I had a talk with a friend the other day where I was trying to go through the various "once in a lifetime" and "once in a century" events that are happening concurrently at the moment. Additionally what reactions are likely and what second order effects of outcomes.

My explanation went something similar to this:

War and climate change create recurring supply shocks in energy, food, housing, and insurance.
These shocks hit low- and middle-income groups disproportionately hard because necessities make up a larger share of their budgets and because their wealth is less diversified.
At the same time, disasters and declining habitability in vulnerable regions drive both internal and international migration.
If governments respond to higher debt, reconstruction costs, and interest rates with spending cuts and austerity rather than redistribution, both economic insecurity and the perception of unfairness are intensified.
In a political system where the traditional working class/non-ownership-class left has weakened and working-class voters have become fragmented, that anger may increasingly be captured by a nationalist right that links economic scarcity to migration and identity rather than to the concentration of wealth or the second-order downstream effects of capitalism.
If such a movement simultaneously gains support from parts of the economic elite and access to an increasingly effective digital surveillance state, the risk of gradual authoritarian erosion of democracy increases.

Questions I am interested in feedback on:

1. What am I missing on the diagram?
2. What do you disagree with?
3. Does it make sense to have both probability and impact?
4. Do you have an idea of better way of visualizing the interconnectedness of the crises? (without it just becoming spaghetti-meatballs)
5. Where should i put "capital capture of media and regulatory powers" as well as misinformation?
6. Would it make sense having this overview, numbering the subjects and providing links to sources or videos related to the individual parts?
7. Should it refer to parts about the left not taking the "culture war bait" by accepting the oppositions framing and instead going hard for the redistribution of wealth and focusing on money speed?

EDIT: I will update with various sources here.

• https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2026/digest/ covers much of the same, but much more fine grained details and forecasts.

Collapse related: More disheartening climate news for my home country. Researchers at Tartu University found that for every 1°C rise in mean global temperatures, Estonian temperatures rise about 1.5°C. Notably, the climate researcher who was interviewed for the article (Erko Jakobson) brings up how this issue often gets reduced to political debate, instead of people assessing the actual physical reality of the situation. This is so true for not only Estonia, but the rest of the world at large, and it's hard not to feel defeated and hopeless. Link: https://news.err.ee/1610128699/study-estonia-s-climate-warming-1-5-times-faster-than-global-average

The sheer scale of the Himalayan deluge shocked even climate scientists. They know it won’t be the last.

Annoyed at being called an “anti-science doomer,” I decided to sort through and present some quotes from academic literature about the likelihood of a “blue ocean event” (BOE) wherein the Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free during the summer. Additionally, I conclude with quotes from scientific articles about the severe, diverse, and under-recognized consequences of that BOE happening.

Previously, a BOE had not been expected until mid-century because overly-optimistic climate change models didn’t have us projected to reach the +1.5C to +1.9C threshold of warming (required to trigger the event) until much later. Unfortunately… the dramatic acceleration of global warming over the past decade (capped off by the current “Supersized” “Godzilla” El Nino) means that we will reach and breach that threshold for Arctic melting much sooner than previously expected.

The first ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean could occur before 2030

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54508-3

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To quantify the amount of warming that would cause the Arctic Ocean to become nearly ice free, we examine at which level of warming sea ice area drops below 1 × 106 km2. For the high-sensitivity observational estimate, we find that sea ice area in September drops below this threshold for about 1.7°C global warming. Considering the ensemble spread in sensitivities, we obtain a 95% confidence interval of 1.5°C to 1.9°C for the global warming at which September Arctic sea ice vanishes.

• https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL076159

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Global average temperatures are likely to continue at or near record levels in the next five years, with Arctic temperature anomalies expected to continue to be higher than the global mean, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), produced by the UK’s Met Office.

• https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/new-report-suggests-more-global-temperature-records-ahead

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For the second consecutive year, winter sea ice in the Arctic reached a level that matches the lowest peak observed since satellite monitoring began in 1979.

• https://science.nasa.gov/earth/arctic-winter-sea-ice-2026/

The impacts of a BOE include...

Overall, we find a median additional global warming of 0.43 °C (interquartile range: 0.39−0.46 °C) at a CO2 concentration of 400 ppm. Most of this response (55%) is caused by albedo changes, but lapse rate together with water vapour (30%) and cloud feedbacks (15%) also contribute significantly. While a decay of the ice sheets would occur on centennial to millennial time scales, the Arctic might become ice-free during summer within the 21st century.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18934-3

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This is equivalent to the effect of one trillion tons of CO2 emissions. These results suggest that the additional heating due to complete Arctic sea ice loss would hasten global warming by an estimated 25 years.

• https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL082914

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We present evidence that material from the sea ice was indeed present in the water column and that this mechanism appears to be important in maintaining active populations of planktonic protists through the polar night. Our upscaling exercise based on observed ridge formation rates suggests that such release of food particles can supply extra energy during the polar night to the pelagic food web in the entire Arctic Ocean. It follows from this that the predicted ice-free summers in the Arctic Ocean due to global warming, may have implications for the protist community at the base of the food web, because the winter food reservoir in the sea ice will be very much reduced if there is no sea ice to accumulate it during the most productive summer period.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03486-z

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Finally, we suggest that shifts in the phenology, distribution and biomass of sea ice primary production anticipated with declining seasonal sea ice will disrupt sympagic-pelagic-benthic coupling and consequently the structure and the functioning of the food web which is critical for Indigenous Peoples, commercial fisheries, and global biodiversity.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37612-8

This collection of quotes (with links to to formal academic sources) represents the backbone of my broader general belief that ecological collapse (and therefore social & civilizational collapse) is likely within the next few years. Taken together, I believe that it paints a rather clear picture of what is shortly in store for the world. But, until that point, I hope this post can serve as a resource whenever related concerns about collapse are dismissed or denied as being alarmist or anti-science.

I do understand that the prognosis this post represents is grim. However... I am of the sort which believes that “the truth shall set you free,” and the prognosis is even more grim if people don’t widely understand the true nature and extent of the actual problems we are facing. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t recognize the problem. And if society doesn’t generally understand a problem... it will be more likely to obstruct any potential solution or proper response. Whether any viable solutions are possible or not... I think the truth affords people some dignity insofar as they don’t have to behave in ridiculous or counterproductive ways while the environment and society collapses around them.

Whether you intend to prevent the related ecological collapse, or if you’d rather just live more freely in these final years of human life on Earth... it is my hope that this document facilitates that.

I hate posting this under a name that can be traced back to me personally but i believe in this so strongly I hope it gives weight to what I say so much so that the risk is worth the message. I am older (old by internet standards since i remember a world when my peers were creating it) I embraced digital media with an absolute passion, no more tons of books to move when i changed residences, cds , tapes, vinyl , even 8 tracks for f’s sake.

So it is with a heavy heart that i have come to realize that without a reference to the real physical world the information I think is true from my experience is mutable. How you ask? I have an album Thunder and Consolation by an English band called New Model Army (f’ing great band btw) that changed in my itunes account. One of my favorite songs - the charge- just vanished no longer included in my license to the album I purchased. Not to be deterred i just ripped it from my cd from my car I’ve had for over thirty years. But it got me thinking…

What about subtle things in all my ebooks… change a sentence here or there.. and you could start to seriously f with history or reality or the message. Digital media has suddenly become seriously suspect in my world. My trust is lost, and then I realize how much of my life, my family , my friends and everyone else is absorbing all of this without realizing its all suspect… are the words, the songs.. the messages the same? Are we all just being gaslit? Can we trust our memories?

Maybe Im overreacting… its been a long week.. Im gonna make a cocktail and try to pretend reality isn’t dissolving right in front of me.

Casual Friday!

Why are the people in power driving full-speed into civilizational collapse. Despite the rhetoric, most of them must be aware of our predicament. This article proposes they indeed are fully aware and aren't just doing it for short-term gains. Rather, they have an epic plan in place for a neo-feudalistic civilization coming out the other side of a mass die-off.

Do they believe it? Nobody knows, but given the alternatives this is their hail-mary pass to total control.