When do you think collapse is most likely to occur? [in-depth]
Posted by nommabelle@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 98 comments
The most recent r/collapse survey of 1.2k users showed the below, with majority believing collapse is already happening, just not widely distributed yet.
How do we distinguish between a decline and collapse?
What are your thoughts?
Feel free to vote in the poll and put your in-depth comments/discussion below
This is the current question in our Common Collapse Questions series.
Responses may be utilized to help extend the Collapse Wiki. We last asked this question in 2019.
SIGPrime@reddit
The exact lines in the definitions are arbitrary. The reality is that strain is increasing on almost every major issue simultaneously. We have siphoned the easiest and cheapest resources from pretty much every global supply- copper, oil, lithium, etc- while ignoring the damage done to the earth in the process. Temps are rising, climates are showing the beginnings of major alterations, supply chains are no longer supplying as much as demand requires, ecosystems are beginning to reach the point of no return. All of these issues are in a decline and exactly when they "collapse" barely matters in the grand scheme. Wealthy areas will insulate themselves from this phenomenon as best as they can but for many in the global south, insulation is or has failed.
Hard-To_Read@reddit
When will antibiotics become hard to get? I’m guessing in 2032, there will be a series of heatwave-induced mass casualty events in south asia and less severe events that year in developed nations that set heat death records. This will cause ripple effects leading to global supply chain halt and borders closing. There will be runs on food and medicine sparking widespread violence and military interventions. What happens in the wake of that summer, no one knows.
nationwideonyours@reddit
I just know 2032 is THE year.
SIGPrime@reddit
Nailing down an exact year for X event is likely not a reliable practice. I would suffice it to say that things will gradually get worse until the first few pillars of society truly crumble, after which we can expect a cascade of failures. My bet is decline for about 5-10 more years then more rapid collapse
Hard-To_Read@reddit
I’m just making a guess so that in the last days of Reddit in late 2032, I can point to this comment as the ultimate “nailed it” before I vanish into the mountains
oneshot99210@reddit
!RemindMe 8 years
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SIGPrime@reddit
fair enough, i would say that by 2032 there could certainly have been one of more major failures. at a minimum the future will be much more clear by then i assume
dancingmelissa@reddit
"There are too many spinning plates in the air with no one capable or willing to catch them."
You hit the nail on the effing head!
Termin8tor@reddit
I think both civilization peak and collapse are on a bell curve lagging a couple of decades behind global peak oil production. Demand and production of fossil fuels, along with CO2 emissions have been following an exponential trend upward in lock-step with the upside of a typical bell curve. Demand will overshoot the actual global production capacity and continue to rise as actual production falls.
CO2 emissions will also likely continue to rise because of inertia and crossed tipping points, resulting in atmospheric carbon far outstripping the peak of fossil fuel production and consumption. There is also the spectre of it possibly shooting up as nations try to offset peaking production of hydrocarbons with coal.
When we end up on the downside of peak production I think that global breakdown and collapse will likely happen exponentially quickly. Right now we're "only" feeling the effects of environmental and climactic breakdown which is not evenly distributed. I think we're somewhere near the crest of peak production and not quite looking downward yet. Essentially we're currently on a decline rather than outright collapse at this moment in time. My general hypothesis is that decline happens somewhere on the flat part of an energy/resource production peak. Collapse happens on the exponential steep drop side of the curve.
When the negative economic impacts of the energy crisis become apparent I think the actual collapse will likely happen faster than expected™. How long good reader, would you last if you were no longer able to work, your stocks and shares collapse in value and your pension becomes worthless and you can't get state support?
What do you do when your currency hyper inflates and you can no longer live in a temperature regulated environment or at least afford to regulate temperatures in your home? What do you do when farmers can't grow enough food because they can't afford the fossil fuel fertilizers for the food you eat?
Do you have enough provisions to last a month? A year? Decades? How would you acquire food and remain in your current shelter if you can no longer work?
Are nation states going to sit idle as all of this occurs? I very much doubt it given actual historic examples. Resource constrained nations either entirely collapse, or try to take what other nations have and occasionally both simultaneously.
Also, my prediction for the timing of when no one will be able to ignore collapse is January 17th, 2033 at 03:49 am GMT. There's no particular reason for this date and time mind you, I just think it's fun to peg an arbitrary date and time to.
BTRCguy@reddit
"Decline" is what is happening to you when "collapse" has happened elsewhere but has not reached you yet.
For instance "Decline and fall of the Roman Empire". I'd bet good money it had fallen (i.e. collapsed) in a lot of places before the barbarians reached the gates of Rome, which up to that point what merely in decline.
OctopusIntellect@reddit
It's a dangerous analogy, because the Roman Empire continued in the east for nearly a thousand years after the barbarians reached the gates of Rome. Rather like the guy from Ireland who posted here the other day, saying that as far as he can see, collapse is something that mostly happens to Americans.
Fragrant-Education-3@reddit
Byzantium is a really good example for this kind of thing. Its existence was due to a broader breakdown of the Roman imperial structure, and the history of its existence is the narrative of extended decline. Asking when did the Byzantium Empire pass the point of no return can get a lot of answers. Which one is taken as the primary depends heavily on the criteria for what collapse means. Is the complete eradication of the state as an existing quality, then 1453. But the Byzantine empire of even the 11-12th century would look like it had fallen apart when compared to the 5th-8th period, let alone from the 13th century onwards. One could argue the plague of Justinian was a point of collapse, as after that the Byzantium were controlling losses rather than building territory. 1453 was not even the first time Constantinople was sacked as it also occurred in 1204 and saw the Byzantium elite at the time become refugees. Byzantium persisted for another 249 years. To put that into perspective the USA as a political entity is as of today 248 years old.
There is no real 'point' of collapse that is experienced in real time. It's dated retroactively most often, but retroactive dating doesn’t really take into account the individual points of societal breakdown. And hegemonic institutions take a long time to fully disintegrate. Post-sack Byzantium persisted for a long time. And throughout the latter few centuries of its 1000 year existence was going from crisis to crisis. Then the broader implication of Byzantium being in essence the continuation of the Roman state, if reduced in size, then even the Roman empires collapse has a timeframe going over 1000 years of history. While the contexts of the modern world is starkly different to that of late antiquity and the entire medieval period (with a common date of the start of the early modern period being 1453 due to Byzantium’s final end) true collapse on state level can take a long time. But people, as in individuals, are not political states. Individually the Byzantium empire collapsed multiple times. And depending on when one was born, becoming a Byzantine was itself living though a Roman collapse.
All this to say trying to predict this stuff is impossible. What matters often to a question like this is, “from which perspective?”. Because depending on the perspective there is a real possibility that somewhere like the US has never been in the position to collapse, because they come from a historically disenfranchised minority. Other’s might say that far from collapsing the USA is still developing, women for example have greater rights now than in 1950, even with everything going on right now. In the same sense a Byzantium elite who became a refugee in 1204 would say that’s when it died, as a contemporary of the time wrote (translated by Micheal Angold in 1977),
“The peasants and common riff-raff jeered at those of us from Byzantium and were thick-headed enough to call our miserable poverty and nakedness equality...Many were only too happy to accept this outrage, saying "Blessed be the Lord that we have grown rich", and buying up for next to nothing the property that their fellow-countrymen were forced to offer for sale, for they had not yet had much to do with the beef-eating Latins and they did not know that they served a wine as pure and unmixed as unadulterated bile, nor that they would treat the Byzantines with utter contempt.”
For those leading the Latin Empire though, this was a founding moment for a new entity governing over the following 61 years. Something of a generation in other words.
Zestyclose-Ad-9420@reddit
An actual material and accurate analysis of roman collapse is appreciated but Im not sure how useful it is to use it to try and paper over the gulf that separates pre and post industrial societies.
Its like trying to use studies of hunter gatherers to predict the development of the roman empire, maybe even more extreme.
dancingmelissa@reddit
Excellent evaluation. On difference is that everything now is "faster than expected." With the advent of technology and there being quite a bit more people now than before, collpase and degradation of our governmental institutions will be and is more rapid than collapses in the past. Added on our environmental collapse. We are at a crossroads as humans rather than it being growing pains so to speak.
Fragrant-Education-3@reddit
To an extent, I think the current context is probably not that close to the 'typical' narratives of declines. Definitely the modernization/population factor is pretty much impossible to ignore. If we consider the things that usually bring down historical institutions there are some common refrains, disease/famine/overextension/political decay. What is unique today is these factors would now play out globally and would probably present in far more extreme circumstances. It may not be that decline speeds up, but that the factors that tend to break down human societies are primed to be more impactful.
Plague is anathema to urban civilization, and while it's true we have the massive protective factor of modern medicine, society is also essentially now made up of thousands of Constantinople. The bubonic plague (which is considered to be both the cause of the black death and the plague of Justinian) destroyed urban centers in particular. As we saw with COVID modern medicine needs to be faster in reducing symptoms/contagion than the speed in which disease can now spread.
Another morbid fact is despite COVID being by all intents and purposes a relatively mild illness, the factors of dense population and its supercharged spreading speed has meant it currently ranks amongst the deadliest pandemics in history.
Something like the bubonic plague today is easily treatable, so long as antibiotics work (antibiotic resistance is now a threat), without them it's taken a sledgehammer to the human population nearly every time it's shown up. In Europe plague pandemics have wiped out between 25-60% of the population twice. If something with that kind of killing power developed the kind of spreading power as COVID, or even anything remotely close to it, its likely we see something akin to the Black Death.
Famine is helped by a globalized society that lessens the impact of a localized agricultural failure. But our population is just larger in nearly every region. If our ability to address a famine is beneath the extent to which a famine affects a population then that population is going to break down faster. Famine also tends to line up incredibly well with major societal unrest. Think about some the most famous revolutions in history and a lot of the time a famine has been a cause. The other factor is angry people in close proximity, the internet has brought everyone to close proximity.
It's a mistake of the modern world to equate out current status to something like magic rather than protective factors which ameliorate negative ones. We are not past the disasters of history, rather empiricism and globalization has allowed us to use the full weight of society to get ahead of the usual four horsemen. The danger of climate change is that, from what the data is implying, it will give more horsemen more horsepower. To use a metaphor, modern society is using a V6 engine against a steam engine. But what happens when climate change makes that steam engine a V8? Well society can no longer stay ahead of them. Once that happens the negative factors our society creates (high population, densely urbanized, nukes) may play out more readily.
Bormgans@reddit
Another important difference is that hardly anybody is self-sufficient anymore. In the past, a good chunk people could more or less withstand societal collapse as they were farmers.
Good_Door7102@reddit
And of course the combination of overpopulation and material contraction of the biosphere, which will preclude self-sufficiency in the vast majority of areas regardless of one's knowledge
SunnySummerFarm@reddit
This is excellent. The one of the things I feel like getting a history degree taught me was that we’re screwed.
mem2100@reddit
Exceptionally keen analysis.
PlausiblyCoincident@reddit
It's comments like this that keep me coming here. Thank you for the perspective and the history lesson.
Gott_ist_tot@reddit
Do you have a link to that comment?
BeardedGlass@reddit
Here you are, this is the post with that guy from Ireland who personally feels collapse is an overreaction.
Midithir@reddit
Thanks for digging that up. They obviously don't read the farming press, or the monthly/seasonal weather reports or pay much attention to anything really. Definitely do not garden. They are right that we have not had the same issues with food availability or supply chain issues as is happening in th US/Canada. Not sure why.
Gott_ist_tot@reddit
You the man!
OctopusIntellect@reddit
No, that's a paraphrase from memory; it could've been on CollapseSupport instead of specifically here. I do remember he mentioned that he currently has no trouble buying food in his local area, etc., so was left wondering what all the fuss was about.
SunnySummerFarm@reddit
Oh my, well as long as he’s not bothered.
OctopusIntellect@reddit
I think he will find out the reality soon enough (or, faster than expected). Someone did mention to him that the AMOC collapse could happen any moment, and that might be very bad for someone living in Ireland.
I was going to start explaining about how global food shortages don't only affect the places whose crops fail first, etc., but I decided it might be wasted effort. (Ireland might be one of the places that is self-sufficient for food even with its current population levels, so it gets complicated explaining why that's not all that's needed to sustain "civilisation" as people in Ireland currently know it.)
IronDBZ@reddit
It continued in the East for a thousand years, in a state of ongoing collapse.
Like, I used to be really into the Roman Empire, so allow me to send you one of the websites I used to look at when I was a teenager.
https://byzantium.gr/emperors.html
Go through this list, skip around a little bit and see that map at the bottom corner looks like. Cause that's the East. The collapse of an empire can be drawn out, but it is rarely reversed.
lavapig_love@reddit
Dangerous indeed. That guy seems to be unaware of the history of the Great Potato Famine.
daviddjg0033@reddit
Great Potato Famine was localized. When multiple breadbaskets cannot cope with the drought to flood to drought conditions
lavapig_love@reddit
Not quite. It started a lot of Irish emigration everywhere and the Choctaw Nation to donate money to the Irish government.
daviddjg0033@reddit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
Indigo_Sunset@reddit
The difference between art and pornography is that the artful wants us to think about sex while the pornographic wants us to participate. We'll know collapse in our participation, otherwise it's just sparkling velocity.
osoberry_cordial@reddit
Imo it’s just beginning to happen, our supply chains have become so specialized and convoluted that they’re more fragile than ever. And unfortunately that’s coinciding with the acceleration of climate change and other environmental destruction. If I put those all together I bet our global supply chains will begin to really break down in the next 10-20 years and after that, the more vulnerable countries will enter a state of perpetual unrest and hardship. I bet that most the other countries will become near-dictatorships at that point, militarizing their borders and clamping down on any dissent to their regimes. Regional partnerships might become stronger in some cases, but the UN will cease to exist soon afterwards.
fractalineglaze@reddit
When will hypothetical people looking back pick trying to pick a specific year decide on?
I think it would be somewhere between 2025-2040 for pop discussions. I suspect on the earlier side of that range, maybe somewhere around 2030.
It's obviously already here to a degree and things were made inevitable even longer ago, but I think everything so far will all have been relatively small-scale compared to many events likely to come in the coming decades.
I think the 8-10C warming by 2100 estimate is most convincing and although the warming curve will not be linear, I also think people will agree to a date related to events that will occur long before 8C. So, sooner than later. Hence 2030.
StarFilth@reddit
I think collapse is already happening, but not widely distributed. but specifically, i think there are certain places that have reached their “high water mark”. they will never get back to their highest quality of life - Haiti, Puerto Rico, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Congo, Yemen, Guam, Ukraine, etc. I don’t think there are enough local resources or political will to improve these places before climate change lowers the quality of life ceiling on them for at least the next 300 years.
osoberry_cordial@reddit
That’s so scary, but you might be right. Just out of curiosity though, why did you add Guam to the list?
Icelandic_Invasion@reddit
~~Venus by next Tuesday~~
But seriously, I don't think we'll last the decade. With everything going on right now, I feel like something will happen between now and 2030, there's too much going on for some not to happen. I don't know whether it will be climate disasters, food shortages, trade collapse, hell, WW3 has a chance. It could happen as soon as this year or next or as far away as 2029 which...still isn't that far away tbh.
Even if we make it through this decade, we will absolutely not survive this century.
flutterguy123@reddit
I give us about 10(maybe 20) years before we reach stage of billions dying and the collapse of human civilization. It really depend on what order things start to happen in and what the response to those events would be.
I'm of the opinion that things are so interconnected that we are like a giant house of cards. One huge issue can cause everything else to collapse in response.
There are 2 main non war related possibilities I see as likey to cause the chain reaction. Mass food web collapse leading to an actual in ability to feed everyone, even in western counties, would break down the social order. The other is ocean accidifcation and warming causing a mass plankton/ocean microbe die off.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit
I think it will be in the next 10-20 years unless WW3 happens now. But WW3 pales compared to the much more dire threat of global warming. I will say the beginning stages of global warming have already started. However, I don’t think it will begin to hit the general public until we hit 2C in the next decade because global crop yields will take a toll, and billions will be at risk of famine. Even first-world countries will be affected by crop failures, and inflation prices resulting from lower crop yields could possibly cause unrest.
dancingmelissa@reddit
I agree except for the timelines. We would get to WW3 if the environment didn't get us first.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit
I do think even if won’t don’t have a world war now, we will still inevitably have one over the increasing lack of water and other resources
dumnezero@reddit
I don't think that you can get such wars over fairly immovable resources. For one thing, it's easy to destroy the resources... either by accident or out of spite (salt the soils, poison the water, burn the forests etc.). For movable resources, yeah, that's pillaging 102. Water is hard to move. However, that leaves small faction war, civil war, "balkanization", local genocide, fighting for local control of local resources. That's what I think is going to be the future of war. And Syria is an example of that now, as it's been claimed as the first climate war. I'd also point at Sudan and Darfur as such a war, with ethnic cleansing of agriculturalists (farmers) to make room for herding ruminants (herders) to grow meat for exports (to rich assholes).
PatchworkRaccoon314@reddit
Russia would disagree. So would the people of Ukraine, at least those who aren't dead now.
dumnezero@reddit
If you know the region, you'd know that what's going on in Ukraine is closer to a civil war.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit
Maybe, but I do think in opinion there could still be a strong possibility of a world war if nations get desperate enough to
dumnezero@reddit
It would have to be totally insane people, people who don't usually get to those tops. There's literally no point to destroying the world. Just in terms of losses, human and especially capital (because we are ruled by capitalists), it makes zero sense to even engage in MAD; yes, even to reply. That was made clear by sensible people who didn't "reply" to false alarms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls look at that list.
KravMacaw@reddit
Trump's already mentioned Canada's oil and (apparently) water reserves...
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit
The water wars are coming
Similar_Resort8300@reddit
agreed. read the book "On the Move". too many god forsaken hot places in the US.
AbbaFuckingZabba@reddit
WW3 is happening now. This is it. It's Russia, Iran, NK vs basically everybody else with China sitting nervously on their hands (they have too much to lose by starting anything).
dumnezero@reddit
If WW3 was happening, you wouldn't be reading this.
Wars don't just happen because some guy gets shot, that's the pretext, not the cause. It's just like in soccer and other ball sports, the game starts when the referee whistle is blown, but the game is caused by organizers, players training for it, coaches coaching, sponsors of varying pockets, construction workers constructing the stadium, lots of care workers in the background and at home, and many more. As illegality is the defining of wars, think of it as the interest of the betting mafias on rigging the game and getting favorable outcomes too. You may get to see why in hindsight, much like collapse. The pretexts you have upfront are just cheerleaders.
PatchworkRaccoon314@reddit
World War did not stop the radio and newspapers. There is no reason to believe it would stop the internet.
dumnezero@reddit
Not sure where you got that from, I didn't say that it would stop. The internet is built specifically to for that, and radio can be very resilient.
However, I would bet that if national war plans required rationing of energy, "crypto" energy waste, AI, and even various server farms would be shut down. It would definitely all be slower.
systemofaderp@reddit
Uhm, just wait until the Israel/Iran powderkeg goes up and Taiwan/China gets started. India might also want to get involved. WW3 isn't happening yet, even if the history books might begin the chapter with the invasion of Ukraine
AbbaFuckingZabba@reddit
The Israel/Iran powder keg is going up. Israel is destroying Iran's proxies and doing a really good job of it. But Iran has really limited options for attacking Israel. They can't physically invade so really all they can do is lob missiles with very poor accuracy.
Taiwan/China is not going to get started for many many reasons. Mainly because 1. Taiwan is an extremely well defended rock. 2. Amphibious invasions are *really* difficult and can be disastrous if they fail, 3. China's economy is far too reliant on the west to be cut off the way Russia's was.
The fact that China is being aggressive with drills and rhetoric means they absolutely are not planing to invade - otherwise why warn the enemy of the invasion.
India isn't doing shit. They hate China more than anything else and they can't rely on Russia for arms any longer. They're happy to milk the situation for cheap energy from Russia now, but they will be coming to the US/west for weapons, not China, they have no choice.
deepdivisions@reddit
Crazy how all the possible scenarios for WW3 starting are USA's proxies getting embroiled in conflicts with countries rejecting becoming USA's vassals.
Similar_Resort8300@reddit
agreed. societal collapse and division b/c of right wing conspiracy theory anti vax nut jobs.
unbreakablekango@reddit
What about this most recent kerfuffle between India and Canada? I didn't see that one coming.
gmuslera@reddit
It is a process, not a single point event. From here the collapse of the Roman Empire could be seen as that happened overnight, but took centuries in reality. I don't think we will last many centuries more, but neither do I think it will finish to happen over the next 5-10 years.
deepdivisions@reddit
The problem with a polycrisis is that one small collapse somewhere can easily exacerbate all the other crisises. If we had an interaction of crisises that alleviated the severity of other problems, there might be a case for being hopeful.
The way things look, we have the biggest engineering problem/quandary mankind has ever faced.
gmuslera@reddit
The problem is how wide the collapse you think it will be, or on what you draw the line as collapse. Yes, we are in a very interconnected world, but depending on how it will behave the connections may be among the first thing to fall, and somewhat protect now isolated regions from what is happening in others.
Reality is complex. There are many things going on, and some of them are more regional than global. Probably there is no safe place to be from sudden global events, but from progressive or regional ones there may be asymmetries that may let some to stand more than others.
NyriasNeo@reddit
No one knows for sure. Anyone saying otherwise is lying. The only thing I know is that it is not today, nor tomorrow, nor next week.
BTW, if it is not "widely distributed", it is not the collapse of society. It may be a sign. It may be a unstoppable trend, but it is not collapse yet. If I can still go on reddit, order doordash, order amazon, drive and fill up my gas tank on any corner gas station, go into a grocery store and buy food, .... it is not true collapse yet.
deepdivisions@reddit
When a ship's sinking, that is collapse. The rich people on the Titanic who drowned did tend to drown much later than the ship's workers, but that is more or less the position of most people in this subreddit: watching the parts of the ship below us sink and get flooded.
deepdivisions@reddit
If we somehow unfold the ship and get it to a good or better place, you could argue convincingly that it wasn't a collapse, but it seems unlikely- insurance companies abandoning your state does not look reversible.
doomerdoodoo@reddit
I think for the apocalyptic sci-fi movie a lot of people have in their head, around 2100. For a general decline in quality of life, that's been happening since the early 2000s. Each new decade is, somehow, shittier than the last one, and I have no doubt that trend will continue on the long slide down.
Similar_Resort8300@reddit
societal collapse ahs been emphasized since covid. people are divided.
thatguyad@reddit
Societal collapse will out pace the devastation of a climate collapse. Everything is a mess.
Bormgans@reddit
I think to answer & discuss this question you need a bit of definitions, or else you end up talking past each other - if you take 'collapse' in the broad sense, it's indeed already happening.
There was a thread about definitions a few months ago here, and building upon Ghostwoods' post, I came up with the following:
local collapse would be when it is no longer reasonable to expect that rulers -- governments, companies, etc -- will keep a neighbourhood liveable. Some local collapses might have an influence on global supply lines.
global collapse would be a breakdown of (most of) the international community, when countries cannot expect any structural assistance from the international community (This is also where advanced tech starts becoming irreplaceable, we begin to forcibly de-complexify, and significant parts of the global supply lines will cease to exist.)
complete human collapse would be the extinction of our species
A fourth level could also be mentioned: complete collapse of complex life forms - and different stages in between level 3 and 4. Obviously, one could discuss the definition of 'complex life forms', etc.
--
I think local collapse is happening right now in different areas, mainly because of interstate wars & civil wars, and a significant amount of these wars are probably partially the result of both climate change and overshoot.
As for global collapse - the thing I think most people think about when they talk about 'collapse', and as such the topic of this thread - my hunch is that it it could occur somewhere in the range of 10-20 years, but pars of Europe and America might experience local collapse earlier, maybe in 5 years.
For complete human collapse all bets are off.
Qliver1@reddit
As some commenters have pointed out, this really really hard to answer because we face a polycrisis in the modern world. This means that some issues are more on the verge of collapse than others.
AwayMix7947@reddit
So far I think Tainter's definition is the most appropriate one: a rapid simplification. That is, a complexity collapse.
By this definition, we are not there yet, not on a global civilization scale.
tsyhanka@reddit
suggestions of more precise ways to define "collapse"
annual global agricultural output (Mt) starts to decline
annual global energy consumption (BTUs or kWh?) starts to decline
global human population starts to decline
PsudoGravity@reddit
Imo it stands to reason there will always be bastions/strongholds of humanity and civilization propped up my stockpiled resources of the most fortunate among us.
From that logic, it could probably be argued that "humanity" as we see it now has officially collapsed when we only exert control over >50% of our potential territory.
eco-overshoot@reddit
Really depends on your definition of collapse, but I voted that it's already happening.
We overshot the planets carrying capacity in the early 1970's and since then we've been living on a credit card, continuing to pollute the atmosphere and nature - leading to climate change and ecological degradation to the point of planetary system collapse - the impact from this is so extreme and horrific that most people are either in complete denial or living in some strange stage of hopium. Unfortunately it seems most of this is irreversible on human time-scales.
Some countries have clearly already collapsed and if you are paying attention, most are very close to it. I would say decades at most for the vast majority of people.
ActiveWerewolf9093@reddit
I agree that collapse is already here but not evenly distributed. But if we're talking full on societal/economic/billionaires retreat to their bunkers collapse, I'd put my money on 10-20 years. 5-10 possible if we trigger worst case scenario feedback loops or encounter a true black swan event.
GloriousDawn@reddit
I think short of a full-fledged WWIII with ICBMs flying, we'll never see the "billionaires retreat to their bunkers" stage. They'll want to maintain their lavish lifestyles up to the last second, and by then it will be too late. I would also bet that billionaires retreating would act as another collapse trigger, by signaling to the general population there's nothing left of value to extract from them.
ActiveWerewolf9093@reddit
Yeah that's valid
lowrads@reddit
That poll item should really be amended to say not evenly distributed, rather than not widely. Global generally implies the widest possible distribution.
Mas_Tacos_19@reddit
Collapse is already here, it's just not evenly distributed
we get wrapped up in a specific big event that will create a Mad Max / The Road scenario, and the reality is that (absent nuclear war), there is no falling off the cliff overnight. it is a daily, weekly, monthly decline that we can see, but fail to understand
we = humanity
edited to add explanation
GloriousDawn@reddit
I think a better analogy than the cliff is falling down several flights of stairs. You fall, then you get to walk (or crawl) for some time on the stair landing because things have stabilized a bit, and then you fall again. Maybe you walk a couple of steps up on a special occasion, but you'll never make it back to the top. Within a long enough timeframe, everyone gets to the bottom.
Mas_Tacos_19@reddit
good example, borrowing
lavapig_love@reddit
It's already happening. The endless wildfires, hurricanes and flooding have caused many companies to stop issuing home insurance in California and Florida, for example. Often you can't buy a new home without home insurance, so a lot of people have been frozen out or depending on newly-formed state insurance to help them out.
It's already happening, because 2023 was the hottest summer we'd ever had until this year, and now we're seeing worldwide crop shortages because plants can't take the heat and drought.
BTRCguy@reddit
A different take on the OP's question would be this:
"Given your perception of the current situation, if you were put into suspended animation and woken back up at some point in the future, how many years in the future would this have to be for you to compare it to today and say as a relative measure 'things have collapsed'?"
GloriousDawn@reddit
This is why i like the wording of the great unraveling instead of collapse. The fabric of society and ecosystems is being teared apart. You see some loose threads first, then larger tears, and then there's nothing left of the original design but a mess of tangled threads. And it's not unraveling by itself, it's being teared apart.
Just like in that old Utah Phillips quote: The earth is not dying - it is being killed. And those who are killing it have names and addresses.
ovO_Zzzzzzzzz@reddit
I personally think that collapse is a critical point. The decline in the integrity of our current society indicates that we may reach it, but we cannot say that the current decline is the collapse itself - because there may be room for recovery. When things completely fall apart to an irreversible point, that is the collapse itself.
But this may not be a bad thing. After all, the collapse of feudalism can be also named as "collapse", and Karl Marx once said that communism will occur when capitalism is at its peak...hehe
Similar_Resort8300@reddit
we won't recover from trump's magats.
RagingNerdaholic@reddit
It's not going to be some blockbuster event. It's an unfolding of disastrous events increasing exponentially in severity, frequency, and concentration.
JotaTaylor@reddit
In my understanding, collapse entails an abrupt deterioration of key structures to modern civilization --I.E. water and energy (electricity and fuel) distribution, food regime, housing, access to information, republican institutions and so on. So while I agree there's an ongoing decline in many of those factors, we're still to reach a tipping point in which the large majority of people who now have relatively easy access to those structures encounter sudden obstacles of access, or full on interruption of services.
I voted on 10-20 years as I believe that's the interval of time in which we're likely to witness some severe breakdowns in one or more of those key structures, mainly water supply, food availabilityand energy related to climate change.
dancingmelissa@reddit
It is already happening just not equally, but it will become more often equal than not within 2033. However by 2028-29 you will see a significant decline and difference in the daily life of everyone on the planet. But when something dies, something is born. So that's good.
dumnezero@reddit
Only if there are sufficient nutrients around and safe conditions, otherwise something is aborted (natural abortions).
dumnezero@reddit
My guess is that by 2050 it should be advanced decay, without signs of meaningful recovery, globally. In some isolated places it will take longer, and that won't mean that "collapse isn't happening". For those who don't know what survivorship bias is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
middleagerioter@reddit
It's been happening for decades now.
OrangeCrack@reddit
Collapse is already happening in the same sense that I'm getting older everyday but I'm not retired yet.
IMO things getting worse is not what most people would define as collapse. Not so long as the masses believes things will eventually get better. For people in r/collapse to believe that collapse is taking place is no mean feat. But for the masses to recognize that the systems around them (environmental, governmental, economic) have shifted from bad to worse in a way that cannot be recovered within their lifetime is something that will take something of a hit over the head so hard that no one can deny it anymore.
After all many periods of history were dark, even in more modern history we have examples like the great depression, dust bowl and other periods that I would say modern day America hasn't surpassed in terms of hardship for the average American or really even NATO aligned countries.
I don't think we are far off from hitting that point, but I also definitely don't think we are there today. The next election could definitely speed this process up a lot depending on the outcome. A collapsed society will be easy to recognize because we see them all the time: Fallout TV series, Mad Max, The Walking Dead, etc. Everyone knows generally speaking what will happen once society collapses, but how we get there is the fun part.
dancingmelissa@reddit
Collapse is already happening in the same sense that I'm getting older everyday but I'm not retired yet.
OMG Yes yes like this is really draggin on. I totally am there.
BlackMassSmoker@reddit
Complete societal collapse is a tough one. Basically the point where we're all just killing each other to survive for one more day, I don't even know if I'll live to see that point. But perhaps I will, the world is big and complex and we don't know how fast things can change, for better or worse.
The decline is here though and I genuinely feel we have 10 years before things get noticeably bad for everyone, 20 if we're lucky. There will still be a desperate attempt to keep business as usual alive through whatever means and some of population will maintain a belief in it and cling to it since it's all they know. But more will people will be coming to the conclusion that we're fucked. We'll be seeing riots as a regular occurrence, food and water shortages, and generally an uptick in violence as people get more desperate. It won't be collapse but the end of 'life as we know it' which for many might as well be collapse.
And I've not even considered global conflict/nuclear war in this.
Gyirin@reddit
What I've learned from this sub is that the collapse is already happening. Everything just gradually gets worse until there's no civilization.
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