Too many people, including a substantial majority of so-called survivalists, get caught up in ideas of apocalypse as a romantic fanatasy of heroic struggle and chest-beating triumph, a'la zombie wars.
Seriously. Anyone remember reading Interdictor, who was some IT guy who decided that he'd ride out Katrina in the building he worked in and documented what happened in downtown New Orleans in the subsequent. Check the comments on the posts during the period; dude had a seriously slathering fanbase going, all sorts of geeks & nerds jealous at the dude's chance to play out his post-apoc exercise.
― kingfish, Sunday, 20 January 2008 21:41 (sixteen years ago) link
Yup, i use grammar good and never words drop.
― kingfish, Sunday, 20 January 2008 21:43 (sixteen years ago) link
I remember that guy! Nothing seems to wind up the nerds like having to keep the servers up while the world is going to hell.
― gbx, Sunday, 20 January 2008 21:50 (sixteen years ago) link
Yeah. Dude was a goon and had people falling all over themselves on the sa forums to post about him.
― kingfish, Sunday, 20 January 2008 21:55 (sixteen years ago) link
So apparently big chunks of this story are fabricated or something, Julian Robertson didn't even say most of the stuff that attributed to him here, but this seemed like the right thread for this story.
Legendary Funds Manager Predicts Utter Global Collapse Stemming From Bursting of Property Bubble
Blames Bush-Cheney "regime"
In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the "old-timer" funds manager, Julian Robertson, predicted "utter global collapse" as a consequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble.
Often called "Never Been Wrong Robertson", the former head of Tiger Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the speculative bubble in real estate.
Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property bubble bursts.
Even more worrisome, he thinks central banks around the globe out of desperation will try to re-inflate the world economy with more liquidity that will create an inflationary spiral unseen in the economic history of mankind.
"Where does it end?", Insana asked Robertson. "Utter global collapse," he answered. But not just economic collapse ... collapse of epic proportions. Collapse and disintegration of all infrastructure, including government. Inflation will run into the double and triple digits. "Food production will fall. People will be carrying around U.S. dollars in wheelbarrows like Germany," he said.
There will be "total collapse of public infrastructure. Total collapse of medical care systems. All public pension plans, Social Security will collapse. All corporate pension plans will collapse."
"The American consumer is effectively now supporting the rest of the planet," he continued. "Consumption rates in all other nations are falling, have fallen to the point that the tax revenues to governments, that the business and industries those nation states are providing is now a net negative number relative to total debt service and public cost, that this exists in virtually every nation state on the planet now."
And for much of this "doom", interestingly, he blames the Bush-Cheney "regime".
"They have now consolidated power and money on the planet to the maximum extent possible. The planet's net liquidity, that is its, net free cash flow. Is now a negative number. The planet is not simply sinking into a sea of red ink; it is already sunk. The people just don't realize it yet," he said.
According to Robertson, "the Bush-Cheney regime is preparing the nation for transition from democracy into dictatorship because a dictatorship will be necessary to control, in 5 years time, food and water riots." He said "the federal government, that part of Patriot II Act, the internal exile, that the government is going to have to build now huge detention compounds on federal lands, probably in the West where the land is available, to potentially house 50 million or more citizens that will be in financial ruin."
In 10 years time, whoever is left will be effectively starting again, he said.
"More importantly, and I'm trying to think how we imply this or how we express this to the people, what extraordinary times we are living in and how the destruction of the planet has been engineered by the Bushonian Cabal from 1980 to 1992, and then from 2001 to present, which has effectively destroyed the economic liquidity of the planet," he said.
Robertson ended the interview by saying that he hopes he is not alive to see this.
"The lucky ones are the ones who are my age now," he said.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:15 (sixteen years ago) link
this seemed like the right thread for this story.
I'd also like to emphasize that the thread title (rolling looming apocalypse + flippant thunderdome ref) is intended as much to take the piss out of constant doom & gloom propositions as anything else. Thread is Rolling cause they're always coming and never coming true. Or something.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:21 (sixteen years ago) link
Instead of all this sturm und drang over the coming economic apocalypse, maybe we should all just relax, crack open a few brewskies, and enjoy a few good chuckles over the coming avian flu pandemic. amirite?
― Aimless, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:22 (sixteen years ago) link
avian fluskies
― Oilyrags, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:23 (sixteen years ago) link
i'll have a wheaty avian fluskie plz
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:27 (sixteen years ago) link
I like mine hoppy and peaty.
― Aimless, Thursday, 24 January 2008 19:28 (sixteen years ago) link
Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.
"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."
full
Hooray @ headline/lede alarmism. Point of the article: what with more people on earth, we probably oughta be growing more food, eh? Let's get on that right quick.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 3 February 2008 09:49 (sixteen years ago) link
HOOpocalypse now
― DG, Sunday, 3 February 2008 12:56 (sixteen years ago) link
The US has many flavors of hucksters working the doom industry. Some are crackpots. Some are our leaders. Some are scholars pimping books. It's a great racket and I've covered it for a number of years in print. It's hard to lose money predicting doom.
See a Lexis search I did a couple years ago on prediction of terror attacks.
Or flogging it.
A running tabulation of invocations of imminent mushroom cloud in daily newspapers.
― Gorge, Monday, 4 February 2008 21:55 (sixteen years ago) link
Ack, mushroom clouds in the press.
― Gorge, Monday, 4 February 2008 22:01 (sixteen years ago) link
'but it's got electrolytes!'
xposts
― rrrobyn, Monday, 4 February 2008 22:01 (sixteen years ago) link
lol rrobyn
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 9 February 2008 06:54 (sixteen years ago) link
Ethanol Fuel Will Kill Us All
"Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," concludes the study published in Science magazine.
RUN TOOOO THE HILLLLLLLLS
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 9 February 2008 06:55 (sixteen years ago) link
Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood
Skyrocketing oil prices, a falling dollar, and collapsing financial markets are the key ingredients in an economic brew that could end up in more than just an ordinary recession.
RUN FOOOOOOOOR YOOOOOOOUR LIIIIIIIIFE
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 23 February 2008 04:18 (sixteen years ago) link
Richard Dawkins is Optimistic About Something
"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color and bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?" - Richard Dawkins
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 14 March 2008 22:06 (sixteen years ago) link
tl;dr
― snoball, Friday, 14 March 2008 22:56 (sixteen years ago) link
BIG KINS aka the cheerleader
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 15 March 2008 03:23 (sixteen years ago) link
<a href=http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803u/uranium-smuggling>Russian Uranium Smuggling</a>
I haven't read the whole thing yet, but who can resist panicking about Russian Uranium Smuggling?
― Oilyrags, Monday, 7 April 2008 18:02 (sixteen years ago) link
two pieces in this month's Harper's bring the o_O
"Numbers Racket: Why the Economy is Worse Than We Think" "Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits" about how teh center can't hold cause of peak oil omg
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 12 April 2008 07:59 (sixteen years ago) link
Rolling UK Economy Into The Shitbin Thread Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread Real Estate bubble bust may be worse than Dot Com bubble bust
― Ned Trifle II, Saturday, 12 April 2008 12:20 (sixteen years ago) link
eeg so i guess i'm kinda glad this month's harpers has become buried in a pile of random objects on my desk xpost
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 12 April 2008 17:48 (sixteen years ago) link
The Economy piece in Harper's didn't really include any new information.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:07 (sixteen years ago) link
I mean most of what it says was true ten years ago, granted that it's important to remember that all that is true.
Last month's Harper's cover about the potential contagious cancer made me laugh a little. They should just change their name to Looming Apocalypse Monthly.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:09 (sixteen years ago) link
If the "Numbers Racket" article is about how the US gov skews its own economic statistics in order to manipulate markets, understate unemployment, and circumvent the intent of certain US laws (eg indexing Social Security benefits to the CPI), then I would like to read it.
― Aimless, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:13 (sixteen years ago) link
haha xpost
confession: i never read any of the american politics/economy articles in harpers
i try sometimes but
― rrrobyn, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:15 (sixteen years ago) link
the "Numbers Racket" article is about how the US gov skews its own economic statistics in order to manipulate markets, understate unemployment, and circumvent the intent of certain US laws (eg indexing Social Security benefits to the CPI), then I would like to read it.
-- Aimless, Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:13 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
That's what it's about, but your post pretty much sums up everything that's in the article.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:20 (sixteen years ago) link
There was a time when these numbers weren't corrupt. It is good to keep track of how widespread the area of corruption has grown and who benefits from it, if only to keep one's sense of reality from becoming too distorted by the powerful Untruth Waves bombarding us from all sides.
― Aimless, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:28 (sixteen years ago) link
It has some neat graphs.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:29 (sixteen years ago) link
Yeah, I see your point. It is important to stop once in a while and remind yourself that the statistics you're hearing have little bearing on whether the typical American living standard, or even your own living standard, is actually getting better.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 12 April 2008 18:30 (sixteen years ago) link
Got any faith in humanity left? Trash it.
― Oilyrags, Saturday, 12 April 2008 20:38 (sixteen years ago) link
Wait, sorry, I'm supposed to lose faith in humanity because someone did something kind of stupid and got killed?
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 12 April 2008 21:57 (sixteen years ago) link
I guess you're right, but it still pisses me off real good.
― Oilyrags, Saturday, 12 April 2008 21:59 (sixteen years ago) link
I do think it's a little saddening that this woman undertook a project that relied on a certain degree of basic human decency, and then those expectations were horribly violated. I'm also a little saddened by the jaded reactions I'm seeing all over the place.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 12 April 2008 22:24 (sixteen years ago) link
Was it a naive project? Maybe. But it's depressing nonetheless.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 12 April 2008 22:26 (sixteen years ago) link
lol Gawker's scifi blog (lol) had a roundup today on "12 Ways to Prepare for Our Dystopian Near-Future" or something, and even I thought it was some alarmist bullshit.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 14 April 2008 04:01 (sixteen years ago) link
and i'm already stockin up on non-perishables and shit
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 14 April 2008 04:05 (sixteen years ago) link
man drop in a reference to ghostface and that's the most in-character pair of posts i've ever had
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 14 April 2008 04:06 (sixteen years ago) link
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_cox/2008/04/precautionary_principles.html
― banriquit, Sunday, 20 April 2008 09:58 (sixteen years ago) link
lol
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 20 April 2008 16:38 (sixteen years ago) link
CIA chief: 'Get ready for Children of Men-style funnies'. Admittedly I paraphrase.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 May 2008 17:12 (sixteen years ago) link
I think it's just wonderful that the deterioration in the world situation from overpopulation will occur at a slow enough pace that we can adjust to each new level of chaos as normal and expected. This means that, however bad things get, life will still seem commonplace and acceptable. Humans are amazingly good at this.
― Aimless, Thursday, 1 May 2008 17:33 (sixteen years ago) link
Was it Obvious Day at the CIA?
― milo z, Thursday, 1 May 2008 17:34 (sixteen years ago) link
i kinda suck at it but yknow, go humans xpost
― rrrobyn, Thursday, 1 May 2008 17:36 (sixteen years ago) link
Debates, debates.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 5 May 2008 19:22 (sixteen years ago) link
lol just had a half hour convo w/an old friend about how we're both getting a creeping sense of doomq
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 May 2008 19:24 (sixteen years ago) link