Today’s guest post is by Hideaway, the originator of Complexity Theory, the only new idea in the study of human overshoot since Varki’s MORT 10 years ago.
For those who have not followed Hideaway at Peak Oil Barrel or here at un-Denial, Complexity Theory argues that any species that is dependent on any non-renewable resource must grow or it will collapse, because as a resource depletes the quality of its reserves declines, which requires increasing complexity and energy for extraction to maintain the flow of supply, and increasing complexity requires a growing population, because each brain can manage a finite level of complexity, which requires a growing supply of resources to support the growing population, and because recycling non-renewable minerals without losses is impossible, and since the energy that supply chains depend on is mostly non-renewable, a point is eventually reached where the complexity of supply chains must break down, and the species returns to a state that is not dependent on non-renewable resources, which for humans is a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Complexity Theory, if true, is important because it implies any plan to mitigate the effects of human overshoot like climate change, species extinction, pollution, or resource scarcity, with population reduction policies, or a steady-state economy using a full-reserve asset-backed monetary system, or voluntary degrowth, or balanced budgets, will cause a reduction of complexity, and therefore the population and its lifestyle that depends on growing complexity for resources will collapse, possibly quite quickly due to the many self-reinforcing feedback loops in supply chains, and the extreme level of current human complexity and overshoot.
In today’s post Hideaway focusses on a quality of energy that is required to support complexity, Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI).
“EROEI is the ratio of the amount of usable energy (the exergy) delivered from a particular energy resource to the amount of exergy used to obtain that energy resource.” – Wikipedia
For anyone new to the concept of EROEI, here is a simple way to visualize it. Imagine we discovered an oil field with a gigantic quantity oil but it was so deep that the machines used to drill and pump the oil burned all of the oil obtained. This energy source has an EROEI of 1.0, because energy obtained equals energy used, which means it contributes nothing to civilization (except pollution), and will not be exploited for long because oil companies cannot make a profit.
Any useful energy source must have an EROEI higher than 1.
Most advocates of non-fossil energy believe it has a plenty high EROEI and therefore we can and should transition from burning fossil energy. Hideaway here calculates that their EROEI assumptions are far too optimistic.
Hideaway has spent several years patiently trying to educate and persuade dozens of alternate energy advocates, with, as far as I can tell, zero success. I believe this is yet more evidence that Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory is correct because energy experts are plenty smart enough to understand Hideaway’s calculations, yet are incapable of doing so.
Given that Hideaway’s Complexity Theory predicts we will soon collapse no matter what we do, why is the truth about EROEI important? Because if Hideaway is correct and non-fossil energy is not making enough net contribution to our civilization, then subsidizing and prioritizing non-fossil energy will increase the rate of depletion of non-renewable resources, which will reduce the time to collapse, and probably worsen the pollution and ecosystem destruction our descendent hunter-gatherers must cope with. In other words, using non-fossil energy will worsen the problems their advocates are trying to solve.
Truth here therefore is a big deal.
Hideaway should be commended for the significant original research he did here.
His conclusion sheds light on why everything seems to be breaking all at once now, and why our leaders are obsessively fixated on regime changing Russia and Iran, two of the very few remaining big sources of exportable oil.
A few years ago, when I couldn’t get a mining project to work economically by using just renewables for the power source, despite the claims of “renewables” being the cheapest form of electricity, I knew I had to go and find out what I was missing. Using diesel to generate electricity at remote mine sites is extremely expensive, so if there was any truth in renewables being “cheaper”, it should be validated at remote mine sites.
I searched for every document I could find about how EROEI was worked out and found many documents discussing great EROEI for renewables, but precious little on how much energy went into building solar panels, wind turbines, or batteries. If I traced far enough back to references of references, I eventually found some numbers, but mostly just plucked out of the air with some basic calculations on Aluminium production and glass production, with a few about silicon wafer production and the energy used in the processes alone.
Even the nuclear industry had a way they worked out their often touted 100 to 1 energy return on investment. The following is from the World Nuclear Association, quoted!!
“Peterson et al (2005) have presented materials figures for four reactor types:
- Generation II PWR of 1000 MWe: 75 m3 concrete and 36 t steel per MWe.
- ABWR of 1380 MWe: 191,000 m3 concrete, 63,440 t metal – 138 m3 concrete and 46 t metal/MWe.
- EPR of 1600 MWe: 204,500 m3 concrete, 70,900 t metal – 128 m3 concrete and 44.3 t metal/MWe.
- ESBWR of 1500 MWe: 104,000 m3 conc, 50,100 t metal – 69 m3 concrete and 33 t metal/MWe.
The AP1000 is similar to the ESBWR per MWe but no actual data is given.
Using gross energy requirement figures of 50 GJ/t for steel or 60 GJ/t for metal overall, 1.5 GJ/t or 3 GJ/m3 for pure concrete, this data converts to:
- Generation II PWR needs: 225 GJ concrete + 2160 GJ metal/MWe = 2.3 PJ/GWe.
- ABWR needs: 414 GJ concrete + 2760 GJ metal/MWe = 3.2 PJ/GWe.
- EPR needs: 384 GJ concrete + 2658 GJ metal/MWe = 3.0 PJ/GWe.
- ESBWR needs: 207 GJ concrete + 1980 GJ metal/MWe = 2.2 PJ/GWe.
In common with other studies the inputs are all in primary energy terms, joules, and any electrical inputs are presumed to be generated at 33% thermal efficiency.
The figures now in Table 1 for plant construction and operation, and also for decommissioning, are from Weissbach et al (2013) adjusted for 1 GWe. They are slightly higher than the above estimates, but much lower than earlier published US figures (ERDA 76-1). Our fuel input figures are 60% higher than Weissbach. Hence our EROI is 70, compared with 105 in that study.”
My way of thinking is that if you dump 191,000 tonnes of concrete and 63,440 tonnes of metals, mostly steel with ‘some’ copper, aluminium, etc. all together in a pile somewhere, it does not materialize into a ABWR nuclear power plant all by itself. All the bits and pieces need to be carefully constructed into very certain shapes and combinations, plus built in the correct order to become a nuclear power plant, therefore their calculations had to be horribly wrong!
If we dumped that quantity of those materials, in there correct shapes, onto the North Sentinal Island where some of the most isolated primitive humans exist, would they turn it into a nuclear power plant? The answer is obviously also NO!!
What if we left a very specific set of written instructions for those people? Again NO as they do not know how to read, nor do any calculations.
How about leaving the cement, reinforcing steel, gravel, sand, and all the instructions of how to put it all together to make concrete in some sign language form, to just make the foundations? Once again NO. How do you give instructions for just the right consistency, or to get all air bubbles out, or to work the surface correctly when in the setting process? You can’t, it only comes from experience of working with concrete.
Even if we had a group of knowledgeable teenagers, who could read and follow instructions, would we get them to be totally responsible for the foundations of a nuclear power plant? Again NO, as we need engineers and experienced concreters to build something that will last decades and is highly dangerous with failure of something like the foundations of the reactor chamber.
From this line of thinking, extended to solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, geothermal, plus even oil , gas and coal, there has to be an inclusion of all the energy inputs, which includes the education of the people involved in construction and operation, as well as all the energy inputs to the trucks, bridges, ports, mines, roads to mines, etc., etc., that all have to exist for building of anything to be possible. We only have one possible way to include all the inputs, money, or the cost of building and operating any form of energy source.
Money, or cost is certainly not going to be a perfect way to work out the Energy cost of building anything, plus it needs to be compared to something to come to a conclusion about the EROEI.
Firstly, we know that fossil fuels certainly can or could provide the net energy for everything else in a modern civilization, from the simple fact that modern civilization exists at all, at least for ‘most’ in the developed countries.
As the price for every energy supply appears to be different all over the world and different for each type of energy, I decided to look at the wholesale price or cost of energy at the world’s manufacturing hub of South/East Asia as a starting point. The question is over what period? Going back to 2012 the average price of crude oil was often over $100/bbl, while in March 2020 it was $16/bbl.
Should the price be from a single year when a solar panel factory starts production, or should it be over the years when the factory was built?
Should it be when the adults who are working in the factory were at school, or perhaps when the engineers, accountants, lawyers and managers were at university?
Maybe it should be when the mine providing the silicon was established, or the ships and ports where they load and unload were built? OK no easy answer at all.
Anyway, I decided to look at the average wholesale price of energy in different forms over the last decade (from 2013- 2023) as it encompassed times of higher and lower wholesale energy prices. What surprised me most was that oil, gas and metallurgical coal all had around the same average wholesale price over that period of around $US43/MWh, with thermal coal cheaper. It was cheap enough that the wholesale price of electricity in Asia during this period was also around the $US40/MWh.*
*Of course there are variations from year to year and from one location to another, but interestingly when I worked out the average price for oil over the prior decade 2003-2012 is was also around the same number, roughly $70/bbl that corresponds with around $41/MWh for the energy content using 1.7MWh/bbl.
Once I had a base number it was fairly easy to just compare the total lifetime cost, both capital and operating and maintenance cost of any energy producer back to how much energy was produced.
I decided to use $US40/MWh as the average wholesale cost of energy for every type of energy producer, as the base for the capital, operating and maintenance costs over the lifetime of operation. This cost to build and operate the plant can then be compared to the total lifetime output for that plant. The actual base number doesn’t really matter as I’ll explain towards the end of this article.
For our purposes here is a simplistic example. If an oil well returned $400 worth of energy over it’s lifetime, while only costing $40 worth of energy in total, to build and operate, then the EROEI was 10/1. As in it cost 1MWh of energy and returned 10mWh of energy, in this case oil.
I had no idea at all about what type of results this form of calculation would give me, or if it would be close to the often touted 10 or 20 to 1 returns that are needed for modern civilization to exist, until I worked out as much as possible.
I was not interested in theoretical cost, I wanted actual existing examples so I could compare different energy delivery types. Finding the actual numbers proved a lot more difficult than I expected. All over the place are headlines of a new development with an expected cost of $XYZ. Often though, the completed cost was vastly different to ‘expected’ capital cost. Then there was also operating and maintenance costs which many projects are very coy about, again giving some expected costs, with nothing about actual operating costs released, this depended upon the energy source.
For some like the nuclear industry, it’s fairly easy to find average O&M costs from public companies or industry announcements. The nuclear industry reports this for US reactors, with the average being around the $30/MWh as per World Nuclear Association (includes fuel costs).*
*Anyone paying attention can immediately see that in a world of $40/MWh energy cost an O&M cost of $30/MWh means that this form of energy cannot deliver a 10/1 ratio of EROEI. It’s 1.33/1 before including any capital costs.
OK, here are some examples of what I came up with…
A relatively new coal fired power plant in Queensland Australia, that was a highly efficient design, based on super critical operating temperatures, situated right next to the coal mine, where they dig the coal themselves, so no “price” paid for coal, had an EROEI of only 5.09/1.
This coal power station cost $US750M to build, including all the costs associated with the coal mine and conveyor system (4km), with an operating cost of around $US4.68/MWh for staff and sustaining capital.
Assuming the lifespan to be 40 years then over the plant and coal mine life of 40 years at a 90% capacity factor, it will produce 750Mw X 24hrs X 365 days X 40 years X 0.9 capacity factor. = 236,520,000MWh of electricity into the grid.
Total cost of capital plus O&M over this lifetime = $US750,000,000 + 236,520,000 X $US4.68 = $1,856,913,600 or $7.85/Mwh, giving an EROEI of $40/7.85 = 5.09/1.
The overall formula is adding all costs in $US to keep everything consistent, then divide by the $40/MWh average cost of wholesale energy over the last decade or so. Then compare the cost to build and operate in MWh with the total MWh the plant will produce over it’s lifetime of operation.
Using exactly the same method, I came up with an EROEI of a new gas well, connected to the system and paying their share of O&M to the pipeline authority in Western Australia of 23/1. The capital cost of drilling 2 wells and building a simple processing plant, plus joining up to the main gas pipeline, plus the fees to pipeline operator comes to a total cost of $US25,750,000, while the return is 15,000,000 MWh of gas delivered to customers.
In Saudi Arabia there are still old wells that have a total capital plus operating and maintenance cost of $2.5/bbl. That comes out to an EROEI of 27/1. These are the old legacy wells drilled decades ago and still flowing well. The Saudi’s also have newer wells at a much lower EROEI, yet I can’t get data on this of actual costs.
The New England Solar Farm in northern NSW, is still being built at a capital cost of around $US858M for a 720 MW plant, an expected life of 25 years with an expected capacity of 5.5 hours/d on average. It also has 400MWh of battery storage, or about 35 minutes at the rated capacity. In terms of O&M costs in solar circles I’ve seen 1% of capital costs as the base used for the first decade, with costs expected to be 2-3% of capital costs thereafter. I’ve used a constant 1.5% of capital cost as the basis for my calculations.
1% of Capital cost of $858M = $8.58M X1.5 O&M X 25 yrs = $321,750,000. Add capital cost of $858M = $1,179,750,000. Divide by cost of energy $40/MWh = 29,493,750 MWh.
How much electricity will the plant produce over it’s life 720MW X 5.5Hrs/d X 365d/y X 25 Yrs = 36,135,000MWh ..or an EROEI of 1.22/1.
A wind farm near me of 132MW capacity, at a capital cost of $US193,000,000 and an expected O&M cost of $7.53/MWh, with expected production of 7,227,000 MWH over it’s life expectancy of 25 years. It was meant to have a capacity factor of 37% but has been running well below that at only 25% capacity, which is the number I’ve used. I’ve also noticed that fairly often during the day when I pass it, even with a good breeze, it’s often mostly stopped, and when I check the wholesale price at the time, it’s negative, meaning they deliberately shutdown the plant to avoid a cost to send electricity into the grid.
Anyway cost of $193,000,000 + 7,227,000MWh X $7.53/MW = $US247,419,310 lifetime cost. Divide by $40/MWh = 6,185,482MWh to build. The EROEI is 7,227,000MWH divided by 6,185,482MWh = 1.17/1.
Hinkley Point C nuclear plant with a latest estimation of $62,000,000,000 capital cost, an output of 1,564,185,600 MWh over a 60 year lifespan plus the same O&M costs of $30/MWh as in the US NPP fleet, works out with the following… 62B + 1,564,185,600hrs X 30/MWh = $108,925,568,000 lifetime cost, divided by $40/MWh = 2,723,139,200MWh to build while producing only 1,564,185,600MWh of electricity over 60 years or an EROEI of 0.57/1. In other words less energy produced than went into building and operating it!! (assuming there is any accuracy in the methodologies ‘cost to build’)
For curiosity I worked out a fracked well based on some industry numbers from D Coyne and others on the Peak Oil Barrel web page. Assuming the capital cost of the older wells was around the $US10,000,000 plus O&M costs averaging $US12/bbl, and a return over first 120 months (10 years) of 375,000bbls oil equivalent, then the cost is $10,000,000 + 375,000 X $12 = $US14,500,000. Divide by $40/Mwh = 362,500MWh for a return of 375,000 bbls which equals 375,000 X 1.7MWh.bbl = 637,500MWh. The EROEI is therefore 637,500MWH divided by 362,500MWh cost or 1.76/1.
Assuming the wholesale price of energy was a too low a number to use in the first place, because only the largest businesses pay this cheap price, while all the people involved in every aspect of their daily lives have to pay a much higher retail price, what does it do to all the EROEIs shown?
Lets take a quick example using a cost of energy as $80/MWh instead of the $40/MWh of the approximate wholesale price of energy to reflect the ‘retail’ costs people actually pay.
In the first very simple example we had an oil well that cost 1MWh of oil energy to build and returned 10Mwh of oil energy. In that case the energy cost was $40/MWH.
Let’s double the energy cost to the more realistic $80/MWh cost. However it still only cost $40 to build and operate, all we changed was the base price of energy we use to $80/MWh. It’s now only costing 0.5MWh of energy to build and still returning 10MWh of oil energy so the EROEI has gone up to 20/1.
Exactly the same happens to all the EROEI numbers we worked out, they all doubled. The ratio between any of the energy producers stayed the same. In fact we could use whatever number we liked for the overall energy cost, it’s just the EROEI numbers that change, but are always related back to each other.
In summary, assuming the original $40/MWh wholesale cost of energy, and $80/MWh for comparison, we get the following EROEIs:
| $40/MWh | $80/MWH | |
| Kogan Creek coal power station | 5.09 | 10.18 |
| Old Saudi oil wells | 27 | 54 |
| Permian fracked oil wells ~2015 | 1.76 | 3.52 |
| NESF Solar Farm | 1.22 | 2.44 |
| MTG Wind Farm | 1.17 | 2.34 |
| WA gas wells | 23 | 46 |
| Hinkley Point C nuclear | 0.57 | 1.14 |
None of the new energy types, including nuclear give us anything like the 10-20 EROEI that’s needed for modern civilisation to operate, yet the older fossil fuel plants have given us a much higher numbers on average well in excess of what’s often cited as the required EROEI.
Taking another new coal mine, the Leer South one in W Virginia USA, has a resource of 200,000,000 tonnes of metallurgical coal at an energy content of 8.33MWh/tonne. So the return for this new mine is around 1,666,000,000MWh in total over decades. The capital cost was around $380,000,000 and operating cost of $72.49/tonne. This works out at an EROEI of around 4.48 at the $40/MWh rate or 8.96 at the $80/Mwh rate for energy cost of building and operating the mine.
This mine and the Kogan Creek coal fired power station I mentioned earlier are both late coal developments, not considered viable in earlier times when easier to obtain coal resources were available. It’s the same with the fracked oil from the Permian, only left until recently as the energy prices were too low for them to be considered. The Leer South mine has seams of coal 2-3.5 metres in thickness with waste between the seams and between layers in the seams. Likewise for Kogan Creek.
These are not the thick, easy to mine types of coal deposits we built civilization with 50-100 years ago, so have a much lower EROEI than the easy to get and now depleted coal from around the world. Yet both are decent EROEIs at the $40/MWh cost and much higher EROEIs than any of the newer energy producers.
In conclusion, it should be obvious to everyone that any energy producing facility that costs a total of under $US26M over it’s lifetime (the small gas field in WA) and delivers 15,000,000MWh has a far better return under any metric than one that delivers only 7,227,000MWh (and intermittently at that), the Mt Gellibrand Wind Farm for a total lifetime cost of over $US247M.
All the ‘costs’ associated with any of energy producers are spent by the providers of the goods and services to build and operate the plants. People spend the money they earn working on these things, on food, heating their houses, cooling their houses, getting to work, their kid’s education and food, holidays, etc., the list is endless. Yet every single cent spent by anyone in the chain anywhere has an energy cost associated with it somewhere. Spending over $US247M must have a much higher background energy cost than something only costing under $US26M.
Understanding this cost difference, then comparing just these raw numbers to countless research papers that try to make out that wind farms have a better EROEI than the gas wells/plant costing only 10% overall, yet producing more than double the energy, has to make you think we are just deluding ourselves.
I know my numbers and methodology are far from perfect, yet they seem a lot more honest in comparing differences between the various energy providers and clearly show we have trouble ahead as the older much higher EROEI type energy producers are rapidly declining. These older types, even in the fossil fuel domain, are clearly the most profitable ones, so humans being humans are likely to use these much faster than the newer more marginal energy sources.
un-Denial 
Very nice primer on overshoot today by B.
B’s assembled a fairly complete laundry list of overshoot forces and issues, which is a great starting point for a new Themist, with of course the usual glaring omission about a uniquely intelligent brain with an extended theory of mind that believes in gods.
B thinks we can’t see overshoot because that’s what we’re taught, when in reality most teachers and their students are physically unable to see unpleasant realities.
His essay includes ideas on complexity consistent with Hideaway, and my idea that we should be grateful for witnessing the peak of what is possible in the universe, but nothing about the unique human brain as explained by Varki.
Maybe B doesn’t want to kill his subscriber growth, or maybe his denial genes are not fully defective.
His final sentence is odd: “may you are yours succeed”. Succeed at what? Breeding and growing your consumption? I’ve been there, it’s hard to know how to wrap up such a tome.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/how-i-came-to-believe-that-civilization-fe3
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Ya, B kinda gave us a big F U at the end there by not mentioning un-Denial in his recommended blog listing. Just based on his list, there’s no way he doesn’t know about this site, so I can only assume it was an intentional omission.
Very lame B.
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Curious minds want to know. Is it me or is it MORT that makes all the big names ignore this site?
We have a sound theory that explains the insanity (plus many other mysteries like god) and everyone ignores it.
We also have a new theory by Hideaway that explains why no solutions exist and the likely trajectory. Everyone ignores that too.
Their theory is we need more education despite 50 years since Limits to Growth with a 100% failure rate.
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A lot of the peak oil guys were recently complaining on Facebook about it being called a “predicament”. Apparently that is too pessimistic
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LOL, people are going to lose their minds as reality unfolds.
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Yeah, my feelings exactly. And all the people who have looked sideways at me for all these years as I have warned about collapse will apear in my driveway begging for me to take them in and feed them. . . reducing my preps to nothing. The irony is that I will have been right . . . just dead right in the end.
You are lucky that you have a true gray man location that can probably be maintained for some time.
AJ
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10 years or so ago I read a book called Tumbling Tide by Peter Goodchild. It was the book that really sealed the idea for me that civilisation never has been nor ever can be sustainable. It was a doomed experiment from the start. If memory serves me correct the book exposes a similar line of thinking as Hideaway’s theory. I also have a vague recollection that Peter Goodchild has a blog…
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This response is one good example why all the big names avoid mentioning this blog – from a passerby with no blog
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I don’t understand.
You think Varki’s theory is wrong? Or you think Hideaway’s theory is wrong? Or?
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Hello there Rob,
Hope you’re going well. I think what Anon meant was in response to your spot-on prediction that people will lose their minds when the penny finally drops that there’s no way out of our predicament. We all here have already adapted our minds to this reality but most of the gatekeepers to doom still think our take on it and no holds barred discussion is just too harsh especially for those just beginning their awareness journey. That’s why we’re a bit shunned, although remember you got a whole month’s worth of spruiking from the donor at Climate and Economy, well done! Have you gotten more subscribers since that exposure? Eventually people will percolate to their level of current understanding and comfort, and we’re either the crema or the dregs depending on how one wants to see it! It is lonely at the top but remember it’s not quantity but quality that counts!
Sending everyone warm thoughts and my gratitude for your being here.
Namaste, friends.
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😂 I reckon Harry’s news of doom website has about as many views as this site. I actually haven’t been on his good site for a while. I find I just end up spending too much time reading all this depressing stuff and before I know it I’ve spent 3 hours in front of a screen. Not healthy! One must live life!
By the way I was up your way at the end of August. You live in a stunningly beautiful area. I couldn’t get over how green it was around Atherton. I didn’t realise how mountainous it is up there. A bit like Tassie in that regard – and it was cold! I went for a swim in a few of the creeks and was a bit shocked at how cold the water was. So much for the tropics being hot!
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Hi there Perran,
Ah ha, now you know one of the reasons I chose the Atherton Tablelands as my final retreat and resting place, and only because alas, Tasmania is on the whole too cold and deficient in sunlight for me. I always thought of the Tablelands in Far North QLD, especially with the rolling hills to be a version of Tasmania but in the subtropics! The high altitude (where I’m at is around 950m elevation) is the secret for a more temperate climate compared to the stifling heat and humidity of the coast, we can even get frosts up here!
I still have a presence in Tasmania (although this year was largely spent up in QLD as we’re converting our shed into a house) and it will always be the place I spent the best years of my life and for the longest duration. We have been meaning to meet up for some years now and there’s not a minute to lose! I hope to get back to Tassie around Christmas or early in the new year and stay on for a few months, let’s try to get together then. I consider myself to be very lucky indeed to have 2 co-undenialists as practically neighbours, you in the Huon Valley, and David here in the Tablelands.
I trust you and your family are well. Enjoy the Show Day holiday.
Namaste, neighbour and friend.
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Thanks for explaining Gaia. I’m so dense on understanding nuance. Don’t know if it is age or a lifelong mental defect.
All I care about is understanding truth. For example, if someone thinks Hideaway’s complexity theory is wrong then they should explain why and offer a better theory for what’s going on. Instead everyone is silent and ignores it. MORT in action again I guess.
That donor at Climate and Economy was very kind. I don’t look at my subscriber number so do not know if it went up but there have been a fair number of new people commenting so maybe it had an effect.
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I think another thing that keeps people away from this blog is that we are delightfully apolitical. so many people are stuck in their camp’s way of thinking and get too easily offended
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LOL, I just listened to the latest episode of the “Breaking Down Collapse” podcast titled “Meta Reflections on Collapse”. They have a reasonable understanding of the problems but not much else. His core conclusion is that we are doomed unless politics quickly shifts left.
Unsubscribed.
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Yea that sort of thing is a big turn off for me as well. Especially considering that extreme left/right politics is a very new, only really getting going from the 1960s I think. Of course the battles between aristocrats and communists was a big theme of WW1 and WW2.
This type of ideological capture is so bad for critical thinking.
There won’t be left and right politics in a collapsing and collapsed society, because these are products of hyper industrialized modern internet society.
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Indi with a good one today. Has his usual trademark combo of hate & great writing skills.
I Can’t Watch Anything Anymore (Zionists Everywhere) — indi.ca
I like this comment from Dermot:
ps. Looks like I was successful at pushing another “woke” idiot out of my life because of what she deemed “unacceptable language”. One less CFM in my life, good riddance. I won’t bore you with the details, but the whole thing reminded me of this hilarious clip. Pay attention to Michael after Larry yells at him for not staying in the hand. The actor did a great job in this bit. He’s almost crying, LOL.
And now I can’t resist posting my all-time favorite scene of this series. It’s the grand opening of their new restaurant. Their chef has tourette syndrome so Larry is trying to ease the awkwardness and ends up starting a funny chain reaction.
But the only person not playing around is Susie. She’s still mad at Cheryl for making her miss her dental appt earlier that day and doesn’t believe Cheryl’s wacky (but true) excuse that she was stuck in a carwash. So of course Susie walks in the restaurant at the exact moment that Cheryl is “playing along” and assumes it’s directed at her. LOL, sorry for the worthless info but it’ll make it funnier.
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omg – I needed that!!! Good laugh! I have never even watched that show, but just loved it. It was actually really sweet of him and then everyone else to start swearing like that, it completely busts people out of their roles and the niceties of polite society. Also, hilarious the look on the guys face when he thought Larry was slapping around his woman in the car 😆
Americans are more hung up about the c word thas Brits or Australians, that’s what makes the first clip work.
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Someone is bringing Michael Dowd’s work back to life.
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Hey Rob – that someone is the postdoom team
“Keeping watch over Post-doom has been passed from Michael Dowd’s widow, Connie Barlow, to a small team dedicated to stoking the embers to ensure the flame of Collapse Acceptance continues to burn and spread.“
They have collated his many audio book recordings plus the vast amount of content he made around collapse on the site. I listened to this one, Electrifying the Titanic, it’s a great little book. Then read equally good ‘Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilisations Fail’.
This year each month the post doom site has put out a challenge. And I had not looked, but the challange for October is ‘Death Comfort’ and there are a couple of great links re all things preparing for death.
https://postdoom.com/challenges/
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I was certain that I had posted a comment on megacancer last year talking shit about Ophuls. I like William so I was hoping I wasn’t too harsh. Finally found it and no Ophuls bashing at all, thank god. True to my word, it’s only DQ that I ever pick on.😂😂
https://megacancer.wordpress.com/2024/11/11/splodge-goggles/#comment-10430
I’m just sharing the link because my last question about humans living in harmony started a long and interesting thread that’s worth reading, IMO.
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Some food for thought.
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Many warnings. Peak soil, peak oil, peak fisheries, peak minerals. Lead author is data scientist.
Microsoft Word – Peak Metals, Minerals, Energy, Wealth, Food and Population Urgent Policy Considerations for a Sustainable Soci
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I remain obsessed with what happened during covid, especially the ignorance and indifference of 95% of citizens.
I don’t talk about it much anymore because I am so angry that I will blow up in a heartbeat any relationship with someone that denies what happened. Over half of my relationships are already gone over this issue. Best not to discuss it anymore or I will be alone for the balance of my life.
I differentiate ignorance/denial of covid from overshoot issues because there is nothing that can be done about overshoot and so there is good reason for MORT to operate in most normal people.
Covid ignorance/denial, on the other hand, has no excuse because all of the dozens of things done wrong were completely avoidable, or at least now in the light of more data and less panic should be acknowledged with apologies and corrective lessons learned, but none have been.
I think most of the deaths were caused by our responses to the virus and not the virus itself. But even if I’m wrong and mRNA/PCR/withholding treatments/lockdowns/ventilators etc. etc. all worked as claimed there is still the core fact that every death was directly or indirectly caused by US/China collaboration on bioweapons research.
No one has been held to account. The issue is not discussed. Anywhere. Including my little community where only 300 out of 19,000 voters voted for the only party that promised to do something.
Shame on healthcare “professionals”. Shame on our “leaders”. Shame on the 95% of citizens that let them get away with it.
This new Tucker Carlson interview is the first I’ve heard with an insider that explains why the US collaborated with and transferred bioweapons expertise and technology to the Wuhan lab.
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Wow, I don’t know where to start.
Dr. Huff is an interesting brilliant scientist who was there from before Covid to the present. I agree that all those involved in the cover-up should be in jail. Gain of Function and synthetic biology should be banned (but won’t be because there is too much money to be made and too much geopolitical risk not to be involved).
Governments (probably of all countries) are not to be trusted, but ours (U.S.) is probably the worst.
I wish he would have gotten into the Covid vaccine and all the evil it caused (only touched on the increase in cancers linked to it).
I thought Tucker’s backhand statement that he hasn’t seen a doctor in 5 years was interesting. I have seen a few doctors but don’t trust any of them.
The most depressing part for me is that Tucker is a total religious fascist. I find true atheists/agnostics tend to be the most moral and belivers in religion the easiest to become immoral-god told me to kill all the Palestinians, Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Hindus, Pakestani’s, Iraians, atheists, etc..
AJ
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LOL, I haven’t seen a doctor for 30 years. Now thanks to covid I’m going to try even harder to avoid them.
I cut Carlson some slack for his religious beliefs because he’s trying to do the right thing on many important issues.
Despite voting for Trump he is publicly and harshly critical when Trump does things that are wrong, especially when they contradict Christian beliefs.
Carlson (I think) tries to follow the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the 10 commandments. He opposes many (most?) of his Christian US colleagues that support the genocide of Muslims and evil empire shenanigans.
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Angels on the sideline
Puzzled and amused
Why did Father give these humans free will?
Now they’re all confused
Don’t these talking monkeys know that
Eden has enough to go around?
Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys
Where there’s one, you’re bound to divide it
Right in two..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E1DkgUNfBc&list=RD6E1DkgUNfBc&start_radio=1
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Great tune and lyrics.
This is an awesome video that wasn’t made by Tool. I think the animation was to something else and someone had the genius idea to use it for this song.
If we put together a list of the best collapse songs, Tool would probably comprise half the list. LOL
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Trump is dragging the US into a war with Venezuela.
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This used to be one of my favorite things on the internet. 100% pure unadulterated smut. Full consciousness at its finest.
Probably been two years since I’ve seen it. I just got done watching and sorry to say but I’m gonna have to dump you debbie downers and hook back up with my ex-spiritual peeps. Goddamn there is so much hopium packed in this 9 min clip, I miss it. I don’t miss the lack of clarity and extreme curiosity… I just miss being able to watch or read something like this and think “maybe, you never know”.
I still recommend it though. It’s good. Half the audience will somewhat like it. The other half will be laughing maniacally at it. win/win😊
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I used to like watching this sort of crap too
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Tom Murphy’s essay today has a clear message that I always like to see: Space is off limits!!
2025: A Space Absurdity | Do the Math
I’ll continue to bash Tommy for his weakness with critical moment theory, but when it comes to space, he is definitely the expert. I’ve read 5 or 6 excellent essays from him about this topic.
Quick, pick an answer without thinking too much. Answer is in the essay. (I got it wrong)
This nugget below was actually the highlight of the essay for me. Made me LOL.
And I know… such an obvious song to pick, But I can’t help myself. It’s too good.
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What surprises me is that there’s so many engineers and scientists who present themselves as logical, critical thinking people who will fulminate with all the intensity of a religious fanatic when you tell them space colonization is completely ridiculous.
I think it’s just deeply embedded in the human psyche to want to have somewhere else to be able to wander off to when the local ecosystem has been exploited to the point where it’s no longer habitable.
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No surprise, just another case of MORT; denial in the form of overconfidence and irrational optimism.
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I just shared that video with Marigold but thought I’d post it here for any other new audience members. I still love this clip. And always a nice reminder to see that un-Denialist’s are real people and not just imaginary online friends.
https://un-denial.com/2024/06/13/coping-with-awareness/comment-page-2/#comment-100061
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I’m so glad I saw this and got to read the other thread as well. Amazing and very cool – what a life and experience for this young family, and then to see that each one is now getting their own house built on the block of land. I am amoung giants here and I am humbled to be with such incredibly clued in and wide awake company. Thanks Chris for continuing to find the treasures on this site for me 😊 And I will now have something extra special to share withy me bestest collapse buddy in NZ too, for next time we talk. As long as I also share the commentary from Campbell ‘we are so fucked!’ Yes we are real people, not imaginary friends 😉
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I like rewatching that video every now and then. We had a great 5 years on the road. Nikki and I are still in the bus on the land and currently relocating our nursery to right beside us so our future plantings get attention every morning.
I love every day with our kids in our wee piece of paradise. 🙏
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That is wonderful to hear. You are blessed to be in such a set up with your family. In my own way I tried to provide an ecological grounding for my daughter. We did baby led weaning, elimination communication at home (no nappies), took her to a bush kinder program and we used to spend a lot of time together at an inner city farm just hanging out where we had a garden plot. But I see that these efforts were nothing against the pull of global culture, just as it was for me when I was young. In her teens during the lockdowns, there were times when she went to the local waterways to collect plastic out of the creek. It kind of both made me proud and broke my heart, because it was done with genuine desire to help and make a difference. But she is happy now and loving life. She has a boyfriend, has just landed a new job, works out nearly every day at the gym pumping iron and is on a low carb diet and is strong and well.
Much of her younger years was spent in braces/plates and from the start she had problems with not being able to breath through her nose, as well as asthma/eczema/allergies. We had one completely failed or botched orthodontic attempt followed by another successful one. There were ops to remove adenoids and every kind of intervention to try to help widen nasal passage so she could nose breath. Buteyko, mouth taping at night with mouth brace etc. Later after this time I read Paul Ehrlich ‘Jaws’ book amoung others and learnt of the epidemic of dental/breathing problems, and wished more than anything I had read this before she was born. I was also into Western Price cookng and eating when she was young. He was a dentist in the early 20th century who visited all these tribal cultures to find out why they had such good teeth and bone strucutre of their faces.
Watching your video of that time and the bus and the way you had it rigged up, I wish every family had a chance to live like that. But somehow the kids still manage and adapt and get by. I think of all the modern ‘vices’ that we see young people have these days, but it could be that such things are keeping them from going utterly insane. Like their discord servers and constant contact and gaming etc, it is there way of surviving and connecting with each other.
The tragic thing is kids her age know on some level that it is all over for this modern way of life, but the knowing is not real, it does not click in the way it has for us here, it’s pushed aside by the hormonal and other forcess that will just keep life going, even if they can see it fracturing everywhere.
I think if she had two doomer parents, not just one, then I would be able to convince her to get out of the city and do survival training and to seriously try to have a chance. But that’s not going to happen.
Regardless, each day is to be treasured now – global hospice days. And each life, no matter how young, is a complete and whole life.
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https://truthout.org/articles/gaza-officials-say-israel-has-violated-ceasefire-80-times-in-first-10-days/
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Steve St. Angelo reviews peak net energy and predicts big problems by 2030.
He also explains why AI tech stocks and BitCoin have risks higher than everything else in our everything bubble.
AI data centers are depreciating 40 billion per year on annual revenues of 15 billion. Revenues would need to increase 10 fold for AI data centers to break even.
Also a nice add-on to Tom Murphy’s piece above on the impossibility of space travel dreams.
His conclusion: buy gold. No mention of sardines.
A supernova exit it is.
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Everybody in the collapse sphere seems to put the collapse 5 years off. I would think all the wars, rumors of wars and especially complexity would suggest the supernova exit is closer than that and we are seeing some denial of that unpleasant reality from everyone???
AJ
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The only overshoot aware person that I recall who predicts collapse closer than 5 years and/or the ubiquitous 2030 that almost everyone uses is Lars Larsen.
https://un-denial.com/2024/07/29/book-review-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-by-lars-larsen-2024/
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Serious question.
How is it possible that only one person in the world, an obscure, now retired, and possible insane blogger, attempted the most obvious analysis for anyone seriously interested in understanding when scarcity might begin for the most vital non-renewable resource that about 7 billion lives depend on: the cumulative effect of supply, EROEI, and Export Land Model on diesel available to import?
Perhaps it’s MORT.
But then why hasn’t an aware (MORT free?) expert like Berman, Tverberg, St. Angelo, Peach, Martenson, Hagens, etc. done an independent calculation, or even critiqued the work of Larsen?
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I don’t know the answer to your question, but I like it when I pick up ego vibes of you wanting some credit (which we all know you absolutely deserve a ton of). Because it shows me you’re still flawed😊. The perfect Zen Master place I want to get to is where I DGAF about anything dopamine related. No ego at all. I thought Ligotti was there… by not giving a damn that his work was stolen for the Rust Cohle character in True Detective. But I saw some old comments from him in a forum and he was beyond pissed. Haha!
I’m miles away though. In fact, I still have the nerve to drop comments from time to time declaring that I should be credited for bringing the entire concept of fire to the doomasphere. LOL!!!
Here’s one from a sermon I gave on Steve Bull’s site couple months ago. Entire comment is worth reading, imo. (btw, I might go back to preaching this instead of blowing up the planet to destroy the blob forever. And just for the record; blowing up the planet is absolutely the most helpful & merciful act possible. But for some reason, it’s a tough sell😂)
Great list Steve.. That’s why I think it’s mandatory to… | by paqnation | Aug, 2025 | Medium
And I take it back re your question. Of course I know the answer. Because it’s just too scary/depressing to commit and go all the way with it. So funny too. An overshoot journey requires a constant peeling of the denial layers. Never stops. Every new thing you learn, more denial needs to be shed. But when we get to a certain point… lol, that’s when most doomer pussies (I’d say 80% easy) refuse to peel back any more layers and jump ship to the safe zone of blaming culture or believing in technology.
For example, look at the last sentence from George’s essay yesterday.
Demystifying Collapse – The George Tsakraklides View
George is similar to me in that he has come a long way in his journey in the last two years. He’s much more advanced than he was back in his post doom interview w/ Dowd. He seems to have his denial under control. And he knows damn well that humans need to go away ASAP. Yet he still slips up occasionally with garbage hopium. I pointed out the error, of course:
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Good insight about why everyone might be avoiding Larsen. Also possible they haven’t seen his work. I hadn’t until el mar posted a link here, and I thought I knew all the names in the peak oil space.
I think your insights on linking fire to human uniqueness and overshoot are the clearest and most directly expressed I’ve seen. If someday you want to do a version 2 I’d be pleased to post it.
I don’t think my ego is saying I know more than the oil experts.
I think my ego is saying Larsen is focused on the most important short-term overshoot issue we face. He smells correct to me but I don’t have the skills to verify his work. How come I’m the only person paying attention to his work?
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Well this is not meant to fire up that dopamine, but i just read the whole Fire essay again now and I think it is brillant and I don’t know why it is you putting this together, and not some high falutin academic. Beats me. It’s funny reading it again now, after taking in a lot of the other essays here and also getting to know you, that I can see it fitting together. And I was also already there in a less intellectual sense, with a kind of fascination with pre fire humans, as the picture painted by Lyle Lewis (Racing to Extinction book) in his “Day in the Life” of australopithecus tribe. I even made the fam listen to this from the audio book at the dinner table the other night LOL. I guess it’s searching for the ‘lost innocence’ but I see now that it’s not about some inherent evilness or rotten to the core – bullshit, it’s just how life has unfolded. it’s not personal. that’s about all I can come up with. And I like how Charles influence was there on the essay toward the end as well – sounded very non dual.
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Also, the permaculture movement has a niche of people obsessed with backyard pyrotechnics. From the book of one of them (oops, prob breaks copyright)
“Around a million years ago our ancestors learnt to control the mysterious and powerful force of fire. So significant was this moment, that by the time we would retrospectively come to be known as Homo sapiens, our whole digestive system had come to expect its food cooked, and our lungs had adapted to air pollution.
It’s somewhat humbling therefore to learn that for those last one million years – and let’s not mince words here – we’ve been doing it wrong.
Three billion people continue to cook on biomass each day. The smoke caused by this (despite our genetic adaptations) is a major health concern, and the excessive use of fuel is a major environmental one. Smoke however, is nothing but unburnt fuel, and more efficient combustion offers both more heat, and an end to the cancer and coughing.
Enter the rocket stove…”
Then the rest of the book is how to build one. I had one built in a demonstration workshop at a former rental property and then had to SMASH it after we left, as the owner did not want a rocket oven in their backyard – morons.
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Well, I guess I’m not a Zen Master yet, cuz I’m tingling.😊
Thanks for the kind words Renaee. (you too Rob)
ps. Funny image for me with that dinner table story. You the doomer trying to take control of the situation and pawn your awareness knowledge onto them. Sounds like you were successful. Impressive. I had to stop trying. They either start talking shit or not paying enough attention and the way I end up handling it, you’d think I was the writer/director of whatever video we’re watching.😂
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I’ve been pondering this question since you first asked it.
We need to look at the history of the peak oil movement, going back over 20 years when many people did try to forecast when civilization was in trouble past peak oil. Collectively they got the end of our civilization wrong with their guesses based on what they thought was the best information.
I’ve been of the opinion we just cannot work any of this out exactly, as so much vital information is kept as state secrets. None of us has any way to know exactly how much oil exists in the Middle East as the reported reserves don’t change from year to year. I expect all those countries will keep lying to the rest of the world up until it’s obvious they really are running out of ability to produce in increasing quantities. (might be right now, I just don’t know!!)
All the past experts rely upon a Hubbert linearization graph to show the rise, plateau then fall of oil production in a trap, field, country or the world as a whole, based on past actual growth and decline rates of individual oil fields.
In my not so humble opinion, this methodology has worked in a set of circumstances of cheap energy and materials, plus growth in population (market/workers) and technology. The first sign that this methodology for forecasting the future was incorrect was the Cantarell oil field in Mexico, the second largest in the world, where the oil production collapsed just past peak, when using tertiary oil extraction methods to increase production as it was being depleted.
https://www.energycrisis.com/mx/images/cantarell.png
I suspect overall world oil production will be a similar shaped graph, with the middle east countries using every technology at their disposal to keep production as high as possible until it’s no longer possible, after 80% plus depletion of their ‘real’ reserves, whenever that is.
Even Cantarell was able to keep some production going past peak, because there were continuing new technological advances, plus materials and energy overall were were still cheap to build whatever ‘new’, needed to be built to keep production as high as possible..
Once the world as a whole passes peak production, with likely steep falls in production after then, the feedback loops of more expensive energy and materials overall, plus crashing economies will exacerbate the situation, making the fall in production much steeper than what happened to the decline rate of fields like Cantarell.
It’s a different world past peak, which is what people looking at old models forget about. We cannot compare a world where growth is still happening, in relation to how oil field decline rates happen; to a world where overall world energy and materials are declining, to how an oil field (or all fields combined), decline when the feedback loops of ‘less’ are kicking in. As in less technology, less cheap energy and materials to drill more wells etc..
We cannot tell when oil production’s peak will happen, even if we did know the total reserves and resources of the entire world with accuracy. Because of our advanced technology in oil extraction, the models of the past, where peak production was reached at 50% of depletion, are not relevant anymore. Actual production peak might happen at 70% of depletion or 80% of depletion, or if radical drilling technologies improve enough at 90% depletion of reserves/resources..
What is certain to happen though, is that the rate of decline, or Seneca cliff of production, is likely to be much steeper, the later peak production is reached.
The only real method we have of telling when the collapse of civilization is approaching is by looking at the crude oil price. As production starts to decline the price will rise, it’s the part where economics is correct with simple supply reduction raising prices to reduce demand. When production keeps declining no matter what the price goes to, even with ‘demand’ declining (because lots of people/ businesses/countries can no longer afford oil and it’s products), then that’s where feedback loops kick in, which accelerates the decline in production.
In Lars’s case about diesel, which I agree is the master component of oil for civilization, he misses how diesel also comes from the condensate from increased natural gas production, plus misses how substitution will kick in when diesel becomes much more expensive than the petroleum component.
Petrol engines exist and will be used increasingly in some applications that currently rely upon diesel, if overall ‘liquids’ production can continue to rise. If diesel is currently used for generators or pumps, but gets a lot more expensive, then people still have the option of petrol generators and pumps, which are less efficient than diesel, but could still be cheaper to operate overall with expensive diesel and cheap petrol. When is comes to using energy products, people think of efficiency in dollar terms to operate machinery.
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Sorry, I missed this when you posted it. It’s a very good explanation.
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Most of the mainstream peak oilers have been super wrong in their predictions. Especially near term predictions. I can understand why they are more cautious now. If you make a prediction for 10-20 years in the future, most people would have forgot by then and not call you out. I’m after McPhearson though for next year. 10 years ago he said we would all be dead by 2026.
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Rad (1986) – IMDb
Thrashin’ (1986) – IMDb
Two of the best nostalgia movies from my youth. No recommendation here. These will be awful if you’ve never seen em and just tried watching now. You missed the window by 40 years. LOL
Watched Rad last night and was laughing at the backflip. It was the holy grail of BMX tricks at the time.
Remember this cheesy anti-drug ad from the 80’s.
Well, I had a similar (and just as cheesy😊) idea for critical moment theory.
This is hunter/gatherer’s skill level for most of history:
This is h/g skill level after full consciousness is added:
Easy to see why the megafauna didn’t go extinct until only recently. Any questions?
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I had to watch that second one a couple of times to believe what I was seeing – no questions 😉 though outside of un-denial, few would have a clue what you meant. The contrast was remarkable.
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LOL, and that was from ten years ago! They’re probably up to 6 or 7 backflips by now😊… or I think more accurately that the BMXers hit their peak just like everything else in society and there’s no more progress left to be made.
Although, I think this ridiculous trick happened just recently… so they’re not quite done yet.
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That’s peak insanity right there!!! I remember listening do a spiritual teacher maybe in the 90s sometime who said that all around the world, the trend is for people to come into the body more and more, and we are seeing this explosion of talent in the feats of sports people (skiers, rock climbing, gymnasts, bmx skateboard etc), and there was some other profound explanation around this, but I can’t quite remember the point he was making. Something about full consciousness and embodiment.
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Don’t forget guitarists.
There’s hundreds of guitarists on YouTube that are much more talented that the half dozen or so top guitarists of the 60’s.
Problem is those 60’s guys used up the finite supply of good riffs.
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Better than Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Fripp, Van Halen, Thompson and on and on?
These guys were Musicians and great songwriters(and brilliant guitar players) not just guitar twiddlers. Pointless technical brilliance is just that – pointless. Which is why they do You Tube videos in their bedrooms. I suppose it’s better for them than masturbating.
Mick N
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Agree, modern shredders like Polyphia have amazing skills but their music sounds like noise.
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There are some amazing sounds that these guys can do with their mouths. There was nothing close to this in the 70s and 80s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cGbMr7EBlE
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The Police Academy dude strongly disagrees with you niko.😊
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Michael is good but not that good. Better at sound effects not beat making. Always loved Police Academy films.
Then there is this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHY5HbA7TCw&list=RDSHY5HbA7TCw&start_radio=1
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We’re just a bunch of clever monkeys.
I’ve posted this many times but I love it.
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dear Rob, that has made my day!! So glad you did post it again. Omg so true 😆🙉🙈🙊🐒🐵
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Say you run to be the US president and promise a balanced budget, no more war, and no more foreign meddling.
Several attempts to assassinate you are made but you survive and are elected.
As soon as you are sworn in the CIA makes a presentation explaining that by 2030, maybe as early as 2027, there will not be enough diesel to supply the world and weaker countries will be forced to make do without resulting in their economic collapse and starvation.
If you cut the deficit your economy will go into a depression, and a depression (or hyperinflation) will eventually happen no matter what you do, however you might sustain less harm if you’re the last country standing.
Your domestic supply of diesel is falling fast and you will soon be dependent on imports again.
The biggest importer of oil is China and they have many more valued things to trade for oil than you do.
Iran, Venezuela, and Russia are the only countries that might be able to increase diesel exports.
What would you do?
Would you explain what you’re doing?
How does this differ from what Trump has done?
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spot on Rob!
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Mark Knopfler wrote a wonderful little tango about the handover 20 years ago. Here it is with lyrics
Mark Knopfler – Don’t Crash The Ambulance (Lyrics) – Shangri-La (2004)
Mick North
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Great song – what’s the meaning behind it though – ‘the handover’?
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I still keep my eye on Dr. Joe Lee.
He’s a smart crazy rude SOB with a couple theories that might be right about 2 very important covid issues.
Why so few died from the virus, and why so many were harmed by mRNA transfections.
This essay addresses the former.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/176580385
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The US “experts” are still recommending mRNA transfections for almost everyone including:
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche responded today.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/175944133
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I had no idea people were still getting Covid vaccines, maybe people just aren’t talking about it anymore. I still think the other shoe has yet to drop with these vaccines. Like I’m sure a lot of people have died from the Covid vaccines already, but I don’t think the worst is over yet. Things like immunodeficiencies and cancers take a long time to develop to the point where they start getting captured in official statistic.
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In addition, thanks to tossing 100 years of pandemic wisdom in the garbage, and vaccinating billions who did not need protection in the middle of pandemic, we have not achieved herd immunity, and many new variants continue to emerge and circulate.
This means a roulette wheel with a possible horrific outcome is being spun and spun and spun and spun.
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I live outside (30 miles away) from a solidly BLUE area. I shop at the local organic co-op and many people of all ages are still wearing masks (showing solidarity). One of my children lives in this town and she and her partner are very BLUE. I suspect she is still getting “boosters”. Although young (30 ish) and healthy (runner and thin) she has had Covid multiple times – again just a few weeks ago. So, yes there are still people getting the vax.
AJ
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LOL, I see a few people in the stores here wearing masks.
I assumed they understand they have broken their immune systems with mRNA transfections and are trying to do what they can to protect themselves from the variants circulating everywhere that they helped to create.
Now you tell me the masks are a political statement rather than a rational scientific act.
That makes me sad but not surprised.
Covid exposed the large percentage of morons in our species.
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Kim Kardashian diagnosed with brain aneurysm | Ents & Arts News | Sky News
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Really good covid rant by Dr. Bret Weinstein with some fresh insights into what went on behind the scenes with Fauci’s policy decision makers.
Weinstein explains why Fauci deserves the title of worst human being, and accuses them all of not injecting the mRNA that they coerced into billions of people they knew did not need protection, and without full disclosure of known risks.
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When (not if) the A bubble bursts, it is going to be less like the dotcom bubble and more like the housing bubble of the late 2000s.
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The conclusion from Tim Morgan’s above essay predicts a supernova ending.
I prefer Hideaway’s Complexity Theory explanation for the supernova.
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From my waiting-for-the-espresso-machine-to-warm-up-while-lying-in-bed news feed:
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Preptip:
I recently installed 5 security cameras on my property.
If you’re wondering which application to use to monitor cameras I can vouch for Blue Iris. It seems to be the most popular camera security software and I can see why.
I ran a cracked version for a while before deciding to buy a license. I’m super impressed. Their team releases improvements and bug fixes every few days. It’s a complicated product but the documentation is superb.
Their sales distribution channel is confusing with wildly varying prices. The cheapest I could find was US$49.49 from Amcrest.com. Use coupon HOLIDAY10 for 10% off.
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I wish Berman would stick to his energy wheelhouse and verify or rebut Larsen’s calculations rather than pontificating on philosophical nonsense.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-mirror-not-the-monster-what-ai-reveals-about-us/
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Pontificating on philosophical nonsense! ha ha, such a ‘you’ comment.
Maybe we could just ask Berman to do this? He has a comments section of his blog, so I could put a question there, if you put together the exact requirement? I gather it is based on the book review of Larsen and your final conclusion as per the bottom of that post? It sure seems worthwhile thing to do.
Re his post about AI, I read some of it, and I think he is a good writer. But like you, I am now done with caring about what AI teaches us about ourselves. I wrote a review of a book that ‘psychoanalysed’ AI and it’s on Substack. First few paras….well over half!
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My experiences interacting with Berman over the years have been very negative. I stay away now.
He has no time for anyone that is not a gifted professional like himself.
Berman dislikes “doomers” despite being one himself during half the cycle of his regular flip-flops between despair and optimism.
Maybe you’ll have more luck. You could provide a link to Larsen’s work and ask if he’s looked at it.
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Yes, as per your post i see called ‘we’re all good now’ from a little while ago. I will give this a try – can’t hurt!
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If Berman responds my prediction is he’ll dismiss the source and not look at the content.
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My prediction is Art will get pissy and tell her to go start her own blog since she knows it all.
I’ve seen him go there a couple times. (good luck Marigold!)
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I left a comment on his blog, but the comments are not published until approved by the looks, so will see if it appears there and/or if he responds to me via email.
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Shale oil probably peaked last October and may show it’s first year on year decline this month.
Longer holes are being drilled for less oil.
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Crazy Eddy wants to make a new holiday. Introducing World Vaccine Injured Day
I try to keep up with my archrival shock jock, but I just don’t have what it takes. Sorry guys, I’ve let you down. I mean c’mon, how am I supposed to compete with this: “All I care about is that vaxxers are suffering and dying…it’s awesome…let’s celebrate”
Bonus: I found some actual live footage of Eddy’s schadenfreude.
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I spent some time reading FE. Geez, it’s hard to hear, but he’s right about a lot.
Likely true for the city, but if you are in an isolated area with lots of other people with you that you trust (like examples shared here) then there may be a chance to defend the place for a while. But as noted, at what cost to heart and soul.
I wanted to believe the fairy tale in Retrosuburbia (Aussie Street) by David Holmgren, where we all live in the Salvage Economy and somehow get by for a while, eating possums and sulphur crested cockatoos etc etc, despite knowing on some level how utterly incapable of this lifestyle change I would be. Optimism bias!!
FE also writes about the vax in a way that is simple enough to understand.
I read the one about the poor woman gang raped during the Arab Spring. Horrific.
Then followed a link off to YT about the blackouts in NY city in the 70s comparing them to the biggest blackout ever in nov 1965. This dorky history guy explained that while there were terrible riots and violence, there were also peolple cooperating and even partying. He explained the worsening economic conditions, heat wave and serial killer on the loose, that all spurred on the violence of that one night in ’77. Also said that there is a theory that if it was not for this night, where many dudes were able to steal recording equipment, then the birth of hip hop music would not have been possible, and now it is the highest selling genre of music in the world.
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I challenge Hideaway’s essay
A global cull combined with A.I. can work. (works in other animal herds all the time. without A.I.)
By 2030 carbon will be cut in half
Then again by 2040.
Then again by 2050.
= 1 billion people left (the golden billion)
*It won’t be easy but nothing good is easy.
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It’s good to be challenged, I like challenges.. Please explain your thesis in exactly how it can be done and where I’m incorrect.
Assuming you are referring to the EROEI essay up top as wrong, please explain exactly how we can measure EROEI which covers all energy inputs, included embedded in the system ones, in a better way. Every time I’ve asked people to show how they have worked out energy inputs, they have a tendency to point to research papers that don’t mention any methodology at all, just pluck numbers from other papers, which also don’t show the actual methodology.
Realistically, we can’t separate any aspect of civilization to work out how the whole can continue, yet that’s what I’m always reading. People write up research papers in regard to energy, or environment, or economics, or complexity, or agriculture, or mining, or recycling, or, or, or….. all without reference to the other aspects as if any aspect can fully be explained by itself.
It doesn’t work that way, yet our minds want to compartmentalize every aspect as if independent. I read about how we have a new 500GW of solar (or whatever the number) this year and are growing it’s instalments at xx%, so in ‘y’ years time we’ll have plenty of solar, blah, blah, blah etc… It’s total nonsense by itself, as it ignores the new cost, new energy, new materials and new workers or machines required for all the new mines, new factories, new roads, new workers to build it all.
If we are adding something new to civilization, it takes overall growth to do it, which means more energy and materials, more workers to build it, while maintaining every aspect that exists so the system can operate normally to allow the new aspect to grow. This is the part most people fail to research at all. They think we can grow some aspect, in a vacuum by itself, which is not how our system of civilization works at all.
I’m all eyes to read your essay on how the plan you mention can be done. Especially how you cover entropy, dissipation, lower ore grades, while increasing production of energy and materials necessary for the golden billion in 2050. PLease leave out the hand waves of “we’ll recycle everything” and explain in energy and material terms exactly how it’s done..
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Today I listened to an interview with expert geopolitical analyst John Mearsheimer in which he said many years ago when oil supply was a problem he understood why the US supported Israel, but today he’s dumbfounded why US supports Israel’s genocide given that oil is a total non-issue.
Pretty much every analyst trying to understand the suicidal behavior of European leaders towards Russia ignores oil depletion.
There’s only one small group of peak oil experts in the entire world that meets on a regular basis to discuss depletion of oil, the most important non-renewable resource that all of modernity and about 7 billion people need to survive.
Many thousands of times more people meet to discuss Star Wars movies.
The fact that a topic as important as peak oil gets so little attention can only be understood in the light of MORT.
The world’s sole peak-oil group is led by a young small scale farmer in Canada named Andril Zvorygin.
Today Andril published a plan for making Canada more sustainable with less oil.
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Oil is a strategic resource and has been since the early 20th century. There might not be public forums discussing its depletion, but I guarantee you it’s discussed in the intelligence and military communities and those conversations are not released to the public. The argument that an abundant oil supply would deter the US from intervening in the middle east can be dismissed on its face. For example, the US still had an abundant oil supply in the 1950s and chose to coup Iran regardless.
A lot of these “geopolitical” experts in academia don’t have access to the full picture because it’s classified, or they alone are not an expert in enough areas to understand why a nation is acting in a certain way toward another nation. They got to where they are because they’re good at writing papers and arguing coherently, not necessarily for being “right” or understanding the full picture.
If they were really that good at understanding international relations, why would they be in academia? It’s like economists, if they really understood the economy, why aren’t they all billionaires?
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Steve Bull with a good essay today about govt & elites.
I try to stay away from this crap nowadays. I prefer the bigger picture stuff. But Steve knows what he’s talking about. I’ll betcha he’s read most of Chomsky’s work.
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXVIII–We’re Saved! ‘Good Government’ Has Humanity’s Back. Part 2. | by Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca) | Oct, 2025 | Medium
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Very nice calm wise humble discussion with Dr. Tom Murphy on physics and his path through overshoot awareness.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/10/tangents-with-chris-ryan/
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Looks interesting. I plan to watch it later.
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After a period of peace and tranquility fortifying his bunker, Hideaway is back exposing reality.
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Supernovas everywhere you look…
https://voiceforscienceandsolidarity.substack.com/p/no-the-damage-resulting-from-this?r=y46t6
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So this increasing threat from Covid variants and the shots made me bite the bullet and buy some Ivermectin. I had quite a bit of the horse paste that I purchased over the past few years that is still there for back-up, but I wanted some good old fashioned pills.
These guys advertise on Zero Hedge and the price is a rip off for something that could be had for pennies a pill if it was truly over-the-counter available (which it isn’t – and I don’t live in a Red state). Hopefully I won’t need it, but you never know.
https://www.twc.health/
AJ
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US$3.50 per 18 mg pill plus shipping. Jeez that’s expensive. My horse paste per mg is about 1/3 the cost.
Anyone have a cheap reliable source of pills?
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Nice rant by el gato malo on why all music since 2005 sucks.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/video-really-did-kill-the-radio-star
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That was a fun trip down nostalgia lane.
Comments were actually the highlight. A lot of “we need to” fixes. Whenever I see that phrase I laugh. Not so much at the person who said it, but at the Sam Mitchell voice in my head that always whispers back “Aint Gonna Happen!”
The author’s “we need to” was funny and accurate:
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’
Into the future
It’s all just one big nonstop conveyer belt of so called ‘progress’. And the belt has moved way past that epic 1985 performance of Bohemian Rhapsody. It was a fleeting moment and no longer exists. Same with my golden age of independent cinema. Ditto for the good ol’ days of pre-Columbus Native Americans living in harmony with nature. Time just keeps on slippin.
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Yes – brilliant rant!! This is def one to share at the dinner table as well 😜🙏
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I had to Google tay-tay LOL. Her stuff all sounds the same but she does have nice hair.
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oh that’s hilarious Rob! My kid’s ‘boyfriend’ is a huge Tay Tay fan, has all the merch and has been to the concerts. Swift is a billionaire – a mini touring economy all of her own. Still she has donated lots of money to charities and pays her roadies/crew big bucks. And yes nice hair 😆
I read of another one of his essays – this was a really good one i thought:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/mean-words-and-male-bonding
I’m so glad to be hanging out here with smart and cool people who send me off to lots of great stuff to read 😊 It’s pouring rain today – so wonderful.
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Very high talent here.
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Supurb! that’s quite a made up surname he’s got going there too. Surely this is as good as any guitartist back in the day? It sounds like there is some bass in the background but i don’t think so – amazing this full sound is from just one instrument. He even got to have one riff that was Michael Jackson’s very high voice – impressive.
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He’s playing the bass line. Everything you hear is him.
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Preptip:
I’m thinking about buying an alcohol still for post-collapse fun and profit.
Vevor is the cheapest 30L still I can find at CDN$135 (US$96).
Bubba’s review gives me confidence this is a good choice.
Anyone aware of a better choice?
https://www.vevor.ca/alcohol-distiller-c_10688/10gal-38l-water-wine-distiller-ceramic-stove-red-copper-pipe-moonshine-p_010887753019
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Rob, if you are thinking of going into distilling at all from a know nothing point of view, then go to homedistiller.org and read, read, read….
Any still that requires hot high grade alcohol to come into contact with teflon tape, plastic or rubber is to be avoided. Something that has multiple possible leak points is to be avoided. I’ve been distilling for over 20 years, even though I haven’t been drink alcohol for the last 10 of those years, others like my product.
It’s one of those hobbies you either go into it properly or not at all. A half baked $90 still is not going to cut it at all. After the collapse the local warlord will think you a genius if you make good quality shine, but make him sick with your product, and you can guess the rest…
You need copper, lots of copper to make moonshine properly. The right equipment is not the cheap stuff..
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Thanks Hideaway. I think you’re right. I’m getting old and my brain does not remember as well as it once did. Many years ago I did a bunch of reading and found my old notes. At that time I concluded the best choice for making vodka from sugar, which is all I want to do, is the Turbo 500 boiler and reflux column and condenser made by a company in New Zealand. It costs about CDN$600. That’s a lot of money for something I won’t use until SHTF, and then sugar may be scarce.
On the other hand, alcohol doesn’t go bad so I guess I could chip away at it now and make a big quantity stored in mason jars.
I’m going to think about it.
https://www.stillspirits.com/collections/stills/products/t500-reflux-still
P.S. I had a friend here who got serious about making scotch from locally sourced grains, smoked peat, and wood for aging. It was way too complicated and messy for me. The whole point is the ethanol drug so I think vodka from cheap sugar is a better choice. My friend died unexpectedly watching television after (I suspect but do not know for sure) getting a covid shot.
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payback estimate:
– vodka @ liquor store $40/L
– 1Kg sugar costs $1.50 and makes 1L vodka
– add say $1.50 per L for mason jar, yeast, electricity, charcoal filters, etc.
– homemade vodka costs $3.00 per L which saves $37 per L
– payback for equipment is $600/$37 = 16L
Sounds too good to be true. Four batches pays for the equipment?
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Well that sucks.
High proof alcohol is not safe to store with standard canning lids because it dissolves the PVC based gasket material.
Ditto for the rubber in my reusable Harvest Guard canning lids.
Silence on long-term storage at homedistiller.org.
These 2L glass jugs might be a good option but shipping cost is 3 times the product cost!
https://www.bottlestore.com/64oz-amber-glass-growler-38-405-neck.html
Anyone have any cheap long-term storage ideas?
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Screw it, we’re all going to die anyway. Maybe the health risks are acceptable?
chatGPT says no.
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Hmmm… How about a few 50 gallon stainless steel tanks? Nope, US$1,000-$6,000 each.
Maybe the optimal solution is to stockpile sugar and then make ethanol incrementally on demand? This assumes affordable reliable electricity. Also rodents will be a problem with bulk sugar.
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Dilute the alcohol to 40% like vodka and store in bottles. It is less of a fire risk and is ready to drink. It shouldn’t be anywhere as strong of a solvent this way.
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Thanks. That might help but will double the storage space required. I don’t see any cheap large bottles in the stores here or on Amazon. Maybe I should see what the brewing supply stores here sell for beer & wine.
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Duh… I think I found an obvious solution.
Clear glass 750 mL wine bottles with metal screw caps are CDN$3.40 each with free delivery. Bloody bottle costs more than the alcohol.
12 per cardboard box should stack efficiently.
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Frankly, I would prefer that someone say I don’t know than spew BS with confidence.
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I listened to this once already. There’s a lot of substance in this one. Nate put a lot of work into his thoughts. I’m going to listen to it again and concentrate harder.
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Your comment got me to watch this. One of Nate’s best. And it paired well with George’s post today about panic attacks from the pressures of the office.
Before Capitalism Breaks the Bank, It Breaks the People
It’s funny that this is probably relatable to everyone… yet we don’t see it that way at the time. Instead of seeing the job as fraudulent, we think we’re the problem. Tricksters and frauds. Imposter syndrome.
My big breakdown moment happened almost ten years ago. I was a manager for the sales dept of a credit repair company. I had moved up the ladder quickly because I was a good sales rep… and even better at getting others to use & follow my script.
I was by far the best (in middle management) at getting people engaged and motivated with games (carrot and stick). To the point where my boss’s boss assigned me to coordinate games for not just my team, but the entire floor.
I’d be brought into interviews of sought after heavy hitters because I was good at pumping people up with excitement about how much money they could potentially make. I was the hype man for that place. I might as well have been wearing a bozo the clown costume.
There’s a godlike complex that comes with being good in the sales world. A lot of my reps had never made more than $40k in a year and now I had them up to 70-90k. Those people are loyal to a fault. They’d march to the frontlines of the battlefield if I told them to.
And then almost overnight, I went from the man with all the answers to a bumbling idiot. Just like that. I couldn’t fake my way through anything anymore. Instead of instant bullshit answers with confidence, I became hesitant on everything. I mean if we were buying the sales floor lunch that day and I was asked if we should go with pizza or subs… I’d freeze up even with that!
It got so bad that eventually I couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning. Crippling fear for what was awaiting me in the office…. questions that I don’t know the answers to. The horror, the horror! LOL
I went to the doctors and they put me on a few anxiety & depression meds like Lexipro. I was a zombie with that stuff, but at least I could get out of bed in the morning. In 2016 I finally got out of the sales environment for good. That world was like Beavis and Butthead. And it damn near drove me to the same place as principal McVicker.
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Interesting story. Any idea what triggered your change?
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Not officially. But I have a theory. LOL, I always have a theory. I think it was from the marijuana industry getting too creative.
Around 2010 the industry blew up with complexity. Manufacturers began experimenting with extraction processes to produce a variety of concentrates like budder, wax, crumble and shatter. A hit of normal flower has about 20% THC potency. A hit of concentrates is closer to 90% potency.
Just look at the equipment. If you are a total novice with weed and I bust out a joint or bong and then use my lighter… no big deal, you’re gonna know exactly what I’m doing. But if I bust out my rig (which looks like a chemistry set) and then use my blow torch to heat the wax… well, you might think I’m smoking crack or something.
But ya, that’s my theory. A few years with the much more potent THC and it finally caught up to me. Fried my brain a little bit (like an egg! the cheesy anti-drug ads were right this whole time😂). Nothing like 2 + 2 = 3… it was more about self-confidence issues.
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When I was in high school they grew weed in hacked out areas of the forest and the plants grew with rain and sunlight. It took a couple full joints to get a good buzz.
Today its all grown indoors with high power lights and high tech irrigation/fertilization. One puff and your blasted.
The old way was much safer and wiser.
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The indoor stuff is full of pesticides and fungicides too, not healthy
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That’s a great few opening para’s from George you had and this one too:
Re this:
It’s funny that this is probably relatable to everyone… yet we don’t see it that way at the time. Instead of seeing the job as fraudulent, we think we’re the problem. Tricksters and frauds. Imposter syndrome.
Yes it is relatable to me, but right from the very start of the working world I could never buy it. And I DID think there was something wrong with me, but I also had this underlying suspicion that everyone was a bit nuts and I could not really get how they took it seriously. And this was working with caring and aspirational NGOs and all sorts of orgs trying to do good stuff.
I had a mental breakdown around about the same time as you 2015/16 and if you track the world wide stats on the increase of mental illness, the line goes up in close correlation to the introducion of the smart phone with camera, facebook and instagram, it’s staggering to see the extent it tracks together. Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation shows this data.
For my partner, he always said to me that he is really working in a ‘sheltered workshop’ with a govt job and just played the long game being a ‘yes man’ and now by weird default, has floated to the top.
So it’s good that you could not ‘fake it til you make it’ anymore, as this saved your soul by the sound of it, that you got out when you did. Same with me. Having a kid for a woman in also a different life path that changes things a lot and gives you a get out of jail free card, in fact that was a big part of the appeal i think. As well as just lots of friends and sisters doing the same thing.
then after baby I only ever worked part time, for myself at home, doing web dev.
Also – this is a very long quote to include below…but it is about the whole I DONT KNOW thing, except in the ‘spiritual’ scene. how I wished that I had of had this wisdom earlier in my life too, about steering clear of those with professed certainty:
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I posted a very long reply to this – but it did not work – doh! thanks for sharing anyway.
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Bummer. Sometimes those disappeared comments end up in spam folder and Rob can still save them… but sometimes not.
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It was flagged as spam and I’ve restored it.
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B today reviews the implications of peak oil on the economy and sets out to predict what might happen.
He starts out strong predicting a temporary closure of the banking system and stock market and then wisely acknowledges digital currencies will not be a useful replacement for money because the grid will be unstable, and so predicts we will use paper ration coupons like those used in WWII.
But then B stops leaving 95% of the issues unanswered.
I’m thinking it might be more productive to review what authorities actually did during the 2012 Cyprus banking crisis. In summary, they closed the banks, confiscated all account balances above $100K to bail-in the system, then reopened with capital controls that prevented people from withdrawing what was left.
In this light spending $600 on a still to make a giant quantity of 93% pure alcohol that can be later traded for necessities doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/what-comes-after-the-current-financial
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The Debt based money is inherently unsustainable, just like any Ponzi scheme. There has 2 likely outcomes: hyperinflation or deflationary collapse. Pick your poison.
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I would like to reword this:
“Debt based money is inherently unsustainable, just like any Ponzi scheme. It has 2 likely outcomes: hyperinflation or deflationary collapse. Pick your poison.
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That’s true, but before we get to a full on economic collapse they have quietly rewritten the rules so that the assets you thought belonged to you can be confiscated to bail-in a failing banking system. Cyprus was a test run. They’ll kick the can one more time using some of our savings and investments.
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If food stamps get cut off on the 3rd.
Society is only nine meals away from anarchy.
D-DAY = November 7th or (711)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNtJH8Io5I0
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Will the US government shutdown affect food stamps?
chatGPT:
How many people in the US depend on food stamps to survive?
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If that piqued your interest, check out Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) – IMDb
Best to just dive in, but if you need more info, I posted a recommendation over at mega:
https://megacancer.wordpress.com/2025/09/28/the-spice-of-life/#comment-12792
This musical piece from the film is absolutely beautiful:
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Really good movie.
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Senator Ron Johnson, a powerful intelligent man with integrity on the inside of the US government as a senator for the last 15 years, and prior chair of the committee for homeland security, knows the stories we are told about covid, 9/11, and prior wars are not true, but does not know what actually happened, despite having used his power trying to find out.
If with all his connections and power Johnson is unable to get to the bottom of what happened, how are observers like us supposed to establish what is true?
The best we can do is have confidence that what we are being told is not true.
You can see a glimpse of the power behind the curtain on Johnson’s wikipedia page:
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Rob, my brother from another mother.
There is no point in seeking revenge because all the people who pushed it also took it themselves. And they’re all suffering horribly.
Anthony Fauci hospitalized after testing positive for West Nile Virus
WHO chief hospitalised in Rio de Janeiro for ‘hypertensive crisis’
The Pope is dead. Biden has cancer. Hulk Hogan dead. King Charles has cancer. etc. etc.
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Fauci is responsible for the death of 20+ million people worldwide. That’s more than 3 times the holocaust.
Sickness from his own poison is not good enough.
He needs to be hung like those convicted of much less evil crimes at Nuremberg.
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My point it’s “fool proof”.
And our only option to save the human race. That’s why they targeted the liberal places = most populated.
If you have a better idea we’re all ears.
*Nope only saving yourself.
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https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/10/24/2035-permanent-crisis-the-world-after-american-unraveling/
I looked at XrayMike79’s most recent essay and noticed it sounded a bit robotic. I pasted the first few paragraphs into an app called gptzero, which detects AI-generated texts, and it said that there was a 100% chance that the essay was written by AI.
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Yes, I’d say 100% of his posts for at least a year have been AI. I don’t even open them anymore. Quite sad, he used to be a superb overshoot writer.
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Hi Stellar. We held a closed-casket funeral service for xraymike earlier this month. Maybe you were out of town of town that weekend.
RIP Mike.
https://un-denial.com/2025/07/12/by-hideaway-eroei/comment-page-6/#comment-114050
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Finally some good news!
The damage from nuclear war has been grossly overstated by fear mongers like Annie Jacobsen and Carl Sagan.
Only about 20% of the population will die from a full scale nuclear war.
You should of course stock up on preps to get through a rough period. In particular, everyone should have about 100 sand bags to build a little fort around their kitchen table after seeing the flash. Also important is a $125 Geiger counter so you can be confident to know when it’s safe to come out from under your kitchen table. Unless you’re in a worst case scenario 48 hours is usually enough.
We finally understand why the US no longer worries about provoking Russia, China, and Iran.
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LOL
Have you seen this movie yet? A House of Dynamite (2025) – IMDb
I had high hopes because of the director (Kathryn Bigelow). This comment sums it up perfect for me. Spoiler alert, don’t read anymore if you plan on watching it.
But it looks like Hollywood is gonna give us another one. I see that the brilliant director Denis Villeneuve is scheduled to direct Annie Jacobsen’s ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’. No way Villeneuve shies away from the payoff scene like Bigelow did.
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Not yet but its queued. I usually read the spoilers because I’ll have forgotten it by the time I get around to watching it.
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My wife watched it the other night, and at the end came into the room I was in swearing at the stupid producers/directors etc for not finishing the film…
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Oh Rob, you crack me up sometimes with your extra dry humour! I think that whoever survives a full-blown nuclear exchange in this time of otherwise imminent societal and biospheric collapse will wish they went instantly in that flash, knowing that they will have to suffer the unfolding consequences. Sometimes living is just another way of saying we’re dying a bit slower.
By the way, your interest in distilling instilled in me some thoughts. I have no intention of brewing alcohol for my own or others’ consumption (if it’s that bad that only alcohol can drown my sorrows or give me some leverage to survive, then I have other plans for exit) but I thought it might be useful in the near and up through collapse term to be able to make plant hydrosols and essential oils which can be used for medicinal purposes (and also be another form of calming therapy). I have absolutely no experience with distilling but I do have a whole lot of plant matter here that is waiting to be turned into liquid essence. It seems that NZ has quite the monopoly on distilling equipment, here’s the site that I cottoned on that offers European made copper stills (is this what Hideaway means by proper copper?) that look amazing just as an art piece. https://www.alembics.co.nz/products/copper-stills/ Not cheap but then again, metal in this form is worth way more practically than gold or silver in ingots which will only be a liability when things get more uneven (as in how do you convert it then to what you need without risking life, and more to the point, where’s the supply of goods then?). In my view, anything concrete that is of use at all is more desired than paper dollars or digital blips on screens once you have enough of a buffer to keep going in the society we’re chained to as Hideaway reminds us so clearly.
How about a deal, Rob? If you go ahead and get a still (whatever type) then I will, too and we will co-brew on both hemispheres in the end of days.
Hope all are going well, Anyone here following the 3i/Atlas comet? Interesting stuff, and keeps our predicament here on this infinitesimal speck in perspective.
Namaste friends.
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I’d love to take you up on your offer of collaborating but our goals may require different equipment.
Hideaway may need to correct me but my understanding is that copper pot stills are best for people who pretend that the reason they distill alcohol is for the flavor and aroma.
They’re like the people that pretend to be sophisticated about selecting and judging wine when in fact they only want a hit from the ethanol in rotting grapes.
Pot stills are also good (I think) for your goal of making essential oils.
Those of us that are honest know the only reason to distill alcohol is to make the ethanol drug and flavors and aromas and colors are just crap impurities that should be removed.
The still I linked above excels at removing everything and concentrating every drop of alcohol from the sugar wash into beautiful clear 93% APV ethanol.
It’s probably very bad at making essential oils.
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Rob the above more expensive still, is a reflux still for making high purity ethanol. I make 94% pure alcohol with my still. It has copper mesh in the reflux column, so the liquid contacts lots of copper.
The purpose of copper is to reduce/remove the organosulphur compounds that get made during fermentation. Copper reacts with these to remove them while stainless steel doesn’t.
Here’s a link to a bit more detail…
https://eightoaksdistillery.com/blog/the-role-of-copper-in-distillation-more-than-just-a-material/#:~:text=Copper%20reacts%20with%20these%20volatile,persist%20into%20the%20final%20spirit.
For essential oil you’d need a pot still Gaia, not a reflux one. The best whisky, bourbon, gin etc is made in a pot still.
Reflux still are for as pure as possible ethanol. Note only in a vacuum, or a few other conditions can you obtain 100% ethanol. Ethanol and water from the wash forms an azeotrope so no amount of distilling can separate further.
Rob, there is so much useful information and experience on those home distiller forums, in all sorts of threads, that you could be reading for weeks and still find new useful information. Like most occupations of humans, once you get into the details there is so much information to consider and so many nuances that can change results drastically..
BTW I use plain glass bottles and put an piece of aluminium foil between any gasket and the alcohol. The bottles I use are meant to be silicone seals, but I don’t trust them so use Alfoil. I would think using a thin copper foil might be just as good. Most metal bottle caps have some type of plastic lining here in Australia.
Glass stopper bottles or decanters do work, as it’s all glass, but they are more expensive than the booze….
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Thank you very much for the info.
I’ll test a sheet of aluminum foil under a standard mason jar lid to see if it still seals. I’ve got a nice stock of mason jars in storage which is why I hoped they would work.
Are you aware of a better choice for my plan than the Turbo 500 from New Zealand? It has copper inside the stainless steel reflux column. It’s been about 8 years since I concluded it was the best lowish cost choice at that time. I’ll go back into the forums to double check before I purchase if you’re not sure.
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All copper column as well would be best, but the type I bought is no longer available. Pure distilling have a copper column and places in NZ probably sell it, not sure about Canada..
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They now make a copper version called the Turbo 500 Pro.
https://www.stillspirits.com/collections/reflux-stills/products/t500-pro-reflux-still
I found a Canadian source for the copper pro version. CDN$700 delivered.
Given copper prices that’s less than I expected.
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Come the end of civilization, with some local warlord in charge of wherever you live, then having a very useful skillset of brewing good quality alcohol for the warlord to both drink and distribute to his minions, would be very high on the ‘keep alive’ list for the warlord and possibly one of the most likely to survive collapse, if you really wanted to survive..
I suspect I’m closer to Gaia’s thinking these days. I can sit back and quietly say to myself, yep, I was right, it was quick, now time to go…
In the meanwhile, if you have any questions about ‘shine then feel free to ask.. The best sugar wash for example, for the purest alcohol is Wineo’s plain ol sugar wash.. (on home distiller tried and true recipes page). Easily the best cleanest wash you can make and works every time (as in ferments). Never use turbo yeasts…
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Thank you.
I’ll check out Wineo’s wash.
I’m sure the recipe sold by Still Spirits produces excellent results but it’s expensive with a long distance supply chain. Before buying any equipment I plan to do some research to confirm it’s possible to achieve “good enough” results without having to buy specialized yeast, carbon wash cleaner, washing clearing agent, distilling conditioner, and carbon filter cartridges.
I like the idea of having a skill that warlords and neighbors might value after I’m too old to harvest potatoes. Also handy to have something valuable to trade. 20 years ago I enjoyed too much the reality distortion created by ethanol and switched to clean living but if the end was near I might choose ethanol distortion again with some good movies and snacks.
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many people unconsciously have already chosen this option:
‘ethanol distortion with some good movies and snacks’
as the general approach to modern life, without really knowing it.
Escapism into books, fantasy, movies, stories of all kinds, is how my partner manages to function so well within the matrix i think. he’s been that way right from the start. We have thousands of books, and many stored at my parents place in the country. he used to read a fiction book once a week on public transport, that has slowed now he doesn’t have to go into the city as much post covid.
The tag line has changed on his movie review site…
‘let us be the distraction from your constant doom scrolling’
rather than raging against the machine, these days i think he has the right idea.
We gave Survival (2015) a go last night, discussed here on an older thread (thanks Chris!), but not night time viewing for me. i still get too tense, and makes me more convinced than ever to have a peaceful and reliable way out. Still we watched most of it and it was very well acted, so I do want to see how it ends. But sun is shining today, so am going to get out there one way or another.
Good luck with the ongoing research on brewing / distilling. Something to takeaway the pain and to trade does seem like it would be extremely valuable – cheers 🥃😊
ps – Art Berman is back to posting on ‘Reality’ today, in a brief way, but no sign of deep dive into Larsen.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/energy-reality-what-cant-and-wont-happen/
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My dear Rob, I just love the way you really distil every drop from a topic that piques your interest and I am so grateful for your generous spirit in sharing. Thank you for your input which aims to help produce the best output!
I am very new to the distillation idea and really appreciate the extra information to mull over. My suggested pact doesn’t require us to obtain the same style of equipment, just having the same inclination to try something new for hopefully some betterment for someone is the spirit I’m invoking. What I mean is, if you’re willing to take the leap into getting some kind of unit, then I will also dedicate myself to researching the best one for what I think I’d like to do. No pressure at all, of course!
I never was a wine snob when I did drink a bit. It humoured me greatly to read tasting notes, especially from someone who supposedly had the nose and palate for all nuances. After the descriptions of assorted flowers, fruit, and other food essences, I almost lost my desire for the red liquid (I preferred red to white, hands down) and instead wanted to just eat whatever was described! However, I have recently rekindled an interest (not yet passion and probably never will be) for tea. After my debacle with coffee last year, I figure that I can at least grow a few leaves, pour hot water over them and call that a success!
Happy brewing to you.
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I’m not surprised by this at all, as I did some research on the number of atmospheric nuclear bombs exploded in the late ’50’s and early 60’s, which was surprisingly high, around 500 in the last 4-5 years leading up to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963.
I’ve often wondered if WW2 and all the nuclear tests used over the next 17 years is what caused the pause in the world temperature rise observed in climate data between 1945 and 1975, with all the aerosols spewed into the atmosphere..
If 500 nukes exploded in a few years didn’t destroy or really change much, I’ve had a hard time believing all out nuclear war would destroy everything…
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Annie Jacobsen reported what she was told, but has no STEM education or first hand experience.
Mark Rush is an electrical engineer that has worked with ballistic missile submarines and nuclear power plants. He’s speaking from first hand knowledge.
I think he’s intelligent with integrity. Plan to buy his book.
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I got the book on Kindle and have started reading it. I will probably take a day or two to finish it. It is illuminating.
However, I already have some concerns about it.
Rush is uninformed (or wilfully blind) to the advances Russia, China, and Iran have made in hypersonic weapons that change the dynamics of a possible nuclear war. He also takes the “Western” view that Russia is backward and behind the west technologically (he should read Andrei Martyanov).
Rush minimizes the affect of a limited nuclear war on the collapse of civilization and at least not yet mentioned civilizational overshoot. Maybe read “Black Autumn”.
What was most illuminating was how the portrayal of Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen and Carl Sagan is dated, in that we now have far fewer weapons than the past(due to arms control), far more accuracy (so don’t need larger megatonage) and fewer of those weapons are ground burst (less fallout). The consensus view that Nuclear War is civilization ending is based on that past, the historical contingency of the west and western propaganda to their own people.
But, so far I think it is a valuable book.
AJ
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Thanks for the review AJ. I was hoping it would be filled with useful prepping tips. How is it in this regard?
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Ya i mean most people will survive the initial impacts. In fact most people live in countries that probably wouldn’t even be targeted. You never hear of Chile or Madagascar high on the list of countries that would be nuked. The issue would be what comes after the impacts when the government, financial system, manufacturing centers, electrical grid, transportation networks, petrochemical infrastructure, and communications networks have all been destroyed. Countries aren’t launching nukes at random locations, they’re getting launched at key nodes, and you don’t need to destroy very many of those for catastrophic consequences to result. That’s why most countries that have nukes don’t maintain more the a few hundred, you just don’t need that many to destroy an opposing nation. The resulting global famines and civil unrest would likely cause far more deaths than the initial nuclear exchange.
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Have you watched the interview with Mark Rush?
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I just watched the video. He does make a lot of good points, but he has no understanding of complexity or overshoot. That nuclear war is survivable, I must say yes. My question is the aftermath, this is not like Europe after world war II or Japan after world war II; all the infrastructure of civilization was still standing outside those areas and made rebuilding relatively easy. I do think “Black Autumn” is a more realistic depiction of the aftermath.
AJ
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The other main issue is EMP destruction on electronic infrastructure. Getting civilsation back up and running is very unlikely with most electronics fried. It only takes 3 large nuclear explosions correctly positioned in the stratosphere above the US to bathe all of north america in EMP. As most things now have chips in them say goodbye to them working. Including the chip making plants of course.
Analysts predict (take with grain of salt) that it would lead to a 90% population decline in the countries hit if no outside assistance is available.
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Additionally as FE used to talk about – all of the cooling ponds of nuclear reactors may dry up if the system isn’t functioning to keep them running. That is another level of bad. The ionising radiation from that going into the atmosphere is massive.
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Col. Larry Wilkerson today said his friends in the know think peace is finally coming to the middle east via a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran.
Both will be badly damaged but I’ve been to Israel and 3 or 4 nukes will probably wipe out that evil trouble making country.
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Rush goes into this in a chapter in his book. Since he worked in this industry for quite some time it appears knowledgeable. He says that if missiles strike nuke plants that is a worst case scenario (but everyone agreed not to do that long ago. . .). He also has this weird idea that all the communities around plants should/will help them not go Chernobyl. I think all the engineers/workers at those plants will take off for the hills if their is a nuclear war/grid down situation.
AJ
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So has anyone bought a geiger counter?
Where does one get a reliable one?
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I’m starting with sand bags. They have other useful purposes like sea level rise flood barriers where I live. I don’t see them in stores here so having some in stock would be wise. Best price I’ve found is about CDN$1.00 per bag.
Rush in the interview said you can get a good enough geiger counter on Amazon for about $125. He said to make sure it is a 2 tube design.
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I finished the book and overall I think his message that Nuclear War is survivable it probably correct. A lot of it depends where you are. D.C., NYC, BIG Cities, large infrastructure, and military sites you probably are toast unless you leave before the missles hit. He makes the point that missles are lower yield and far fewer of them than the Annie Jacobson scenarios. Survival all depends on how far you are from a strike and what protective measures you have made. Fallout is probably not a big problem (unless Nuke Plants get targeted). I live about 50 miles from Eugene or Salem possible targets. My only problem is in the summer a nuke strike on either of those site would probably start uncontrollable fires.
His prep tips are what any ordinary prepper has already done: water and a way to filter it, food, a way to cook, sanitation, heating, and for him of course radiation mitigation (mass water, or sandbags and a small shelter to protect from possible radiation for the first 2 weeks).
Rush seems to think that somehow government will recover and civilization will be reconstituted. I think the EMP alone would doom us. He makes no mention of self-protection (guns).
If I had bought the book I might be a little disappointed (got it free on Kindle Unlimited – free for 2 months then cancel). The video and his web site probably gives you 80% of the book.
https://thermonuclear101.wordpress.com/
AJ
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Excellent salient review. Thank you for saving me the time of reading it.
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Exclusive: Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, sources say | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-targets-many-30000-corporate-job-cuts-sources-say-2025-10-27/
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Yeah, my son was a data scientist there for 4 years and was one of those let go.
Gota make sure the stock goes up and Bezos can surpase Musk as the first Trillionaire?
AJ
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Venezuela claims capture of CIA group, accuses U.S. of plotting ‘false flag’ attack
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article312660489.html#storylink=cpy
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I wrote this 24 years ago in a german blog. Today I know, we will pass a seneca cliff within 10 years!
“I am a generalist and think top-down. As a result, many things seem pointless to me and I lack the motivation to get excited about micro-tasks. I’m not sure if that’s a mistake – or if I’m on the right track. Actually, the world can only be saved if a new grand paradigm prevails that puts an end to the madness. Perhaps I am a step ahead of the “majority” in this respect. Measured by the standards of the still prevailing paradigm, I don’t function well because I am skeptical and question many things from the outset, because I consider a fundamental paradigm shift to be necessary and already believe I can see the beginnings of one. However, I am not sure whether my desire for fundamental change is just an escape (from what?) or a desire for a general reckoning. I hate the decadent consumer society! I dream of a sustainable, more reasonable society. This can only happen through cultural evolution and can never be achieved perfectly. Biological evolution is far too slow. Cultural evolution takes place when new paradigms (= broad “perspectives” or “common sense”) gradually prevail because the old ones no longer work. I believe (or hope) that this is happening right now.
My pessimism is optimism in disguise, because I believe that crises that come early enough (economic or environmental) will accelerate this cultural evolution. In such a new paradigm, I could develop much better, because a top-down approach would then lead to reasonable actions at the micro level thanks to a sensible “basic orientation” – which is absolutely not the case now, as can be observed thousands of times every day if you look closely! If the paradigm changes, I will no longer need to swim against the tide. However, as this process is progressing slowly, I must first learn to come to terms with the “circumstances” better. Otherwise, the constant subconscious struggle against everyday madness will make me ill!
Overall, I do not believe in guilt and responsibility. Everyone is determined by their genes, their socialization, and their “circumstances” on a small and large scale. Theoretically, people with exactly the same genes, social environments, and circumstances would act in exactly the same way. This applies to Jack the Ripper as well as to Mother Theresa.
However, within the framework of the prevailing paradigm, we have to pretend that guilt and responsibility exist, because otherwise society could not function.
The “Jack the Rippers” were simply unlucky. What is good and bad is therefore defined by the prevailing paradigm, alongside “self-evident truths” (e.g., the Ten Commandments—and even those are no longer followed in our delusion). Here we find ourselves in a tremendous predicament. Roughly summarized, one could say that someone is successful if they convert as many raw materials and energy into waste as possible. A vivid example: Michael Schumacher is a hero because he was able to drive around in circles the fastest in a vehicle powered by a combustion engine. For this, he received $100 million a year.
Waste can also be defined in immaterial terms, for example, when watching television programs or observing indifference to injustice and violence. The change in standards (socialization and circumstances) constitutes the paradigm shift. The entropy-promoting faster, higher, further must be replaced by sustainability. I live among people who, for the most part, do not think “sustainably” and do not understand me, and I allow myself to be measured by their standards – which is perhaps a mistake.
I feel compelled to participate in a game that I consider completely absurd! But I am on my way to breaking free from it. Every now and then, I look out of the fog and into the sun. But I need to climb even higher—where there is no more fog. Time and aging will help with that. But I also need to keep working on it myself.
But I also have to keep working on it myself. · Accepting the way things are. · Reducing the pressure to please others (e.g., the community in my village or my father). · Becoming more relaxed and not always wanting to be right—slowly becoming a little “wiser.” Seeking inner peace—continuing to “grow.” · Consciously swallowing bitter pills if they make life easier. Simplify life and align the things I can influence myself with my inner voice. · Accept compromises. · Maintain discipline in my daily routine (nutrition, alcohol, exercise, concentration, planning, autogenic training, principles, e.g., “Less is more, away with the frills”). · Prioritize family. · Stand up for what is worth preserving—don’t negate everything. Plan the next day every evening, finish things, first things first! These are my resolutions for 2002 and my farewell thoughts for several months!”
Saludos
el mar
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In the spirit of “when something doesn’t make sense, it’s best to assume they’re lying”, Fast Eddy asks a good question today.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/lets-commit-economic-suicide-for
A while ago I proposed a different explanation. Natural gas is a waste byproduct from fracking that is no longer allowed to be flared off, so the US must force Europe to buy expensive LNG or else they would be have to curtail oil production, and therefore the US blew up the pipeline from Russia.
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What happens when fracking goes into permanent decline? I hope Europe’s landscape isn’t completely denuded. One silver lining is that nearly all of Europe has sub-replacement fertility.
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Alex Jones predicts collapse from food stamps shut off. He’s a moron but he does make some decent points and has the balls to “go there”.
Skip to the 8:30 mark
https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1983286654426140876
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Thanks, good for a chuckle. There’s nugget of truth there mixed in with intolerance and ignorance.
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Is Violent Societal Unrest Now Inevitable? | Peter Turchin
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Nate Hagens today interviewed Dr. Sheldon Solomon on his Terror Management Theory (TMT).
They discuss MORT starting at 14:15.
Solomon says MORT is related to TMT and that MORT may explain why human consciousness emerged, however Solomon thinks mortality awareness is not unique to humans.
They didn’t go deep enough to assess if Solomon really understands MORT and its implications.
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Just got done with this. He talks kindly about Varki, but the “we’re not friends but we go way back”, makes me think there’s some ego shit going on between them. He made damn sure to squeeze in that Varki & Brower’s book was based on Solomon’s work.
For the first 30 minutes I was impressed and thinking we need to get this guy linked up with un-Denial because he has some great ideas. It kinda went downhill after that.
I don’t know what to make of that. But it sounds like Sheldon would agree with Stan Rushworth’s “And everybody knows in the deepest part of their hearts that we’re WAY better than that”.
Overall, for a big name in the denial world, I was very disappointed. Nate didn’t do him any favors though by hyping him up as the most requested guest of all time. And maybe Sheldon is like most of us where he’s much better on paper than in person.
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Solomon is a light weight academic that had one idea that he milked for all it was worth using evidence (I suspect) from those bullshit psychology experiments that cannot be replicated and therefore prove nothing.
He’s not even witty. Every clever quip he made I’ve heard in every other interview he’s given.
Just a reminder:
Becker’s TMT is to Varki’s MORT as Newton’s physics is to Einstein’s general relativity. Both do a good job of everyday predictions but the latter supersedes the former and is a far more accurate and illuminating model of reality.
Remember, fear of death is not the key issue. The key question is, why is there only one species on this planet with an extended theory of mind and a belief in gods, and why did that species emerge suddenly from one small tribe and then dominate every other species including wiping out all of its close cousins? And why is that species so smart it can fly to the moon and create nanometer computer chips but is completely incapable of understanding its own obvious state of overshoot?
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Every pro-BRICS analyst has been blah-blah-blahing about the new game changing Burevestnik nuclear powered Russian missile.
Not one has questioned how it works or whether it is technically/economically feasible to propel a missile with a nuclear power source.
I’ve done no research but I call bullshit.
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I’m not knowledgeable to call it one way or the other, BUT Andrei probably is . . .
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/10/how-this-and-burevestnik.html
AJ
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I read the link and skimmed his interview with Nema today. I saw no details on how the Russian nuclear propulsion system works. I still call bullshit.
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I was also thinking bullshit about nuclear propulsion so I looked it up. It still requires a propellant, though the propellant is not burnt.
Apparently running pipes of the propellant, say liquid hydrogen right through the centre of a very small nuclear reactor running on haleu nuclear fuel at extremely high temperatures, super heats the hydrogen, which leads to massive expansion as the hydrogen leaves the rocket via nozzles that provides the thrust.
This massive expansion against the nozzles is exactly how a chemical rocket also works to provide thrust. The nuclear propulsion only requires the hydrogen as fuel, not any added oxygen as with chemical rockets.
The nuclear propulsion leaves behind a wake of radioactive waste as the propellant going through the core of the reactor gets contaminated with neutron particles.
The general consensus is that nuclear propulsion will work in space but doesn’t provide enough thrust to overcome all the weight carried for an efficient Earth launch, plus the radioactive exhaust problem. (my simplified explanation).
Do the Russians have a nuclear powered rocket/missile that works using the compressed air as the propellant once launched (minimising the weight it has to carry)? Call me very sceptical as well, though not quite at the full bullshit level I was before looking it up..
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A missile needs a lot of thrust from a fairly small size package that does not weigh too much and does not cost too much because you plan to use it once and then destroy it.
A missile must be transported and handled by a lot of people in close quarters so if it’s nuclear that means they’ve figured out how to make it safe.
If there was even a hint that technology like this existed companies like Boeing and Space-X would be all over it.
In the 50’s the US spent a lot of money trying to make nuclear airplane engines and even flew a few reactors but didn’t even get close to a viable product.
And engineers in the 50’s were a lot smarter than they are today.
I say it’s 100% bullshit and I’ll buy everyone here a can of sardines if I’m wrong.
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Depending on how you define bullshit I may owe you a can of sardines.
Scott Manley is a rocket expert I have followed for years. He just released a video on the history of nuclear jet propulsion and how it works.
Manley thinks a Russian nuclear powered missile probably exists as a prototype but is unlikely to become a viable or serious weapons threat.
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J. Doe here.
Looks like a new “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” paper just dropped. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biaf149/8303627?login=false
In the spirit of MORT, I asked Grok today if there is evidence of even a single politician who ever publically quoted any of these papers. Results:
“No, I could not identify even a single politician who has publicly quoted any of the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” publications (1992, 2017 “Second Notice,” or later updates).Despite extensive searches across web sources (news, academic papers, government/parliament sites), X (Twitter) keyword/semantic posts, and profiles:No direct quotes from politicians (e.g., Biden, Trump, Gore, Kerry, Trudeau, Macron, or others) in speeches, statements, social media, or official records.
No mentions in congressional/parliamentary debates, Hansard, or .gov/.parl sites tying politicians to these exact documents.”
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Unless we take care of people’s basic needs the climate change issue doesn’t make any sense to mitigate. I mean if you can’t afford to make ends meet at the end of the month. That is the polar ice caps melting.
Caring about the climate is a luxury for the rich. They care because they have their basic needs all set for life.
Its like asking a homeless person sleeping in a shelter to give up his bed for someone else and sleep in the street. Why the hell would he do that? Not because he’s selfish – because he can’t worried about others or future others when he’s hanging on by a thread.
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Watched a couple old Dowd videos and came across some fun nostalgia. Like this documentary from Michael Shaw featuring Dahr Jamail, Jem Bendell, Catherine Ingram, and Stan Rushworth. Living in the Time of Dying.
Funny when people who can’t take it all the way, start waxing poetic about people who can’t take it all the way.
Yuck! But a native elder like Stan has to think this way, so he gets a free pass. Btw, I still stand by my observation that wetiko (the way it’s used in the doomasphere) is just a pretentious way of talking about MPP and the blob.
Jamail and Bendell weren’t even worth quoting. LOL. The whole thing is full consciousness on steroids. And Catherine is a perfect example of what happens when you stay married to DQ’s culture blaming and never venture out of your comfort zone to places like un-denial or megacancer. She’s oozing with sadness & sorrow. Was made in 2022 so maybe she’s been able to peel back a couple more layers of denial since then, but I doubt it.
And after all that bashing, I still recommend it. It was a perfect 10 back when I first saw it, but I’d still give it a solid 7 today. Shaw does a great job with his filming and editing techniques to tell a pretty cool story.
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I saw a live screening of this film at a cinema in Melbourne with Michael Shaw and his partner and a group of around 10 or 15 other people went out for drinks afters. drew came with me too. It was pretty hilarious at one point, as the cinema appointed a woman for a post screening Q n A and I think the first thing she says was – so what are we going to do about all this!!? Michael said that was the arrangement they had to go along with to have it shown, that they do a post talk. He is just about the nicest guy you can imagine and I was glad to be there. And agree that he was a good story teller.
But yes I would not watch it again now and it does feed into an aching sorrow for the world and there is a place to go further, to see the inevitability of it all and make peace with that.
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The essay is an analysis of why neocon hegemonic policies are behind the denial and withdrawal of US support of ‘living on Earth as tho we intend to stay’. A good read reposted on nakedcapitalism.com
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Trump Border Patrol Goons Allegedly Break Ribs of U.S. Man, 67, at Kids’ Halloween Party
https://www.thedailybeast.com/border-patrol-thugs-allegedly-broke-ribs-of-67-year-old-member-of-dwrunning-club/
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Honestly this stuff is just BS to make people divided. For reference I would say at least 1 million people worldwide had a horrendous day at the same time this happened but we didn’t get to see it and share it on SM or wherever.
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Yuck, truly horrible. Whenever stuff like this comes into my awareness, i remember that somewhere else in the world, someone is doing something kind and heroic and helping that person, and the news will never see it. I imagine collapse will play out like this too – a mixture of the very worst and the very best of humans on display.
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