We’re in serious trouble. Many red lights are flashing on the dashboard.
Most people are now aware that something is seriously wrong, and each has their favorite lens through which to view the problems:
- Geopolitical: increasing nuclear war risk, trade wars, genocide.
- Political: polarized angry citizens, unstable governments, panicking/thrashing leaders.
- Economic: end of growth, declining living standards, widening wealth gap, inflation, accelerating unsustainable debt, asset bubbles.
- Environmental: accelerating climate change, species extinction, toxic forever chemicals, plastic waste, sick & dying trees from rising ground level ozone, etc.
- Health: increasing obesity, autism, and chronic diseases, declining lifespans, increasing depression and mental illness.
- Resources: peak food, peak oil, peak minerals, aquifer depletion, etc.
- Energy: reserve depletion, rising extraction costs, falling EROI, export land model, no renewable substitutes for non-renewable fossils, etc.
The common denominator to all of these problems is overshoot.
Very few people are able to see through the lens of overshoot because overshoot is a very unpleasant topic with no painless solutions and no way to avoid its consequences, and because humans evolved to deny unpleasant realities like overshoot.
Grok: Biological overshoot occurs when a population exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment, meaning it consumes resources faster than they can be replenished, leading to ecological imbalance. This is often seen in ecosystems where a species’ population grows beyond what the available resources (e.g., food, water, habitat) can sustainably support.
Causes: Rapid reproduction, lack of predators, abundant resources (temporarily), or human intervention (e.g., removing natural checks).
Consequences: Resource depletion, habitat degradation, population crashes, or ecosystem collapse. For example, a deer population might overshoot due to abundant food, then starve when resources run out.
Quantifying Overshoot: In ecology, overshoot can be measured by comparing population size N to carrying capacity K . If N>K, the system is in overshoot, often leading to a decline until N≤K.
Helpful Responses: Addressing overshoot requires restoring balance between population and resources.
What Should We Do?
I started this un-Denial blog 13 years ago after I became aware of our overshoot predicament, and a plausible theory by Dr. Ajit Varki for why almost no one can see the most important and obvious threat we face.
After a few years of discussing our overshoot issues I got tired of being a pessimist and wrote a prescription for what we should do. I thought it was pretty good at the time and represented a path that might actually help rather than the fantasy solutions with 100% probability of failing being promoted by millions of people with good intentions working on symptoms rather than the core overshoot problem.
My prescription for what we should do was in essence to minimize total suffering for all species by humanely reducing our population as fast as possible, and by planning and managing a controlled economic contraction, rather than allowing nature to force an uncontrolled collapse.
I understood that it would not be possible to implement my prescription unless the majority somehow could be made aware of our overshoot predicament, and this in turn required some method of overriding our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities. So I then spent several years promoting Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory in the hope that experts in relevant domains would work discover a method to override MORT.
My efforts were a complete failure. Not only did I not succeed in engaging any brain or behavior experts, I was not even able to recruit any like-minded colleagues in the overshoot space who were also trying to find solutions.
I sadly concluded that it was not possible to override MORT because denial of denial is the strongest form of denial, probably because evolution, for good reasons, ensures that the Maximum Power Principal (MPP) trumps all other behaviors.
What Can We Do?
In recent years the insights of Hideaway on the role of complexity in sustaining our civilization have caused me to question the theoretical feasibility of my or any other prescription.
Hideaway explains that the use of any non-renewable resource degrades the quality of its reserves over time, and this requires increasing complexity to sustain supply of the resource, which requires growing economies and population, which consume more supply, which worsens the reserve quality, which means any civilization dependent on non-renewable resources must grow or it will collapse, which means a hard collapse is unavoidable and no mitigation paths exist.
Hideaway’s probably correct but it’s a tough pill to swallow.
I’m still struggling to accept Hideaway’s conclusion because I can imagine many things we could do to worsen our predicament, like for example starting a nuclear war, or by burning our remaining coal and gas reserves faster by using AI to create more enjoyable porn.
Given that we could do many things to increase the coming suffering, it seems reasonable to assume there must be some things we could do to reduce the coming suffering, which I believe is the only sensible goal left to us.
But what are the things we could do to reduce total suffering for all species?
I would love to see the readers of un-Denial offer their ideas in the comments below. If we get enough good ideas I will collate them into another post with a new prescription representing our collective wisdom.
What Could Someone Do?
I’m a long time follower and admirer of Jack Alpert and have posted some of his best work over the years.
For many years Alpert’s been a lone voice advocating rapid population reduction with the goals of reducing suffering and retaining some of our best accomplishments as the only species with science and advanced technology.
I very much like the goal of retaining some of our best science and technology post-collapse because I have some insight into how rare and precious our accomplishments are likely to be in the universe.
In addition, if you have any doubts about the importance of Alpert’s goal to retain some of the more valuable features of modernity, this video on what life was actually like in ancient Rome will set you straight.
I was pessimistic about the feasibility of Alpert’s plan because it required educating sufficient citizens to vote for population reduction policies and I knew from my MORT observations and failures that his education plan would most certainly fail due to our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.
Nevertheless, I still like Alpert’s plan because setting aside the political feasibility of achieving a quorum, it at least was technically feasible and did not break the laws of physics or deny the reality of non-renewable resources as every other “plan” by every other “expert” does.
There is of course now a new technical feasibility question created by Hideaway’s complexity theory. It may not be possible to retain some of modernity’s most valuable technology without the 8 billion scale of our civilization. Let’s hand wave this away for now because I don’t know the specifics of what Alpert proposes to retain, and we need to think harder about the implications of Hideaway’s complexity theory in the context of a population that falls really fast, perhaps so fast that the requirement for growing complexity to maintain supply no longer applies. Suggest we continue this discussion in the comments below.
I was recently pleased to see a revised plan by Alpert that no longer requires a majority of citizens to vote for population reduction policies.
We are underestimating our predicament and underestimating the behaviors needed to unwind it.
Human civilization maybe sicker than we think. Maybe we should consider stronger medicine.
Abstract:
Consider a line that describes the delivery rate of fossil fuels to civilization. Each higher rate each year supported an ever larger global population with ever grander lifestyles.
Unfortunately, earth’s crustal limitations suggest this rate of energy delivery will decline back to its 1750’s level this century.
Unless energy deliveries from solar, wind, hydro, geo thermal, fission, and fusion can come online and replace lost fossil deliveries, human population and lifestyles will also drop back to the 1750’s levels.
Civilization will experience first scarcity; then conflict; and finally a self-reinforcing feedback loop called a scarcity conflict death spiral which will starve to death or kill in conflict most if the people who live this century.
When the behaviors that prevent this die off cause their own significant injuries the condition is called a predicament because people are injured with or without the prevention behavior.
In the last two minutes of this video I propose a behavior that causes much pain and prevents the injuries during civilization contraction. The video helps the chooser of the potential behavior quantify the injuries on each path.
After you view the video you may have important questions that need answers:
- Why do we have to make the transition in the next 80 years?
- Why can the earth (without fossil fuels) support only 600 million people living like serfs.
- Why does a new civilization that keeps our levels of arts and science support only 50 million people living like moderns?
In this latest plan Alpert proposes that a single expert could engineer a contagious virus to sterilize the human population.
It seems plausible to me that a single scientist with defective denial genes could be found and recruited for this task. People who can see reality are rare but they do exist.
I do have, however, serious doubts about the technical feasibility of engineering a safe and effective sterilization virus given that it’s required to override life’s primary mission, and given that a trillion dollar pharma industry with an army of scientists was unable to engineer or manufacture a safe and effective gene therapy for a virus they created and had the blueprints for.
How is one rogue scientist going to engineer a safe and effective highly contagious virus designed to override the primary objective of DNA honed by 4 billion years of evolution?
Nevertheless, I’m an electrical engineer with limited knowledge of genetic engineering so perhaps Alpert knows something I do not.
What Will We Do?
Our most likely path is the path we are on which is to use every psychological, accounting, and technology trick we can think of to keep growing the size of our economy and the complexity it depends on until we reach the end of the runway and crash with a spectacular collapse of supply chains, complexity, food, and population.
Unfortunately there will be a lot of suffering for humans and other species. The planet and its diversity of life will no doubt recover, but it will never achieve the pinnacle of rare complexity we enjoy today.
As we accelerate down the runway stresses will increase within countries and between countries. You can see these growing stresses everywhere today. There is a high probability that our leaders will do something in desperation that reduces the length of the runway.
It is likely that our most powerful weapons will be used when citizens of a resource unlucky country become envious and angry. As one recent example, a petulant little island nation off the coast of France that is collapsing because its oil and coal reserves are depleted is trying to provoke a nuclear war with a much larger and more powerful country on the opposite side of a large continent because it has some oil and gas that might sustain the lifestyles and entitlements of the island nation a little longer.
There is another darker scenario now being publicly discussed by very competent geopolitical experts like Col. Larry Wilkerson. In this interview last week Wilkerson explained why he is very worried about the growing threat of a nuclear war and that he fears for his grandchildren.
Wilkerson also said he knows powerful people who believe the solution to overpopulation and resource depletion is to kill billions with nuclear weapons. You can listen to these comments at 42:30 but I’d start earlier at around 33:30 for important context.
In this light, Jack Alpert’s sterilization virus starts to look pretty good.
In case you are not aware of it, I recommend the 2013 TV series Utopia which was about a plot to reduce the population with an engineered virus.
James today with a fresh spin on his RNA analogy for human civilization.
James has a hilarious, warped sense of humor. I suggested to him once, that he should go in for stand-up comedy. He replied that it wasn’t necessary, because the general situation is hilarious enough already. I still think it would be a good idea — he could become the next George Carlin.
A podcast with William Rees.
At about 1:21:00 in the video, one of the hosts concludes that inevitably, the cynical calculus will emerge where our leaders start counting the amount of people in the world and how many the world can sustain, and that rather than changing the system, they will think “we are OK with X amount of people from that particular group vanishing off the face of the earth”. Given the West’s response to Gaza, I can see where he is coming from. This also seems to dovetail with what Larry Wilkerson said about Nukes.
Other than that, the hosts seem to be in partial denial.
Good summary Stellar and nice find. Thanks.
https://zenodo.org/records/15787612
https://zenodo.org/records/15787612/files/mRNA%20'vaccine'%20harms%20research%20collection%20v2.pdf?download=1
Man, I don’t know what the hell I just read… and I was rolling my eyes during some of it… but it was entertaining and kept my attention the whole way through.
Still not sure, but I think the author is saying… if we want to avoid extinction, when we go back to hunter/gatherer lifestyles again, all tribes will need to be coordinated with each other so that we can monitor for any suspicious colonialism type behavior and then neutralize it before it gets out of hand.
Between Jack Alpert and now Eric Lee, someone’s gonna eventually find a way for humans to keep on trucking. I better get started on my sabotage missions. LOL
The Future Excludes Modern Humans | by Eric Lee | Jun, 2025 | Medium
Skimmed article, detected word salad, and stopped.
There’s a giant elephant wrecking everything in the room.
A small number of people see the elephant and are trying to help the majority see it so we can respond wisely, but they are all failing to increase awareness.
There’s a compelling scientific theory that explains why almost no one, regardless of intelligence or education, can see the elephant.
No one discusses this theory, despite it explaining why they are all failing to increase awareness.
If you push the theory into their face, they ignore it or get angry, but never provide a fact to prove it is wrong.
Then they continue to try to increase awareness and continue to fail.
This is so true. It is such a weird thing going through a motions of ordinary life while knowing what is going to happen to ordinary life.
I was invited to a dinner part tonight. It was surreal. No one has a clue what’s going on.
Ya, I like the way Rob broke that down. And your line resonates also. Knowing it’s so close (yet maybe still so far) to happening makes me react differently now to certain situations.
Arizona just started its monsoon season. It lasts for a couple months. Power usually goes out on my block a few times during these months. As I type this we are having one of our best storms in years… so I better hurry up with this comment before the power goes out.
My entire life, I’ve always liked it when the monsoons take out the power. Fun and sometimes even scary. Get out the candles and flashlights. Sit around talking and hanging out. My mom loves to tell ghost stories during these times… but I’m afraid I’m losing my playfulness in this scenario.
Couple nights ago our power went out around 7pm. Updates said the estimated fix time would be 4am. They always give themselves a big window and its usually fixed way before… but I had a feeling that it was gonna be a long outtage… thank god I was wrong and power was back on at 9pm. But I got really annoyed with my mom and brother during those two hours.
The only instructions I gave them was to limit opening the fridge and freezer. We had just eaten dinner so no reason to open either one. We have a water cooler so just get your drink from there. If you absolutely have to do it, think of what you want before you open the door so fridge or freezer will only be open for a second… Pretty fucking easy right? Wrong!
About an hour into it I caught my brother with the freezer open and he was taking things out. I asked him what he was doing? He was looking for dogfood (that had been in there for over a month). I asked why now. He said he felt like giving the dog a new kind of food this week and wanted to thaw it out for tomorrow. What??? Freezer was open for a few minutes. My mom opened the fridge multiple times. Two times she came away with nothing. On the 2nd time, I asked her why she did that. She said she can’t make up her mind if she was hungry or thirsty. What??? There is something with reverse psychology going on here. If I had told them to open the fridge/freezer repeatedly… they wouldn’t have touched it once.
LOL, probably sounds like they were intentionally pushing my buttons… but no, it wasn’t that. They just couldn’t handle something as simple as “dont waste the energy in there”. They were like children. And I wasn’t sitting there bossing them around or anything. I was just quietly taking mental notes. And my notes tell me that I’m not gonna be able to handle that type of cluelessness when SHTF for real. My cat, Mr Zeus, will be more helpful to me than these morons.
Living with normies that frustrate me is the trade-off for not being alone. But being on my own doesn’t sound bad right about now. And of course the perfect scenario is being around other doomers… but that shit is damn near unattainable.
Good story. My head would explode living in your household.
Preptip:
The fridge is kind of a sacred device to me. It’s my most valued use of electricity and the only thing I really care about during an outage. I have a small generator and enough gas to keep my food frozen for several weeks if we have a bad outage.
I bought a smallish fridge with the old style top freezer and single doors for minimum energy consumption.
I keep both the fridge and freezer near full for maximum thermal mass.
When I cook a meal I think about every item I need from the fridge, open the door, quickly remove everything, and then close the door. After prepping the food the door is opened once more and everything is put back in. Most days my fridge door opens only 5 times (2 meals plus a snack).
A week ago, there was a brutal heatwave in the Central and Eastern United States, I think it also affected parts of Ontario as well.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/25/1254697878/extreme-heat-bodies-transportation-infrastructure
Our infrastructure is designed for the stable climate of the Holocene, and the heat is pushing it to the limit. (Not that much of our infrastructure is sustainable to begin with). One of the guests still thinks that renewables will save us, but given it is the mainstream media, they have to provide some form of hopium.
Gonna babble about a topic that I’m very ignorant about. So this post might get ugly.😂
I was a religious man for what seems like only a minute… but there is no doubt I was a better person during that time. This was an edit that I added to my NDE account a few months later:
Well, I’m back up to where I belong. Level 9.😊
If I could magically make myself religious again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Not necessarily for the comforting idea of an afterlife, but more for that motivation where you’re constantly striving to be a better man. And that motivation came from fear, I think… fear of not being worthy when that so called judgement day moment comes… LOL, I don’t know but it did keep me in check a little bit.
Michael Dowd used to preach about how for eco-centric (life-centered) cultures, when religion is doing its job correctly, it’s a control mechanism for the people. But for human centered cultures, religion gets downgraded to a coping mechanism.
I believe it was a concept that he got from Edward Goldsmith’s book The Way. And yes, I know the eco-centric culture stuff is suspect… but this concept made sense to me. Like it’s all bullshit, but there’s a healthy way and an unhealthy way to soak up the bullshit.
If Mother Earth is your god and you believe that doing anything that hurts her is gonna get the gods angry enough that they send famines your way… well that’s probably gonna keep you and your tribe in check from doing things that harm the planet.
And then organized religion came along and kicked god out of the biosphere and far away from humans up into the heavenly sky. In order for agriculture and mining to spread across the globe, it is a requirement that your god is not associated with the planet. So now that you are no longer held in check, you can do all kinds of awful things to the planet and then just say a Hail Mary prayer for coping purposes and it’s all good.
LOL, I’m already all over the map, so I’ll try to get to the point. It’s a slippery slope to challenge someone’s faith. On the one hand, it probably makes them a better person so how dare I try to ruin that… but on the other hand, it’s just a big lie to make that person more comfortable while they walk around with their corrosive worldviews.
It falls under the same category as trying get a normie to become collapse aware. I have no problem with that… so I should have no problem attacking their faith too.
My brother came out to me a couple months ago about how he is religious now and has been since just prior to covid. Wouldn’t be that big a deal to me… but he believes in that idiotic 6,000-year-old creation story. We haven’t been able to have a good conversation about it because I can’t get over the ridiculousness of it. That whole story is human supremacy at its finest.
I can easily overlook the religious doomers. They are never gonna believe something so crazy like my brother. Their god or story is gonna be rooted somewhat in reality with limits or Mother Earth. And for them it’s mainly about filling that desperate need for an afterlife story. In other words, doomers have the healthier religion going on. So no reason for me to pick on Hagens, Tverberg, Berman… well maybe Art is still fair game. He’s got too much craziness happening for me to let it slide.😂
But for the clueless non-doomers with their unhealthy religions like my brother… ehh, I doubt I can keep my big fat mouth shut.
If you ignore his overly confident understanding of world affairs, Canadian Prepper today does a good job today of showing we are steadily moving towards nuclear war by escalating in ratchets, and we quickly becoming normalized to each new level of aggression.
David Korowicz, in this 78-page paper argues that if the financial system fails, the real economy will fail with it. Which do you think is more likely?
Click to access Trade_Off_Korowicz.pdf
I remember studying like crazy and agonizing over whether I should expect inflation or deflation after the 2008 Great Financial Crisis (GFC) woke me up to overshoot. Inflation meant savings should be held in gold and deflation meant savings should be held in cash (or T-bills).
I decided at that time that both outcomes were possible and it depended on political decisions that could not be predicted.
17 years later I now understand there is no uncertainty in political economic decisions. If it is possible to kick the can, our leaders will, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum. As an example, look at the recent abrupt U-turn from DOGE to the Beautiful Big Bill with its record increase in debt.
Guaranteed extreme can-kicking means we should expect both inflation and deflation, with the possibility that deflation will manifest as a Great Simplification event that Nate Hagens worries about.
Complexity theory means we should also expect scarcity soon.
Which explains why these days I like to invest in coffee and sardines.
In a recent Frankly video, Nate Hagens said that at some point “Too big to fail” will become “Too big to save”. What if kicking the can down the road results in hyperinflation?
I should start investing in sardines too. I don’t like the taste of coffee though (I do have a bit of a sweet tooth).
Here is an interview I recorded with Jack Alpert last week, that just aired tonight:
https://kkfi.org/program-episodes/jack-alpert-director-of-skil-asks-important-questions/
I plug Un-denial.com and borrow a few talking points from Rob and others. I even worked in a movie reference for Chris. I describe this blog as my tribe, though I’m a fairly silent member. I’ll try to post a bit more often. I’m really liking Hideaway’s thesis lately. I want to contribute a peak oil guest post sometime. It’s running around in my head, but isn’t going to write itself.
Excellent, what a nice surprise!
Jack Alpert interviews are very rare, perhaps because he scares most channels.
Looking forward to listening to this later tonight.
It’s encouraging that there are un-Denial tribe members that are present but silent.
A guest essay would be most welcome and I do hope you speak up more often.
Rob I am about halfway through a new article you might like. It is a history of everything, told in a way to focus on resources. My aim is to help people build a mental frame of deep time so they can understand the past more accurately. It’s taking a bit of work to research because there are a lot of topics I’m not really familiar with.
Sounds excellent. Looking forward to it.
Awesome!! Good interview Brent. Love to see an un-Denialist with the balls to go on the air. Maybe one day I’ll get there. I actually got excited when you plugged Rob and his site. And you know I appreciated the Logan’s Run reference.
The funniest part is at the 39:30 mark when you’re trying to delicately ease into Jack’s sterilization plan. If your show has any sponsors, I think their heads just exploded.😂😂
ps. Rob, give us a headcount for once will ya? I’m thinking we have over 500 in this crazy tribal connection of ours.
The un-Denial headcount is more top secret than the status of the underground Iranian centrifuges.
Even I don’t know the number because I never look at the stats.
This allows me to deny that I am a failure and happily believe there are millions of lurkers like Brent that think MORT is the most important idea in the entire world.
Speaking of lurkers, there is a regular named Nancy who I imagine is about 65, single, loves to hike, collects digital media, understands the significance of MORT, and is unaware that she lives in the same community as me.
If you moved to NZ I would introduce you to my mum! She fits the bill and I reckon you two would get on well
Now we’re talking. Once Rob becomes your stepdad, you’ll be privy to all of un-Denial’s secrets. You don’t have to share them all, but you do have to share the headcount that I so badly want to know.😊
Imagine that you created a website that provides a solid scientific explanation for why our species will soon collapse from overshoot, and another solid scientific explanation for why there is no solution to our overshoot predicament, and another solid scientific explanation for why 99.99% of people are unable to understand this reality regardless of their intelligence or education, then imagine how many people would visit your site.
LOL, why you gotta ruin my pipedreams of 500 in the audience. And your right about what you always say about us; defective denial genes… and if not that, defective something for sure.😊
Of the true doomer blogsites, B the Honest Sorcerer I’m betting has the biggest audience. For the other bloggers that have shed more layers of denial than him, there’s probably a 10-99% drop in audience, depending on how many layers. Explains why un-Denial I’m guessing has only 50 people… and why Megacancer can’t even hit double digits.😂
ps. Regarding B’s awareness, I kinda think he lurks here so maybe it’s just the same old broken record… PG-13 makes more money than R.
It may be a coincidence but I’ve noticed the topics of B’s essays often track what we’re discussing here.
It used to bother me that B and James and Hagens and Murphy and Tverberg and Morgan and Friedemann and all the others never comment here. Over the last 10 years I have made many contributions on their sites and frequently promote their work.
Now I understand they all deny denial.
This little conversation got me to wondering where I first ran across un-Denial. Can’t remember, but I do know that my routine has changed over the years. Some sites have gone dark, some have gone nuts, some have gotten repetitive, some have tried too hard to cash in, some have revealed themselves to not really seeing the big picture, and some I just don’t have time to keep in my routine.
Very few are daily, and some are good but usually big reads ( like Peak Energy and Resources) , so I hang on to several that I only check in on maybe once a month. I visit here pretty often, just don’t pipe up as much.
Thanks for letting us know you still lurk Steve.
For those who don’t know Steve, he wrote a great guest essay.
https://un-denial.com/2024/03/19/by-steve-carrow-what-would-a-wise-community-do/
bahahahaha
I am also a lurker named Nancy but I live in North County in San Diego.
Hi Nancy, thanks for popping up.
LOL!!
If that’s really true then you have some incredible discipline. No way could I not take a peek once in a while. Any good hackers in the audience? Give me a legit headcount and there might be a reward in it for you.🤭
ps. I think Nancy’s shy so she’s gonna be embarrassed about the unwanted attention. LOL. I was on a mission for nearly a year straight to get her to “like” just one of my posts. Finally happened few months back. Almost retired from un-Denial that day.
And if you’re correct about being in the same community… I don’t care how uncomfortable it is, you guys should meet up for coffee or something. Two un-Denialist’s living that close to each other. It’s too cool to pass up. The only encounter of this tribe that I know of is Gaia and that couple that lives near her (sorry, forgot their names).
pss. If the attention is killing you Nancy, don’t worry, I won’t bring it up again.😊
It was supposed to be a joke. I have no idea where Nancy lives or anything about her other than she probably has defective denial genes if she hangs out here.
Haha!! Knew the rest was a joke, but you with IP addresses, totally believed that part. Man, I’m losin it.
Just finished the podcast. Well done Brent! You asked great questions and demonstrated an excellent understanding of our predicament.
And well done Jack if you’re lurking! You sounded very intelligent and not at all crazy.
Thank you Brent for the kind un-Denial promotion. Much appreciated.
A few notes I made while listening:
Hi Brent! I would be very keen to read your essay. We need more ideas and perspectives from people who have already got their heads around the basic stuff!
Hideaway and others interested in complexity might enjoy this new podcast episode from physicist Dr. Sean Carroll.
Your thougts about telling”Grandparents’ Climate Action” healthcare dependens on oil? Energy and Public Health: The Challenge of Peak Petroleum – PMC
I just briefly skimmed the paper.
It was written 15 years ago and is rooted in the thinking at that time: oil depletion will increase its price thus enabling the viability of alternates, and changing consumption behaviors, but modernity with 8+ billion people will continue.
The new way of thinking about oil depletion is that our 6-continent supply chains and many critical materials depend on oil, so as it depletes supply chains will break and productivity will fall, causing incomes to fall, causing oil to become unaffordable, causing mineral and oil extraction to become unprofitable, causing the economy to collapse in a spiral of decreasing complexity, debt defaults, inflation, and wars over remaining oil, until we return to a few million hunter-gatherers, probably living near the poles where it’s not too hot to survive.
My thoughts is to tell the pensioners is that without oil there is no healthcare. No nothing. How do we go from max to nothing in a few years?
It will take many years to get to nothing however as Hideaway’s complexity theory explains, it will only take a small decline in energy to create a lot of chaos, scarcity, and hardship.
I you have any doubt that the US is responsible for starting the Ukraine war, this is an excellent discussion.
That clip cracked me up, especially the last line. Gyms, car dealerships, and mattress stores are the worst when it comes to aggressive sales tactics. If I can avoid walking into one of those places the rest of my life, I’ll die happy.
I worked at a mattress store for a couple years around 2010. Retail is the most miserable sales job in my book. Every holiday means you’re working more, not less. And here’s a tip; run for the hills if you ever see a salesman talking like this –
“We had a warehouse fire at our Tucson location and they’re closing it down for a while. Management has to unload the remaining inventory so that the location can be renovated… and usually there’s good discounts for this that will save you a couple hundred bucks. I just double checked, and they do have 2 of those beds left that you were looking at earlier. Now because it’s coming directly from the warehouse, they don’t come with the 90-day money back guarantee but that’s okay because they weren’t damaged in the fire. But first let me see if the discount is even worth going this route. I’ll be right back. (fake phone call in front of customer or just go in the backroom and dick around for a couple minutes)
Ok, thanks for being so patient. So ya, this is gonna be a no brainer. That bed actually has three different discounts that management approved for me. $700 total in discounts. And of course you’ll be able to look it over and inspect it at time of delivery. If for any reason you’re not satisfied, you can simply decline it, but like I said, it won’t be a problem because that bed wasn’t damaged at all in the fire. I can have it delivered Sunday or Tuesday. What day works best?”
Ahh, good times. Of course there was no fire, heck we don’t even have a Tucson location… and the reason I can sell that $1700 bed for only $1000 is because it was already returned by another customer during their 90-day money back guarantee. LOL, that tactic made me lots of money. The commissions on those used beds were huge.
Only a couple of us were savvy enough with our bullshitting skills to attempt the fake phone call in front of the customer. I pulled it off perfectly many times, but I also had quite a few potential sales blow up in my face because my Academy Award winning acting was not good enough that day.😊
Wow, a truly soul crushing job. It’s no wonder you hate humans.
Much like a doctor injecting a baby with an mRNA gene therapy to “protect” it from covid while assuring the mother she’s doing the right thing.
LOL. Ya, talk about deplorables. The telemarketing life will crush your soul slowly over time. But the retail life does it much faster. Probably because its face to face.
After almost twenty years of being a salesman, there is no soul left. But I’m working with my spiritual advisor Charles to try and get some of it back. My NDE from a few years back started to help me on this path, but then I found out it was all bullshit. The NDE might as well of been sold to me by that mattress store jerk.😂😂
In addition to Charles I recommend a backpack, a one man tent, some hiking boots, and a wilderness trail.
+1
🙂
Reminiscing about those horrible days got me to rewatch Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) last night. Great movie about the scumbag sales world.
If you haven’t seen it, the famous Baldwin speech is worth watching. So much acting talent in that room. Jack Lemmon’s expression at 4:52 is my favorite part.
And for the younger folk who might think Alec’s behavior of yelling at his employees and using offensive language is totally unrealistic… No, it was perfectly acceptable back then. Shoot, I was still witnessing it in the early 2010’s.
Hideaway again tries to explain the significance of fossil energy to the owner of the site that discusses peak oil.
MORT is amazing!!!
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-june-2025/#comment-790392
Wow. There’s the introduction to the book Hideaway 👏👏👏
The moron in denial never quits. Hideaway tries again…
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-june-2025/#comment-790443
Hideaway continues on this thread and points out that Dennis does not even understand his own data.
Is it stupidity or genetic reality denial?
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-june-2025/#comment-790476
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-june-2025/#comment-790499
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-june-2025/#comment-790524
I always knew Hans Roslings work was wrong considering ecological overshoot. Here is an good partial debunking of Hans Roslings work:
B is good today.
Fortunately we have decades or even a century before we have to worry about collapse.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/anthills-of-civilization
Yes, that was really good… even though B is so goddamn wrong about “the collapse of this global civilization will take several decades (if not a century)”
The “no free will” people will like it. I don’t think B mentions it once, but I was getting strong vibes (of our lack of it) while reading the essay.
Someone on the Great Simplification Discord Server posted this.
There is still quite a bit of denial on that forum.
.
Here was my reply by the way.
Good one Stellar. Keep terminating those hopium filled dreams with extreme prejudice.
I had to look up regenerative agriculture.
LOL!!! Ya, because a species strictly living off their domestication of plants and animals is so common in the web of life… and definitely in harmony with nature.
Hi Paq,
There are many definitions of ‘regenerative agriculture’. Corporate ag has been tossing the term around to mean anything that might be slightly less damaging to Earth than full on highly-mechanized / chemical / slash&burn / etc. ag.
The reality is that humans can improve soil quality with manual labor, local inputs and minimum water. The kicker is it takes years. This is being done around the world today.
Thanks and good health, Weogo
Yes 🙂
Time, dedication, love, faith.
Dr. Ted Postol (top expert on nuclear weapons) presents a deep technical dive into what it would take to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and concludes that US leaders are even more stupid than we already assumed.
Remember Doomberg?
He’s the guy that disguised himself as an animated chicken and argued oil depletion is not a problem.
He’s removed the chicken disguise and is now arguing that AI will kill us.
People in the comments are saying this person is AI generated 🙁
LOL, there was something off about the video but I only watched a few seconds because the chicken guy is such a confident smooth-talking idiot.
At this point, unfortunately, could be. There are innumerous videos I certainly wouldn’t be able to distinguish anymore, for instance:
Even denial is indistinguishable from reality:
The pinnacle of the empire of lies.
That damn Mike Roberts. Was trying to pin him down with his view on full consciousness. He won’t play with me.😒. If anyone in the audience wants to play, be my guest. And I know it’s silly and simplified, but that’s my specialty.
Mike did give me enough info that I’m gonna box him into C – “If you’re looking for that critical moment in history when everything changed, I don’t believe there is one.”
Really? Too beneath you guys to play my games huh? Fine, be that way.😊
When I see the words M.R., I think about the 20+ million people killed by gain of function bioweapons research, and the evil methods used to force approval of a dangerous improperly tested unnecessary mRNA gene therapy, and the fact that NOT ONE person has been held to account for the 20+ million deaths, because citizens can be easily manipulated like puppets, and I get angry and stop reading any further.
First of all: definitions, definitions, definitions.
I would avoid the term “consciousness” and instead try to narrow it down, such as “mortality salience” (the full awareness of death, mortality and finality of oneself and other complex structures).
If you pick this term instead, then A would be my favourite pick. The jump pattern is what we would expect if MORT is true, as we are talking about the breaching of a barrier, not a gradual development. The way I see it, mortality salience gradually approached a threshold, and then lingered there for a very long time until the reality denial module was unlocked and catapulted things into overdrive.
Ya, definitions do help.😊 Your term is much better. And good explanation, thanks.
There seems to be some crazy stuff going on behind the scenes of the Gaza/Iran conflict and the smartest people I know can’t figure it out.
Art Berman today explains that the Gaza genocide and unprovoked illegal attack on Iran are fully justified, and we will need more of the same in the future.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-shattering-of-illusions-iran-israel-and-the-end-of-strategic-restraint/
Q: How many Israelis have Palestinians killed in the last 25 years?
Grok: About 3,000.
Q: How many Palestinians have Israelis killed in the last 25 years?
Grok: About 70,000.
I don’t understand anything in the Middle East. And most of this essay went over my head.
But between your commentary at the top & bottom, and the heavy pro-USA vibes I got while reading the essay… has Art gone all-in with his xenophobia? It’s like he’s a paid actor for the Deep State (which he said recently does not exist).
I don’t know what’s going on. He’s recently change his position on the severity of the peak oil problem, has gone woo-woo spiritual, and now supports genocide and war crimes.
If I had to guess it’s brain damage from mRNA transfections. There’s a lot of that going around.
It looks like Hideaway had some espresso today…
That Brandon fellow is one hell of a poster-child for MORT.
Here’s a new idea for another chapter in Hideaway’s book…
George with another good one. If you can keep my attention with an essay about tulips… you’re doing something right😊
Farming Ourselves to Extinction: The Great Tulip Uprising of 1822 – George Tsakraklides
He got me thinking about a post of mine from last year. Dont worry, it’s not about tulips LOL. https://un-denial.com/2024/04/09/radical-reality-by-hideaway-and-radical-acceptance-by-b/#comment-97845
Preptip:
When you find some food that is healthy, delicious, has a good shelf life, and is on sale at a very rare low price, treat it like a sure-thing investment and go all in with as much savings and storage space that you can afford.
My find this week was raw salmon poke frozen in individual servings.
This is not a functioning brain. 🙁
I am of the opinion that Humans weren’t given one – a functioning brain that is.
Shouldn’t government representatives stay out of court proceedings? Especially if those court proceedings are taking place in another country…
Alastair Crooke seems to have deep first hand knowledge and good middle east sources.
This is the best explanation I’ve heard of what happened in the attack on Iran.
I respect that he acknowledges it is an educated best guess and he may be wrong.
I wouldn’t pay much attention to Crooke , he is the same guy who was selling that Erdogan and Jordan were going to attack Israel to defend Gaza lol , then came the Syrian debacle to help Israel with the active participation of Turkey and Jordan to make it happen .
Tnis is the reality , all the Sunni Arab monarchies are part of the cabal and have been collaborating with the US against Iran for the last 40 years , they first financed Saddam’s invasion and only abandoned him when he after failing in his purpose and trying to recoup his losses tried to annex Kuwait . Then all these feudal sheikhs called their colonial masters to help them and the gulf war came .
After 11s and the creation of the ” mythical ” al Qaeda and other Wahabi groups they have been dedicated to eliminate the few Arab states not controlled by the United States such as Libya and Syria and to create sectarian hatred with all these so-called jihadist groups (they are all mercenaries of the intelligence services) against the Shiites to divide and conquer.
And in the last twenty years they have been joined by Erdogan’s Turkey, which at the time of the cold war was more concerned with its internal problems and its northern border with the Soviet Union than with the Arab world to the south.
Syria was the last missing piece , with its fall they have given Israel an air highway against Iran and they have cut off the supply route to Hezbollah , in all this has actively collaborated Erdogan , the same who cried crocodile tears over Gaza in a performance worthy of Oscar while filling Israel with Azerbaijani oil. Its all bussines .
The entire Arab Middle East is an American military colony , Iraq does not even control its central bank , the United States controls its accounts and its airspace . The last day before the truce Israel bombed a lot of Iraqi army radars , what has the government said about this and the violation of its airspace by Israel ? Nothing.
The lie that the Bedouins of the Persian Gulf were going to abandon the petrodollar was just smoke from people who do not know the geopolitical reality of the region and who have been sold a false Muslim unity. At the level of blocs there is only one acting together militarily , NATO , Israel and its vassals .
Russia did not sell modern fighters jets to Iran to defend its airspace and China seems to prefer to arm Pakistan ….
Thanks for the interesting take.
It does seem that US$ drives most behavior in the middle east. When you can print bags of US$ you can influence a lot of people.
I didn’t hear Crooke say Iran would survive the pressures to regime change them so maybe the two of you are not in total disagreement.
Which geopolitical analyst do you respect the most? I’d guess you like Brian Berletic but please let us know.
It would help Nebuchadnezzar ( I assume that is you as this is the same posting at OFW) if you use a name so we can work out who is saying what.
cheers for the great comment
Denial is rampant on Dr. Tim Morgan’s site despite him explaining our overshoot predicament over and over and over.
Even Morgan seems to be in denial because he believes his repetition is required to educate our leaders into accepting reality so they will act to address our problems.
Hideaway with a very good restatement of his complexity theory:
Dr. Morgan replies demonstrating that he is controlled by MORT, just like his audience:
Hideaway’s ability to synthesize and explain the problem never ceases to amaze me. Specially the complexity part, which for me is key to understand that there’s no escape route available.
Anyone who reads this explanation and still doesn’t get it, is simply blinded by their mental blocks, and will have to wait until everything falls apart around them to accept it.
I agree.
Lots of people including me saw the dependency of our monetary system on growth and assumed it might be possible to have a sustainable civilization if we somehow voluntarily reduced our standard of living, paid down our debt (I wanted to confiscate wealth of the rich to do this), and changed our monetary system to a full reserve system preferably backed by an asset like energy so that lifestyles would stay synchronized with means to avoid catastrophic bubbles like the one we face today.
While it’s true our monetary system requires growth, the need for complexity growth to sustain non-renewable material flows is an even more powerful force that makes a steady state civilization impossible.
Hideaway’s the first that I recall who saw and explained this dependency on complexity growth.
When things fall apart the people who deny all of this will blame China and we will burn up what remains of our energy and materials with a war.
Mike Stasse found a very nice essay by fellow British Columbian Dave Pollard.
It seems Pollard doesn’t think MORT is required to explain what we observe. I think he’s wrong.
https://howtosavetheworld.ca/2025/06/23/maybe-i-got-too-sad-for-my-friends/
Another “interpretation”:
“EUROPEAN GLOBALISTS AGENDA ALIVE & WELL:
1) Oligarchs have swarmed TACO admin with the agenda of destroying USgov agencies. Congress will cut funding to science & welfare to the poor. The objective is obviously to break the US government & then make it part of something bigger: THE WESTERN UNION.
2) Carney, top level globalist, was made Canada PM. Currently, he is trying to merge Canada with EU as well as contributing to pushing US to economic decay.
3) Techbros are trying to replace USgov by AI, make robots, create mysterious AI centers, launch 40k satellites to control the robots, make self driving cars to transport the robots, they are taking control from conventional media via X, as well as pushing AI into many public activities, including the schools. MIT study just came out that AI usage makes people more stupid by pacifying the brain. BBB includes conditions where no laws can be passed against AI development for 10 years. Everything is AGAINST CRITICAL THINKING and CONTROL by the few over many.
4) Tariffs serve the purpose of destroying China and many third world countries by destroying consumerism. Whether it can be achieved is the future story; they are certainly trying. Tariffs will also wreck the western Main Street economy -> more obedient people needing help.
5) Even ME war can be connected to this: A country like Iran with massive oil resources and military proximity to half the oil in the world poses a huge obstacle to globalist agenda and needs to be wrecked to pave the way. EU leaders did not say a single word during the 12-days of war.
6) Petrochemicals in food & water have pushed global fertility rates below 2 and global population will now certainly shrink, a long-time wet dream by the Elites: achieved!
7) Fed‘s refusal to drop interest rates is prohibiting inexpensive debt=money to 90% of the population, while providing comfy income to those with cash. It is also crushing those under debt. It is a very handy way to take independence from 90% of the population. It is now just a matter of months before accumulated debt at high rates crushes many corporations & households
8) After being pushed to BS jobs (D Greaber), much of the Main Street is now being guided to NO JOBS or being & feeling USELESS, since AI & robots will carry out almost anything. YOU WILL OWN NOTHINGYOU WILL THINK NOTHINGYOU WILL BE HAPPY This is essentially a secret WW3 between ELITES vs CLUELESS GLOBAL MAIN STREET.
Keep sleeping as the world changes at supersonic speed.”
https://x.com/TOzgokmen/status/1937822506427044163
Saludos
el mar
This feels like it was written by someone who sees standards of living falling, governments cutting services, geopolitical tensions increasing, and populations falling, assumes there must be a common cause, and blames it on a cabal of evil global elites, because he is blind or in denial of the fact that overshoot and resource depletion have brought an end to growth which breaks everything.
MORT causes us to favor explanations that can be fixed.
You see this everywhere. Vote for the other party, tax the rich, Putin is evil, shut down fossil energy companies, reduce CO2 by building renewables, etc., etc.
Given Hideaway’s complexity theory, if we want to extend BAU a little longer, then the only path that might help is further integration and unification of the global economy.
Which means the globalist elites are actually the good guys if you want to delay the collapse of civilization.
I think, you are right, Rob, and this is a very important insight:
“Which means the globalist elites are actually the good guys if you want to delay the collapse of civilization.”
The mess we all hate is the reason we survive.
The wasteful industrial civilization made our existence possible in the first place.
We are the result of a disaster.
Saludos
el mar
We are MEGACANCER!
I assume you know about James’ fine blog.
https://megacancer.wordpress.com/
Yes!
He knows. And he also knows he messed up because that was an absolute perfect closing line for the first comment. Probably forgot and then remembered after it was too late, or the idea didn’t pop in his head until shortly after hitting that damn reply button. LOL, I know the feeling for both.
btw Rob, If available and free I’m in favor of an edit button. It it’s too much of a hassle, how about one just for me.😂😂
LOL, I wish but I have no control over the stock WordPress features.
I’ll have a look at the optional commenting plug-ins that I have to pay extra for.
I have no idea what features they offer or how they handle migrating old comments into the new system and vice versa if I decide to cancel.
It would be a show stopper for me if we had to lose our history of comments.
Totally agree about the comment history being a deal breaker. That shit is sacred. Kinda like the Star Trek episode where the dying planet’s civilization is more worried about preserving their knowledge than preserving themselves.😊
Megacancer has a few links that just say unavailable. James told me that a while back he missed a payment date, eventually causing the site to be closed… and those basterds at WordPress wiped out some of his content when they reactivated his account. I might be getting details wrong, but it’s something like that… So don’t ever miss a payment!!
Thanks for the heads up.
I found this an interesting interpretation. Particularly the last half
@7SEES_
on X
People aren’t ready to hear that Israel, America, and Iran are actually all working together to artificially fulfill a Zionist doomsday prophecy to justify the global great reset.
What do you make of this?
https://rumble.com/v6s4u1r-the-kabbalistic-doomday-death-cult-w-christopher-jon-bjerknes.html?e9s=src_v1_upp_a
Saludos
el mar
I’ve not watched the video but here are a few thoughts.
I know nothing about the beliefs or motivations of Iranian citizens however the last war Iran started was in 1856.
I know from first hand experience that Israel is ultra-aggressive and will do anything and everything to survive and prosper, and Israelis feel very threatened by fast growing populations around them that hate them.
I suspect the main reason Israel has so much influence on US leaders is not Jewish money (which no doubt helps) but rather because Fundamentalist Christians believe Jesus will return after an apocalyptic event and the rise of Israel. So using some wacky twisted logic the people who killed Jesus are supported and encouraged to start WWIII by a powerful Christian lobby because that will bring Jesus back to life. Why this is important escapes me because the cornerstone of Christianity is that Jesus already rose from the dead and they don’t seem to think he first needs to be killed again.
I was raised mainstream Protestant (Lutheran) but fell away in my late teens due to Scientific rationalism taking hold.
So, in the final book of the bible – Revelations . . . the author (John, the gospel author) claims that Jesus (who is in heaven as part of the triune god) will come to earth after the battle at Armageddon (between the forces of evil and good) and then take all the belivers to heavan. (All of this is kinda jumbled up in Revelations and the subject of many christian demonination’s disagreements).
Hence, Fundamentalist christian denominations in the U.S. want the final battle between Isreal and the Arabs as they are sure these are the forces of good and evil and this is the battle of Armageddon that Revelations fortold, and then Jesus will come to save them.
Kinda delusional if you ask me personally.
AJ
Also kinda dangerous.
This all sounds like that insane documentary you found last year about the christian evangelical nutjobs. That one got me fired up. Oh, the good old days when I gave a shit.😂
Doubt I’ll watch the rumble video but the idea of “Israel, America, and Iran are actually all working together”… I already have no problem believing it.
And that famous trump f-bomb clip reeked from the very first second. Fake anger… oh well, like Hideaway was saying a few days back, it’s all just theatre.
Muslims and Jews also believe in the apocalypse and the end times. John Greer describes in his book Apocalypse Not how monotheism and the end times were in invented in ancient Persia.
The Jewish people copied the Persians, dumping all their original pagan gods & goddesses.
George RR Martin did a very good job of allegory of Zoroastrianism with Azor Ahai in Game of Thrones.
It’s quite interesting to research these topics in depth, but I am definitely not that knowledge on it!
Trump followed up on his brilliant regime change MIGA idea (Make Iran Great Again) with an inspirational video.
Pretty sure I’m having a really bad dream.
An interesting question: How did animals and plants survive when it was hotter than it is today?
A few educated guesses: When the climate changes slowly, it gives plants and animals time to adapt and evolve. The speed of the current change is unprecedented though. Also, when the Earth gets warmer, most of the warming occurs at mid and especially high-latitude regions, so already hot places don’t get that much hotter.
Many of the commenters are denialists or Nuclear bros. Very few people advocating for reducing energy consumption. But the comments are better when you sort them by “Top first”
Here are some of the better ones.
While camping I read the book “Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company” by Patrick McGee.
I enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone with an interest in the complexity and scale of our global supply chains or the history of modern smart phones.
My take-away was that Chinese leaders had a plan and executed it very well to become the most powerful manufacturer in the world, and are now on a path to dominating the design of advanced technology.
Apple spent an order of magnitude more than the US spent on the post World War II Marshall Plan training China. Now Apple is trapped because there is no alternate capable of designing and manufacturing its products at scale.
Not discussed in the book is the fact there isn’t enough time or resources left to move Apple’s manufacturing back to the US (as desired by recent US government policies) before the “great simplification”.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220161058-apple-in-china
This morning I saw an article that made me wonder if China will soon also dominate the US on military matters. Very smart move to use Ukraine to learn how to fight a war.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-to-reportedly-train-600-chinese-troops-using-tactics-from-war-in-ukraine-9370
Funny, cause the final quote of my guest essay here on un-denial was from that episode 😊
Ah, nice one. You get full credit for bringing it to the doomasphere.😊
And funny, I’m 100% positive I’ve read your fine essay before. I don’t know how I missed it. I’d blame you for underselling it, but the word “relevant” should have definitely gotten me to at least click the link.
Ever since I became a full-on nazi doomer, it’s almost impossible to get me to appreciate life. The automatic stuff that used to do it (Native American culture, Tales from the Green Valley, Cloud Atlas, Dances with Wolves, etc) no longer works.
I can only think of two things that have done it for me in the last year. Biochemist Nick Lane (h/t Rob for that recommendation), and the movie Tree of Life (2011). Well, I just found another one. Totally unexpected, a 1992 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. s5e25, The Inner Light.
I saw this over 20 years ago and liked it, but I guess it didn’t stick with me. Stumbled on to it last night and now that I’m older, and have some collapse knowledge, this episode hits home way harder. And it should definitely be more known in the doomasphere because of how relatable it is.
It’s the highest rated Star Trek episode on IMDB so I’m betting some of you have seen it. But if you haven’t, you don’t have to like or know anything about the show. And just to spark your interest (without spoiling too much) here’s the underlying theme of the episode… but it really is all about Picard’s epic journey:
Not gonna provide a trailer link because it will give away too much info. So instead, here’s a great clip from the movie Duets (2000). I love how much fun the two actors are genuinely having here.
Some of my happiest memories involve a karaoke machine. I never had the nerve to do it at a bar. But at home gatherings with trusted friends where the vibe was more supportive than judgmental… that’s when karaoke is a wildly fun time.
Another promising movie not in my collection. Thanks for the tip.
Will watch the Star Trek episode tonight.
I’m sorry life is providing so little joy. Maybe something simple like camping or walking in a remote wilderness area with few people around might provide a little calm if not pleasure?
I’m certain I posted about “Inner Light” being one of my favorites long, long ago. That along with an original Star Trek, “City on the Edge of Forever” were the best. I bought the VHS tape of “Inner Light” 20 years ago. Poignant is the best word for “Inner Light”.
AJ
You discussed Inner Light on May 26, 2021.
https://un-denial.com/2021/05/21/how-to-have-a-difficult-conversation-about-vaccination/#comment-43524
Sorry marromai but AJ gets full credit until we see an earlier date.😊
See, this is why I hate recommending mainstream pop culture… because everyone and their momma has already seen it. LOL
You had another comment towards the top of that thread that Rob shared that I really liked.
I’ve wanted to write an essay for a while about how wasteful and damaging SciFi has been. But your quote sums it up perfectly. No essay needed.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t about wanting to be the first 😂
About your comment on SciFi: Although I became a fan of Star Trek (especially TNG) in younger years, I look at it with a lot more distance now. I still like the storytelling of those episodes, with less action and more ethics, diplomacy and moral qualities – but with what I know now, a future like Star Wars is much more realistic. Only difference will be, that we are the dark side…
My new rule for assessing the integrity of geopolitical analysts:
If they pretend they understand what is going on they are full of shit.
Last year I thought the exchanges between Israel/US and Iran were theatre and not the start of something bigger.
This time it seems more of the same, just at a higher level. I’ve just found from a news source that the US base that was targeted by Iran had been evacuated of personnel, yet it would only take a few minutes to get missiles from Iran to Qatar, certainly not enough time to evacuate, hence it smells like Iran gave warning to the US about the missiles.
Realistically, it begs the question of what all this theatre is about, is it a distraction for some other big issue, that’s not being reported?
It was appearing to me as all theatre even last week when the ‘nuclear’ facilities were being targeted, based on maps of the underground bunkers from 2018, as boasted about by Netanyahu back then. Did anyone think Iran might have changed what’s underground in those 8 years, or moved whatever to a different site? Or is it assumed Iran is really dumb?
I don’t buy any of it. Who said Iran had enriched uranium? IAEA, funded by the US govt. What evidence was produced? Words. The USA made the first couple of nuclear bombs in 1945, the soviets a few years later, followed by several other countries back in the ’50s, over 70 years ago.. Does anyone really think that if Iran had really wanted to build a nuclear weapon, using 2020’s technology, not 1940’s, it would take them multiples of time it took the US scientists??
They could have probably just bought a few from North Korea if they really wanted them..
Are we getting an excuse for setting up increased surveillance on people in general everywhere, under the guise of being worried about terror cells or whatever??
Overall just more signs of heading into collapse. Very noticeable that no-one bothered to attack Iran’s Kharg Island oil facilities and if the real purpose was to change the regime then cutting off export revenue would have gone a long way towards that..
You’re correct Rob no-one has a clue what this theatre is really all about……
I suppose it could all be explained by not so bright emotional monkeys jockeying for power without a strategy or a plan.
Hanlon’s razor… “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”
Your comment reminded me of this clip I recently saw.
You’re like an AI made of meat trained on movies.
😂😂😂
I know its ugly. The smal scale farming is with tools from 50s. People have old time cows and sheep. Still doing hay framing. The knowledge has not wanished. Better than nothing I guess.
As a Norwegian it is difficult to see total anilation. Around me its lots of nature and fresh water.
Where I live there is some smal scale farming , berries in the woods and fish in the sea.
Whats your thoughts?
Nature can be more ressilient? I cant se how modern humans will be able to hunt down the last pices of nature.
Humans wiped out most megafauna with a significant lower population and incomprehensible more primitive technology.
I thought it’s pretty well known how poor scandinavian countries used to be before the heavy use of exogenous energy. So yes, all your small scale farming is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
Now factor in the loss of almost all cultural knowledge on how to live without our beloved energy slaves and you have quite a ugly situation.
Why was Scandinavia poorer than other regions of Europe?
https://newatlas.com/space/largest-map-universe-reveals-800000-galaxies/
800,000 galaxies! What a way to be reminded of our insignificance.
Agree, even the scale of a single galaxy can be hard to comprehend.
In the beginning of my overshoot journey Tom Wessels was one of my favorite sources. His short book ‘The Myth of Progress’ was an excellent introduction to basic ecological concepts.
I forgot all about him. His “reading the forest” videos on youtube are excellent. Highly educational and entertaining. Also good to fall asleep to because of their calming effect.
Thanks, haven’t heard of (or don’t remember) Wessels. His work looks very promising. I have subscribed and queued a few of his videos.
Here’s an interesting deep dive into the power consumption of AI and the challenges it’s creating for the grid.
There’s the usual overshoot blindness, climate change ignorance, and hopium, but otherwise is pretty good.
Sure looks to me like we’re going to exit like a supernova.
Found this cool slide in a Nate Hagens presentation. Been staring at it like a madman. There are lots of stories that can be told with this one picture.
It’s kind of like a climate map guide for life on how to get to civilization. And it’s making me think civilization is much less common in the universe than we think. You really have to defy the odds and keep on surviving during those drastic spikes on the left. Sprinkle in a few major bottleneck events… I don’t know how we did it.
ps. Nate’s presentation was from November. First half was pretty damn good. Second half was filled to the brim with hopium.
Nice find, interesting chart.
If you step back and look at the big picture, biology and geology cooperated over 300 million years to grow and bury biomass carbon that became about 10,000 cubic kilometers of coal and 2,000 cubic kilometers of oil (says Grok), which created a climate compatible with agriculture and complex civilization, then a clever god worshipping reality denying fire ape dug it all up and burned it in 200 years to create 8 billion fire apes.
Great way to look at it. Maybe instead of useless man, we should be called Homo Taz.
If you’re looking for more coverage of today’s bombing, Richard Medhurst is doing a live show right now (started 45 min ago… he usually does these for a few hours).
The 10 Core Myths Still Taught in Business Schools | Frankly 99
Neoclassical economics is a pseudoscience.
26:40. Could the too big to save country be the US?
Q: When did Trump tell Israel to not attack Iran?
Grok: April 2025 and again late May 2025.
Q: When did Patel confirm Epstein killed himself?
Grok: May 8, 2025.
Q: When did Musk say Trump is in Epstein file?
Grok: June 5, 2025.
Q: When did Patel shift from saying he would release all Epstein files ASAP to saying he will release some declassified portions of the Epstein files someday?
Grok: Between May 28, 2025 (all files ASAP) and June 6, 2025 (some declassified portions someday).
Q: When did Trump’s position on Iran change from no nuclear weapons to zero enrichment?
Grok: June 2, 2025.
Q: When did Trump say he supports Israel’s attack on Iran?
Grok: June 12, 2025.
Q: When did Trump attack Iran?
Grok: June 21, 2025.
Returned home from camping to learn US bombed Iran. 🙁
Note to self, in the future pay attention to Seymour Hersh.
Lots of rain on this trip. Leaned how to rig a tarp.
Thanks for keeping the site going in my absence.
Whats your thoughts about prepping? I have smal farm with fruits and potatoes. Fish in the sea, fish in nearby lakes, farmers with cows and sheep nearby. Different types of cows and sheep. Any hope? To much suffering? Better than nothing?
Anony, not sure who you are asking, but I’ll chime in anyway.
While I don’t think prepping, having your own farm etc will help much during full on collapse, it will certainly be better than nothing in the lead up to collapse.
I also think that in the pre collapse period everything gets a lot worse, think govt taxes on your property going sky high, plus restrictions on what you can do with harsh penalties, quotas you have to meet or lose the property etc.
All the type of stuff no-one considers possible in the world we currently live in, but have happened to ‘farmers’ in past civilizations nearing collapse..