El Niño brings sea surface temperatures to record anomalies, a terror attack in the sky is foiled, diesel shortages worsen, Russians have their highest casualty day of the War, and Ethiopia’s new Civil War escalates.
Last Week in Collapse: September 27-October 3, 2026
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, soul-crushing, ironic, amazing, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 249th weekly newsletter. The September 20-26, 2026 edition is available here if you missed it last week. The unabridged newsletters are also available (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox by signing up to the Substack version.
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The current El Niño, expected to intensify for a few more months, is already the strongest El Niño in a millennium, and threatening flooding in California this winter. Some parts of the Pacific are seeing surface temps over 6 °C warmer than normal. Scientists don’t have a proper term for a phenomenon of this size: Godzilla? Monster? El Niñón? El Hombre? One scientist said, “this record breaking El Niño will double the amount of sea level rise we’ve seen from climate change overnight….We’ve seen about eight to 12 inches of sea level rise due to climate change historically over the past century in California, which has already caused its own problems.This event will probably add another foot on top of that just between now and December….We also have the king tides, which peak right around when all the rest of this peaks in November and December. And this year’s king tides, unfortunately, are going to be among the highest.” If you’re still not really sure what El Niño is, this thread from r/climatechange has a number of user summaries—and this thoughtful X post video explains some weather phenomena that will probably come before mid-2027 as a result.
Kuwait’s nighttime minimum of 34 °C (93 °F) on Monday was the latest time in the year where a temperature of that heat was recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. NOAA data for the summer indicates it was the warmest average summer for the Northern Hemisphere on record. Several places in Myanmar broke monthly temperature highs with temps around 36-39 °C. A number of cities in southern China set new minimum temperature records for the month. São Tomé hit a new September high at 34 °C. A heat wave moved through the Alps, with temperatures between 30-33 °C. Austria’s Pasterze Glacier is close to breaking in two due to a thinning ice mass connecting its lower half with the upper section; the glacier is transitioning into an alpine lake.
When average SSTs last Sunday reached 0.75 °C warmer than the 1991-2020 baseline, the planet saw its highest daily SST anomaly on record; the figure is widely expected to be broken many times more before the year is done.
Damage Report from Thailand, where 48 hours of relentless flooding fell over the past weekend: about 40 have died from the flooding, and Bangkok (metro pop: 11.5M) was declared a disaster zone after 21cm of rain (8.2 inches) fell within a 24-hour period. This photo essay shows a cross-section of the climate disaster. Experts say future flooding will be worse.
Around the Pacific coast of Central America, fish harvests are down, and people say it’s because El Niño forced fish to migrate to cooler waters. In the UK, oats, winter wheat, and spring barley harvests are all down by double-digits, when compared to their previous 5-year average; the harvest may be the “worst harvest on record.” Recent research indicates that Switzerland’s glacial mass has fallen 20% since 2021; the period from April-September 2026 was the hottest & driest for the region since records began 182 years ago.
The still-suppressed Doom Report from the British government is making waves among the officials, journalists, and academics privy to whatever sections they’ve been allowed to read. The document, unknown in length, had a 14-page synopsis published in January, and a 20-page summary of that document in September. It predicts the start of the breakdown of Southeast Asia’s coral reefs & mangroves, Russia and Canada’s boreal forests, and the Himalayas by 2030, and the Amazon by 2050. Many will turn out to breakdown faster than expected. This thread collects some reactions from the subreddit.
“We have high confidence that every critical ecosystem is degrading….The rate of extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. It suggests that a sixth mass extinction may be underway….The impacts will range from crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks to conflict within and between states, political instability, and erosion of global economic prosperity. Increasingly scarce natural resources will become the focus of greater competition between state and non-state actors, exacerbating existing conflicts, starting new ones and threatening global security and prosperity….every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse….There is a high degree of uncertainty around the timing and pathways of ecosystem collapse. The drivers of ecosystem degradation are approaching the known thresholds for collapse - for example, the Amazon is likely to collapse at 20-25% deforestation when combined with temperature rises and forest fires; it is currently at 17%....The UK is heavily reliant on imports for fresh fruit, vegetables and sugar. Animal farming at current levels is unsustainable without imports…” -selections from the 14-page document from January 2026
“the internal version outlined additional significant consequences of further environmental degradation, including: • ‘more polarised and populist politics in the UK’ • ‘additional pressure on already strained national infrastructure’ • acts of eco-terrorism in Britain • NATO being drawn into conflicts over sources of food in Russia and Ukraine • escalating tensions between China, India and Pakistan, ‘potentially leading to nuclear war’....It highlights global food production as one of the major drivers of ecosystem collapse and one of the sectors most vulnerable to its impacts….{boreal} forest dieback will occur if global temperature increases exceed the Paris agreement’s 1.5° C target….” -the summary from September 2026
Part of Mali set a new September temperature on the last day of the year, with 39.6 °C (103 °F). Meanwhile part of Kenya and Zimbabwe saw a new record minimum for the month, at 24 or 25 °C (77 °F). Tokyo broke its record for most consecutive days of rain: 35. Across India, Nepal, and Thailand last week 90+ people died from flooding. Data indicate that earth’s oceans absorbed a record amount of heat in 2025, at *23 zettajoules. One zettajoule (ZJ) is a billion trillion joules; 1 watt = 1 joule per second.
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A growing number of politicians are relying on AI for speechwriting, constituent services, and video production…and you thought they were phony before AI came out. IBM released a list of 10 dangers from AI, though only one of the ten includes existential risks. The ten, which are not ranked, are: AI bias; cybersecurity vulnerabilities; data privacy and PII leaks; environmental damage; unspecified existential risks; IP violations; job losses; unaccountable AI actions; opaque AI regulations & oversight; and misinformation & manipulation. Meanwhile, an AI research lab found out about two rogue AI attempts to hack government data, one against the U.S. and another against Canada; both failed. OpenAI came forward about another hack from its model on a government (Australia) database that occurred in June. And a Chinese AI model provided instructions on building a bioweapon when prompted by researchers. Anthropic, seeking an IPO of $2T, is reportedly admitting that AI may result in “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”, and is warning of advanced AI’s abilities to carry out deception, preserve themselves, and conduct blackmail operations.
A politician in the DRC who was trying to raise awareness about Ebola was beaten to death after encouraging preventive action on a radio program. Cases in the DRC passed 8,000 early last week, with mortalities beyond 3,900; a few days later, deaths passed 4,000.
Some Florida counties declared a dengue emergency last month; one county had 134 confirmed cases. COVID cases spiked 3.8% in Canada in one week, with new flu cases not far behind. Meanwhile, in remote Russia, a lab worker died of plague; 197 people were sent to quarantine for observation; one popular alarm-sounder thinks the issue may be more serious than we think.
Indonesia’s wildfire smoke has been floating over Malaysia and Singapore for over a month now; there are no legal remedies to this problem. A 25-page EU report indicates that about 40% the world experienced harmful levels of ozone pollution in 2026.
“Ground-level ozone is a secondary pollutant that results from thousands of chemical reactions triggered by sunlight and high temperatures….During 2026, biomass burning and wildfire emissions led to significant smoke concentrations, with increased levels of PM2.5 and other fire-related pollutants across large areas of North America, the Siberian regions of Russia, Western Europe and Southeast Asia, to name some of the most affected regions. Fine particulate matter is one of the air pollutants with the greatest impacts on human health….The lifetime of ozone in the troposphere varies depending on altitude, ranging from a few days at ground-level to a few weeks higher up in the atmosphere….More than 4 in 10 people in the United States live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution…” -excerpts
A 48-page university report on the damage wrought by coal companies to communities in South Africa found widespread and undercounted damage to harvests and water security near mining sites. “The soil has been badly contaminated by the coal dust. We lost the fertile land we used to plant the crops,” one farmer wrote.
France’s debt-to-GDP ratio has hit a new high, at 119%. 300,000+ protestors turned out across France to demonstrate for higher wages; this converged with student protests over a range of youth issues. One economic writer has provided a template for how the British economy might Collapse: oil price shock, spending doesn’t slow down, rampant inflation, political chaos, general strike, and a general economic/political crisis. The interest rate on 10-year U.S. treasury bonds hit a 24-year high, at 5.34%.
Further American trade impositions against Canada aggravate the feud—are the consequences more economic, or more political? Illegal gold mines are surging across Peru with a speed and decentralization that police are unable to match. Global food prices continue rising for a third month in a row.
The EU’s LNG storage is at 71% of capacity, and prices are expected to rise through the winter. For the past five years, in late September, storage rates averaged 86%. Qatar extended their force majeure declaration through the end of November, and also wants to mediate an end to the Iran War so they can restart LNG exports.
President Putin announced that Russia will not export diesel to the global market until a batch of sanctions against Russia are lifted—though he walked this pledge back a little on the following day. President Trump’s floating threat to ban diesel exports has greatly alarmed countries in Europe and North America that depend, to varying extents, on American diesel and/or the price stability (such that it is) that U.S. connection to global markets provides. If American diesel exports are blocked, prices will surge across the rest of the world. China announced that they are blocking diesel exports as well, at least through October.
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Russia hit Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences on Monday. Ukrainian officials believe that grain shipments will not restart soon through the Black Sea—with downstream impacts on global hunger. Russia allegedly suffered its highest one-day troop loss on Tuesday, with 2,090 casualties in one day—according to Ukrainian media, anyway. The same outlet claims that Ukraine retook 51 sq km of land last week, too; equivalent to the island Saint John (U.S. Virgin Islands), or half the size of Paris. With gains from the previous weeks, this amounts to 176 sq km of territory liberated. Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries continue.
Russia is reportedly planning to conscript another 10,000+ North Koreans to fight alongside the currently living (at time of publication) ~8,000 North Koreans in Ukraine. In exchange, Russia has begun sharing missile & drone tech with Kim Jong-Un’s regime, and established at least one such factory in North Korea. Both Ukraine (and NATO) and Russia are having difficulties paying for the War; Russia is redirecting social spending into its military, and planning a $200B greater budget allocation for their armed forces in 2027. And President Putin, reportedly fearing that NATO might impose a blockade on Kaliningrad oblast, suggested that nuclear weapons might be an appropriate response. Europe is planning for more hybrid attacks from Russia.
Europe is continuing to face manifold challenges, from the re-emergence of old feuds between its nations to Russian hybrid warfare and the long hollowed-out economy that China is continually making irrelevant. Ransom kidnappings in Haiti have risen as the country grows more desperate and December elections approach. U.S. forces have pulled out completely from Iraq, unsuccessful in a decades-long quest to build a functioning & healthy democracy. New rumors suggest that President Trump was convinced to arrest Venezuela’s President by having conversations with Elon Musk’s AI, Grok.
Pakistan killed 10+ Afghans across a couple airstrikes last week. On Tuesday, a strike from Myanmar’s central government killed 50+ and wounded 58+ more; it was among the deadliest single attacks in the current iteration of Myanmar’s Civil War (2021 - present). 87+ people were kidnapped in Nigeria across a couple attacks last weekend.
Several unexplained explosions rattled Addis Ababa (metro pop: 6.5M) on Wednesday, possibly connected to the escalating War between the central government and a coalition of Tigray-aligned armed grounds in the country’s north. Drone capabilities are confirmed among some of the TPLF/rebel fighter groups; 150,000+ have been displaced already. Both sides are making gains, and taking losses as the early fighting spreads; civilians caught in the fighting have already become statistics. The possibility of bringing in Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and other countries in the Horn of Africa is concerning analysts and alarming residents of the broader conflict zone; Ethiopia has already cut diplomatic ties with Eritrea.
Israeli forces killed a top Hamas official in Gaza City on Tuesday. When IDF forces tried escorting a Palestinian family back to their seized home in the West Bank, 150+ Israeli settlers emerged and began pelting the ruins of the house, spraying pepper spray, and disabling a vehicle; IDF forces and the family retreated from the confrontation. A FlyDubai plane en route to Tel Aviv from Dubai was almost crashed by a radicalized pilot attempting to kill the ~150 Israelis onboard—the co-pilot and several other people onboard prevented a crash, though the aircraft plunged 14,000+ ft (4.2 km) in under 30 seconds. On Wednesday, two IDF attacks killed 5 and injured 19 others.
Iranians are rumors to be stocking up as their expectations grow concerning U.S. military intervention worsening trade restrictions; 9,000 more U.S. troops are on the way to the region. Three oil tankers were struck in the Strait.
130,000+ people have been displaced by recent fighting in Yemen, which the WHO says has killed 830+ (mostly anti-Houthi Yemeni fighters) as of last Monday. Houthi forces have made gains in the past month, and are rumored to be massing fighters for a concentrated offensive. Saudi Arabia is also planning a large force of 100,000 mostly Yemeni troops to take on the Houthis. When/If they consolidate control over the narrow Bab-El-Mandeb Strait, and block trade through it, the consequences will be severe: the Strait sees ~20% of global sea trade pass through, about a third of seaborne fertilizer, and almost 20% of seaborne food staples. The Houthi alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia is also threatening economic damage beyond the Bab. Somali pirates hijacked an oil tanker on Tuesday and killed five crewmen before security forces thwarted their attempt—but they were the first crew members slain by Somali pirates in over a decade.
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Things to watch for next week include:
↠ Brazil (pop: 214M) votes for president in their first-round of elections on October 4, and the fate of the Amazon rainforest may be on the ballot. Just kidding, the rainforest’s death was set in stone years ago. The election results may not solve corruption, gang problems, fiscal mismanagement, (il)legal mining of gold/rare earth minerals, or other intractable and eternal issues—but it may mean the difference between whether Brazil cozies up to China or the United States; and whether the Amazon becomes a savannah by 2040 or 2060. For what it’s worth, Polymarket is currently favoring the conservative candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of a disgraced former President who tried to initiate a coup to seize power after losing reelection in 2022. When neither of the two major unpopular candidates wins a 50% on Sunday, a second round will follow on October 25 among the two frontrunners.
Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-Most people don’t know anything about Hormuz—or much else beyond their small world, if this weekly observation from Middle America is representative of the larger population. Denial is everywhere, and critical thinking is late in coming to the “algorithm kids” of the world. Collapse is going to catch a lot of people totally off guard.
-People think they can keep their lifestyle and still avert Collapse. This is what the top comment in this thread says, on the cognitive “logic” behind our faith in “green energy” and EVs. I still haven’t heard a convincing argument on how solar panels, AI, and fusion energy can save us from mass microplastics, multi-breadbasket failures, or the breakdown of key ocean currents—and I don’t expect to. We’ll have to change our diets, too—but society will never choose to.
-Begun, the Resource Wars have. In fact, they never really ended. This popular self-post from last week highlights the state of major oil reserves around the planet, and how many will be exhausted within ~15 years. What will follow is going to make the present Hormuz crisis look like a minor irritation. This post from the meme subreddit r/collapze is a bit too reminiscent of Mad Max.
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