The Great Reset: An Alternate Theory

In my last post I speculated that covid was a plan orchestrated by the heads of the important central banks to provide cover for printing a gazillion dollars to head off an imminent economic collapse, and to implement tools like digital currencies and lockdown mechanisms that will be useful for maintaining social order when money printing eventually fails and the economy collapses.

In that post I asked the key question:

What force is powerful enough to synchronize senior leaders in most countries to do the wrong thing on almost every covid action without assuming every leader is evil and/or stupid?

I stated that those of us paying attention and not listening to the official narrative know that nothing about covid makes sense.

Here is a brief summary of the covid facts and actions that do not make sense and that together suggest there is an objective other than public health in play:

  • no investigation or consequences for China and it’s Wuhan lab that engineered the virus
  • no investigation or consequences for the funders of the Wuhan lab work
  • Fauci kept in the most powerful healthcare position in the world, despite his involvement in funding the virus research and the subsequent coverup
  • no gain of function research policy changes to prevent a recurrence
  • no consequences for grossly incompetent WHO policies that encouraged global spread of the virus in the early days
  • suspiciously short and record time to develop a novel vaccine technology
  • all 4 vaccine manufacturers use the same (probably bad idea) mRNA code
  • suspicious vaccine patent history
  • probable fraudulent vaccine approval process and attempt to hide it for 75 years
  • insufficient testing to determine mRNA longevity and locations of activity in the body
  • willingness to rapidly deploy a novel insufficiently tested vaccine technology to billions at low risk from the disease including pregnant women
  • confident claims that vaccines are safe and effective despite being unwillingly to unconditionally approve the vaccines
  • indemnification of vaccine manufacturers
  • aggressive censorship of covid policy debate
  • aggressive character assassination and career destruction of dissenting experts
  • no updates to mRNA vaccines despite being ineffective against current variants
  • boosters recommended despite risks of infection, hospitalization, and adverse reactions increasing with each subsequent shot
  • elimination of non-mRNA vaccines from the market
  • ignoring 50 years of knowledge and discounting the risk of promoting vaccine resistant and/or more virulent strains by vaccinating in the middle of a pandemic with a non-sterilizing vaccine
  • no cost benefit analysis on lockdown policies
  • testing methods that grossly overstated the prevalence of disease
  • reporting methods that grossly overstated the severity and risk of disease
  • data manipulation that grossly overstated the effectiveness of vaccines
  • passports required for vaccines that are ineffective at preventing transmission
  • no passports given to people with naturally acquired immunity
  • zero promotion of effective disease prevention methods like vitamin D and weight loss
  • aggressive promotion of ineffective disease prevention methods like mask policies that did not prevent and probably encouraged disease spread
  • blocking of all effective early treatments including those profitable for pharma
  • strong arming countries like India & Japan that developed successful prophylaxis and early treatment protocols from disclosing what they did
  • preventing doctors from treating patients by blocking fulfillment of prescriptions
  • ignoring record numbers of adverse reactions confirmed by different systems in different countries
  • avoiding autopsies to determine causes of suspicious deaths
  • gaslighting and not supporting those suffering from adverse reactions
  • no adjustment to policies or admission or error regardless of evidence

I argued that if we assume that most of our leaders are not evil and/or stupid then the only plausible explanation for their behavior is that they are working as a team to prevent harms worse than those being caused by their covid policies.

Those of us that study human overshoot know that 8 billion people depend for survival on rapidly depleting non-renewable, non-substitutable resources, and that the only reason our global growth dependent system functions today is that we deny limits to growth by accelerating the use of unrepayable debt, and we know that emerging inflation will soon force a day of reckoning via an economic reset.

This day of reckoning will harm many people. Most citizens will be surprised and unprepared. If citizens respond with violent social unrest then the harms will be magnified. Hence the urgent need for tools to manage a collapse such as:

  • lockdown tools to prevent rioting
  • lockdown tools to reduce consumption of energy and other scarce resources
  • digital currencies to enable a negative interest rate so debt can continue to grow
  • digital currencies to enable fair and effective rationing of scarce resources like food and energy
  • digital currencies to prevent panics from destroying the financial system

I argued that the real purpose of our otherwise irrational and obsessive focus on vaccines as a response to covid was to prepare the behaviors and infrastructure necessary for lockdown policies and digital currencies.

While I still think this hypothesis is plausible and probable there is a fact that bothers me because it is inconsistent with the assumption that our leaders are not evil or stupid.

That is the recent push to vaccinate children. This policy makes no sense in the context of the above hypothesis because:

  • vaccinating children for covid is 100% risk and 0% benefit
  • any sane, non-evil person knows that protecting children from harm should be a top priority
  • young children do not need to participate in the economy with digital currencies
  • children can be vaccinated at a later and safer age when they need to participate in the economy

I do not understand what’s going here. I suppose you could argue that our leaders really are evil and/or stupid, although that seems improbable given the large number of cooperating leaders.

Another possible explanation is that my hypothesis that covid is cover for collapse preparation is incorrect.

What other purpose might there be for our insane covid policies?

Just for fun, let’s go all dark and crazy and speculate the mRNA has some function that has not yet been deployed, and our leaders want it to be injected in everyone before pushing the on button.

Perhaps our leaders have employed, or stolen the ideas from, Jack Alpert to mastermind a humane population reduction plan.

I say humane, by which I mean no suffering or violence, because we’re still assuming here that our leaders are not evil.

Alpert has developed the only feasible plan in existence for retaining a modern technologically advanced civilization after we have depleted most of the economically recoverable fossil energy. His idea is to rapidly reduce our population to about fifty million people concentrated in 3 regions of world with adequate hydro electricity and other necessary natural resources. By keeping the population low and constant, but still large enough to sustain advanced technology and manufacturing, and by aggressively recycling materials and forgoing impossibly wasteful luxuries like air travel and personal vehicles, it might be possible to sustain our science and technologies long enough to make fusion work, before the hydro dams inevitably silt in.

Because of the rapid rate that fossil energy is depleting, and the total dependence of our food supply on that energy, there is insufficient time for a one-child policy and/or family planning education to get the population down to a sustainable level without massive suffering.

A very aggressive plan for reducing the population is required to avoid unimaginable suffering and probable civilization ending nuclear resource wars.

Jack’s idea is to vaccinate everyone on the planet with a genetically engineered substance that causes sterility and that can be reversed with an antidote.

Any couple desiring a child must apply for a birth permit. Once a year a carefully calculated number of permits will be randomly awarded to applicants and those lucky people will be relocated to one of the 3 regions established for humanity’s permanent civilizations and issued the sterility antidote.

If our leaders are indeed implementing Alpert’s plan with a time delayed sterility inducing vaccine, this would explain why children are being targeted for vaccination. It would be imperative that as many child bearing, and soon to be child bearing, people be vaccinated as quickly as possible because once word of the plan gets out, either via a leak or via impossible to ignore evidence, then no further vaccinations will be possible.

If true, this thankfully means our leaders are brilliant heroes rather than evil idiots.

And it gives “The Great Reset” a whole new meaning!

Go Jack go!!!

P.S. I would like to make the above list of covid things that don’t make sense as complete as possible. If I missed anything, please let me know and I will add it.

17-Jul-2022 Addendum

I’m worried that a future visitor who does not know me will will read this post and conclude that I’m a wack job and therefore should discount everything else I’ve written. This is a statement to clarify what I actually believe is going on with covid.

If we assume that our leaders are not evil and/or stupid then there is overwhelming evidence to suggest there’s an agenda other than public health in play for covid policies.

I believe that some of our most senior leaders with the power to influence lower level leaders are using covid as an excuse to implement tools that will be helpful for maintaining social order during an economic collapse.

I do not know if these senior leaders deliberately released an engineered virus, or if they are just taking advantage of a mistake made at the Wuhan lab.

All of the evidence I see supports this “covid is cover for collapse prep” theory, EXCEPT the push to vaccinate children which I cannot explain if we continue to assume our leaders are not evil and/or stupid.

I proposed above, tongue in cheek, that perhaps the child vaccination push could be explained by a humane population reduction agenda, which I think would be a brilliant thing for our leaders to do, because population reduction is the only path to reducing the suffering that is coming due to human overshoot.

The problem with this population reduction hypothesis is that I don’t think are leaders are aware or smart or brave enough to try it.

So to be clear, I do NOT think there is a population reduction agenda in play.

Which means our leaders must be evil and/or stupid.

I’m pretty sure Fauci and his gang are corrupt, but I do not think all the collaborating leaders in the world are evil.

Which leaves stupidity as the only viable explanation for what’s going on with children.

Stupid behavior can have causes other than a low IQ.

Stupid behavior can result from our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, like for example, doubling down because “I can’t possibly have supported the biggest blunder in human history”, or from a mass formation al la Mattias Desmet that causes temporary insanity.

July 13, 2022 Addition

Thank you to a reader for bringing to my attention a list of bad covid decisions compiled by Dr. Vinay Prasad.

I respect Dr. Prasad’s fairness and integrity by only listing those items for which a functioning brain looking at evidence available at the time would know was wrong.

https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/a-checklist-for-covid-policy

“Lots of people commented about COVID-19. Some were more right than others. It isn’t fair to judge people by facts not known at the time. Instead here is a list of issues where a person who read actively, and whose brain was working (aka not riddled with anxiety) could be right in the moment.

  1. The evidence for community cloth masking was awful, nonexistent, negative and poor and we should have run cluster RCTs. This view was obvious based on reading pre-pandemic literature and is why the CDC, WHO and Tony Fauci himself initially advised against masking. Instead, in the weeks that followed many lied about the evidence of cloth masking to push this intervention. It was propaganda, not science. It was shameful how real scientists lied and exaggerated and virtue signalled, all of which prevented randomized trials.
  2. Without embellishment, I will think it’s ok to have supported cloth masking initially, but smart people understood the residual uncertainty and wanted cluster RCTs. Unfortunately, they were defeated by zealots, and we have zero cluster RCTs in high income countries. Aka we learned nothing. This is embarrassing.
  3. Masking kids 2-4 and mandates (oh, of course, except when they nap for 2 hours in the same room!) was a stupid policy and it’s hard to understand how anyone whose brain was working would support it. They napped together in the same room unmasked! Use your brain! How could that possibly work? Moreover, the World Health Organization advised against doing it.
  4. School closure in the spring of 2020 was arguable, but closure any time after Aug 2020 was clearly wrong. Enough data had accumulated by then to know it was a fools errand. Most Western European nations had returned in person by then. Liberal American cities remained the last hold outs. They paid lip service to vulnerable children, but their policies crushed their future.
  5. Vaccinating 20 year old health care workers and teachers and ‘first responders’ before the elderly was clearly stupid. It only happened because anxious first responders are more powerful lobbying force than old people. Society, particularly America, does not value the elderly. Anyone who could do basic arithmetic would know this would cost lives. Even assuming first responders were much more likely to get the virus, the IFR by age was so steep, it could not be overcome by exposure. Wise nations didn’t do it. You only needed a calculator and 2 seconds to realize how stupid it was.
  6. When J&J was found to cause VITT, it was obvious the product should be pulled from the market. Bad policy makers analogized it to DVT after oral contraceptives. They apparently did not understand the difference between the cerebral sinus, and the leg. Or a simple clot and runaway platelet activation. Alternatives were available. The FDA and CDC kept the product for one more year and many people were harmed.
  7. Mandating the mRNA shot was always a stupid idea. First, remember mandating a medical intervention is not done to protect the person getting the intervention. We don’t mandate you take your blood pressure pills. And you’re allowed to decline life-saving therapies. Mandates only exist when there is sufficient benefit to third parties that the intrusion on autonomy is justified. It has to clear a high bar. In the beginning, it looked like the vaccine provided massive individual level protection. Thus, it didn’t matter if someone else didn’t get the shot, you were protected. Modeling studies suggested that thousands of people would have to be excluded to avert one acquisition of COVID. It was clear that many people would be angered, a few would not comply, and there was no justifiable case that coercive vaccination benefited third parties. If a third party was worried, they could get vaccinated themselves. Later, by the fall of 2021, when it was abundantly clear that vaccines were unable to halt novel variants and breakthrough was inevitable, then vaccine mandates were unethical because vaccines could not protect a third party from transmission anyway. Ironically, vaccine mandates were always unethical because they never conferred sufficient benefit to 3rd parties. Instead, some people argued that protecting someone from their own choice was a valuable use of coercion. These people are ignorant of medical history, and do not see the fact that there is no end to this principle. You can mandate people to get any medical intervention by this logic. Moreover, they are aloof from Americans. Americans would never tolerate such an intrusion.
  8. Wearing a mask after vaccination. Or distancing. Or avoiding weddings or avoiding other things. After vaccination, there was nothing more you could do to lower your individual risk. Weight loss, optimizing medical issues, and vaccination by the only three risk reducing interventions. Before it was evident that breakthrough was inevitable, there’s no point to take precautions after vaccination because you were very well protected. The moment it was evident that breakthrough was inevitable, there was no point to take precautions after vaccination because if you live long enough, you’ll eventually get the virus. So what’s the goal of delaying?
  9. Testing testing, testing. The United States not for 1 minute was able to control the virus through test, trace, isolate. The seed load or initial preconditions in 2020 made it impossible to do that. The idea we could test our way halting the virus and his tracks was delusional. Someday Congress should pass a bill asking testing companies to release the names of doctors and epidemiologists who they paid. Once you see the money trail, you will understand why people pushed testing.
  10. After adult vaccination, the idea that wide scale testing was necessary or desirable was a delusion. Testing kids and quarantining them was massively disruptive. The loss of educational alone offset any potential gains. And the final outcome will be inevitable. 93 to 98% breakthrough.
  11. The idea kids need a vaccine to return to normal– was insane. This was absolutely a crazy point of view. Proof that it was not true is that many nations had very high sero prevalence prior to the debut of vaccines. The United Kingdom was nearly 100%. The US was at least over 70% but probably much higher, due to terrible data collection. If kids got COVID anyway prior to vaccine all the restrictions hurt them with no possibility of benefit.
  12. Children never faced an emergency. The regulatory use of emergency use authorization for kids was unjustified. Their drug products should have come through traditional marketing pathways. The IFR in children was too low to constitute an emergency. Moreover, by the time kids vaccines arrived it was clear that breakthrough was inevitable. Ergo vaccinating kids would not protect anyone else. The abuse of expedited pathways benefits companies, but does not benefit people. This abuse has continued in cancer drugs for years. COVID makes people scared, which pharmaceutical companies use to enrich themselves with scant data.
  13. Giving paxlovid to young vaccinated people. Anyone who knows the history of medicine knows that extrapolating data from very sick individuals to milder versions of disease is never a good idea. It’s always better to run a randomized trial before you spend $5 billion dollars treating your anxiety.
  14. Anyone who ever said the word zero COVID is an idiot. Because the opportunity for zero COVID ended in early December 2019, and firmly closed by March of 2020. Anyone who still thought it possible, particularly in 2021, should be muted and ignored.
  15. By June 2022, anybody who thinks the United States should do anything to control infections is wrong. Such a person must be living under a rock to not notice the fact that 200 million plus Americans have returned to complete normal. Moreover, it is not biologically possible. These should be too good reasons for these people to stop.
  16. Travel bans. Border closure. Testing to cross borders. It was evident that these measures could do nothing to stop spread. It’s unbelievable we repeated that until 2022.
  17. Long COVID: If you were very ill with COVID-19, if you were hospitalized, if you were intubated, if you were on death’s door, it is entirely possible that you will have a prolonged recovery. You may never be the same. This has always been the case with respiratory viruses. Or any illness for that matter. But if you had a mild infection, if you didn’t even know you were sick, then it would be astonishing that you would have serious long-term sequela. The burden of proof that this is due to COVID should be very high. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t take you seriously. Doctor should always take patients seriously. And if a person feels bad, we should run studies to determine what makes them better. But that’s very different than advising people that asymptomatic Long Covid is a big problem, and that we should try to control infections in perpetuity. Those are bold policy maneuvers. It requires extraordinary evidence. That evidence has never been met. The best study from the Annals of internal medicine compares patients with milder Covid to those without milder Covid and finds no differences in any of dozens of dozens of biological tests. That finding is astonishing. And should be replicated in larger sample size. But if it holds true, a serious rethinking of long COVID is needed.
  18. Saying in 2022 we need to control infections to prevent mutations. Serious science writers are saying this. In top magazines. It’s totally delusional. There is no political buy-in. Even if there were, you’d have to weld door shut like Shanghai to achieve it. That’s not possible in free society. It’s living in a fairy tale confusing it for reality.
  19. Saying healthcare workers will mask forever. Before you institute a sweeping change in healthcare, don’t you want to run a randomized trial to know it works? Evidence-based medicine is dead when people propose such changes without evidence. I’m pretty confident now that many people didn’t understand it.
  20. And the biggest way to know somebody doesn’t know what they’re talking about: when somebody suggests school reopening benefits rich and privileged kids. It benefits poor, underserved, minority kids. How clueless are you?
  21. I forgot to mention boosting 12-year-olds, yearly booster, and a load of other things. That’s for another column.

These were issues that were not just obvious in retrospect but at the time. A simple test for who knows what they’re talking about.”

328 thoughts on “The Great Reset: An Alternate Theory”

  2. Hello everyone, hope all are traveling well. What a lot I’ve missed in the past week or so from this site when we’ve been flat out brushcutting, pole-pruning, mulching, and planting here up in Far North Queensland! I am happy to report that the land is looking a bit more tamed and I’m getting ready to start a few new projects which fall very nicely into this section of self-sufficiency living, our most important contribution to present and future. Thank you all for your wonderful descriptions of how you’re making your home space a more sustainable and utterly fulfilling haven.

    As I was reading, I found myself saying Yes, Yes, and Yes! because so much of what has been presented is what my husband and I have been trying to learn and do in the 24 years or so we’ve been here in Australia. It was a huge learning curve coming from a studio flat in San Francisco to a small hamlet in Tasmania, population 250, and it took us months to figure out how to use the slow combustion stove in our new home (the only form of cooking then), dinner was cereal and crackers for many nights in the beginning! It had a wet back and we did manage to heat all our water for several years using wood (now we have caved into convenience of using the electric back-up for the days we don’t get a fire going). The wet back set-up is a huge investment and eventually the copper-lined low pressure tank will corrode if you are using rain water which has a much lower pH (ours is 5.5), we found this out the hard way. Now we add sodium bicarb to the rain tank to increase the pH, but it seems that for every problem that we try to fix, we fall into more complexity and reliance on something else. If you don’t have a gravity fed system for water, you will still always be reliant on a pump and a hand transfer set-up won’t be practical for the amount of house water we are all used to, and for the head you would need for adequate pressure. In Tasmania, we collect rainwater from our little (relatively, but it is far from tiny) house of 80m2 and it is pumped to rain tanks which are elevated so we have gravity return to the house–at least during power outages we still have running water as here in the rural areas we don’t have town water. For all the wood-eyed enthusiasts here wearing rose-coloured glasses, I must say that it takes a whole heck of a lot of wood to heat even a small house in a temperate climate, and also for cooking, not to mention hot water. We happen to have enough trees on the property to perhaps be self-sufficient in our own wood needs but many of them are in a ravine and huge and we don’t have the skill to cut them down ourselves–one mishap with the chainsaw would either see the world population down by one or add another dependent to the social system. So, we rely on getting wood delivered and amuse ourselves in having a part in the process by splitting some larger pieces. What will happen when the chainsaws fail. both in fuel and parts? Not to mention getting the wood to our properties, we seem to be short in mules around here.

    In version two of our self-sufficiency dream, we chose a climate where wood heating isn’t critical for survival, although it still adds a lot of comfort in the few winter months here in the subtropics where the night time temps still dip low enough to be chilly. Here we have a baker’s oven type of woodstove, a kind of compromise between a woodheater and slow combustion stove, an Esse Bakeheart which I highly recommend for it’s efficiency and usefulness. It can be configured with a wetback but we decided that’s not the way to go here as we won’t have the stove on in the hot summers. I am now researching other ways to provide hot water, I’ve got some ideas on using black polypipe, anyone tried this? We have discovered that bamboo burns quite well but quick, (Campbell, your curse of excess bamboo may very well be a blessing in disguise!) and is much more easily harvested even by hand tools and is an incredible renewing biomass. We are also experimenting with coppicing several different species of soft and hard woods, but no matter what, without power tools, getting wood from tree to where you need it, in the size that is useful, is bloody hard work. Does anyone here profess to have proficient axe skills? We certainly do not, although we have a copy of The Axe Book, so phew, that should take care of it if we need to skill up in a hurry-NOT! We have experimented with rocket stoves and top-lit updraft stoves for more efficient burns (using small diameter wood of kindling size and any dry biomass) that can be used for cooking and heating hot water in reasonable quantities. There are many designs one can make and commercial ones on the market, we got a SilverFire rocket stove about 8 years ago, don’t know if they are still imported in from China from whence all things come. Does anyone else have experience with these?

    We have also decided that solar isn’t going to be viable in the long term, but we are considering getting a small solar generator of 1.3kW just to charge up power tools (we have battery powered brush cutter, chainsaw, pole-pruner, hedger) which will be a boon for the intermediate stages before we all go back to scythe, saw, and axe. And my Vitamix blender is currently a non-negotiable, as smoothies with all our fruit and veg are going to hopefully remain a main source of nutrients, and this small generator will do the trick. Here is the link for the unit here in Australia, I’m sure you will have something similar in the States and NZ.
    https://itechworld.com.au/collections/lithium-power-stations/products/lithium-portable-power-station-1300-watt-100ah-itech1300p

    Of course, all this is transitionary but it will go a long way to making life hopefully just that little bit easier in the first instance when fuel and parts supply dwindle. I suppose we better start reading up on how to use these hand tools which all our ancestors were experts at–of course we need to practice the skills! I have suddenly had the desire to re-read one of my favourite series of books from childhood, The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, she chronicles her family’s pioneering adventures in the 1870s-80s. Anyone else read these classics? Was it only an American thing? I never watched the TV series, but I’m sure they would also be instructive as well as heart-warming. Boy, people were of a tougher stock back then, but their lives seemed ever so fulfilling despite all the hardship which they just knew as freedom to live their chosen lives. Which is what I wish for all of us, in whatever time we have remaining. Remember as Marcus Aurelius exhorts us from yet an even more distant past–“Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within ourselves in our way of thinking ” (and doing!) I’ll sign off with another one of his pithy and wise quotes “Accept the things that fate binds you, love the people with whom fate brings you together, and do so with all your heart.” Namaste.

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    1. Damn, battery banks are expensive.

      Our ancestors were tough. I’ve always been impressed with the skills and effort required to build early wood ships. Imagine falling, hewing, and transporting huge beams by hand.

      I’m going to add Little House on the Prairie to my library.

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    2. I read Little House in the Woods so many times as a child, and then the rest of the series later as a teenager. I love those books.
      I read on Alice’s blog there is a limit for how far you can go out to get wood before you are burning more calories than you will get back in value from the wood. I think it was based on a mule pulling a cart, and how much you would need to feed them

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      1. Hi there monk,

        So heartened to hear that you love those books, too. So glad that they became popular in New Zealand as well, which is not a surprise as there is plenty of pioneering spirit in all the Commonwealth lands, a bit too much really! Given our generation difference in age, (I am 52) it proves that the Little House on the Prairie books are truly timeless and there is something we have definitely lost in leaving the past so distantly behind as we hurled headlong into our technological wonderland of the future. I have often thought that we couldn’t last even a few days thrown into Laura’s world but yet, their family could still live in ours, by high-tailing it into the wilderness and doing what they always did, that is if they could find some wilderness left anymore. Of course without their community and inputs it would be very different, but they could survive because they had the skills and mindset to do so. Our world just expects so much to appear from China at low cost after clicking a few buttons linked to a bright screen.

        Methinks you may have read another children’s book series that was a favourite of mine, The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald? Once again, based on real life memoirs and the setting is a small town in the western state of Utah, just before the turn of the century 1900. This one explores the escapades of his older brother Tom whose great mischievous brain leads him to come up with various schemes to swindle people in his community which he rationalises by claiming he was only teaching others a lesson whilst making use of his greater God-given faculties. There were about 8 books in the series, all entertaining and also gives a snap shot into life in those times.

        And my absolute favourite (I read a lot as a child and as an only child, books were not only my escape but friends), the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander? Beginning with The Black Cauldron and the fifth book is The High King. These are loosely based on ancient Welsh mythology and you will recall a lot of the Lord of the Rings themes here, too. Once again, part of what enchanted me and still, is the description of how life was then in the middle ages. We think we use our fill of CPU now with our technological overwhelm but I would argue that the challenges of overcoming the elements and being completely self-reliant in any situation are the more stimulating and fulfilling uses of our unique brains and bodies. It is hard to justify that in just over 150 years we went from near complete self-sufficiency to near total dependence, and without an inkling of knowledge or ability to get back as a society. Not to mention nearly completely destroying the planet in the meantime. But, in the inception of progress through the ages, this end was already foretold, unfolding as it has, chapter by chapter, because it was written by a strange but spectacular hominid species with a MORT leaning brain. It’s enough to make you want to bury yourself back into the comforting depths of good children’s books which take us back to a simpler and wholesome time when we thought anything was possible.

        I think that after the collapse, these books would be excellent comfort material to be read by candlelight. I think I will go onto eBay and with a few clicks on the keyboard, make secondhand copies magically appear at my doorstep. It is so disconcerting to be so disconnected with our not so distant past, but it looks like we’ll have another chance to make it up very soon.

        Happy reading, everyone! Just the thought that we can read (and write) is a mind-blowing idea. Will we continue to do so?

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        1. Pardon me, an errata addendum here. The first book in the Lloyd Alexander Prydain series is The Book of Three, not The Black Cauldron (that’s the next one). But you would know that if you love these books as much as I do. I really do recommend these for everyone, and if you happen to have children or grandchildren in your lives, do yourselves a huge favour and get a set to read together. It will be wonderful sharing time in these very interesting times indeed.

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        2. Happy reading Gaia Gardener, Thank you for sharing your favourite books. I haven’t read any of those so I will add them to my list 🙂

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  3. Our leaders did the opposite of the correct thing for every single one of dozens of covid decisions. Rather than assuming that all of our leaders are stupid or evil I speculated in the last 2 posts that our most senior leaders have an agenda other than public health, specifically that covid is being used as cover to prepare for an economic collapse.

    I also speculated that their visceral hatred and irrational behavior towards Russia may have been caused by Russia refusing to participate in their covid plans.

    I seems I may be wrong on my Russia speculation. Riley Waggaman today took a deep dive into the history of Russia’s covid policies. Although Russia charted a path independent of the west, they made most of the same mistakes, which can also be explained in the context of planning for a reset.

    I am paying attention to people like Dr. Weinstein and Dr. Malone, who are much smarter and more knowledgeable about covid than me, for alternate theories to explain what’s going on. As far as I can tell they know something big is going on but they don’t know what it is. Because they are in denial of our overshoot predicament this makes me think that my “covid is cover for collapse prep” theory remains the most plausible explanation.

    I should add that I don’t know Waggaman so I can’t vouch for him.

    https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/07/investigative-reports/resetting-without-schwab-russia-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

    Are Moscow and Beijing resisting the Davos-endorsed path, or are they building a parallel system using a similar blueprint? Are these two “sustainable development” partners opposed to world governance or do they instead want to be equal “stakeholders” in existing and future global superstructures?

    The argument that Moscow is begrudgingly mirroring the West as part of a biothreat-fueled technocratic arms race raises a whole other set of questions. Can Russia responsibly harness technologies that have been abused and misused by western governments? If a PCR test is not fit for purpose in the West, can the same test protect Russia from biological threats as part of its Sanitary Shield program? Is the global adoption of CBDCs an attack on financial freedom in the United States, but a necessary measure to ensure Russia’s economic sovereignty?

    These are the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves as our increasingly chaotic world fragments into seemingly irreconcilable blocs.

    Whether in the East or the West, will the “client path” be fundamentally different?

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  4. My favorite Canadian covid data analyzer, who by the way stays away from conspiracy theories and only looks at official government data, although that data is becoming scarcer because our officials don’t like what it says so are cutting back on the data they make available, is predicting that we will be in a full on pandemic with overloaded hospitals this fall.

    This is consistent with Dr. Bossche’s prediction although I can’t tell if both predictions have the same underlying cause. I left a question in the comments hoping he will discuss any link to Bossche’s prediction.

    https://sheldonyakiwchuk.substack.com/p/a-snapshot-of-the-current-covid-situation

    As more and more provinces remove data on COVID, it’s difficult to actually bust down the stats to see exactly where we are at.

    Of course, this is the intent – they don’t want us to know.

    With that data that is still available is quite troubling and while I hope I am completely wrong, I don’t think we’ve actually seen a true pandemic…nothing like what we will be looking at in the Fall of 2022.

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    1. Hi Rob and all friends,

      Things are starting to go pear shaped even more quickly here down under in Australia with Covid cases spiking in every State and territory more than the initial “waves”. Hospitalizations are increasing steadily, too, although outright deaths from Covid remain small, all cause mortality has increased in every age group throughout this year. Every other week or even once a week, we are reminded on the national news (I read our main news outlet daily just to see what is being filtered down to the masses) that this year’s Covid and flu season is going to get worse as our winter progresses, and Australia’s government has spent mega dollars on a snazzy new advertising campaign called “Take on Winter” to encourage uptake of Booster number 2 (that’s four shots) for everyone over 30. I’m not so sure that is a good proposition, as I would place my bet on Winter having the upper hand any day, especially as fuel prices continue to soar. It is not clear whether or not they are also encouraging the elderly and immunocompromised to take a 5th dose as many already took their fourth earlier this year. The child vaccination campaign continues but uptake is not as robust as they would like in the youngest groups, so we’ll see how they’ll swing that. One territory has changed their testing requirements to 28 days after a previous Covid positive if you have any symptoms of a respiratory infection, meaning that they are admitting that people are now regularly getting re-infected in shorter time frames. Tasmania has a population of 525,000 and the official Covid cases by testing is now 210,000 which really means easily double that as many have not tested, so practically everyone in the State has gotten it or more likely, a good number of people have gotten Covid twice or three times, all within the space of a few months. Even with reduced testing and confounding with high number of flu cases, we are averaging now 1700 cases a day and climbing (so double this at least) which is about the same as the peak back in March when more people were tested. And we’re only just into winter as the population’s Vit D status is just starting to wane. It looks like Geert’s theory is still holding course, very sorry to say but not at all surprised.

      (For what it’s worth, no-one in our little 3 person household has officially gotten Covid, my husband had two shots but my mother and I are unvaccinated. I have been exposed to many people but I haven’t had a cold or flu in more years than I can count on my fingers. Since Covid, we do rinse our noses after every foray out to the public, but I think the main thing is doing the right things to stay healthy–proper food, rest, fresh air, sunshine, and physical exercise, preferably in natural surrounds. Nothing new here, and if any one is interested in what I eat and why, you only need to ask. I thought about entering this topic several times when the opportunity seemed to arise, but something told me to just wait and observe.)

      Add to this our repeated major interest rate hikes of 0.5% each month and our once happy-go-lucky country is poised like Wiley Coyote jumping off the cliff, this is the moment when we’re spinning our legs as fast as we can before the free-fall.

      For the past several years we have been trying to get our mortgage down as much as we can as fast as we can, and in another parallel universe we may have just made it before collapse. But for what purpose now? For the past couple months, we have been borrowing back from our paid-ahead mortgage fund to buy all manner of goods and food whilst we still can. The solar generator even at a couple grand is worth more to us in the hand than any more excess money we can funnel into the bank’s coffers at this time. I am trying to balance stocking up hand tools with battery powered tools, but for the garden, there is always the need for good quality tools that can be sharpened. For everyone who is scythe minded, this is the time to invest in several kits, and don’t forget having a left handed snath around for the south paws! Even if we are not physically able to scythe for hours a day, there will be others who can and need to. 5 gallon buckets with lids will be a very important commodity, I recommend everyone stocking up on these for food storage, water carriage, and yes, collection of human urine and manure. And hopefully in due course, you will have a bountiful harvest to pick and carry back from the field, overflowing from the buckets.

      Just another idea, this is a good time to obtain whatever musical instrument you ever wanted to play or used to play as a child, and some books to learn from and music to play. If you can fit it into your small homes, a piano will be a morale-boosting addition, usually someone knows how to play and if you’re lucky, you or someone you know can play by ear, and gathering together to sing around the piano will probably be a much comforting past time, just as it was in days of yore.

      All the best, everyone. If for some reason we are disconnected in the near future, I just want to say again how much comfort and joy being part of this group for this short while has meant to me, and thank you all. All gratitude to Rob for bringing us together and being brave to live and share his convictions so we might do the same.

      As for my name–well, I could tell you but that’s not important now. I am just a fellow earthling wanderer like you.
      Gaia is our home and gardening seems what we humans now need to do, in a more wise, compassionate, gentle, and generous fashion. It seems more than fitting to call myself that now as I aspire to become more skilful and wonder-filled trying to live up to my chosen name.

      Namaste.

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      1. Thank you Gaia for a most interesting update from Australia and for the excellent preptips.

        I would be interested someday to hear about your diet.

        FYI, I am unvaccinated, have never been tested for covid, and have not had any illness of any kind since covid began.

        P.S. In case anyone is wondering, I try to include the unique word “preptip” in any useful content for collapse preparation to make it easier to find it later with search engines.

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  5. Nice round-up of global economic problems with a focus on energy and food from friend Panopticon.

    https://climateandeconomy.com/2022/07/12/12th-july-2022-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/

    Rising Social Unrest Over Energy, Food Shortages Threatens Global Stability…

    “This increasing level of instability resulting from rising fuel shortages, supply chain disruptions and the rapidly-escalating prices that inevitably result are now creating food shortages that have placed hundreds of millions of individuals in developing nations around the world under a very real threat of starvation.”

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    1. Thanks, I wrote this review of Harari’s Sapiens book in 2015:

      Yuval Harari’s Sapiens

      I thought I found some support for Varki’s denial theory in a new book by Yuval Harari titled Sapiens.

      Harari makes the case that humans dominate the planet because we cooperate and we cooperate because we are uniquely able to construct and believe fictional stories.

      This is no doubt part of the story but misses the bigger picture and lacks a satisfying explanation for why.

      We dominate for many reasons. Cooperation yes, but also sophisticated symbolic language, ability to manage many relationships, forward planning, analytic skills, long term memory, learning ability, etc. All of these things fall under the umbrella of CPU power.

      The important question to be answered is, why did only one small group of one species in Africa evolve this higher CPU power, despite many similar species being exposed to the same selection pressures?

      Varki provides a plausible answer. Harari does not.

      And of course, why with this exceptional CPU power do we believe in wacky economic theories and even wackier religions but not climate change or peak oil or almost anything that matters?

      Again, Varki provides an answer. Harari does not.

      I then re-read his book and wrote this updated review in 2020:

      Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (revisited)

      After watching this book sit near the top of popular book lists for several years I thought I should re-read it to see if I missed something. I posted the following refreshed review on Goodreads.

      Another fine example of Panglossian cognitive dissonance in the tradition of Pinker’s Enlightenment Now and Ridley’s Rational Optimist.

      Harari gets everything right except what matters: human overshoot and the total dependence of everything he admires about humans on rapidly depleting non-renewable resources.

      Harari does seem to get the fact we’re trashing other species and the planet but then leaves that thought unfinished and shifts to an abundant future with genetically engineered humans and artificial intelligence.

      By pandering to and reinforcing the human tendency to deny unpleasant realities it’s no wonder his book is popular.

      Despite being very well read he’s just another clever monkey in denial.

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  7. El Gato is seeing the same bad trend in the data as other truth seekers and as Dr. Bossche predicted.

    I repeat, where are the intellects of comparable quality that support current policies?

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/higher-vaccine-rates-associated-with

    higher vaccine rates associated with greater rise in hospitalization
    if vaccines work to stop severe outcomes, then why aren’t they working?

    the bottom line is we’re seeing exactly what we would expect if variants were now homing in preferentially on the vaccinated and either becoming more severe for them or (more likely in my view) still providing some protection level of zero or greater but more than swamping it by making contracting covid more likely.

    the fact that variance by vaxx level is so much greater in overall than in 70+ bolsters this.

    we’re seeing strong association with more vaxx, greater rise in rates of hospitalization for covid, and more oddly, it’s well out of season in most of the high vaxx states.

    this sudden unseasonable surges pattern is aberrant relative to past covid outcomes which adds further cause for suspicion of new external drivers. (i suspect one could advance an argument about immune exhaustion from repeated boosting here as well)

    july this year vs july last year does not look good and they have already had one big surge that far exceeded last summer. another seems to be beginning both early and from a worryingly high base. this starts to look more an more like a virus “jumping the banks” due to herd immune fixation and/or a people less and less able to resist it. one would always expect to see that signal most in the oldest whose generalized immune systems are less capable and thus cannot pick up the slack from inapt antibody response.

    i realize i’m becoming a bit of a one note flute here, but this signal just keeps popping up everywhere in completely independent data series.

    i’m not sure any one can rise to the standard of “proof” but as a mosaic, especially given what we know about the underlying biology, this starts to get awfully compelling to ignore.

    the simple fact that this vaccine program is not working on society scale is getting far to obvious to ignore.

    if we could get any health agencies interested in actually stepping up and assessing this, then we could all go grab a beer and put our feet up, but as it appears they are disinclined to do so, the pulling of threads is left to us.

    and so we shall.

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    1. So far, here in NZ, I haven’t seen the higher hospitalisation, ICU or death rate, because of vaccinations but I don’t see any benefit to the vaccines, with omicron. It appears as though vaccination currently is a zero benefit decision (whether there are increased risks is open for debate). However, that may be due to change as our health ministry has just corrected downwards the hospitalisations and ICUs that are unvaccinated. It may turn out that being unvaccinated gives one a higher risk of hospitalisation and ICU from COVID-19. Or it may have been a one day typo. Not enough info on deaths yet.

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  8. Very interesting mega-thread from Dr. Tim Garrett today in which he discusses the implications of classifying sandwiches and wine as capital rather than consumption.

    So why then is inflation rising now? Two reasons. We try to grow access to new reserves that sustain us but can’t. It’s just too hard because they aren’t there.

    Or, depreciation of what we have previously produced is rising due to physical decay, perhaps due to climate damages.

    Both decay and decreased reserve discovery are things we can expect to increase this century. This is why I think long-term inflation is here to stay, and eventually hyper-inflation will kick in as we enter the phase of civilization collapse.

    Is there a solution to inflation? It’s tricky. Finding lot’s of new energy will help, for a while, because the bigger we get the faster we need to find the resources.

    Or we could address inflation by solving the climate crisis, but that’s hard to do if we’re busy addressing inflation by looking for new energy.

    I think we’re stuck, but at least we have a means now of understanding why inflation is a thing, tied to the major forces of this century, resource depletion and climate change.

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  9. I remain fascinated with the centrality of energy to everything we value, and the aggressive denial of that centrality.

    I have in the past pointed out the top 2 commodities by value are:
    – coffee: energy for our brain
    – oil: energy for everything else

    Today I saw another interesting observation from Grant Williams that the only two asset classes that are positive this year are:
    – hydrocarbons
    – carbohydrates

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    1. Pure energy! Energy is the economy. Currency is a proxy for ‘ability to burn energy’. The basics of life that very few seem to understand

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    1. LOL, I don’t even know what a troll is so you can relax.

      I watched it twice because I so want it to be related to Varki’s theory but I honestly don’t understand the message of the video.

      Would someone less dense than me please explain it.

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      2. Hey there Rob,
        I’m not less dense than you, but just a different kind of dense so I perceive some things in another way. Here I will try my best to explain what I saw in this diversion offered by our friend the Mandrake.

        This clip was sort of amusing because of the repetitive droll monotone “I don’t deny it” response for everything that you could just simply say “yes” to instead. Somehow that double negative answer makes it more sophisticated or serious sounding and causes one to pause to wonder what the responder really means, when a simple “yes or no” would have sufficed.
        For example, when the woman figure asked the man “is this ugly” referring to her outfit, and he responded “I don’t deny it” and she bursts into tears because that means he is really saying yes, that is ugly. She probably expected him to say “no, you look great” but not only did he not say that, it came out in a totally unanticipated way. That is what is supposed to be humorous. I think a large part of the comical factor is in the presentation using these toy figurines, whatever they’re called. They always have a plastered on smiling expression even when matched up to whatever voiceover words in any tone from solemn to facetious.

        The whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with your brand of undenial and certainly Varki’s theory is not even in the same universe as this little production’s reason for existence, which I believe is just pure light-hearted fun.

        Hope that helps explain what I see in it, for what it’s worth. I must say that on a scale of 1-10 for humour for me, this one doesn’t even rate but Mandrake chose it obviously because of its distinguished title of Undenial. I think you should think about copyrighting that before others start to bandy it about without appreciating the total seriousness of its implications.

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        2. I’m pretty sure Rob was being “un-serious” with his response & playing along with the whole denial schtick in a Dead Parrot sketch kind of way. Cause Rob knows what a troll is. Every blogger does.

          Yeah the clip is totally unrelated to Varki other than the title. Maybe if you watched it 100 times you might see an association but only because you’re tired and starting to hallucinate. Anyhow, I thought Rob might find it useful to know that the search term “un-denial” brings up some surprising results.

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          1. Thanks, glad I didn’t miss something.

            For the record, my brain doesn’t have a troll category for people.

            Categories I use for people I wish would stay away from this blog include rude, crazy, and stupid, but never troll.

            Fortunately we haven’t had any undesirable people here for quite a while.

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  11. Nate Hagens interviewed Joseph Tainter today.

    https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/27-joe-tainter

    Joe Tainter has been a professor at Utah State University in the Environment and Society Department since 2007, serving as Department Head from 2007 to 2009. His study of why societies collapse led to research on sustainability, with emphasis on energy and innovation. He has also conducted research on land-use conflict and human responses to climate change. He has written several books, including The Collapse of Complex Societies and Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma.

    Key highlights:

    Hagens: Are you aware of any civilization that decided to consume less than all available resources?
    Tainter: No

    Hagens: Are you aware of any civilizations that voluntarily decided to simplify?
    Tainter: No

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    2. This is succinct and exactly what I’ve been trying to get across to the enviro-optimists. This is because humans are a species. That species has a characteristic behaviour that can’t be voluntarily changed and, as far as resources go, they act like most other species, using all the resources they can at ever increasing rates until the availability of those resources stops them from doing that. Then there is a die-off. It doesn’t matter that humans may be the only species that knows it is doing this, they (sorry, we) can’t help themselves.

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      1. Your are correct and yet we have a uniquely powerful intelligence capable of calculating that our behavior will cause great harm to ourselves and loved descendants.

        The interesting question is, how did evolution selectively disable intelligence so that we behave no different than yeast when it comes to overshoot?

        I of course think Varki’s MORT provides the answer to both this question, and importantly, why we have a uniquely rare and powerful intelligence.

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    3. I didn’t have the chance yet to listen to this latest podcast but I already beg to differ on Tainter’s conclusion that no known civilization has learned balance with its environment. Here in Australia, and there in the Americas, I believe we have supreme examples of peoples who have lived in greater harmony with their environment for millennia, the Aboriginals of this Great Southern Land (60,000 years and more), and the First Nations of the Americas. They most certainly did not consume all available resources otherwise they would not have experienced such long continuous culture, until of course colonization happened. I think they did voluntarily simplify, or rather, it was inherent in their philosophy that all of Nature was interwoven and ultimately One, and no one element was superior to another so to take more than necessary was a cardinal transgression to the natural order of things.

      I suppose Tainter is not considering these premiere cultures to be “civilizations” because they did not organise into city-states with agriculture and permanent buildings? The hubris of our flash-in-the-pan dominant Western civ to label thus! How much there is to learn from humans who have chosen the Great Simplification from the beginning of their development as we are now forced back, kicking and screaming, into some semblance of balance in an environment we have already thrown akimbo. When I brave it to consider that our Western paradigm has utterly extirpated so many other forms of human societal experiments, some of which harken back in continuous existence of tens of thousands of years, I am reduced to only silence and shame. Yes, we have our technology, our monuments, our piercing into atoms and outer space, but they are going along with us in a blink and what do we have left to show for all that has transpired? A trail of tears and suffering which we already forced many upon, and now it is our turn to walk in their wake.

      This brings up something coming into my consciousness–do you think MORT applies to all human societal formations or just the ones that became dominant in and controlling of their environment? It is very interesting to contemplate if this theory holds across all human cultures. If white colonization of the Australian Aboriginals did not happen, let’s pretend there would never be any contact from the outer world, and the physical environment remained the same, then what would prevent a culture of 60,000 years from continuing? I’m not saying the original cultures didn’t have their forms of denial, but something in their make-up allowed for them to exist in relative balance with their environment, even the most challenging and changing, in a reproduceable culturally distinct way for many thousandfold years than we can claim for the dawn of our own branch of civilizations. Why can we not admit or honour this unequivocal success and how dare we deem it a primitive existence as if it is a reduced form of humanity? What very important lessons are there to learn from this before it becomes even more late?

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      1. 1) Would your belief that sustainable civilizations have existed change if we added the qualifier “consumed only what available technologies permitted”? If no, please provide the name of your favorite sustainable civilization and then let’s do some research to determine if your belief is true.

        2) Varki’s MORT theory applies to all 8 billion behaviorally modern humans who descended from a single group in Africa that experienced simultaneous mutations for an extended theory of mind plus a tendency to deny unpleasant realities about 100,000 years ago.

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      2. Yes, I’m sure the aboriginal groups wouldn’t have been thought of as a civilisation, for the reason you mentioned. I understand civilisations to be based on cities.

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    4. Those questions are irrelevant. You might as well ask;

      Are you aware of any current civilizations that consume human flesh?
      Tainter: No, but we have massive amounts of grain to stuff into the population.

      Are you aware of any civilizations that voluntarily decided to keep their population ignorant by piling on lie after lie from kindergarten to PhD thus making sure they don’t make the right decisions and act better?
      Tainter: Only the US and its hangers on.

      We live in the modern world where we have the ability to know what needs to be done but are not allowed to to do it because it would mean the end of the massive wealth that allows 1% of the population to walk the planet as GODS!

      I will put words into Tainters mouth;

      Hagens: Are you aware of any civilization that decided to consume less than all available resources?
      Tainter: No because they had no idea there is only a finite amount just like NOW!

      Hagens: Are you aware of any civilizations that voluntarily decided to simplify?
      Tainter: No because all the media and information everyone receives says we don’t need to and in fact encourages that we do MORE!

      I will ask the right question;

      Will anyone simplify or consume less resources or mandate that that happens when it means loss of jobs, income, money, food, housing, healthcare?

      NO!

      Nothing changes until we change how money works.

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  12. Dr. Bret Weinstein interviewed Dr. Mattias Desmet today.

    Bret Speaks with Mattias Desmet on the subject of mass formation, a topic Mattias has spent a great deal of time exploring and has written a recent book on (The Psychology of Totalitarianism), linked below. They tackle this process from their differing backgrounds of expertise and discuss what it suggests about our path into the future.

    P.S. Desmet’s new book is available for download at the usual sites.

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    1. I agree with both of them that a mass formation probably explains the insane covid behavior of the majority.

      They did not discuss whether the mass formation emerged spontaneously or was encouraged by senior leaders with an agenda other than public health. You already know that my opinion is that our leaders deliberately stoked the insanity to prepare tools necessary for managing an economic collapse. I acknowledge that I might be wrong and that our senior leaders may also simply be caught up in the insanity. There are historical examples of both deliberate and spontaneous mass formations so it could be either.

      I disagree with both Weinstein and Desmet on the forces that enable a mass formation.

      Desmet has a social sciences background and looks to things like social isolation and a lack of purpose as the enabling forces. Desmet also has a touch of woo and so dismisses science’s ability to explain everything.

      Weinstein is a hard sciences guy and is seeking a evolutionary explanation for mass formations. Trouble is, Weinstein is in denial of our overshoot predicament and so does not see things clearly.

      As for me, I only have a single hammer in my toolkit, and so everything looks like a MORT nail. 🙂

      I think a mass formation is an evolved behavior of social species with an extended theory of mind that causes groups to align around some belief creating a fitness advantage that results from less conflict and more cooperation.

      Religions are of course the most obvious example of a mass formation. All religions began with a core belief in life after death to reinforce our genetic need to deny mortality, and then evolved into more elaborate belief systems to further aid the success of the group.

      It matters not a whit to evolution if the belief is true or not. What matters is that everyone who believes it belongs to the same club and follows the same rules. This explains why most people don’t care what the data says about vaccine effectiveness and safety.

      Mass formations can turn ugly when the group senses danger from a threat like a virus. Doubly so if that group has been primed to be nasty to other groups via signals that scarcity is imminent, like a falling standard of living or wacky weather.

      Because our species evolved to deny unpleasant realities, we seek someone to blame for the symptoms of overshoot, like the unvaccinated and the Russians.

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  13. Interesting discussion by Erik Townsend on the US strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) starting at 39:55.

    The SPR is being significantly drawn down for the first time in 50 years, right before the first time in 50 years that the SPR might be required for its original purpose. Putin again seems to be winning the global chess game.

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  16. In the original post above I encouraged readers to provide any bad covid decisions I missed because I want the list to be as complete as possible to demonstrate just how badly our “leaders” screwed up, and continue to screw up.

    A reader sent me a list of 21 more bad decisions compiled by Dr. Vinay Prasad. I have appended Dr. Prasad’s list to the post above.

    I like Dr. Prasad’s fairness and integrity by only listing those items for which a functioning brain looking at evidence available at the time would know was wrong.

    https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/a-checklist-for-covid-policy

    Welcome to my Substack. I’m Vinay Prasad, and I am a hematologist oncologist and Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco. In these pages, you will get my thoughts on medicine, cancer, health policy, evidence and whatever is in the news. Hopefully, by reading, you will become better at critical appraisal of medicine, and thinking through policy issues.

    I run a Youtube Channel, and, I host and cohost the podcasts – Plenary Session, and the VPZD show.

    I have written 2 books: Ending Medical Reversal (w Adam Cifu) about all the flip-flops in biomedicine and Malignant, about cancer drug policy. I have also published more than 350 peer reviewed articles, which you can check out here.

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  18. Canadian “leaders” are either evil or stupid.

    https://sheldonyakiwchuk.substack.com/p/theyre-coming-for-your-children-and

    Health Canada approves first COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 5

    Simply disgusting…

    I’ve threaded out all of the data showing why this is a terrible fucking idea but unfortunately won’t be able to jam it all into one Substack – without a Twitter Account, you can still see the breakdown here:

    What we are already seeing and have already seen in relation to the Vaccines has moved past Gross Negligence and is now simply pre-meditated murder. Coming after infants is the most disgusting of it all.

    Shameful day for Health Canada.

    Shameful day to be a Canadian.

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  19. Isn’t it interesting that the few people who understand the importance of energy and the impossibility of sustaining 8 billion people without abundant fossil energy never discuss the only thing that will help: population reduction.

    Instead they criticize government policies intended to move us away from fossil energy while ignoring the implications of continuing to depend on a depleting non-renewable resource.

    https://doomberg.substack.com/p/running-from-empty

    Until quite recently, Sri Lanka was a pretty good country. With a GDP-per-capita exceeding $4,000 in 2018, the World Bank classified it as an “Upper Middle-Income” nation. As benchmarks, consider that Ukraine had a GDP-per-capita of roughly $3,000 in the same year, and India about $2,000. As is widely known by now, Sri Lanka has undergone what can only be described as a complete societal collapse – its government in chaos and its desperate citizens rioting in the streets.

    To some, the fact that Sri Lanka achieved a “near-perfect ESG score” and then collapsed is ironic. To us, it is causal. For all the nuanced specifics involved, including government corruption, insane fertilizer bans, and submission to foreign know-it-all experts, at its core, Sri Lanka collapsed because it flubbed its energy policy. Fertilizer and food are nothing more than derivatives of energy – rather important ones at that – and Sri Lanka stands as powerful evidence that energy is indeed life, and the absence of energy is death. As videos of Sri Lankan citizens ransacking their Presidential Palace went viral on Twitter, we could not help but feel a deep sadness. Absent a massive and urgent intervention by international aid organizations (which does not seem forthcoming), no amount of protesting will win Sri Lanka’s citizens a reprieve. Akin to passengers scrambling through the banquet halls of the Titanic, their fate is sealed. Mass starvation and unthinkable suffering undoubtedly await.

    For more than a decade, Germany has been doing its best Rajapaksa impersonation in pursuit of its disastrous Energiewende policy, a plan meant to transition the country to a “low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply.” Despite investing several hundred billion Euros implementing Energiewende, the plan has delivered the opposite of those things. Germany had among the most expensive electricity in the developed world prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another strong causal relationship that radical environmentalists refuse to acknowledge. Germany has severely damaged its manufacturing base, eroded its geopolitical power, and risked its people’s literal future in pursuit of Energiewende. Surely, Germany is not in jeopardy of replicating Sri Lanka’s collapse, are they? While the country has a deeper buffer between it and the abyss than Sri Lanka did, it is closer than many would like to admit.

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  20. this might strike a chord with some

    “The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with fools,” Herbert Spencer

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  21. Today’s interview by Rachel Donald of Mike Joy will be of interest to the many thousands of New Zealander’s, who for some unknown reason, lurk at un-Denial.

    https://www.planetcritical.com/p/its-not-just-a-climate-crisis-mike#details

    Mike Joy is a freshwater ecologist and Senior Researcher at IGPS Victoria University of Wellington. He has been working for two decades at the interface of science and policy in New Zealand with a goal of strengthening connections between science, policy and real outcomes to address the multiple environmental issues facing New Zealand.

    He explains the multiple links between New Zealand’s dairy industry and environmental damage—giving a fantastic example of what a systems problem looks like in a real-world context—before diving into an analysis of the correlation between human and planetary health.

    Mike Joy seems to be an intelligent overshoot aware person and he does a nice job of demolishing the myth that New Zealand is a green haven in the world.

    Rachael Donald seems to be an idealistic young person in denial seeking a path to sustainability that does not require her to do hard labor in a farm field.

    Joy is a kind person who on several occasions tried to gently nudge Donald into a more reality based view of our predicament, without success of course, because genetic denial is so powerful.

    Some of the interesting facts about New Zealand that Joy discussed include:
    – NZ is the largest exporter of dairy products in the world.
    – Most of the dairy is exported as powdered milk which requires NZ to import and burn coal to dry the milk.
    – The powdered milk is mostly used by other countries to make junk food.
    – To feed the cows, NZ is the largest importer of palm kernel which is the residue from producing palm oil.
    – A lot of Haber-Bosch fertilizer made from imported natural gas is used to fertilize the grass fed to cows.
    – Nitrogen runoff from the fertilizer and cow’s urine has polluted most of the fresh water that NZ’s 5 million people drink.
    – As a consequence, NZ has the highest rate of colon cancer in the world.

    Joy did not mention that New Zealand’s population has grown from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 since 1950.

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    2. Nice summary Rob. Mike is a real hero of mine who I’ve learnt a lot from about energy depletion and overshoot. He was pretty subdued and indeed very kind to Rachael. He’s generally much more fired up on his media interviews social media posts and comments where his frustrations over the lack of action by our leaders bubbles over.

      I was surprised about how hopeful Rachael was given the people she has interviewed so far.

      Here’s a shortish (14 minutes) documentary about the dairying issue in our South Island that features Mike.

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      1. Nate Hagens has used dairy farming as an extreme example of how a lot of energy and capital have been used to replace labor with technology to achieve amazing productivity.

        I remember as a kid helping to milk one cow twice a day by hand. Then hand cranking a machine to separate the cream. Then cleaning everything by hand. It was very hard work and took several hours every day.

        Now everything is automated and totally dependent on affordable energy and a complex global supply chain for parts.

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        1. Same for me as a kid. My mother did the milking though and I got to spin the butter churn. Very grateful to my parents and their self-sufficiency period. We had bugger all stuff and what we did get was mostly secondhand but life was good.

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  23. To you (?), to us, this video is then both dumb and … criminal:

    It is in the top twenty youtube videos when searching for “human extinction”.

    Fortunately, this one came before:

    (I don’t know how much youtube answers are individualised and vary from day to day, though) I didn’t see this movie, so was surprised to see it address our favourite topic so accurately. In truth, everybody knows, but nobody wants to admit. Denial, you said. Eh eh eh.

    Yes denial, but maybe not because it is a necessity for intelligence. But, maybe just because it’s a necessary transition phase to transform our global enlightenment-based materialistic culture. A culture can only get so far against the forces of Reality.

    So, let me propose an alternative theory… (Anyway, finding a cause, is only to agree on a narration, a myth, because Reality is both much more complex and beautiful than our tiny brain experiments: is there rain because of gravity or the nature of water and air?)
    Reality is fundamentally incomprehensible both at the individual brain level, and at the cultural level. But, in order to function as a society, we must agree on some kind of common logic, values, narration. As long as the common “model” fits our collective experience of Reality, then everything is fine. But, when, ineluctably, we get to the limits of the model, then we must change our collective explanation for the world. But this takes time. There is inertia. Inertia is sometimes a good thing: a model that would be too volatile would not be practical for a society to function.

    And that’s how we get seemingly irrational answers to covid. It’s totally rational as long as we read the answer in light of the old model: triumph of reason over nature, trust in human agency, technology better than natural solutions, success and profit, fear of death, irresponsibility. But it’s at odds with Reality.
    Maybe I am not saying anything fundamentally different than Mattias Desmet… I don’t believe there is some global conspiracy (Lobbying, corruption, silence of media, etc, exist on a massive scale. But the process is not radically different than before). What is making it impressive is the globality. But, that’s because we are almost a complete world-culture monocrop of humans. We all think the same, have similar institutions and are using incredibly powerful megaphones to communicate.

    I see the covid response as an episode in a long and slow process. The society is looking for a new way to make sense of the world. And by the way, the new culture will most probably not be uniform. What’s in our head must reflect our local living conditions.
    I guess, that’s how collapse looks like… It does not fit the expectation of the 1970s to 2000s doomers. That’s why life is full of surprise and worth living 🙂

    Just my 2 cents… (This is all only for entertainment: ultimately there is no explanation as to why things are. Explanation is just stating what we personally believe to be important, because in truth, Reality exists. And is not for our tiny brains to seize in Its entirety. Layer upon layer of causes and effects. Thee are millions ways to see the same object)

    By the way, thank you for maintaining this blog, with its small intelligent community. It is entertaining and enriching.

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  24. Sid Smith today released chapter 3 of his “HTETEOTW: How to Enjoy the End of the World” series.

    Chapter 3 of this series links the previous videos on energy and complexity to the development of civilization, and shows why our own civilization is so unique in human history.

    TERMS AND CONCEPTS INTRODUCED

    1. “Dissipative Structure”—A physical system that is dynamically structured by energy that fluxes through it from an external source.
    2. “Metabolism”—The use of energy for physical and system maintenance.
    3. “Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE)”—The proportion of captured energy that must be used to obtain more energy.
    4. “Excess energy”—The energy left over, if any, after paying for both metabolism and the energy cost of energy.
    5. “Anabolism”—The use of excess energy by a system to increase its size or complexity.
    6. “Energy Return on Investment”—The inverse of the Energy Cost of Energy; the number of units of energy captured for each unit of energy invested in capturing energy.
    7. “Maximum Entropy Production Principle”—The empirical observation that dissipative structures tend to develop in ways that reduce the energy gradient that sustains them as quickly as possible.
    8. “Watt”—A unit of measure of energy.
    9. “Watt-hour”—A unit of measure of the power of a system, of its potential to perform work; the practical application of one Watt of energy for one hour of time.

    REFERENCES AND RESOURCES:

    ECoE and EROI overview:
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332219302209

    Civilizations, definition and history:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization

    How fossil fuel is created:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel

    Human Power:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power

    Energy in a barrel of oil:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_of_oil_equivalent

    Here are chapters 1 & 2 if you missed them:

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      1. I agree, Smith’s very wise and insightful.

        I’ve never spoken to Smith about MORT and I don’t recall every trying to bring MORT to his attention although I may have in the early days with a comment on one of his videos. 99.99% of the time my attempts vanish into the denial of denial vacuum.

        I’m still hopeful that we’ll see an interview by Nate Hagens of Aji Varki soon which will be VERY interesting since Hagens doesn’t buy the MORT theory.

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  25. Alice Friedemann takes a deep dive today into why Canada’s oilsands will not fix overshoot.

    She concludes by predicting that we’ll deny reality to the bitter end.

    https://energyskeptic.com/2022/oilsands-are-not-a-solution/

    I thought I’d republish this post since peak oil was likely in 2018, and shortages are appearing, even if only attributed to political events, such as Europe from lack of Russian coal, oil, and gas. China is past peak coal production and facing coal shortages and low quality coal that are halting andor slowing down production at numerous factories, including those supplying Apple and Tesla. Chinese aluminum production has gone down 7%, cement production 29%, as well as steel, paper, chemicals, dyes, furniture, soymeal, and glass production (Singh 2021). This will only make Europe’s shortages worse as China will pay whatever price it takes to import coal, oil, and LNG (liquefied natural gas).

    In addition, Tad Patzek, former chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, found that energy-content-wise, global coal peak may have occurred in 2011. By 2050, remaining coal will provide only half as much energy as today, and carbon emissions from coal will decline 50 % by 2050. Patzek used the same Hubbert methods that successfully predicted peak oil to come to this conclusion (Patzek et al. 2010).

    Energy quality matters — China is importing and burning even more coal in power plants, but it is low quality coal that burns up faster, producing less electricity (Singh 2021).

    So as the crisis worsens, tarsands aren’t likely to help with the energy crisis.

    If the electric grid is still up, I hope historians will also find this post and the energy forum discussions at the end of interest. The coming energy crisis has been in discussion with thousands of people all over the world since 2000 on the world wide web, and before that on university internet forums, with professors, geologists, ecologists, and the well-educated public. I rarely show these discussions in my posts but I perhaps should, I expect there’ll be a lot of blame at some point, especially on oil companies and other nations, with still no acknowledgement that oil, coal, and natural gas are finite and will eventually run out!

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  26. In a way, the extremely blind European energy policy with respect to Ukraine may be a blessing.

    People do not want to/can not change their collective behaviour while everything goes (rather seems to be going) fine.

    Without energy, without imports, without industry, without transport, we will have to rely on local production, we can not pump the aquifer, we become dependent on the health of the environment and manual labour.

    It is about time, we collectively go back to sanity, because with current practices all the Mediterranean region is becoming a desert fast. Climate change, soil erosion, desertification seem to me (in the long run) a greater existential threat than loss of energy.

    We have unfortunately reached a point where we can’t avoid mass suffering and ensure long term species existence… Pick one (maybe none).

    At this point, if the species truly wants to survive, it must find its place in the living planet. Our true ecological niche. As small initiatives to green back the desert show, we can be life enablers.

    But it is a lot of hard work and humility. Not a strong point of empires…

    It’s time for reconciliation because nobody wins the war against nature (the insanity of us against all, the insanity of objectification, of idolatry, of identification).

    This is my dream. The dream of Dune (of the fremen and imperial planetologist Liet-Kynes)

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    1. Thanks Charles. You are correct that humans usually don’t change unless forced to change.

      The top news story this morning from BBC, CBC, CTV, and Al Jazeera was the heatwave and fires in Europe.

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  27. Kurt Cobb today reviews the latest estimates of oil reserves and discoveries:
    – Total oil reserves have fallen about 10% for each of the last 3 years.
    – Annual oil consumption of about 30 billion barrels has exceeded annual discoveries of about 10 billion barrels for each of the last 10 years.
    – Last year the industry discovered the lowest amount of oil and gas combined since 1946.

    Can you spot the trend?

    Cobb concludes by discussing our denial of the trends and he predicts a recession:

    The optimists tell us that this will soon all be reversed. They have been saying that for a decade. In the meantime the price of oil—which was already rising before the Russian/Ukraine conflict—has vaulted upward. The ultimate effect may be a deep recession. Some 10 out of the last 11 post World War II recessions have been preceded by spikes in the price of oil.

    Does anyone else think it’s odd that so many people have been predicting a recession for so long and yet our central banks have somehow found a way to prevent it? It used to be that recessions were common and no big deal. Now they are fighting to prevent a recession like our lives depend on it.

    My theory is that our debt is now so high, interest rates already so low, and the barriers to growth so strong, that any “recession” will result in a depression far worse than the 1929-32 Great Depression and our leaders are scared to death which explains their covid responses and their silence on the matter.

    http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2022/07/energy-consultancy-keeps-lowering.html

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    1. Mac10 seems to agree with me.

      STARING DOWN THE BARREL OF COLLAPSE

      …even if it’s true that inflation is peaking – which is far from certain: Currently, the Fed rate is at 1.5% on its way most likely to 2.25% (.75%) or 2.5% (1%) this month. However, WHY would the Fed stop hiking rates at 2.5% when THEY know full well that they cannot offset a recession with that small amount of rate cut firepower? In other words, if they have to start cutting rates in 2023 will they want to start from a level of 2.5%? No.

      History informs us that the LEAST amount of rate cuts required to offset a recession in the past 50 years is 5% in both 2000 and 2007. In 2020, the Fed had only 2.5% of rate cut dry powder but they also had unlimited QE AND record fiscal stimulus.

      The 1990 recession was considered a “soft landing” but it took 7% of rate hikes to create that soft landing scenario. Otherwise, logic dictates it would not have been a soft landing.

      Which means the Fed is now on the horns of a very dangerous dilemma. Do they continue to hike rates and ACCELERATE recession, or do they backoff rate hikes and have insufficient dry powder ahead of recession?

      https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2022/07/staring-down-barrel-of-collapse.html

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  29. This is a wise and loving discussion today on vaccine (un)safety between two heroes of the covid debacle, Dr. Jessica Rose and Dr. Tess Lawrie.

    https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/tess-talks-with-warrior-jessica-rose

    Tess Talks with Dr Jessica Rose
    The covid genetic vaccine pharmacovigilance data and why warriors cry

    Dr. Jessica Rose is a Canadian researcher with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and a master’s degree in immunology. She also holds a PhD in computational biology and two postdoctoral degrees in molecular biology and chemistry.

    Over the past two years she has been studying the US’ Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) data and sounding the alarm about Covid-19 vaccine harms. In this frank and open conversation, we compare notes on what we’re seeing in pharmacovigilance databases and what the vaccines are actually doing to people. It’s a challenging topic but it does hold a message of hope for the future.

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    1. It’s a very common form of genetic reality denial that involves blaming something that can be fixed by simply voting for a different political belief rather than accepting the reality of overshoot and the dramatic reduction in standard of livings and birth rates that must occur to reduce the coming suffering.

      The human brain can’t comprehend a reality with no happy ending and a best case outcome of a less bad future.

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      1. My critique of this would be a too narrow a focus on emissions. Every living person eats enough calories to stay alive. To produce these calories we use more fossil fuels, but also land and non-renewable minerals. Habitat destruction happens all over the world, not just for the 1%. Once we don’t have abundant fossil energy, it will be harder to produce enough food to go around.

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    2. Hi Monk,

      A longer-form, more nuanced read of Ms. Pelsmakers’ views on population:
      https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/26/16356524/the-population-question

      “We already produce enough food for 10 billion people”

      • We need healthy farmers and farming communities. Farmer suicides around the world say that, for many locations, we are not there.
      • Fossil fuels used for food production and distribution will be significantly reduced.
      • Most of the good land is in production.
      • Climate change, soil degradation, pollution and seed manipulation are lowering food quality and quantity.
      • With lower fossil fuel use for transportation in general, there will be an increase in land area needed for feeding traction animals – Dogs, Goats, Ponies, Llamas, Alpacas, Donkeys, Mules, Horses, Reindeer, Camels, Yaks, Oxen, Elephants, etc. (Bicycles have a bright future.)

      “only inhabit a small fraction of livable space”

      • Forty years ago, when I lived four months in rural Burkina Faso, tensions were already rising between nomadic pastoralists and farmers over land use, in addition to villages expanding in to each other’s space.
      • Intact natural systems are important to life and we’ve already taken too much good land for mostly two-legged use. Nature will be taking some back.

      In 2017 Ms. Pelsmakers wrote the UN’s projected population in 2050 would be 9.8 billion. The current projection is 9.7 billion:
      https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population

      I predict the UN estimates will be going down yearly for some time to come.

      Rob’s post from 2017 applies:
      https://un-denial.com/2017/08/04/by-alice-friedemann-why-did-everyone-stop-talking-about-population-immigration/

      More than fifty years ago I read “The Population Bomb” and decided to biologically father one child. Over the years I’ve read more on the subject and believe it’s possible that a long-term, healthy, balanced-with-nature world population of around 1 billion is possible. There are so many ifs and unknowns that the real number may be half or double that.

      Kindness costs us little and can do much good now.

      Thanks and good health, Weogo

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      1. Thank you for sharing. People like yourself are on an uphill battle against the mainstream culture to get these very valid points across

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  32. I’m getting ready to close out this thread so I’ve appended the following statement to the post above.

    17-Jul-2022 Addendum
    I’m worried that a future visitor who does not know me will will read this post and conclude that I’m a wack job and therefore should discount everything else I’ve written. This is a statement to clarify what I actually believe is going on with covid.

    If we assume that our leaders are not evil and/or stupid then there is overwhelming evidence to suggest there’s an agenda other than public health in play for covid policies.

    I believe that some of our most senior leaders with the power to influence lower level leaders are using covid as an excuse to implement tools that will be helpful for maintaining social order during an economic collapse.

    I do not know if these senior leaders deliberately released an engineered virus, or if they are just taking advantage of a mistake made at the Wuhan lab.

    All of the evidence I see supports this “covid is cover for collapse prep” theory, EXCEPT the push to vaccinate children which I cannot explain if we continue to assume our leaders are not evil and/or stupid.

    I proposed above, tongue in cheek, that perhaps the child vaccination push could be explained by a humane population reduction agenda, which I think would be a brilliant thing for our leaders to do, because population reduction is the only path to reducing the suffering that is coming due to human overshoot.

    The problem with this population reduction hypothesis is that I don’t think are leaders are aware or smart or brave enough to try it.

    So to be clear, I do NOT think there is a population reduction agenda in play.

    Which means our leaders must be evil and/or stupid.

    I’m pretty sure Fauci and his gang are corrupt, but I do not think all the collaborating leaders in the world are evil.

    Which leaves stupidity as the only viable explanation for what’s going on with children.

    Stupid behavior can have causes other than a low IQ.

    Stupid behavior can result from our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, like for example, doubling down because “I can’t possibly have supported the biggest blunder in human history”, or from a mass formation al la Mattias Desmet that causes temporary insanity.

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    1. Thank you, Rob, for that cogent summary to wrap up another stimulating thread in this tangled web we’re weaving all together. Let me be the whack job and continue to suggest that all this makes even more sense if one can surmise that all global leaders, stupid or otherwise, are responding to yet a higher agenda which includes controlled economic collapse but in all probability also has a hand in population reduction, the one topic no-one can speak of, not because of stupidity or even denial, but because to overtly raise it would bring on immediate apocalyptic mass anarchy especially in the midst of the planned collapse and reset. The one thing no-one can speak of is usually the most important topic to be looked at that everyone knows about but skirts around the edges for fear of upsetting the apple cart, the proverbial elephant (in this case blue whale?) in the room. Boy am I mixing metaphors here. For population reduction, whether planned or not, especially in the Western countries, has certainly been on the cards these past few years with no end in sight given the continued cases of Covid along with possible immune system collapse and other co-morbidities that seem to be increasing across all age groups, resulting in overloaded health care systems which will lead to more deaths from lack of access.

      If population reduction isn’t on the agenda, then surely the policy would have changed tack even a couple thousandths of a degree by now (like taking an iota worth of vit D would be a start, if not outright encouraging early treatment protocols), and we would have gotten a very different result, but so far, it’s the same BAU rhetoric and policy with how the pandemic is being continued, namely vaccine based and clamping down on any dissent. No-one can be this recalcitrantly stupid without something else driving the decisions, and the question of population is even more fundamental to our predicament than our energy overshoot because that is the root cause . And therefore, the question of forcing through child vaccinations does fit into this–if the vaccine has a significant degree of morbidity and even mortality risk, then it’s open season for all age groups, especially the young generation who will become the breeding population. We all seem to concur that we need to reduce the birth rate as well as increase the death rate to get the job done.

      I can sense that the leaders are hopelessly stuck between Scylla and Charybdis and some are really looking like the strain is getting too much to bear. We will have newcomers soon in all the key arenas to keep up the marathon relay, the baton has already been passed in several countries, including Australia and upcoming UK. Now that the race to the finish has begun, there’s no possibility to turn back. Looking at it from a war footing perspective to save humanity from civilization’s end, these are desperate days indeed and I can be moved to give credit to those leading the charge who must be sweating bullets as well as bleeding tears. There may be no-one to judge whether or not these critical days were the right decision; there will be no winners out of this to write their glorified history. We already know how much we have lost, and have yet to lose.

      Looking forward to another clean slate then. It is a fitting reminder that every day is a chance at renewal and we can all live a complete life within our choices in the time we are given. Go well everyone, and boldly!

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      1. You make a damn good point here Gaia. It’s crazy making to think about how bad our covid response has been.

        If population reduction isn’t on the agenda, then surely the policy would have changed tack even a couple thousandths of a degree by now (like taking an iota worth of vit D would be a start, if not outright encouraging early treatment protocols), and we would have gotten a very different result, but so far, it’s the same BAU rhetoric and policy with how the pandemic is being continued, namely vaccine based and clamping down on any dissent. No-one can be this recalcitrantly stupid without something else driving the decisions, and the question of population is even more fundamental to our predicament than our energy overshoot because that is the root cause.

        I’m of the opinion they’ve calculated the benefits of tools to help manage an economic collapse outweigh the costs of a suboptimal covid response. And I’m sure they had noble hopes for the vaccines in the early days.

        There is another possible explanation for vaccinating children that I don’t think we’ve yet discussed. It seems there is political pressure from some moron parents demanding their children be vaccinated with the same safe and effective vaccines that they enjoy.

        I hope you are right that our leaders are trying to do something about population.

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        1. Hiya Rob,

          Thanks for entertaining my thoughts with equanimity and patience as you have always shown since the first I started to add them here. (Am I getting better with the paragraphing?)

          Apparently, I am not yet totally ready to leave this page although I have already been enthralled by wis.dom’s essay and am eager to continue the conversation there. But your Great Reset button is still too tempting not to push some more.

          I am more than a little bemused that on one hand you are completely disparaged by what our leaders have done and here we are speaking namely of the Covid response but it really applies to just about every policy going now, and yet you are ready to barrack for them if they come up with a population reduction policy. Your earlier suggestion of one possible form, that is mandated abortion after one child, may seem more draconian and heartless to some than a “safe and effective” vaccine which may contribute to more “natural cause” deaths across all ages but still mainly in the oldest population. Unlike China, we who deem ourselves democracy and liberty loving are very far from mandating abortion, and in the strangest twist, the US has almost mandated the opposite. But, to come together as one united globe fighting an unseen enemy such as the Virus, and urging populations to do their duty to get the vaccine to protect self and others, well, that is something every flag waving citizen with conscience can take on board.

          Let’s pretend the leaders really did believe at first that this was the right thing to do given all available information at the time, just like the health policy makers and health care givers. But what is the rationale now? For big Pharma, health ministers, universities, medicos, yes, we can paint them with a profit and loss of reputation, job, or funding brush and probably whitewash most of them, with splatters of mass formation thrown in for colour. I don’t believe for a second that the leaders and above operate on this level– career politicians need to be immune to reputational risks (dare I recall Clinton and his cigar?), their job is always on the way out being limited in terms, and the top ones have a salary for life after their service years.

          I reckon what drives the utmost minority of people into these positions is their conviction that they know best how to run the world and they crave the power and scope to be able to try doing so. The most successful of these most select few need both to be ruthless with single-point dedication as well as harbour a genuine understanding and sympathy for the human condition. I believe they began thinking they wanted to make this world a better place, but at some stage the complexity of it all overran them and every emotional decision needed to be subsumed by expediency. Yet they still have the responsibility and power, so the show must go on, at least on their watch. This takes probably more courage than we can imagine, as I am beginning to finally understand. We think it is a lonely space here, thinking and speaking of questions of overshoot and collapse and population, the whys and wherefores are stimulating discussion indeed. Can you imagine how much lonelier, a moonscape even, it would be to know you have the responsibility and power to try to do something about it for unfathomable numbers of human beings? How is it that we can call them evil or stupid (or both) when we are also stabbing in the dark but our musings are child’s play without the possibility of directly harming anyone? Why are they evil when they might be attempting to enact what we all have agreed must be done (population control, etc..)? Why are we not evil for thinking the same, that human are too numerous and many must decease? We are armchair (laptop) warriors, but would we have the guts to actually decree and follow through a plan so unprecedentedly daunting yet absolutely critical for the survival of not only the human race as we know it, but even the biosphere? Maybe it is our own brand of denial to call someone stupid when we cannot or will not imagine ourselves being able to do what needs to be done.

          Let’s say you are the world leader pretend now, what would you do assuming you know everything you know now and most likely much more (with intelligence inputs on every front)? I know you want to spare suffering and total societal breakdown at all costs and because you accept that MORT is a non-negotiable built-in for the vast majority, you realise things have to be done to and for the masses, not await their waking up from denial and making a concerted choice. May it be that your policies look very similar to what is happening now? Is this what we are asking for but dare not formulate for ourselves and others, especially our own family, country, ethnic group, until we realise we are all just one connected life form? Can you share a bit more of your thinking with me on this?

          I know we are all completely in awe of the images that the James Webb Space Telescope has gifted to us. As unbelievably stunning as they are, I am still most moved by two space images which remind me most of our fragility and utter uniqueness as a living, home planet. You, of course, will know of what I speak, the first is Earthrise taken by astronaut William Anders on the Apollo 8 lunar orbit mission and the other is Pale Blue Dot, not taken by a human at all but by Voyager 1 just before it left our solar system, a farewell portrait of the only home all living things that ever lived, has known. Just thinking of it now in my mind’s eye brings tears of I’m not sure what emotion, probably every kind, but now it is solidifying into overwhelming gratitude just to have had the chance at life here.

          Go well, everyone. Remember to turn around and look upon your Earth once more when you decide to journey into the great beyond! I’ll see you on the next post for now!

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          2. Hi Gaia, I can’t find a relevant definition for “barrack” so am checking to make sure I understand what you’re saying.

            I think you are making 2 points:
            1) You disagree with my definition of evil. You think leaders trying to humanely (without suffering) reduce the population would be evil.
            2) You disagree with me that covid is cover for collapse prep and you think the evidence suggests our leaders are trying to reduce the population.

            Have I got your main points correct?

            p.s. nice paragraphs 🙂

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            1. Hi there Rob,

              So nice to be able to flit back and forth between your hallowed pages. Hope you are going well and enjoying midsummer. I can just imagine your nature rambles and feel very happy you are free and fit to enjoy them.

              First of all, let me introduce you to some Aussie vernacular which I had to learn in often humorous ways when we first arrived on these shores. To “barrack for” in Oz and NZ means to cheer or support as in a sporting team. You would say (as I used to) to root for something but funnily enough that means something completely different here, suffice it to say it is not exactly polite language for referring to sexual intercourse. I was the source of much merriment amongst my new Aussie friends when I made this gaffe unknowingly.

              Language is a multifaceted and marvellous thing.

              Except it seems we have misunderstood each other back to front here, so I apologise for losing my point (or perhaps I never found it in the first place) in the above and I am wryly amused you have interpreted my thought rambles so. Your command of precise language is superior to mine but over the course of these months, we have enjoyed very thoughtful and inspiring exchanges despite our very different lenses and antennae to the world.

              1)
              One of the reasons I wrote as I did was because I do not have a concrete understanding of your definition of evil, especially when it comes to world leaders. So, I cannot agree nor disagree with what I am not clear about. On one hand, you say they must be evil (or stupid) to have continued the program as such (with especial emphasis on the child vaccination schemes) but when the end result seems to be in alignment with what we all agree is necessary (population decrease through attrition, reduced fertility due to medical or socioeconomic reasons), then you would claim them to be unsung heroes if this is part of the agenda with the least suffering. Am I understanding you correctly? As for my opinion, which has not changed but somehow I am having a difficult time trying to get across, I do not think of the leaders in terms of evil, but try to see it from their world view which is doing what needs to be done with the tools at hand, or created, to accomplish what might be a unsurmountable task but still it is their responsibility to attempt because of their position and power. That is what a world leader must be. And most certainly I do not think that they are evil if they are trying to humanely reduce the population, rather the exact opposite, I am saying this is what they have their hands tied to do, and nothing must deter their single-minded focus if the plan is to succeed, which to most would be interpreted as evil, but I can understand it as their “fate” and I appreciate their courage to take on this most crucial of decisions in our modern history. I was trying to make the point that they have the guts to do what we, without any responsibility, say must be done, and because in our deepest consciousness we share a sense of compunction that we cannot yet openly acknowledge, that makes us at ease to point the finger and call it out as evil to remove the guilt from ourselves. Perhaps? Language only goes so far to tease out the tangled sinews of the human heart.

              In the formation of my philosophical self over this half-century and odd turns around the sun, I have been swayed to and fro in my notion of good and evil, but through every swing of the pendulum, I have come to see the fulcrum point as the key to balance, for it is always and only in our own subjective thought that we decide when the definition turns from one extreme to the other. There is no unchangeable truth when we speak of human affairs. To the universe, nothing is good nor evil, it just is so. Like your mystical title, un-denial, creator and destroyer, the energy in which all of humanity lives and breathes comes from the potential between our created extremes of being, which are constantly in flux. Perhaps I now see “evil” as a work potential to swing back to “good” and of course, vice versa. As conscious being with choice in thought, if not always action, we can constantly work to stay at whatever echelon of moral being we choose, but the force needed overcome and turn one way or another is inherent in all of us. Thoughts and actions can be activated in different situations in which we do not even realise that we are sliding up and down the same scale that we defined for others. For example, many Westerners can not see that what we have done in Iraq can be labelled equal if not more “evil” as what has unfolded between Russia and Ukraine. And more subtle but no less powerful, we each have decided at some point which lives are more desirable than others and for our own purpose, one only need to give the briefest of glances at factory farming of animals we imprison, torture, then kill for sake of enjoying the taste of their flesh, to quickly pull down the blind of denial to spare us the ethical morass in which we must surely flail and flounder. So it is all a spectrum, and we decide which colours we want to see.

              2)
              I have championed your thesis from the start that Covid is a good cover job for what collapse is to come–don’t you remember pinning my special badge? I keep it shined up and ready for display.

              But that doesn’t preclude that Covid and the aftermath can also be a good vehicle for population mitigation strategies (another PMS, my new euphemism for population reduction, it might go over as more thoughtful and gentle?) A single stone can kill two birds (bad, bad choice of metaphors, especially for a vegan). Nothing has to be either/or, what’s the maths term that allows for all possibilities (I struggled with Calculus, but then again, I was only a Biology major and pre-med, what do you expect?)

              The mark of a skilled and masterful operation is being able to accomplish something as efficiently as possible while increasing efficacy (uh oh, it sounds like the safe and effective mantra we’ve been hammered with). Whether it was planned in the beginning to have this result of increased mortality and morbidity across the board, and especially targeted in the first world countries where “humane” reduction of at once consumers and those most likely to be wild casualties of economic collapse (unmitigated mental and societal breakdown), well, as they say, all’s well that ends well, and in the global leadership playbook, the end always justifies the means. In my opinion, it all dovetails in a bit too tidily for it not to have been in mastermind from the beginning, which has been brewing for many, many years. The unleashing of Covid had its start umpteen thinktank scenarios ago. Have you ever read the Rockefeller Foundation and Global Business Network report of May 2010 entitled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development?

              https://archive.org/details/scenarios-for-the-future-of-technology-and-international-development-rockefeller-foundation-2010/mode/2up

              Reading it is like ripping the bandages from a blind person’s eyes and suddenly they can see. In the Lockstep scenario, a global pandemic leads to a crippled world economy, population unrest, and eventual totalitarian world, sound familiar? It even foretold that China fared better than other countries in the pandemic response. In fact, just about any publication coming from the Rockefeller Foundation reeks of the New World Order, but here I am not making any judgment, just saying what is patently so for everyone to see. Here’s another example of how the thinkers who have their fingers on the pulse (or around our necks?) see the world being unfolded by their determinants. In this one, entitled “Dreaming the Future of Health for the Next 100 Years” held in conference in Beijing, 2013, integration with AI is directly alluded to, as matter of fact as reading out a grocery list.

              Click to access 1b8843cc-0d4c-4d5e-bf35-4c7b2fbbb63d-the.pdf

              So, what I am trying to intimate is that everything we have seen unfolding has already been thought through with such precision that it beggars belief that everything happening is just a completely natural progression without a good nudge in the intended direction. Here I recall a quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” He should know, with his mark in bringing the US into WW2 with a spectacular bid after Pearl Harbour. Another way of saying it 1984speak “Whoever controls the past controls the future” so it stands to reason that if you could, you might as well decide what happens in the present just to make sure the future follows suit–maybe that’s the real meaning of “future-proof”.

              Forgive me everyone for another one of my interminable excesses. Please consider this exercise as just talking to myself because there’s no-one else in the room and I’m now a bit sheepish because maybe there happened to be someone who heard me and probably thinks I’m a nut case (as you would when people talk to themselves! : ))

              I am hoping most of you have already fast forwarded onto the next page, but I am grateful Rob if you found me here and can make any sense of what I’m trying to say in answering your response. Thank you, friend. I’ll check back here for your much appreciated reply, you are always full of thoughtful forbearance and encouragement.

              Just to assure you all that I’m still at heart a gardener of plants as well as thoughts, I planted 3 olive trees today, no surer statement of growing hope than that! I may not see the fruit, but all things willing, some other wandering soul can and hopefully will.

              Namaste.

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    2. I think a combination of plain old money making corruption from the pharma peeps like Fauci; coupled with a sheep like mentality (mass formation) from leaders and journalists like in NZ and Canada. Maybe there are other areas where people are just as scared to brake ranks with the approved narrative. This is getting worse and is a feature of our current culture, especially where the political power is held by the left

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      1. Yes, I would say corruption is another good explanation.

        Then we have to assume most of our health officials and are evil, because if they were decent people with good ethics they certainly wouldn’t mandate injecting a risky substance into people that didn’t need it for pharma kickbacks, which is pretty depressing.

        If it is corruption, I hope they all burn in hell.

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    1. It’s a good question. It would only take a few senior leaders whipping up panic, rather than calming things down, to steer policies to emergency authorized vaccination with passports into all people, including those at low risk, at the expense of all other responses.

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  34. Kunstler with his trademark instantly recognizable prose this morning:

    It’s like our country is trapped on one of those swirling carnival rides beloved of the county fairs… only, the felonious mutt who runs the ride has nodded off in a fentanyl delirium with the motor running at maximum speed… and the children-of-all-ages locked in the pods of this infernal machine shriek and vomit with each sickening rotation… as the half-century-old swing arms groan and wobble from metal fatigue on their squealing pivots… and suddenly comes a deafening crunch of gnashed gears, the smell of burning oil, and the pathetic whimpering of nearly dead.

    That’s us. Some terrible midsummer accident-of-state has befallen the USA Carnival, and most are too dazed to know it. Whose idea was it to send the wind-up doll president called “Joe Biden” to Saudi Arabia? I can just imagine what went on in the chamber in private with “JB” and MBS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), virtual autocrat of the oil-soaked desert land. The American visitor muttered something about wanting an ice-cream cone before dropping into a catatonic thousand-yard stare.

    https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-last-days-of-joe-biden/

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  36. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, one of my heroes, today with a sordid tale of pharma evil.

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2022/07/18/the-crushing-power-of-the-pharmaceutical-industry-a-sorry-tale/

    Drug regulators have been bought and paid for by the companies that they are supposed to regulate. But the commercial influence spreads far wider than the regulators. Key opinion leaders (KOLs) who carry out the big clinical trials, who speak at conferences, and who appear at the top of influential medical organisations and write the guidelines – are often bought and paid for too.

    There is virtually no area of the medical world that has not been lobbied, infiltrated and – in many cases – paid for and controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. We have a major crisis on our hands, that no-one is doing anything about.

    Aseem’s tale is just one more example of the fact that anyone who dares to stand up to the relentless marketing of more and more drugs, and vaccines, will be attacked and crushed. In this case, under the banner of the British Medical Association. An organisation that I am increasingly unproud to be a member of. If the BMA can no longer support freedom of speech, then no-one can. The future looks bleak.

    To quote George Orwell. ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.’

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  37. el gato malo today updates his theory that pharma will soon be thrown under the bus to cover political asses…

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/throwing-the-vaxx-companies-under

    it sure looks to me like omicron and its rapid evolution into ever more vaccine enabled and immune-fixation optimized sub-variants is a fire rapidly growing out of control. the smoke is already visible for miles and the flames are coming.

    the evolutionary gradient created by widespread use of leaky vaxxes does not lead to good places and the politics are going to have to adapt to how wrong they got the science.

    i continue to suspect that the “friends of mRNA vaccines political society” is going to be having serious membership problems in the near future (and we’re seeing some interesting EU defections as austria gets ready to throw its own doctors to the wolves) and that given the likely outcomes of congressional elections in november, this may be something team donkey wants to get out ahead of so that at least they can claim they found it instead of having it rooted out by political foes.

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  39. Pingback: The Great Reset: An Alternate Theory – Olduvai.ca

  40. What a great article! This site is so jam-packed with valuable information that I can’t wait to delve in and use the tools you’ve provided. I have a similar piece that will undoubtedly be helpful.

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