[EdwinSm]

I can sort of picture what an almost immediate collapse could look like [its a nightmare].

What I am having difficulty is envisioning how a collapse might unfold over say 2 generations (50-60 years), without society falling into the immediate collapse nightmare situation. Most of the changes that I think about do not bring much of a population reduction. Eg suicides will increase, but they are at such a low level that they will have to be an astronomical increase to make much dent in the world population, or the initial stress of an event might cause more heart attacks (as in an earthquake situation) but soon it will revert back to the old patterns. I can see a lot of pressure for DNR / Allow a Natural Death to reduce the elderly population, but that will not bring things to a more sustainable level.

Can any of you recommend good novels or easily accessed papers (ie not behind the 'paid wall') that give a vision how a slow collapse might look like?


THANKS

ps. I am enough of a doomer that I do not expect BAU to continue much longer, but as an "optimistic doomer´ a long decline looks likely. I suppose I am looking for ideas to think about how I might position myself to meet what I consider to be more likely scenarios.

[SeaGypsy]

I'm not surprised nobody has jumped in with relevant answers. The reason being, de-growth economics has not been invented, being the exact opposite of the only economic system in existence. The only historical response is killing, war.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I'm not surprised nobody has jumped in with relevant answers. The reason being, de-growth economics has not been invented, being the exact opposite of the only economic system in existence. The only historical response is killing, war.

This reminds me of something I didn't think of when reading the OP when it was written.

This might be stupid, but it might be worth something. How about the economics of the collapse of the Roman Empire? There are LOTS of books, etc. about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

This might not be specific enough, or perhaps modern or detailed enough, but OTOH, depending on what the OP is looking for, it might be a LOT better than nothing -- depending on how much discussion / data on the economics is included (vs. the military, and other aspects of life).

...

There is science fiction (example: David Weber's Honor Harrington series) where gradual economic collapse of an empire is discussed -- but that is a peripheral issue (explaining the behavior of one of the biggest "bad guy" governments -- not even close to the center of the story.

I'll think on it some more, but despite how much I read, this subject is just miles from my typical bailiwick.

[KaiserJeep]

FWIW, I believe that the USA and the World has been in the slow process of collapse for over a century, and things have been worsening for that long. The symptoms of collapse are overpopulation, disease, famine, and war. We have never been free of them. I mean, why did you think the world has a refugee crisis? Those people come from the areas where collapse is accelerating. However conditions are worsening the world over.

You do not need literature depicting this, you are living it. You know exactly what it is like. There will never come a time or even a perceptable event that represents collapse, because we have been in collapse for a century, and have another century (at least) to go, and your Grandkids will think you asked a foolish question.

[Outcast_Searcher]

FWIW, I believe that the USA and the World has been in the slow process of collapse for over a century, and things have been worsening for that long.

But, respectfully, you have a tendency to have beliefs that aren't exactly mainstream on various subjects.

For example:

That inflation in the US has been 10%,and that if your income doesn't increase by at least 10% you can't keep up (yet without citing anything but your belief).

That AGW isn't real -- i.e. that the recent acceleration in global warming isn't man made as the primary cause.

That racism is getting worse in America over time, and that extensive housing discrimination is a central theme there, which is helping cause minorities to stay well behind whites in wealth accumulation.

...

Which is all fine, but don't be surprised, IMO, when the majority of folks don't rush to embrace such positions, however impassioned your defense of them might be -- without sufficient objective facts to back those opinions.

Certainly, BAU population growth is mankind's stupidist, most self-destructive big picture behavior. And certainly that is responsible for a plethora of problems.

But that doesn't mean things are getting "worse". In a world where global GDP growth at a moderate pace is persistent, scientific advances and standards of living for billions are literally mind-blowing (just look at what computers have done for people in the past 50 years of progress, and try to imagine the next 50 re things like medicine via better data), to me calling that "collapse" because there are refugee problems, etc. just doesn't make sense.

When global resources aren't under serious threat because of the impressive growth of the third world toward the middle class lifestyles, be sure and get back to me. Because since that is the reality, it looks more like an overall growth explosion to me (which is the opposite of "collapse").

[KaiserJeep]

I believe that in a world that during my lifetime has busted through the 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion, 6 billion, and 7 billion humans population milestones, and is presntly closing on 8 Billion, that the average human condition has worsened. I also think that due to the uneven distribution of stuff, that a street dwelling person in say Bangladesh might have an opinion that differs from yours. Collapse is a process acting at different rates in different places.

In many parts of the world, humans struggle to acquire food, clean water, and warmth. Here in Silly Valley, humans feel deprived and impoverished to not own the latest version of the iPhone.

[Pops]

I have no recommendation, however my thought on "collapse" has long been more in the realm of population decline (except for odd Wednesdays when I go full doom).

Requisite plot:


Capitalism as currently constituted depends on growth, which depends primarily on population increase. Crash doesn't require increased mortality as often fantasized here, only negative growth and the attendant aging population.

.

[KaiserJeep]

Well, that's a interesting definition of "collapse", associating it with human mortality. When I thought about it, my own definition of human wealth has some definate if not quite clear association with the quality of life. That is however a difficult to define criterion.

[KaiserJeep]

I'm just not seeing it. The USA has major oil reserves left when you consider fracking wells, shales, oil sands, etc. Nobody says you have to sell that oil aftter peak. It runs out a lot faster when you do that. You could just keep all your own oil and it would last a lot longer.... while the rest of the world collapses.

[mmasters]

Natural gas will push things out another 30 years at least. Meanwhile the middle class economy will continue to shrink, it will eventually be the haves and the have nots. The have nots will outnumber the haves and vote in progressive government. Progressive government will take too much from the haves forcing the rich to move out of the US. The progressives will then lose their funding at that point and the country will go bankrupt with all the bloated social welfare programs. That's when it gets ugly.

[EdwinSm]

Thanks for the suggestion to look at the collapse of the Roman Empire. I think I could find lots of stuff about how the edge (Albion) was abandoned - but for those living there that might look like a fairly fast collapse, but life did continue.

I do have some literature about the situation in the Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, which makes for painful reading - How the breadbasket of the Russian Empire was reduced to years of famine, the wanton destruction of production (food as well as machines) in the name of revenge; the appropriation of most farming equipment for various war efforts; appropriation of animals and grain for the cities leaving to little to produce more/plant the next year's crops; the zombie (= anarchist) hordes who entered and killed at will; the far greater numbers killed by disease.

I suppose I was looking for hope that there might be ways to avoid this type of situation on the way down.

[Ibon]

You don't need to look any further than 15 years of thousands of threads posted on this site. Haven't we thoroughly exhausted the topic here?

And you still are looking for more....

Weather its consuming oil or consuming doom it seems we have an insatiable appetite.

Kudzu Apes just never can get enough can we?

[ralfy]

Here's one on limits to growth.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I do have some literature about the situation in the Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, which makes for painful reading - How the breadbasket of the Russian Empire was reduced to years of famine, the wanton destruction of production (food as well as machines) in the name of revenge; the appropriation of most farming equipment for various war efforts; appropriation of animals and grain for the cities leaving to little to produce more/plant the next year's crops; the zombie (= anarchist) hordes who entered and killed at will; the far greater numbers killed by disease.

Wow - that triggers another long forgotten memory. In the middle of the mess of the Russian economic collapse in the 90's, our local chess club (central KY) ponied up and "sponsored" a Russian Chess Grandmaster to get he and his daughter the hell out of there and come move here. He liked it here and got a job and hung around for maybe a decade before moving on to a big city with lots of local top players, as almost all professionals end up doing.

As he got used to life here, we paid him for chess lessons, which helped both him and us. Playing him felt like being choked to death by a very friendly, lanky grinning bear, with a long beard.

So, from his descriptions of general conditions, it was fast collapse then too.

He was just amazed here at how you could, for example, just walk into a grocery store and buy all that variety with no hassle and "almost no line", if you had a little money. (Sometimes we forget just how good we have it, being spoiled for choice here).

[KaiserJeep]

Make no mistake, there has never been a worldwide collapse caused by overpopulation of a single species. The Roman Empire or the collapse of the USSR cannot be compared to TEOTWAWKI, they were strictly local phenomena.

The Dark Ages in Europe are the closest parallel that I can think of. Lasting roughly from the 5th to the 15th centuries, they reflect the surging food production that accompanies developing agriculture via the scientific method, but without the knowledge of disease and the roles played by germs and disease vectors. The result was a thousand years of suffering on the continents of Europe and Asia.

No, I don't think there is a whole lot to be learned there with regard to a worldwide lack of cheap energy caused by the lack of FF's. Very probably, the analysis of TEOTWAKI can only be done in retrospect, after the destruction and dying eases off.

[onlooker]

Read The Long Emergency by... James Howard Kunstler