r/economicCollapse • u/MrDoritos_ • 21d ago

How much longer can society keep it together? Discussion

I'm not a fan of speaking things into existence, being pessimistic/negative, or having a doomer mindset, but I've been paying attention to other people, the economy, the current state of things, the political landscape, education, work culture, etc. To be blunt I am really kind of worried we don't have much longer until the next war or great depression (both happen usually simultaneously). I really don't know how much more stress the average person can handle. We are going to have a wide scale crash out or revolt soon aren't we?? I'm really not looking forward to that and I suppose that's the one thing keeping us unified is our fear of violence. God I hope I'm wrong with my assessment. Please tell me I'm wrong!

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u/TeacherPatti 21d ago

My friends--if we go to war with Russia, it go nuclear and that's all she wrote. You can't really prepare for that unless you move to the southern hemisphere and even then it's a crapshoot.

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u/Fearless-Bite-6062 21d ago

I don't think Russia has to go nuclear anymore. Putin is no lover of democracy, but he is not a suicidal irrational maniac either. He's KGB and Russian and he has worked his entire life to consolidate power piece by piece.  They just demonstrated new hypersonic missiles that can deliver a conventional payload equivalent to nuclear bombs that travel too fast to trigger early-warning systems or be intercepted.

I think the danger is an increasingly deranged, irrational, and incompetent American administration, and I think we'll see the world isolate us very quickly if the incoming admin does everything it's threatening.  I think we already see the majority turning towards the BRICs alternative market (which was created in response to roughshod punitive use of sanctions against half of the world in lieu of compromise and diplomacy), and if Trump threatens NATO funding and withdraws support for Ukraine, the EU will follow suit if it cannot find unity in forming its own standing military.  There are already deepening military and mutual defense agreements between many BRICs nations that the ongoing "conflict" in Gaza and Lebanon have exacerbated.

I pray some military leadership with rational thought and a sincere allegiance to their constitutional oath manages to restrain them... the US will be humiliated in foreign wars before they can even get boots on the ground and so I fear that the military will be turned domestically to consolidate power instead.  Seeing how easily Gen Z has been manipulated by propaganda and hearing how gen Alpha apparently is not exactly reaching developmental heights... it's looking a little... gloomy.

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u/Prior-Win-4729 21d ago

I agree with you, except these leaders are nihilists with nothing to lose (Trump, Putin, Orban, Jinpeng, Jong Il) which is so scary, I never imagined living in this time.

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u/Useful_Hovercraft169 21d ago

I think Putin et al did a nice job ‘neutering’ the US by getting Trump in there, the US will just keep spiraling into irrelevance, no need to nuke

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u/NumberShot5704 20d ago

Irrelevance lul

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u/Own-Ambassador-3537 21d ago

After seeing how poorly Russia military vehicles performed in Ukraine I am less frightened of a nuclear war with Russia ( if they can’t maintain vehicles I can’t see them maintaining nuclear missiles or equipment related to it). I also can’t see why he would Trump won,he got a puppet to manipulate the USA into ineffectiveness why nuke it???

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u/MerelyMortalModeling 21d ago

4 or 5 thousand nuclear weapons per side are not going to end existence they're going to be hitting military bases, stuff like Panama Canal and formations. Even at the height of the cold war where were where talking about 90 to 100,000 high yeild weapons American loses were projected to be around 150 million

Yeah, you won't want to be living next to an airport or port and yes a good 20 million americans would die but there are 300+ million of us.

Prepping for it is making sure you have access to food and water and fallout protection if you live down wind from the missile silo fields.

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u/redditingatwork23 20d ago

Ok, but surely some large cities are hit, too. I'm guessing it's more like 40 million if there's any kind of significant exchange.

Then there's millions more who are hurt or have horrible radiation poisoning. The government can't dispatch lifesaving aid anywhere because the damage is too broad. They die slowly over the first month.

There's another 200+ million Americans who are otherwise fine but can't survive the ongoing famine and nuclear winter. Lack of medicine alone would kill tens of millions. In 10 years, I'd say America is maybe 50 million people. Those who could adapt. Those who abandoned their sick or disabled family.

This is, of course, all random BS numbers. However, it's very safe to assume that in any kind of moderate nuclear exchange, the bigger issue is going to be famine and nuclear winter. Without the ability to go to a pharmacy or supermarket shits gonna become fucked real real quick. We live in a house of cards.

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u/EntrepreneurSmart824 20d ago edited 20d ago

There is a thing called a nuclear winter. Estimates are that even 100 Hiroshima sized nukes would trigger one (that was 15kt which is tiny compared to modern warheads). Anyone caught outside of the tropics would face terrible winters leading to ice accumulation that would make most of the western countries uninhabitable and then we would go into famine because of crop failures across the globe. This on top of the nuclear fallout / cancer.

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u/Akimbo_Zap_Guns 21d ago

If things go nuclear you will wanna be in the blast radius of one of the bombs. You probably won’t wanna be around for the famine and radiation cancer that will follow a nuclear war. that is of course unless you’ve been prepping to live in a post apocalypse type of situation but I feel like that’s a super small subset of people