15 Comments

Russia is the wild card here. Since they're in the recovery phase as the rest of the civilized world teeters into the collapse phase, they'll be well situated to take advantage of that. We could well find ourselves in a situation where the world is looking to Russia as a beacon of hope, with the avant garde consciously modeling themselves on Russian cultural and political influences.

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Sep 9, 2022Liked by Theophilus Chilton

Interested to hear more about what you think will happen in Russia during the collapse -- will their recovery phase continue?

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Within the US we do have at least one advantage lacking elsewhere: a barely but still functioning federal system where each state has *some* (albeit increasingly strangled) room to develop systems, industries, resources etc..

Florida and Texas come to mind as places where there is at least *some* ability to sustain themselves in a collapse. If your state has its own energy, manufacturing base, agriculture, and commerce then it's bound to be resistant to collapse. And maybe it's better to view through a regional lens. The Old South, for whatever reasons, has seemingly won the Post Civil War. Population, industry, wealth, hard workers all have flowed there, especially in the last 40 years, and away from those states hostile to self sufficiency and trade.

Outside the US, i wonder if there is anything similar?

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A good thought exercise would be to consider what we have in our lives today that could be made locally if all global suppliers went poof.

I'd say that we'd still have much of the basic function but no frills. For example, what does it take to build a functional, basic automobile? If you strip out all the electronics and just have a basic block engine w a cab and no power steering and no pollution controls it probably could be made still today in some areas of the US. It might require using scrap metals and be extremely ugly but it could run and get you there. Refrigerators might become more like 1940s ice boxes, maybe literally. Machinery would likely revert to WW2 era tech. Make do. Our homes would have to be heated and cooled without heat pumps or freon.

Point being, much of what we *need* could still be made regionally if not locally, but most of what we prefer or have accustomed ourselves to wont be.

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"This means that it cannot allow any political decentralisation of any kind to occur..."

That is certainly the elite desire, but it can fail in important ways. Examples in America are firearms and homeschooling, and the Internet.

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Panarchy hints at necessarily fractal nature of anti-fragile structures 😀 As in business unit, so on world scale ↓

💬 Most people hate redundancy—managers are always looking to make things more efficient by squeezing out slack capacity—yet by definition, diversity requires redundancy, overlap, and excess capacity.

~~Taylor Pearson

from https://taylorpearson.me/bookreview/origin-of-wealth/

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Rigid degenerate ossified empires attract Vandals, Visigoths, Mongols, and such . The invaders are the usual external clean up crew. Occasionally internal groups arise, such as National Socialists, that strive to revive society . The r/K pendulum swings

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When mandatory vaccination demographic aftermath comes into play the collapse is sharp, sudden and likely sustained for some years to come. Coupled with winter. Coupled with seasonal influenza in a weak immune compromised population. And trade collapse.

The New Feudalism is not pretty.

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