Just before "Titanic" sank under the waves, many passengers, crew, and officials were still arguing about how it could have happened, almost as if they were historians reviewing some old war. Some continued to believe that it wasn't going to happen, even as the water lapped about their feet or they descended from the davits on the (too few) lifeboats.
The formerly great ship "America" is clearly sinking. To deny that this is happening is pure sentimentality, at best. I understand the pull of patriotism---I feel it myself at odd moments. But it is a feeling for something that is going, going, gone.

Some of us have built lifeboats and will sail on for a time as individuals and groups, communities (so-called) and counties. But the "polity" is done for, and will probably break up. It's bankrupt and broken and despised the world 'round.
Yes it has a lot of expensive bombs and even that ridiculous ray-gun they featured on "60 Minutes." I don't feel any safer; indeed, the US military establishment and its mighty yet secretive budget are big doom factors.
My brother just returned from leading a group of his students on an educational tour of Rome. He reported to me being very uncomfortable during portions of this trip, because of the low regard in which Americans are held. "We're hated," he said, "and even my students felt it."

I don't think the rest of the world escapes, though. The WHOLE ship is going down.
Dare anyone imagine the master list PO.comers could compile of "doom factors"? Mass extinction, worsening storms, coastal inundation, topsoil loss and land degradation, ocean acidification, debt, bankruptcy, health care rationing, epidemics, tropical diseases moving north, peak everything . . . we could extend the list massively.
I'm looking for opposing, hopeful trends but I see few to none. Instead, the doom-factor list just keeps lengthening and the items on it worsening.

I don't think that people will be "controlled by the elites" soon. They will be left to their own devices. We will see if the powers that be decide to feed themselves or feed us.
My guess is that as things get tighter they will feed less and less people besides themselves.
What will you do when times get tougher? Will you take in a bunch of starving people when you can barely feed your own family?

I am not getting off the good ship USS "The Current Arrangements are Doomed."
I am only saying that coming out the other side, those who do start to rebuild will still be Americans, carrying the culture(s) of America into the future. The government is not the culture and the economic arrangements are not the culture. We will still sing the same songs, build the same kind of barns, worship the same gods and, I hope, embrace those who worship no god. I think I have some cultural skills that will be helpful to me and my community.
Doesn't mean there will not be a lot of death. Doesn't guarentee the survival of me and mine. It is only that: cultural resources. If you sit back and read about the religious wars of Europe, people survived and rebuilt. The fall of Rome the same thing etc etc...

Mourn the loss of what is if that is where you are at. In the words of Bob Dylan, "I'm not there." There will be something on the other side and while it will not be what is, it will be recognizable.
The passage between here and there is not going to be pretty or pleasant but no one ever promised me pretty or pleasant.

I agree with most of that, Cur.
And most of it could be taken as a reasonable definition of "doom."
A great unraveling. Much death. Cataclysms we don't currently anticipate---the X factor, if you will.
There will be ashes, but I'm not convinced a phoenix will arise from them.

'Doesn't mean there will not be a lot of death. Doesn't guarentee the survival of me and mine. It is only that: cultural resources. If you sit back and read about the religious wars of Europe, people survived and rebuilt. The FALL OF ROME the same thing ' (capitilization, added by me) ~ Very true Wis cur.
The city of Rome's population at it's height approx. 2,000,000 people(not bad!), shortly after the last Emperor was deposed approx. 12,000 people. (Yikes!) Alot of this had to do with the inability to get a consistent supply of wheat to the city, and that much of the surrounding penninsula of Italy was devoid of farmers large and small scale.
Makes for some interesting thoughts on our current situation.
Hope this doesn't add to the doom-o-meter reading too much.
Cheers
Alex

Those chimps back then didn't have nuclear weapons to play with. If they did they would have use them. Outcomes would have been different.
==AC

Very true. Also a vast array of other mass-death weapons.
Perhaps even more important, and too often overlooked in these discussions, is that the people of failing ancient civilizations had a nearly intact natural world to fall back on. If not in their backyards, then over the next hill, or the hill after that one.
We don't.
They didn't have to cope with honeybee dieoffs, etc.

They also did not have millions of tons of steel laying around to be reused.
They did not have thousands of varieties of OP seeds available to them.
They did not have the ability to distill 99% ethanol on a home scale (the other liquid fuel). Only a few gallons a year makes life a lot easier.
They did not have millions of tons of plastic containers around, containers that should be able to be used and reused for a few generations.
Re: nukes, a big wildcard I confess but not a deal killer. USSR did not use theirs on their decline. It was only after they decided they could and would halt the decline that they resisted Chechen independence.

If they are used we are looking at what? The destruction of the cities, not a big loss. The loss of a couple of growing seasons, bigger loss that would lesson the number of survivors.
Fallout, if you crawl in a hole for a few weeks you will survive the short-term. Ok so you get cancer and die at a ripe old age of 40. If you have kids at 20 then there is lower net loss. Those young ones loose a lot of what they could be offered from the lost generation but they will get over it. A generation or two we are just fine as long as you don't wander into any radiological hot zone.
Even if some nukes fly, it is not the end of the world, just the world as we know it. A lot of suffering but, again, no one promised me freedom from suffering.

they also did not have 6.6 billion people, most of them utterly dependent on the status quo and quite unable to do anything with that used steel.

Just being nitpicky, but under average use plastic containers are not even going to last one generation. Even nalgene and acrylic break down faster than that.
-G

All I know is that when I travel the countryside, whether to visit family or buy a new animal or whatever I see a lot of creative reuses of materials. I travel in places where old delivery trucks are used for windbreaks and retaining walls. Shipping containers changed into barns etc etc. These people will still have a lot of obstacles to overcome, they are often the most dependent upon cheap oil in a couple of different equations, but in them I see the human ability to adapt. That is what homo sapiens do.
When the climate turned cold we changed from hunter gatherers to farmers. Whatever we think of that transition we must admit that it was pretty spectacular, esp given the fact that they did not have anyone to teach them or any books to read.
Give me a hammer, enough potatoes to fuel this human machine and a long winter to sit and "figure on" what I can do with this that and the other and I might be able to come up with a plow, not a pretty plow but a plow. I might even build two and trade a neighbor for some turnips or whatever.
All I'm emphasizing is that it is the end of the world as we know it, not the end of the world.

That's what doom is, as I define it, Cur.
Of course it's not the end of THE world. It's the end of OUR world, THIS world.

Exactly!! To most people brought up in this world if it goes they go. Of course there will survivors but mostly hardcore self sufficient groups. Order will come from the chaos but what that order will be is the big question.
A good option:
YouTube

Just for my own planning purposes, How about those big blue 55 gal containers used for food transport last?

Those are polyethylene but usually not cross linked poly. Sun exposure will eat poly pretty quick, with brittleness and cracking happening after 1-3 years. The black UV stabilized poly will last longer. If they are stored in a dark place they will last a long time - I would guess at least 25 years.

-G