheap labor, which may well stifle technological innovation, besides making it impossible to achieve a better life for most of humanity.
The rising time of religious fanaticism, & its attendant anti-intellectualism, may put us at serious risk.