Tag: COVID

Are we shambling into WWIII?

World War I started with the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand by Serbian extremists. This shows that even in the beginning of the 20th century the world was so interconnected that an assassination in Bosnia could lead to a world war. Of course this happened because there was great tension and in response to the assassination, the Austrian-Hungarian army attacked Serbia. Of course alliances kicked in, the dominoes fell and a few years later, nearly nine million soldiers and twenty million civilians were dead.

Are we shambling into another world war, the tensions certainly exist. Let’s start with the South China Sea. China has made no bones about the fact that they very much still consider Taiwan part of China, and like Hong Kong, they intend to take it back. Additionally, China has been very aggressively island building and claiming territory in the South China Sea as well as pushing hard on territorial rights of other Asian nations. Some of these countries like the Philippines have alliances with the United States. Japan, an ancient enemy of China, has an active military for the first time since World War II.

Staying in the region North Korea, a nuclear power, is always wholly unpredictable. The country has massive poverty, a leader that is claimed to be a living God and a completely unpredictable succession process. Not to mention that there current leader is not the most stable person. And as always there is a lot of tension and they continue with large weapons tests.

Historically, no world war has ever started in Asia, so let’s look at where they have started, in Europe. World War I started in the Balkans and right now the Balkans are nearly on fire again. The Belarusian president, a wannabe fascist, who has been a thorn in the side of Europe for years. However, currently he’s decided to throw Eastern Europe into chaos. Belarus has reached out to countries with large populations of potential immigrants and has told them that if they fly to Belarus they can easily cross the border into Poland or Lithuania thus entering the European Union which has a reputation of treating immigrants very well. These desperate people have gone to Belarus, been guided to the borders only to find the borders closed. Troops have amassed on both borders as these poor and desperate immigrants get treated like ping pong balls. Recently, clashes have started to develop between the immigrants the troops on the Polish border. How long before the NATO backed Polish or Lithuanian forces end up in a clash with Russian backed Belarusian forces. This could be the potential flashpoint that kicks off war in Europe.

Additionally, Russian forces are once again moving toward the Ukrainian border. Given that they already have invaded Ukrainian territory in Crimea and have continued to support a shadow ware with the Ukraine, it would not be shocking to see them invade the NATO/US backed Ukraine.

Given the global pressures of COVID, the subsequent economic pressures, global climate change, the rise of fascism and the existing tensions it may only take a spark to set things off. A mistake on the Belarusian or Korean border, China invading Taiwan or Russian invading the Ukraine.

It’s a terrifying proposition, it could easily become at least a limited nuclear war. And more terrifying yet is the recent test by China of a hyper-sonic missile. This is a missile that flies so fast that it actually circled the globe before it was detected. Anyone free this weekend to fill in the swimming pool?

A world full of tilted dominoes

So in the very first post on this blog we talked about how we find ourselves in the middle of a slow-motion shambling apocalypse. There are really three types of apocalyptic decline, the shambling, the disaster kick-off, think asteroid colliding with Earth, or the tumbling domino apocalypse. The crazy thing of course is being in the shambling doesn’t preclude either of the others from happening.

And while there is no evidence that at the moment we are facing an imminent disaster style apocalyptic kick off, it is really starting to feel like COVID might have kicked off the dominoes, or that at the very least, they are leaning hard right now.

The global COVID pandemic has now killed over 700,000 people in America, and over 4.5 million people worldwide. And the pandemic isn’t over, although the US spike is declining, there are still well over 1000 deaths a day. Given the lack of vaccination availability in many developing countries, we have not seen the end of global spikes, nor likely, the emergence of new, dangerous variants.

One of things the pandemic spikes and governmental reactions have caused are major disruptions in the global economic supply chain. Countries have gone from lock downed nervous populations, to populations feeling safer and a quick ramping up of demand for products. Companies trying to fill the gaps, dealing with lack of employees, meeting capacity by switching product lines and market uncertainties have created disruptions in the global economic supply chain.

One of the things I’ve always noticed when I’ve traveled internationally, particularly in developing countries, is the image of empty shelves. When living overseas, one difference I noted is that in the US, I can always get what I want, almost always even the brand and size I want. That is no longer the case, just last night I couldn’t find egg noodles, until I went over the Kosher aisle and got the last bag from that section. More evidence dominoes are falling.

These issues are causing unexpected product shortages for consumers. Worse, it’s creating an environment ripe for rumors causing hoarding and panic behavior. Recently there have been massive lines at stations and gasoline shortages in the UK sparked by rumors there was a shortage of gasoline. There was a shortage of truck drivers, but had people not started hoarding and panic buying, that shortage wouldn’t have caused the type of shortages we saw.

The Evergrande crash has sent ripples through the international money markets. This Chinese company has over $300 Billion in debt, if it defaults, contagion across international real estate and financial systems is inevitable.

Political polarization in the US hit a crescendo on January 6th as Trump supporters spurred on by his comments and conspiracy theories led to people storming the capital, threatening the lives of lawmakers, and causing the death of a law enforcement officer as well as one civilian.

Vaccine inequity globally is a looming problem, while developed countries like the US and Canada as well as the countries of Western Europe are increasing vaccination rates, much of the developing world has had little to no access to vaccines. Vaccine rates in the developing world are often at the level of single digits with a global average of 1.1% in these countries. This means more dying but also more bodies for the virus to infect and possibly mutate in. One mutation that can defeat the current immunity created by the vaccines and we’re right back to March 2020 albeit in a much more fragile global system.

Idiocracy is a documentary! This has become a common meme lately but the base premise of a world that continually takes the easy way out at every possible choice until the whole world is too stupid to function, doesn’t seem farfetched anymore. We are continually more and more dependent on automated computerized systems, AI continues to get smarter. This alone isn’t a problem, but it seems more and more people are dismissing the very science behind everything that automates their lives. Superstition and conspiracy theory, paired with media outlets and social media all to willing to support crazy ideas continues to magnify the problem. While we’re not quite to the point of irrigating our fields with Gatorade yet, it absolutely feels like we’re on that path.

Global Climate Change, ok this one is such an easy one it’s almost not worth mentioning. Climate change issues, like pandemic issues are intensifiers. They exacerbate the problems that already exist. Increasing storm intensities and financial impacts, service disruptions, increasing wildfires, droughts and floods are all increasing. Disease spread and climate migration is also going to be a problem on the increase as global temperatures rise. Rising sea levels also bring an entire suite of additional problems.

It’s time to face facts, we’re living in the apocalypse, the slow motion shambling apocalypse. Under normal circumstances the world has a resiliency reserve, but global climate change continues to chip away at that reserve. And the pandemic has also taken a chunk out of that reserve as well. So as this reserve gets thinner, the likelihood that any of the dominoes could start a speedier collapse grows higher. Let’s be clear, the apocalypse (the degradation of society and civilization as we know it) is happening, the question now is only the rate at which it happens and how prepared you and your family are for the changes.

Welcome to the Shambling Apocalypse

What this blog will be writing about is the apocalypse. We often look at the apocalypse in two very specific ways. First, as something sometime off into the future. Second, we look at it as it occurs in movies and on TV, one day the world is fine, there are a couple of news reports of odd happenings, then boom, all hell breaks loose and everyone is running for their lives.

While that is certainly how the apocalypse could come, in the 1980’s many of us lived daily in fear of just that, some news reports about trouble with the USSR, then boom missiles in the air and everybody heading for a bunker.

The theory of the apocalypse I’ve always thought most realistic is what I call the domino apocalypse. Meaning that something happens, let’s say a pandemic. The pandemic starts to destabilize economies, which leads to political turmoil and something tips off, whether it’s North Korea invading South Korea, or Pakistan nuking India and that starts an initial regional war. And these dominoes just keep toppling, regional war leads to greater economic instability, which leads to further political instability, which leads to refugees, famine and more disease outbreak all while the original pandemic rages on until at some point the world looks nothing like it does now.

However I recently read a really good book by Octavia Butler called, The Parable of the Sower. Without much discussion at all about the downfall of society, her book paints a picture that I could realistically see as California ten to twenty years from now. All of technology hasn’t been wiped out, the rich still can afford airplane flights and live in protected compounds. Not every country is descending into drastic inequality and poverty, but many have. What this very and potentially near future reality made me realize, was that we are already in the apocalypse.

Having fallen prey to the movie version of the apocalypse, while noticing all of the signs around me I still really hadn’t put it together until Octavia Butler’s book hit me over the head with it. You see I have acknowledged that the next generations will likely have a lower standard of living than we or are children have had in life. Natural resource depletion issues are everywhere, fresh water, starvation and the ever elusive concept of peak oil. The Amazon is being cut down, wetlands have been massively eradicated. We’re currently living in a pandemic that has followed on the heels ever several epidemics in Asia and the Middle East, think SARS and MERS.

Then the big hammer, global climate change. The data is undeniable, the signs available for everyone to see. Iceless Summers in the Arctic, record heat, intensification of storms, sea rise, the geographic spread of disease (yellow fever, Zika) and all of the environmental impacts tied to a warming earth. There is even some serious speculation that the North Atlantic conveyor may be on the verge of collapse. This would drop temperatures in England almost ten degrees, meaning a current average high of 48 and low of 41 in the winter would shift to 38 and 31 meaning a lot more snow and ice in the winters.

So it seems to me we are already in the midst of the apocalypse, the dominoes have started to topple, it’s all just happening in slow motion, shambling along like a Zombie in The Walking Dead TV show. So this site will explore it, sort of like a slow motion news report of our society’s demise.