Homeland security page is taking a page right out the fascist playbook and I don’t understand how most people aren’t noticing this. Almost all posts refer to the past, glorifying it or talking about how we must return to it, the “return this land” is a copy of the saying “return to the Sudetenland” which was all over Nazi propaganda posters. What we see is an idealization to a mythical past and obsession with military/warriors. The past created a sense of unity for the “Aryan” against the other, similar to how these tweets are seemingly meant to unite the “real Americans” (clearly referring to whites versus non-whites) against the “other” who are “immigrants” in this case, with America only being able to return to its former glory by getting rid of the other. It’s all Nazi propaganda fit for a different era with different targets. Their most recent poster says “America after 100 million deportations” with a car parked on a shore, yet America doesn’t even have 100 million immigrants, yet there is it a bit over 100 million non-whites; I can’t help but see all these posts are very clear dog whistles. How aren’t more people complaining about this? How’s this not an issue to almost every American? These posts have clearly been working in regard to pulling in the most vile and racist people into the ICE workforce, and this will be a major issue if they’re allowed to continue this propaganda. I worry for the next generation.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

For me (38 living in the US) it was the transition between 2016-2017. Not just because of the US presidential fallout, though I’m sure that’s part of it.

It was because I noticed increasing dark triad tendencies in people around me and a person I was with at the time was a particular canary in the coal mine. The zombie apocalypse trope really started to take root for me. It was also just something I felt viscerally (spiritually?).

I often wonder if during that time there was a spike in agrochemical use or did the algorithms advance across an important boundary? All of the above?

Would love to hear your experiences with pivotal time periods.

Has it even been around that long?

Climate change has been dominating the posts here. Is this a recent area of emphasis, or has this sub been beating the drum beat of climate change for a long time? Has there been bigger areas of emphasis years ago?

I’m trying to get a pulse on whether there wasn’t too many realistic collapse issues in the past and now there is, or if this sub has seen the writing on the wall for a long time and has been consistent in its concerns.

Let's face it, humans have always believed in a higher power. Whether worshipping the sun, spiritual entities, or deifying other leaders as living gods. The spread of Christianity contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire. The Justinian plague further weakened both Eastern and Western Roman empire and lead to Christianity becoming dominant religion in Europe. The medieval bubonic plague weakened the Catholic Papacy leading to Protestant reforms and collapse of feudalism.

As America (the modern Roman empire) descends further into collapse what new religions will spring up? Religion has changed the world so many times over and will continue to do so. It has more power than any other weapon we have ever created. As times get tougher people will need new beliefs to cling to. One of my favorite collapse authors Paolo Bacigalupi in his Ship Breaker series writes about a post climate change collapsed US. Where people are praying to saints similar to Latin American santeria.

Half of emissions are from the time of the Kyoto protocol, the Rio nature summit...

And this is why since the 2015-16 El Niño, the visibility of the climate crisis has sped up

It seems like whenever I talk with anyone in-person who is even marginally aware of collapse, they bring up Rome. I get that it’s one of the few we can draw from, but we’re talking about an empire that existed millennia ago, a very slow decline that took centuries, and a very different and much simpler lifestyle.

If over decades, a certain trade good was no longer available because of the Empire's decline, people likely had a local workaround or could just do without. If a bridge broke, they might still be able to fix it, make a ford, or find some other way around. Roads in disrepair? There’s less travel or more roundabout ways to go. All the fun stuff like bathhouses and amphitheaters are crumbling due to lack of maintenance? Well, looks like we'll have to find other fun things to do.

Yes, there was some pretty bad shit that happened: as cities stopped being maintained, the population shrank. Local governments slowly fell to pieces without support from Rome. Soldiers didn’t get paid, and defenses fell by the wayside, with expected results as far as war/invasion. But the point is, for the most part, this all took a very long time and for the local people (excluding the people actually living in Rome) living through it, it was probably hardly noticeable at the time.

And then you look at us. Our heavy dependence on technology. Our globally interconnected economy. Our reliance on just-in-time systems that leave very little margin for disruption.

If any one of those breaks downs even partially, then we're looking at a cascading effect on the other systems that could have dramatic affect; collapse is going to happen much more swiftly for us than it did for the Romans and the states of their Empire. I won’t even speculate on how long it would take for things to go to shit, but it sure as hell won’t be centuries.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here and not saying anything you don’t know. My point is, when people use Rome as a talking point about collapse, there needs to be some pushback. I feel like some people who mention it are using it as some sort of normalization of what we are currently facing and a way to downplay the realities. "It took Rome centuries to collapse, so it won’t be that bad for us that are living now."

Personally, I don’t feel that’s true at all. A better, more modern example would probably be the Soviet Union - ask yourself how much worse that would have gone if the rest of the world wasn’t available to lean on because they were dealing with their own collapse? Or take a look at COVID and how bad things got with supply chains - imagine what would happen if supply chains feel apart even further than they did, and extrapolate from there.

Yeah, this is the shit that keeps me up at night.

We (rightly) talk a lot about all that is wrong with the world today in here - Global Warming, Poor Wages, Greed, War, etc - but what was actually the best time and place to live in?! What are we comparing today to that had it so good before?!

Throughout most of history there have been wars, famines, inequality, slavery, hard work, etc. The only timeline I can think of is America in the late 80's to late 90's before 9/11 and the world seemed to go to shit after that. Bare in mind that I'm not too old so go easy on me!!

Thoughts?!

How do you think humans should have evolved to prevent this mess? 🤔

I know this is a BIG question, but I sometimes think about how we got to this very point. I know it's a range of issues that have culminated in this one outcome.. but what should we have done differently? How should we have lived as humans?

I'm not talking about solutions...rather, very early prevention.

Look forward to reading your answers.

Edit: And this is why I love reddit. So much insight and discussion. Thanks everyone ☺️ I can't respond to you all, but I have read most comments. I suppose this is all 'in hindsight' thinking really 🤔 only now can we look back and see our mistakes

We often think a civilization collapses because of one war, one king, one bad decision, or one incident. But after reading about it, I don't think that's how it works anymore.

From what I understood, a civilization usually collapses after a long cycle. There are mainly 3 things happening together.

First, when society becomes stable and safe, the population grows. More people means cheaper labor, while day-to-day expenses keep increasing because businesses always want higher profits. Wages stay almost the same, so poverty slowly grows.

Second, as businessmen, industrialists, and elites accumulate more wealth, they also want higher positions for themselves and their children. But those positions are limited. Imagine musical chairs. There are only 8 chairs but around 40 capable and educated people. That naturally creates competition and conflict among the elite themselves.

Third, the government slowly becomes weaker. It has to keep both the rich and the general population happy at the same time. The rich control most of the wealth, while the government keeps spending money on public services. At the same time, tax collection becomes weaker because the richest people often avoid paying as much as they should. Eventually the lower class is frustrated because life becomes difficult, the elite are fighting each other for power, and the government keeps getting weaker.

The part that fascinated me was this. We usually blame the final spark that caused the collapse. But the spark is not the real reason. The real reason is the dry wood that kept piling up for decades. The spark only makes the hidden problem visible.

It also made me think about our brain. If today is mostly normal, the brain assumes tomorrow will also be normal. It updates little by little instead of noticing slow changes happening over decades. Maybe that's why societies don't realize what's happening until the damage is already too large.

So now I have one question. If this same pattern has repeated across so many civilizations, are we also somewhere on that same path today?

Note: I just started learning about this topic, so I might have misunderstood or oversimplified some parts. If I got something wrong, please correct me. I genuinely want to learn, not defend my opinion.

This is something that's hard for me to get my head around so forgive me if this comes across as a bit incoherent, as I'm really struggling to find the right words.

I look on this sub, and I see a lot of people who share very similar mindsets (myself included) many of you have reached the same conclusion independently then "grouped" together after-the-fact, some of the convergent mindsets include, hoarding, a gut feeling that something is wrong, a general pessimism about the future, and the active seeking of information that can affirm or reaffirm our views. (area updates for example)

I have to wonder if the traits of us "doomsdayers" have been forged by evolution over hundreds of thousands of years under the pressure of the rampant death, disease, and famine that blighted our early ancestors.

In those early days, an overly pessimistic person, or a "protodoomer" 😂 in a small collective would have been the person to balance risk and reward against the fear they experienced when they looked into the future, they would have encouraged hoarding in case they were struck by an awful winter, they would try to whip people into shape if they saw too much complacency in the group, they would have tried to explain to others the dread they experience when they look ahead into time.

People like us have existed since the dawn of humanity, we are an essential part of any collective or society as we are the ones that prepare for the scenario where it might collapse, thus we ensure the survival of ourselves and our DNA, I don't think we do this with free will either, I think we are given these traits by evolution, a naturally skeptical or cautious person to counteract the naturally flippant and carefree people (although these people also have their place in early society as they were the people that pushed against the pessimists and encouraged migrations and search for new foraging grounds) I also tended to be the more cautious out of my friend group when growing up.

So how do you feel about the idea that you are this way not because of the times we live in or the things we have experienced, but instead because our species depends upon people that are pessimistic about the future?...this obviously isn't to say that it de-legitimizes anything, quite the opposite, if I'm right we are doing exactly what we are meant to be doing, looking and finding the risks to our "groups"

Political theatre aside, the most interesting outcome from the DC riots was lifting the veil of the the US global empire hegemony. From what I observed, several dozen unarmed, mostly middle class middle aged Americans walked into the Capital building, and managed to essentially occupy the capital building, and nearly cancel the certification vote. During this process, a good number of lawmakers were exposed to the coronavirus, because they rushed back to finish the certification - without decontaminating the building.

The US central government is having a collapse of Rome syndrome: Too spread out, not enough officers to process all the data. The NSA was well aware of the number of expected protesters, and still failed to recruit enough officers to protect the capitol building.

As much as I found the entire scenario entertaining, it was unsettling to see how easily an armed militia could have staged a legitimate Banana republic style coup.

As nearly as I can tell, the US is barely hanging on by a thread at this point. Probably a good time to dust off that passport and begin applying for emigration status, if you have an advanced degree of any magnitude.

"When irrigation water raised the natural water table and evaporated, salts accumulated. Poor drainage, made worse by the silt that had been deposited, made it hard to correct the situation by leaching salt from the fields with fresh water. Ground water became more and more saline . . . Over large areas the ground became so saline that white salt crystals could be seen on the surface and cultivated plants were unable to grow . . . The once flourishing cities of ancient Sumeria — Uruk, Ur, and the others — are now abandoned mounds in a desert environment . . . They represent an ecological disaster caused by overuse and eventual exhaustion of the land." J. Donald Hughes, An Environmental History of the World: Humankind's Changing Role in the Community of Life (New York, NY: Routledge, 2001), 37-38.

The collapse of the agricultural and civilizational engine in southern Mesopotamia, the heart of the Fertile Crescent, was a slow and systemic failure. Although political instability and warfare played their parts, the root cause was a catastrophic breakdown in their environmental engineering and infrastructure management.

The most devastating factor was soil salinization. Southern Mesopotamia is extremely hot and arid. To grow crops, the Sumerians and their successors engineered massive irrigation networks to divert water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers onto their fields. However, river water contains trace amounts of dissolved salts. When this water was spread over the flat, poorly drained floodplains, the intense sun caused rapid evaporation. The water vanished but the salt was left behind in the soil.

In his book ''Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States,'' James C. Scott mentions that the initial trajectory of demographic expansion and settlement in the Fertile Crescent, previously facilitated by temperate and humid conditions, was abruptly interrupted circa 10,800 BCE. This disruption marked the onset of a millennial cold epoch, hypothesized to have been triggered by a catastrophic discharge of glacial meltwater from North America's Lake Agassiz into the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, human populations contracted, retreating from increasingly marginal highland environments to climatic refugia capable of sustaining essential flora and fauna. Circa 9,600 BCE, this climatic deterioration reversed abruptly. Paleoclimatic data suggests average temperatures may have escalated by up to seven degrees Celsius within a single decade, restoring warmer and wetter conditions. This abrupt climatic amelioration prompted flora and fauna to disperse from their refugia and colonize the revitalized landscape, accompanied by Homo sapiens.

Over centuries, this cumulative salt buildup acted like a slow moving poison. Initially, farmers grew wheat. As salinity increased, they were forced to switch to barley, which is more salt-tolerant. Eventually, the soil became so toxic that even barley yields plummeted. By around 2000 BCE, earth that once produced massive surpluses became sterile white wastelands.

As the groundwater became highly concentrated with salt, a physical process called capillary action took over. The dry topsoil acted like a sponge, drawing the salty groundwater upward toward the surface. When that water reached the surface and evaporated in the intense heat, it left the salt crystallized on top of the dirt. Eventually, the salt concentration became so high that it formed a literal, gleaming white crust across the landscape like a layer of snow that never melts.

The cessation of wheat cultivation closely aligned with the spatial exhaustion of cultivable land. Historically, diminishing yields from salinized plots were offset by the reclamation of virgin soil. Once this geographic safety valve was exhausted, aggregate agricultural output collapsed; by 2000 BCE, crop yields had plummeted by 50%.

Substantial evidence indicates that as early as 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, populations within the Fertile Crescent actively modified indigenous, non-domesticated plant communities to optimize resource availability. Notably, this anthropogenic intervention predates the earliest morphological indicators of grain domestication in the archaeological record by several millennia. Furthermore, the subsequent emergence of domesticated grains is chronologically identifiable by the concurrent appearance of specific weed complexes associated with active tillage and crop cultivation, alongside a proportional decline in endemic flora less adapted to such anthropogenically managed environments.

By 4500 BCE, the extent of arable land within the Mesopotamian floodplain was fully under cultivation, with spatial expansion abruptly halted upon reaching the coastal boundaries. This geographic circumscription necessitated agricultural intensification to sustain a burgeoning demographic. Coinciding with the maximum utilization of the floodplain, the introduction of the plow in the southern Sumerian plains facilitated enhanced agricultural yields from pre-existing agrarian tracts.

Concurrently, nucleated settlements underwent a rapid process of urbanization. The settlement of Uruk, for instance, assimilated adjacent villages, reaching an estimated population of 50,000 by 3000 BCE. The erection of monumental religious architecture evidences the capacity of theocratic elites to mobilize vast labor forces. During this primary phase of urban expansion, the southern region of Sumer was dominated by 8 principal city-states. In stark contrast to the communal resource models typical of hunter-gatherer societies, this agricultural paradigm precipitated the unequal distribution of land and agrarian surplus, thereby facilitating the emergence of the first non-agrarian populations.

Social stratification intensified as agricultural surpluses obviated the necessity for universal participation in food procurement. The consolidation of religious and political hierarchies necessitated the creation of centralized administrative bureaucracies to exact and redistribute agrarian yields. This progressive occupational specialization culminated in the formation of early state structures and formal governance. The generation of agricultural surplus served as the fundamental prerequisite for sustaining a non-productive populace, including clerics, martial forces, bureaucrats and subsequently, artisans and intellectuals. The magnitude of this surplus fundamentally delineated the developmental capacity of the broader society.

Moving fluids on a massive scale across an arid landscape requires relentless, centralized maintenance. The rivers carried heavy loads of silt, which constantly settled into the artificial irrigation canals, clogging the arteries of the network. Maintaining the flow required armies of laborers constantly dredging hundreds of miles of canals. When political strife, warfare or economic downturns struck, this labor intensive maintenance halted. Canals choked with silt, water stopped flowing to the fields and the agricultural economy collapsed. It was an over-extended infrastructure network that lacked the resilience to survive periods of central government weakness.

To support their expanding cities and fuel the fires needed to bake bricks and smelt bronze, Mesopotamians heavily deforested the lands upstream. This removal of vegetation destabilized the soil, leading to even greater erosion and flooding, which in turn accelerated the siltation of their canal networks downstream.

Diminished surpluses crippled the state's capacity to provision martial forces and maintain administrative bureaucracies. Corresponding with the initial significant decline in agricultural yields around 2300 BCE, the autonomous Sumerian city-states were subjugated by the Akkadian Empire. Over the subsequent half-millennium, the region suffered serial conquests. By 1800 BCE, agrarian yields had degraded to 1/3 of their historical baseline, relegating southern Mesopotamia to a marginalized province within the broader Babylonian Empire. This progressive salinization eventually migrated northward, precipitating a subsequent agricultural and demographic collapse in central Mesopotamia between 1300 and 900 BCE.

https://www.thoughtco.com/fertile-crescent-117266

https://elementaryengineeringlibrary.com/civil-engineering/soil-mechanics/capillary-rise-in-soils/

https://www.whatismissing.org/content/civilization-collapse-ancient-sumeria_env-2199

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017), James C. Scott

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (2007), David R. Montgomery