State of the world

[andrewducker]

In this fifty year period, a massive depression, coupled with the collapse of a key resource, undermines traditional economic models. Even as the global economy recovers, a global war erupts, a horrifying accident triggered by political systems overwhelmed by increasingly rapid communications, a tragedy multiplied by the almost casual use of chemical weapons. The end of this war coincides with the emergence of a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen, killing millions upon millions -- and, combined with the war, almost eliminating an entire generation in some parts of the globe.

After the pandemic ebbs, a brief, heady economic boom leads many to believe the worst has ended. Unfortunately, what follows is a global depression even more massive than the previous one, causing hyperinflation in some of the most advanced nations, and leading directly to the seizure of power by totalitarian, genocidal regimes.

 

What follows is perhaps predictable: an even greater world-wide war, nearly wiping out a major culture and culminating in a shocking nuclear attack.

 

At this point, you’ve probably already realized that this scenario covers the end of the nineteenth century through the end of World War II.

From.

Comments

[joexnz.livejournal.com]

yeah, thanks for that
-packs bag for nz-

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Apocalypse? Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Oh wait, no.

Booooooooooo.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

You mean: Oh wait... Swine Flu is hardly a problem...

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was kind of thinking we'd probably be at the first bit and had world war to come 'cos civilisation is kind of cyclical..

half-baked ramblings of an amateur

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I assumed that the mirror was the war we're trailing to the end of now. You have to think in decades here rather than years. The period of depression prior to that was I thought the 80s into the early 90s, along with the end of the tension of the Cold War, which one could argue quite neatly works as a modern analogue for the tension in Europe towards the end of the 19th century caused, more or less by a combination of everyone stockpiling weapons and navies but not getting to use them because Victoria was everyone's auntie and would put them over her knee and spank them if they tried anything. It was also a period of some rather dodgy alliances, and the UK/America gang (I'm pretty sure we're the thicko sidekick who'd be all right if s/he just got away from his/her mean best friend) made some pretty dodgy allies during the last fifty years ourselves.

So there are even more connections than that passage suggests, although that being said they're probably connections you could fine anywhere if you were looking for them...

Not sure what the 'key resource' is for us this time, though. I suppose that was when we first realised we were running out of fossil fuels? That did play a big part in triggering the first Gulf War and things really never settled down since, but although we like to cite oil as the reason for this decade's conflict I honestly think it was far more about using the Other and the buzzword of Terrorism to exert tighter more totalitarian control of our own people. Someone read 1984 too often as a child. Possibly me.

War doesn't work the same way it used to; this "West wanders in and annihilates everyone, their own dead counted on four figures or fewer" conflict is probably as close as we get - thank God, most might say, although if we were at risk of the sort of losses the Brits saw in WW1, or the Russians in WW2 maybe we'd think a little harder about getting into them.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Yes, war has evolved, but I still think something huge might break out - especially if fossil fuel estimates are wrong and we end up having almost no resources in the near future. In which case I think our government (especially if it's New Lab. or Tories) will happily commit to mass destruction.


I used to think Brave New World was more likely to happen than 1984. Now I think I was wrong, and that scares me.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

It really is starting to look like swine-flu was bad in Mexico due to some other factor, possibly a secondary infection, but firstly, that secondary infection may just not have found its way out yet and try as we might it might still follow on the heels of the flu, and then we're fucked.

Secondly, whether or not it's this one, every epidemiologist knows that whether we like it or not the day is coming when all our tinkering and vaccination combined with constant failure due to fuckwit anti-vaccine campaigners (thank you, Daily Mail) to get minimum coverage is going to bite us in the arse in the form of a pandemic that we can do nothing about and that will sweep across the globe and kill most of us off.

Which, in fairness, taken from the outside looking in, would be a pretty good thing right about now.

'Course, that doesn't excuse the fact we're currently sort of ignoring Africa and letting everyone there dies of Aids. We'll be sorry when an HIV strain shows up that passes as easily as the common cold. Nobody really talks about the fact that there are several different strains of HIV and that they've been changing, subtly, over the years. We may be closer than you think.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking - surely the much greater impact of the swine 'flu in Mexico might also be because people there aren't as well fed etc. as the other nations that have cases? Mexico might not be quite as poor as a lot of countries, but it isn't nearly as wealthy as Western Europe or the USA.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

We can't really talk about that possibility, though, because it smacks of "their hospitals are dirty 'cause they're brown people" mentality among the more carefully PC. It's a possibility, I haven't heard great things about the Mexican healthcare system, but actually I'm not entirely sure that that should make as much difference as it appears to. IANAE (it's my new abbrev for today), but my guess would be that if this bug behaves like by all accounts a pretty mild flu everywhere else in the world, one would expect it to behave like a pretty mild flu in Mexico. Maybe it should be spreading faster or whatever if the hospitals are sup-par, and as such old folk and young children would be more at risk, but (and again, not an expert) I don't think it should be killing healthy young people in Mexico when everyone elsewhere has, well, manflu.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

True. I am waiting to see what happens though, since I don't think we're going to be able to predict what happens.

And I'm certainly not panicking - I think calling it manflu is probably right.. (That made me laugh madly for about a minute, by the way!)

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Wow, that first sentence I wrote was really ugly.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

If my A-level biology teacher was right, it's single mutation on the HIV that would make it transmitted by droplet infection. The same is true of Ebola, I read recently somewhere (probably the guardian).

But yes - it's alarming how we're distracted we are. Doesn't regular flu kill thousands each year in the UK anyway? Isn't AIDS the great pandemic?

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Also, SARS anyone?

[andrewducker]

No thanks, trying to give it up.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

olol

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

even greater world-wide war, nearly wiping out a major culture and culminating in a shocking nuclear attack.
Or not.

Yeah, I'm an optimist. :)

[andrewducker]

An optimist who pretends that Hiroshima didn't happen?

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I don't pretend Hiroshima didn't happen because oh yes it did and no, I'm not a fan of nuclear weapons.

I'm just an optimist who believes we as a planet don't have to sink into world wars and killing each other again. :)

[girl-onthego.livejournal.com]

You're feeding my spin into crazy. You know that, right?