# If industrial civilization collapsed?



## Hero of Freedom (Nov 23, 2014)

What would the world and society look like when industrial civilization collapses if the environmental crisis is allowed to continue? Cause there was this nasa funded research from last year which predicts the collapse of industrial civilization within several decades with the current ownership of how things are produced being a contributing factor.

If it was allowed to continue on along with the environmental crisis/depletion of resources and eventually industrial civilization did collapse what would the world look like? How would life be like? How would war be fought?


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

"predicted" is a bit strong, but there are lots of possible risks and existential risks are a serious field of study.

Existential Risk Prevention as a Global Priority

If industrial society collapsed, then world trade would collapse and many people would be forced into poverty and famine. Law and order would fail and society would regress to earlier 'honor' based societies, with physical dominance being the most important attribute for status and resources. Most causes of death, especially those that are currently at historical lows (eg murder) would increase by magnitudes of order. Humans will still have the means and technology to survive off the land, but with a much lower population and much more violence.


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## Desolan (Nov 14, 2011)

Well, for starters a world war would occur. This war would either be a direct contributor to the industrial collapse or the eventual result of the collapse occurring. The results of this war would determine a lot of things for the post war era, but assuming we don't all nuke the hell out of each other it is likely that whichever organizations can acquire sufficient military power will claim resources create new governing bodies. How these governing bodies run as totalitarian dictatorships or feel-good hippy love and peace all depends on how idealistic these leaders happen to be.

I should also mention that Jerusalem, as the hub of three major religions, will likely be wiped off the map.


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## Toru Okada (May 10, 2011)

depletion of what resources?


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## redneck15 (Mar 21, 2011)

Dawn of the Light said:


> What would the world and society look like when industrial civilization collapses if the environmental crisis is allowed to continue? Cause there was this nasa funded research from last year which predicts the collapse of industrial civilization within several decades with the current ownership of how things are produced being a contributing factor.
> 
> If it was allowed to continue on along with the environmental crisis/depletion of resources and eventually industrial civilization did collapse what would the world look like? How would life be like? How would war be fought?


I don't believe that industrial civilization will collapse. As soon as conditions became sufficiently bad that it was profitable, capital would invest massively in technologies to mitigate and/or replace depleted resources. Many poor countries might suffer massively, but I don't believe the developed economies can fail. At minimum some of them might, but all three?


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## conscius (Apr 20, 2010)

Sometimes I wish we never had a civilization in the first place. The negatives don't outweigh the positives sometimes.


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## Sourpuss (Aug 9, 2014)

Dawn of the Light said:


> What would the world and society look like when industrial civilization collapses if the environmental crisis is allowed to continue?


The environment won't collapse industrial civilization. If it falls it will be because of social pressures/changes and/or resources running out.

If it does, then expect mass migrations and famine. Once the logistical side of civilization grinds to a halt and there aren't any trucks restocking the grocery stores and mini-marts... that's when things start to fall apart.

I imagine though that it would be resolved locally in some areas and after enough time gradually expanded outward again. How much time? I dunno.


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## Death Persuades (Feb 17, 2012)

To answer all your questions, just read a pre-industrial history book.


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

I would know how to survive in the wild and be with a man who could beat people up.

I'm ok. In fact at least weekly I now check in to armegeddon: mandatory vegetarian, muscular boyfriend, making shit out of basic household items, check.


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

BlackCoffee said:


> I don't believe that industrial civilization will collapse. As soon as conditions became sufficiently bad that it was profitable, capital would invest massively in technologies to mitigate and/or replace depleted resources. Many poor countries might suffer massively, but I don't believe the developed economies can fail. At minimum some of them might, but all three?


You're intellectually challenged, and someone should bring it to your attention.


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## redneck15 (Mar 21, 2011)

Thalassa said:


> You're intellectually challenged, and someone should bring it to your attention.


Disagreement is one thing, but it takes quite a bit to justify thinking my opinion is so baseless that no one could hold it reasonably. I think lots of people would agree with me. It's just an optimistic extrapolation to the future of what the past has been like.


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

Thalassa said:


> I'm ok. In fact at least weekly I now check in to armegeddon: mandatory vegetarian, muscular boyfriend, making shit out of basic household items, check.


And a strong will to live! :wink:


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Snowy Leopard said:


> "predicted" is a bit strong, but there are lots of possible risks and existential risks are a serious field of study.
> 
> Existential Risk Prevention as a Global Priority
> 
> If industrial society collapsed, then world trade would collapse and many people would be forced into poverty and famine. Law and order would fail and society would regress to earlier 'honor' based societies, with physical dominance being the most important attribute for status and resources. Most causes of death, especially those that are currently at historical lows (eg murder) would increase by magnitudes of order. Humans will still have the means and technology to survive off the land, but with a much lower population and much more violence.


People from "honor" culture, like Southern Americans, and the Japanese, would survive. Study them.

Industrial society is definitely temporary. It baffles me that anyone even questions it. It's mostly a matter of in my own lifetime or my children.


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

BlackCoffee said:


> Disagreement is one thing, but it takes quite a bit to justify thinking my opinion is so baseless that no one could hold it reasonably. I think lots of people would agree with me. It's just an optimistic extrapolation to the future of what the past has been like.


Ok then you're overly optimistic. Your faith in man is crazy, and industrial society is definitely temporary.


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## Mirkwood (Jul 16, 2014)

Doomday!?.

No, actually, then i dont think there will happen that much bad. We would just have to adapt to that situation then.
And we would not run out of resources within a split second, one day to the next. Unless ofcourse there was some major disaster.
So we would have time to adapt also. And all of our know-how would not go away either.
There will still be trading without a stock market, etc.

Things would however first become really expensive i guess.

Food is one of the biggest needs in the end. So id think, to hell with cars, computers, etc. (tho perhaps not entirely) 
But the food industry would also haft to reduce production if the there is no building materials, power, etc.

Coming from an farm, then i often think, What the hell will the city folks do?.
Those cities with millions and millions of people. Would they all come to loot the farmers?.
Uhm, we got nearly all the farm land, so.. hmm..
But as said, the farmers would also have to cut down alot, etc.


.....

But entirely agree in that, i dont think things can keep going on this way.
Building more.. = more maintinance.. etc.

But the world population is levelling out they say.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

I don't think society will collapse at all.

The only major resource is oil. Everything else can be reused and recycled.

There will be a rocky transition phase where the winning countries will be the ones with nuclear power plants and access to nuclear fuel.

Then we'll go electric.

And cities will be quiet, beautiful and unpolluted.

I can't see any collapse coming any time soon.

When oil really does get low, I think the oil giants will start taking major steps towards investing in the alternatives. They'll have no choice. It'll be fine.


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## BlackDog (Jan 6, 2012)

Thalassa said:


> You're intellectually challenged, and someone should bring it to your attention.


I don't think I've ever seen you disagree with somebody without accusing them of being stupid in some way or other. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but you sure attack people's intelligence a lot. Has anybody ever brought that to your attention? 

As for the OP, I think there will be some major issues in the coming years but I don't think it will be quite as dramatic as Hollywood would have you believe. I think if sea levels continue to rise there will be some mass migrations. There will be some shifts towards more sustainable technologies out of necessity. Water will be an issue, and I imagine there will be conflict regarding Canada largely because of our low population density and abundance of fresh water. Other than that, it's difficult to say. It's possible climate change is a bit of a false alarm, in the sense that it will stabilize. There is much agreement that climate change is happening (it is) and that its most likely largely related to human activity (it probably is) but it's extremely difficult to predict exactly how it will play out.


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## redneck15 (Mar 21, 2011)

Thalassa said:


> Ok then you're overly optimistic. Your faith in man is crazy, and industrial society is definitely temporary.


Now that we have the Internet, if we have just another century of uninterrupted progress it seems likely that we could have digital forms of intelligent life. I am not someone to think that AI will come soon, but surely eventually? Or more likely, humans with enhanced computer-like abilities will be able to perform just as well as AI.

Our intellectual achievements are astonishing compared to how we lived just a century ago. Admittedly the majority of the population are ignorant of how to produce the main sources of our rich civilization, so if we lost the handful of scientists and intellectuals who hold things together we would collapse into a new dark ages. 

Global warming is a danger, but surely the destruction of some major portion of the globe does not equate to the loss of all civilized knowledge? 

In fact, we see the opposite, as much of Asia becomes educated. Once we have vastly increased our numbers of intelligent minds, perhaps sheer statistics dictate that we will come up with even better ideas. 

On the other hand, the intelligent minds have to be organized into research institutions of some kind, and then there must be a way of channeling discovery into a capitalistic market that isn't so corrupt as to stifle innovation. 

So there is a chance we founder. I don't know what the probability is, but surely you can also acknowledge that there are chances we go forward in addition to backward? 

Trust in the potential of Chinese science, my friend


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## Hero of Freedom (Nov 23, 2014)

BlackCoffee said:


> On the other hand, the intelligent minds have to be organized into research institutions of some kind, and then there must be a way of channeling discovery into a capitalistic market that isn't so corrupt as to stifle innovation.


Capitalism refers to ownership of the means of production by the private sector, CEOs in general though. If you were to take the means of production out of the hands of CEOs it would either be statism, statist capitalism possible(if the state that takes it into its hands it still profit motivated), or a form of socialism(owned literally by workers where CEOs are replaced by democratically elected workers representatives who serve their interests).

Means of distribution means how things are sold which is a totally different thing from means of production. You could for example have a really open means of distribution/market but have a socialist production industry owned by workers instead of CEOs as proposed by Libertarian Socialism.


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## Hero of Freedom (Nov 23, 2014)

HAL said:


> I don't think society will collapse at all.
> 
> The only major resource is oil. Everything else can be reused and recycled.
> 
> ...


But thing is, nuclear powerplants are dangerous and could blow up.


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## Hero of Freedom (Nov 23, 2014)

Gore Motel said:


> depletion of what resources?


Resources that run the means of production/industry which most CEOs that own the production industry consider to be more profitable.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Dawn of the Light said:


> But thing is, nuclear powerplants are dangerous and could blow up.


Actually the danger is in them melting _down_, not blowing _up_. :wink:

Explosions at nuclear power plants, such as those at Fukushima, are just normal explosions caused by high pressure somewhere, with no direct release of radioactive material at all.

The problem with explosions at nuclear power plants is that it clearly means there's something wrong with a process somewhere, which could lead to a coolant problem in the reactor chamber. If the coolant stops working, the nuclear fuel rods get too hot, and then they melt out of their position, down into the base of the chamber and into the floor. Hence the term 'melt down'.

Chernobyl was bad because there was a meltdown, and then something exploded nearby which caused an ejection of radioactive material simply because it was in the vicinity. I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that all nuclear power plants now are built such that this can't happen. Safety is gonna be huge in new power plant designs. Fukushima was a massive disaster and even that was relatively well contained, all things considered. Nobody died either. Which is rather a better result than the amount of deaths from other power production methods in recent history!

I mean sure there's always that 'risk' of explosions and stuff, but suggesting a nuclear power plant 'could blow up' is too vague and paints a picture of it as a massive ticking thermonuclear time bomb, which it isn't at all.

So there! :happy:


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