The resource wars are already underway

Brother Joe:

You write a lot about the upcoming catastrophe for humanity. I agree with you. That’s why I read you. In a recent letter to a reader, you foretold the demise of 5 billion people.

That will entail carnage on an unimaginable scale. How are all those people going to make the transition from living to dead? As a former military historian, and someone who’s thought a lot about The Rapture, what do you think will be the mechanics of the peak oil, eco-collapse, economic implosion — call it The Rupture? Starvation, massive weapons taking out millions of souls at a time, or human against human, gouging each others’ eyes out in a battle for the last tin of beans?

Spin us a yarn of Joe Bageant’s apocalypse!
Buck,

I wish to hell it was all just a yarn instead of an oncoming train. Don’t you?

Well, to my mind it will be a combination of all the above. Only the order is uncertain. For example, if the ethanol/corn fuel thing goes as planned (and you should see the size if the fucking silos they are now building in the American Midwest!) some 2 billion people will experience increased food scarcity right off the bat, and not just from the loss of soybean production acres and redirection of corn usage. Seems that their own nations, thanks to world banking and debt, are converting native crops over to corn and other ethanol producing sources. And that’s just for starters, and not counting the desertification underway and other eco based disasters, such as diminishing aquifers etc. Add to these the increased global movement of diseases due to higher average temps, the rising sea levels which will drive population into the mountainous regions, thus creating huge transportation problems for goods and services such as medicines — and well, it ain’t a purty picture, is it?

Joe Bageant