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Page added on October 19, 2015
America is a bomb waiting to explode
Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it.
Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is.
To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West – increasingly looks like a truck being systematically filled with Semtex.
But it’s easy to counter cries of alarm with the fact that the truck is stable – because it’s true: you can hurl more boxes into the back without any real danger. Absent the right detonator, it is no more dangerous than a truckload of mayonnaise.
But add the right detonator and you’re just one click away from complete devastation.
We can see how fragile the U.S. is now by considering just four tendencies.
1. Destruction of farms and reliable food source
The average American is a long way from food when the shops are closed.
The Washington Post reports that the number of farms in the country has fallen by some 4 million from more than 6 million in 1935 to roughly 2 million in 2012.
And according to the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, only about 2 percent of the US population live on farms.
That means that around 4.6 million people currently have the means to feed themselves.
Food supply logistics are extended, sometimes stretching thousands of miles. The shops have nothing more than a few days’ stock. A simple break in that supply line would clear the shops out in days.
2. Weak economic system
The American economic system is little more than froth.
The US currency came off the gold standard in 1933 and severed any link with gold in 1971. Since then, the currency has been essentially linked to oil, the value of which has been protected and held together by wars.
The whole world has had enough of the US and its hubris – not least the people of the US themselves, which the massive support currently for Putin’s decision to deal with ISIS demonstrates.
Since pro-active war is what keeps the US going, if it loses the monopoly on that front, its decline is inevitable.
Fiat economies always collapse. They last on average for 37 years. By that metric the US should have already run out of gas.
Once people wake up and smell the Yuan, the Exodus out of the dollar will be unstoppable.
3. Americans increasingly on mind-altering drugs
According to the Scientific American, use of antidepressants among the US population was up 400 percent in the late 2000s over the 1990s. Many of these drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
These are the type of FDA-approved narcotics lone gunmen are frequently associated with, and their psychoses often attributed to a forced or sudden withdrawal from such drugs.
Pharmaceuticals are produced at centralized points by companies which themselves rely on extended logistics systems both to produce and to deliver their output. If the logistics system fails, there’s no more supply.
4. Morals in decline
During the objective hardship of the 1930s, there was surprisingly little crime. People were brought up with a conception of morals and right and wrong. Frugality and prudence were prized virtues. Communities were generally fairly cohesive.
Relative to then, society today is undisciplined, unrealistic and selfish.
Around 250 million shoppers participated in the Black Friday sales in 2013 in which around USD 61 billion was spent on consumer items – up roughly 100 percent on 2006 figures.
Stampedes and even murders are not uncommon each year with people openly fighting each other over reduced-price items.
The goods bought in such sales tend to be non-essential and many of them are bought on credit cards which then have to be paid off at interest.
Part of the problem in what I have outlined above is that there is little explicit tension. Sure, it is depressing, vulgar and immoral. But it doesn’t look catastrophic. It looks normal.
My point is that just because US – and many other countries organised after the same template – do not look explosive, doesn’t mean they won’t blow up.
Whereas 80 years ago we could absorb major shocks, today we cannot.
Nowhere to run
In the past, people were in rural communities. They could grow food. They had real communities. They also had self-control and a conception of morality.
Today, if the supply lines go down, you are stuck in a house you can’t heat surrounded by millions of FDA-approved drug addicts who are going psycho because they have run out of juice and people who would murder their own grandmother to get a cut-price iPhone.
I would argue that the right shock event – or combination of shock events – will detonate the explosive.
Potential detonators happen all the time. Either they are contained or they are simply incompatible with the explosive or they don’t go off. But that doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen or that we are not sitting on a mountain of explosives.
There was one such potential detonator – which presently has not gone off – in the UK just last week.
The UK’s Independent reported Friday that experts were ‘staggered’ after Pauline Cafferkey – who had been brought to London of all places – rapidly declined after being declared cured from Ebola.
This woman had been allowed out into the community – still sick with Ebola – and managed to visited Mossneuk Primary School in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, on Monday to thank children for their fund-raising efforts.
We will assume these events have their origins in incompetence; the fact is: we have a woman dying from Ebola in the UK’s largest population center.
What if there is more incompetence?
Boris Johnson, the current Mayor of London, primed the British public for the possibility of Ebola in London just last week.
Perhaps he knows something we don’t.
What do you think will happen if people start dying from Ebola in London or New York? The natural response will be to get out of the urban centre as quickly as possible.
During the Great Plague of London of 1665, for example, Defoe wrote “Nothing was to be seen but wagons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, coaches filled with people of the better sort, and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying away”.
Once the better off city people reach the countryside there will be instant resistance from the host population, not least because they will not want potentially infected people entering their communities.
Meanwhile, the poor people who are left in the cities will run out of food in short order as suppliers refuse to enter the city.
Those who fled London in 1665 had somewhere to go: they were returning to the fields that fed them.
Today, the fields which feed us are largely in other countries, and the ones which are in our own are mainly owned by large corporations.
I am not predicting exactly this scenario for the US or for any other country. I am saying that all the ingredients are there for complete breakdown and large-scale deaths given the right initiating incident.
I am saying that volatility is baked into the cake – even into the cake of what today looks and feels normal.
I am saying that while it may be possible to keep loading box upon box of societal Semtex into the truck, given the right detonator the collapse will be swift, unstoppable and devastating.
47 Comments on "America is a bomb waiting to explode"
Davy on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 7:22 pm
Don’t waste your time the ugly anti-Americans on our board put this article to shame. Get the true blue juicy right here just stick around they will come out of the swamp soon with weird noises and wild appearances.
Popcorn….peanuts…..cold beer.
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 7:34 pm
Not sure why you’re so angry Davy? Us supposed “ugly anti-Americans” will tell you that Canada is in the same boat. We may as well be an American state. I guess that would make me an equal opportunity anti? Or would you rather if I just lied about everything?
Davy on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 7:51 pm
Greg, you are not ugly. What gave you that idea?
makati1 on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 7:58 pm
This short article sums up everything I have been saying about the Us. Well done!
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 8:03 pm
Election results are coming in from Atlantic Canada. So far every single constituency has been won by the Liberals.
OMFG
Rodster on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 8:08 pm
You can interchange the USSA for India, China, Russia, Brazil etc, etc and it all reads the same. The entire world has become Sodom and Gomorrah.
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 8:09 pm
“Greg, you are not ugly. ”
And I’m not an anti-American either Davy, as much as you like to think that I am.
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:03 pm
Justin Trudeau is officially Prime Minister of Canada at 43 years of age.
makati1 on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:09 pm
http://naturalsociety.com/34000-pesticides-and-600-chemicals-later-our-food-supply-is-no-better-for-it/
“More than 34,000 pesticides derived from about 600 basic ingredients are currently registered for use in the United States by the EPA. Industrial agriculture (meaning about 75% of all land used in the U.S. to grow food or raise animals) relies on these chemicals to grow food. Where, exactly has this gotten us? …”
Slow death brought to you by Monsanto.
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:17 pm
Monsanto has pretty much taken over the farming industry in Canada as well Mak.
Sickening.
Boat on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:22 pm
Mak,
It allowed a population of over 7 billion on the earth. Blame Monsanto for feeding billions.
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:55 pm
As usual Boat, you have no clue as to what you are talking about.
Rodster on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:11 pm
“Monsanto has pretty much taken over the farming industry in Canada as well Mak.”
And expect them to expand to other parts of the world with the new TPP deal that was recently passed. In fact MonSatan supposedly was behind the push to get the deal done. So don’t be too surprised if they are spotted heading East.
BC on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:12 pm
Oh, Canada! 😀
I still contend that the best export Canada has ever produced is the lovely and talented Diana Krall. (My younger brother would say Moosehead, but we have different tastes. :-D)
Had Diana run for Canada’s PM (or any other office), she would have won a life term. 😀
makati1 on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:14 pm
Boat, and if that is true, I could find nothing on the net either way, is that a good thing? I did find that the Us uses more per acre, by a large percentage, than either China or India. The chart does not divide out chemical vs natural fertilizers so it is not proof either way.
Ireland uses the most at 594 Kilos/Hector.
China is 255 K/H. Which may prove some of your assertions if most is chemical.
The Us is 103 K/H.
India is 98 K/H
The Ps is 73 K/H
Russia is 11 K/H
(which also proves their ability to survive without it.)
One thing obvious in the chart is that the Western countries and their wannabees rely the most on chemicals to eat.
makati1 on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:15 pm
BTW: The above chart:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Agriculture/Fertilizer-use
makati1 on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:16 pm
Oops also a misread. China uses more per hector then the Us.
DMyers on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 11:00 pm
The article makes some very good points and is largely accurate, IMHO.
Except for the following:
“These are the type of FDA-approved narcotics lone gunmen are frequently associated with, and their psychoses often attributed to a forced or sudden withdrawal from such drugs.”
This suggests that those on SSRIs, when deprived of the same become violent, and this will be accentuated when the refills ain’t refilled, due to broken supply lines.
People do not become violent when taken off SSRIs. The SSRI’s make them violent. Period. Don’t people understand this yet? SSRIs lower inhibitions, dramatically.
With respect to the message of the article, a reduction in anti-depressant availability will lower rather than increase violent behavior.
GregT on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 12:35 am
“I still contend that the best export Canada has ever produced is the lovely and talented Diana Krall.”
“Had Diana run for Canada’s PM (or any other office), she would have won a life term. ”
Sounds like Diana has a bit of a fan!
Can’t blame you DC. She’s definitely a hottie. 🙂
GregT on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 12:36 am
Oops, sorry BC
Mike616 on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 8:09 am
Republican INCOMPETENCE IN GOVERNMENT.
GLOBAL WARMING GOING OFF LIKE A NUCLEAR BOMB on the west coast.
Get out of large hard to heat homes. Let the suckers get destroyed by wasteful sized McMansions built to Bankrupt you.
Efficiency Pays Better Than hot stocks on the stock market.
Davy on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 8:41 am
Now you are talking Mike. I live in a 40×12 log cabin. I am a believer in small efficient housing for the coming descent. I know people in 5000 square foot homes. It really makes me ill when I go to St Louis and see some of these rich neighborhoods where perfectly good traditional upper middleclass homes from the 70’s are being torn down to make way for McMansions on the scale that is obscene and indecent. It is a statement of all that has gone wrong with the American dream.
Sissyfuss on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 9:14 am
Take away my SSRIs and I will KYFA.
BobInget on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 9:15 am
Congrats to all Canadians for picking a winner.
Davy on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 9:40 am
Good one sissy!!
ghung on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 9:51 am
From the article: “I am saying that all the ingredients are there for complete breakdown and large-scale deaths given the right initiating incident.”
People are still looking/waiting for the black swan; all-the-while, industrial civilization is busily squandering humanity’s options while dying a slow death from a thousand self-inflicted cuts, leaving those wounds untreated and festering. If/when that so-called “initiating event” occurs, it will be a convenient target for blame; an excuse to ignore that we all have been complicit for decades; guilty of participating in our own demise.
I suppose that externalizing cause and effect is a sort of coping mechanism, but it’s tantamount to criminal delusion; a collective personality disorder most won’t survive.
Davy on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 10:31 am
Yea, G-man, the age old doomer question “swift and deadly” or “slow and terminal”. I see a little of both in a concoction of entropic global decay. Maybe there will be meaningful change in a real crisis that could be the swift and deadly that stabilizes in the slow and terminal. This is part of the reason I am here daily. I am looking for a doomer clue.
joe on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 10:53 am
While I’m not as urgent about the collapse of society as some here are, I do believe within 1-2 generations from now our great grandchildren will have to work the land that is still productive with animals because precious oil will be too expensive. Future society will be much more unfair and unjust as it was in the past and more violent, and more unhealthy with average life expectency dropping closer to historical norms, but as GW impacts the future zombie quasi-solar society the writing will be on the wall.
Rodster on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 11:20 am
“but as GW impacts the future zombie quasi-solar society the writing will be on the wall.”
My thought says around 2100 before it all comes crumbling down for good. Besides GW/CC you also must factor Geoengineering which is another Godzilla and will destroy the planet if it isn’t stopped.
Lawfish1964 on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 12:24 pm
Unfortunately, SSRI’s are not only addictive, but once off them, the withdrawal never goes away. Ten years ago, I started having panic attacks, so my doctor prescribed Zoloft. I never really felt like it did anything for me, but I dutifully took it for 8 years. Due to sexual side effects, I decided to stop using it, so I tapered down over 6 weeks or so to nothing. Within weeks, I was overwhelmed with despair and depression that just didn’t get better. After 8 months, I finally gave in and went back to my doctor and got on a different SSRI. So back to being a bit dulled down and having a reduced libido, but not psychotic.
Not the same for tobacco. I quit smoking almost 9 years ago. After 6 months, I didn’t even think about them any more, and I had smoked for 16 years.
SSRI’s are a “gotcha” by big pharma.
GregT on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 12:24 pm
“Congrats to all Canadians for picking a winner.”
Not sure if you’re joking or not Bob. His intentions sound really good, but actions speak louder than words. I also wonder if he’ll be read the riot act by TPTB, or if he’ll have the balls to stand up for what’s right. The next 6 months are going to be interesting.
ghung on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 12:56 pm
Lawfish said; “Ten years ago, I started having panic attacks, so my doctor prescribed Zoloft. I never really felt like it did anything for me, but I dutifully took it for 8 years.”
Seems I had a better experience. Around 1990 I had the most stressful and rewarding job I had ever had (since the Navy, perhaps), working long hours while undergoing a cross-continent divorce/child support/custody fight. On top of that, my boss was a complete loon, and my commutes where pretty awful. After about a year of this, I needed a chill pill to keep functioning in this trap not-of-my-own-making.
The doc prescribed Zoloft which worked like a charm. Not only did my professional and personal lives improve, but I started getting laid a lot; something I needed after a couple of years of depressed celibacy. I dated a younger woman for a time and eventually met my current wife. The doc required a check-up and evaluation after 6 months to continue my prescription, but I just stopped the “therapy”; no extreme side effects; kept the job for another 18 months; kept getting laid, and eventually got my mind right with things like overshoot, consumption for consumption’s sake, and where I wanted to go with my life. I got a lot of mileage from that choice.
Just sayin’… some folks have different reactions to drugs. I never had a bad trip with psychedelics during my misspent youth either, while some folks I know went off the deep end, never to recover. Then, again, some people can’t smoke a little pot without freaking out. Differences in brain chemistry I suppose.
peakyeast on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 4:00 pm
@Lawfish: Perhaps the tapering out of the medicine should be done over a much longer period? Like a year.
I had a friend that ingested prozac and she also stopped on her own – because she felt she was “cured”. She committed suicide right after. This made me look a little into it – and i found many warnings about reducing the medicine without continuous professional supervision.
I advice people to take that warning seriously.
peakyeast on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 4:11 pm
@GHung:
A lot of people cant let other people smoke a little pot without freaking out.
😀
Davy on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 4:46 pm
I miss my homegrown, chewing tobacco, and an excellent Norton with dinner. I have been sober for 10 year come February. Now I don’t even have the urge to alter my mind. A good night sleep and a minimum of body aches is my high. No advice that is just where I landed.
apneaman on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 4:56 pm
GHung, I appreciate your honesty. A bunch of us teenage retards went mushroom picking (west coast) in the 80’s and then made tea. One buddy lost it and jumped off the second floor balcony of the apartment and broke his leg.
I think that a society that has changed to make money and material status as the sole metric of life success and meaning creates debt/work/consumer slave citizens that are depressed. I see this as the main factor in the increase in mental health issues. All those who believe (wrongly) that it’s bunk or personal weakness only need to look at the thousands of brain scans (fMRI) of a clinically depressed brain VS a non depressed to see the difference (shrunk). I’m not talking about the pharmaceuticals (different debate), just that there are real physical changes to the brain in the clinically depressed.
makati1 on Tue, 20th Oct 2015 7:39 pm
Ap, you nailed it. I never got hooked on anything, except maybe coffee. Tried smoking, beer, and hard alcohol as a young person. Nothing stuck. No drugs, psycodelic or otherwise. Tried pot when I was in my 50s. Nothing. I guess I was lucky. Maybe that is why, at 71, I have no physical/mental problems? Although some here accuse me of being crazy. LOL
The above comments only point out the US’ societies failures and real costs and why it is going to go down hard when the SHTF.
onlooker on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 4:50 pm
Just thought it pertinent to put this link here. Sad what is happening to Americans.
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/epidemic-of-pain-suicide-and-drug-overdoses-3-graphs/
apneaman on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 5:34 pm
Tragic, looker. Most think it’s about money, but it’s much more complicated and multifaceted. I’ll try and simplify using a twist on a recent meme.
It’s the
economyculture stupidI think you might appreciate this fellow I like cause he make me think about lifeNstuff.
Dave Pollard.
THE ADMISSION OF NECESSARY IGNORANCE
http://shift-magazine.net/2015/10/18/the-admission-of-necessary-ignorance/
Here is his personal site and most recent post.
I’ve Changed My Mind
http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2015/11/05/ive-changed-my-mind/
onlooker on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 6:06 pm
Great links as usual AP. Yes I think that a key term is civilization disease. To me this disease involves separation, hubris, conflicts in free will or lack thereof. Related to the link I posted, Americans were sold the idea of the American dream carefully packaged and marketed. Nothing can be further from the truth that money buys happiness. Happiness is illusory in the sense that no such thing exists. I like to distinguish between peace of mind and lack of peace of mind. Again we are all just trying to make sense of this world in a relatively brief time here. So I will cut short this verbose pondering and just state that a peaceful acceptance of all things MAY by a key to mental well being.
onlooker on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 6:08 pm
I would add one more component of civilization disease, that is achievement orientation.
ghung on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 6:12 pm
Gosh, ap; seems Dave has come full circle. I left him a little note:
“Sanity and sapience come at a price. Too bad many of history’s greatest thinkers and seers discovered that. Keep your chin up, though. A clear view of things, no matter how surreal they may seem, beats the crap out of the alternative.
Not sure what we need more of; optimists or realists, but having so many humans in limbo can’t be good. Maybe it’s true. The Well did run out of souls……
onlooker on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 6:29 pm
Agreed reality however bleak is better then any alternative!
apneaman on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 7:15 pm
looker, happiness IS illusory and that’s why what is really being sold is an endless stream of short lived dopamine hits. Maybe the next one will get you there – you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket. Be all that you can be. Your worth it! You deserve a break today……………………………..
Ya acceptance. Still working on the peaceful part. No expectations.
ghung, would I go back if I could, like Cypher in the matrix? No. I’ll play the hand I’m dealt. Dave is at least in a good place physically/geographically and has plenty to keep him busy. I think you know how that matters. It’s not everything, but it matters. Optimism is completely natural in apes and can be very useful in the right dose. It’s the extreme end of it, magical thinking/denial that is dangerous which is pretty much the greater part of the culture. The people telling people that everything is going to be fine are only making things worse. Save the optimism for after TSHTF, that’s when the people we care about will need some support – hard times coming. Now would be a real good time to get real, but we know that there is not much we can do to change the machine. So we wait and observe and doom the absurdity.
Sobotai on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 7:18 pm
Guys,
SSRI’s are a tool that has to be used for the right problem. Like any other tool.
For depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder SSRI’s can be a godsend. When the problem is gone, the SSRI can be safely stopped.
For bipolar disorder, SSRI’s can worsen anxiety to the point of suicide. Making it a little tricky, about 10% of people with depression are in fact bipolar.
The tool has to be matched with the problem.
By the way, I don’t buy the declining morals and mental health narrative of the article.
Times are changing and what you see in the media looks bad, but my take is that 85% of people are still trying to find a way to live a decent life and take care of the people they love.
Davy on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 7:48 pm
Ape Man read some Alan Watts. I am not giving you advice just saying it might be soothing. Sometimes you carry the weight of the ape species on your shoulders.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/538761-the-wisdom-of-insecurity-a-message-for-an-age-of-anxiety
“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money … but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth … In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are “coins” for real things.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
apneaman on Fri, 6th Nov 2015 8:03 pm
I got big shoulders Davy. I’m half Viking and half Cossack. I understand that Watts got a lot of pussy talking that woo woo. I’ll hit the library first thing. Good looking out.