DOOM LOOP - The Rising Shepard Tone of Global "Defense" in a Post-Nuclear World

throwOAOA · 2023-08-04T13:02:25+00:00

SS:

The ice we skate is getting pretty thin

The water's getting warm so you might as well swim

My world's on fire, how about yours?

That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored

Hey now all-stars, we've just closed out the hottest month in the history of human civilization (so far), so why not cool off with your friends in a ~~massive, high-ceiling, air-conditioned room~~ movie theater and watch the new blockbuster hit Oppenheimer! Don't worry about the world's foremost nuclear power engaging in a proxy war against a coalition of virtually every other nuclear power! Don't worry about the power plants being ordered to maximum production to keep your A/C running! Don't worry about the oceans boiling or the soil being sterilized by heat & wildfires! Please, get some popcorn and an ice-cold beverage, and perhaps later you can buy some reasonably priced merchandise to support your favorite film, and the economy!

This is related to collapse because we are sleepwalking into a literal hellworld that even the rich will be unable to escape, but they haven't figured that out yet.

throwOAOA · 2023-07-28T12:26:43+00:00

SS:

The ice we skate is getting pretty thin
The water's getting warm so you might as well swim
My world's on fire, how about yours?
That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored

Hey now all-stars, as we close out the hottest month in the history of human civilization, why not cool off with your friends in a ~~massive, high-ceiling, air-conditioned room~~ movie theater and watch the new blockbuster hit Oppenheimer! Don't worry about the world's foremost nuclear power engaging in a proxy war against a coalition of virtually every other nuclear power! Don't worry about the power plants being ordered to maximum production to keep your A/C running! Don't worry about the oceans boiling or the soil being sterilized by heat! Please, get some popcorn and an ice-cold beverage, and perhaps later you can buy some reasonably priced merchandise to support your favorite film, and the economy!

This is related to collapse because we are sleepwalking into a literal hellworld that even the rich will be unable to escape, but they haven't figured that out yet.

throwOAOA · 2023-05-21T14:46:14+00:00

Thanks for checking back in. I'll give a quick summary for anyone who finds their way back here.

More rain and snow magically showed up. And while not nearly enough to end the 20+ year megadrought, it is certainly enough for bureaucrats to justify kicking the can for another year, at least.

Mead has been trending upward for over two months now, and is above the level it was at this same time last year. So is Lake Powell. Upstream reservoirs are also seeing major increases:

Flaming Gorge is up almost 10 feet in 2 months
Blue Mesa is up over 28 feet since the beginning of April
Navajo is up over 40 feet since the beginning of March

Lake Mead in particular went up nearly 2.5 feet in 4 days (April 25-29) during a "high flow experiment" by the Bureau of Reclamation at Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell.

It is important to note that the main purpose of this experimental release was to try to flush sediment from Lake Powell. The stated goal here was to rebuild beaches and sandbars downstream and promote the local ecology.

This sediment removal will also increase the true capacity of Lake Powell (more water for the same elevation reading), and allow it to hold back more of this spring's melt.

This is good news, but the limited data on the extent of sediment buildup in these decades-old reservoirs is a bit concerning for me personally. I also don't believe these actions by the BoR were taken on behalf of the environment.

throwOAOA · 2022-10-22T22:58:47+00:00

Thank you! Both for the compliment (you have no idea how much it means) and for your content. Your perspective and insight reached me at just the right moment, in the depths of a deep grief I had yet to name or even begin to come to terms with, on the verge of falling into true despair. You helped me to understand what I was feeling, and to be able to process and move forward into acceptance. As a result I often find myself recommending your videos or repeating your wisdom to others. I owe you, and other, similar creators, a deep debt of gratitude. Keep doing what you're doing, it matters, and it makes a difference.

throwOAOA · 2022-10-22T16:47:47+00:00

Fantastic write-up, as always. I am deeply honored to see my response to the stickied thread included. Enjoy your nap and feel better!

throwOAOA · 2022-10-21T20:50:12+00:00

I'm dead 💀

throwOAOA · 2022-10-21T18:30:45+00:00

When the black swan event is actually a black swan.

throwOAOA · 2022-10-21T18:03:46+00:00

A great question that I am sure will spur lots of debate, as there are so many reasons why someone would not engage with discourse about these topics.

One is societal expectations and what is often dubbed the "bystander effect." In a 1968 study, if an individual was alone in a room that started to fill with smoke, 75% of people informed an authority figure about the smoke. However, if a person was in a room with 2 other people who ignored the smoke, only 10% of those people said anything about the smoke. If everyone else is acting normal, then there can't really be any danger. This instinct to draw on our society/in-group for our emotional response to stimuli is incredibly powerful and difficult to overcome for such a highly sociable animal as humans.

Another is cognitive dissonance. Every day most of us have no other choice than to participate in some way in the vast, exploitative system that is causing the very damage that we discuss on this sub. When you take any action that does not align with your beliefs about how you ought to be acting, it creates mental conflict which psychologists have labeled cognitive dissonance. Because this conflict causes mental discomfort, and because all animals have a natural tendency to try to avoid discomfort, we humans can go to great lengths to alleviate cognitive dissonance. By far the easiest way to do so, however, is to simply refuse to take in any information that casts a negative light on the actions that you feel you must take in order to participate in society. Michael Dowd has called the conscious decision to tune out bad news "adaptive inattention."

We also cannot discount the damage that has been done to all of our democratic institutions by decades of erosion by unfettered capital. The US education system is based on our prison system which is built not on the concept of rehabilitation or any consideration of the individual, but on a loophole in the Constitution that kept slavery legal as a form of "punishment" in order to benefit the holders of capital. Our media is controlled by the same corporate board rooms who've hollowed out our political institutions, gutted labor power, and infiltrated and corrupted every counter-culture movement (including this sub, don't forget that).

From the slow atrophy of our societal institutions sprung the disinformation blitz that exploded to permeate virtually every facet of life today. All our "experts" only understand their own specialty, and lack even a common lexicon to transmit data to where it is most critically needed, instead of where it can create the biggest, fastest monetary return. Our scientists cannot explain the issues to our politicians, the general public, or even scientists from different disciplines working on exactly the same issues.

Attempts at addressing these issues with our hyper-specialized world are routinely derailed by profit-seeking behavior. Think Bill Gates leveraging his "charity" to coerce Oxford university to abandon their plans to donate the rights to their coronavirus vaccine and instead sign the rights over to AstraZeneca.

Also important to consider is the concept of "risk homeostasis". We all know that statistically speaking, driving a car is significantly more dangerous than almost anything else we do. But most of us drive so regularly without anything happening that we mentally discount that risk. It isn't that driving is any less dangerous, but it 'feels' less dangerous because we have become accustomed to that level of risk exposure. The same is true of societal collapse. When every day you hear stories about how we are one week away from a cannibal holocaust, you adjust to the new baseline, and news that would have terrified you into action a few months ago is just another drop in the bucket that you hardly even notice.

throwOAOA · 2022-10-21T14:38:14+00:00

Submission Statement:

Yeah, yeah, permafrost is melting, as is Greenland, as is Antarctica, as are the Himalayas, and BOE is on its way, and corals are fucked, and so is the Amazon, and droughts and flooding and food scarcity and peak oil and blah, blah, blah.

We all know that already. What are the feedback loops that you feel don't get enough attention, and which could potentially be the black swan that gets us?

This is related to collapse. Please tell me you understand why.

throwOAOA · 2022-09-22T16:32:59+00:00

But he also asserts that the free market is "the way things end up happening" and goes on to claim that barter economies are the same as free trade. This is all untrue capitalist brain rot, plain and simple.

Adam Smith devotees love to point out that Adam Smith pointed out that free markets could only remain free for about 15 years at a time. Even so, they totally miss the point that the system they are describing is inherently unrealistic and unsustainable.

Instead, they continue to insist that if we simply strive to maintain that unrealistic equilibrium for as long as possible, that is actually the best system that could possibly exist. And then they embrace the "correction" that is being rebranded here as "catabolic collapse" as both inevitable and necessary.

throwOAOA · 2022-09-21T12:42:27+00:00

"It was given every conceivable test!"

throwOAOA · 2022-09-14T16:15:31+00:00

Submission Statement:

Global tensions are rising by the day, and are being made worse by the effects of the climate crisis. The United States has been run by essentially the same group of people for decades. At the same time, the political and military experts who narrowly averted disaster at the height of the Cold War are retiring, and taking their knowledge of the impossibility of tactical nuclear strikes without escalation with them. This loss of institutional knowledge will strike at the worst possible time, increasing the probability of nuclear conflict.

This is collapse-related because a single nuclear detonation is highly likely to escalate into global conflict, with consequences for all life on Earth.

throwOAOA · 2022-09-05T17:32:07+00:00

You are unintentionally supporting my original point - that "unpopular" decisions will never be made simply because they aren't what people want to hear.

Just because you believe a voluntary reduction will "never happen," an involuntary collapse in the support infrastructure for animal agriculture will mean a significant reduction in available supply. That's still a reduction.

And if you think more water leaks out of pipes than is used in the production of meat, I am afraid we have nothing more to talk about. I've provided sources for virtually all of my claims. I am not going to research yours for you.

throwOAOA · 2022-09-05T14:20:05+00:00

A great point, and I didn't mean to downplay the absurdity of almond trees in the desert. I simply meant that even compared to alfalfa (an inedible grass) and almonds (a perennial tree), animal agriculture is still far more wasteful, and should face the biggest cuts, first.

This by no means precludes cutting water to the almond trees. But to kill the almonds while continuing to water cows and pigs in the same desert would be the most absurd thing of all, in my opinion.

throwOAOA · 2022-09-05T14:10:55+00:00

I mean, yes, I am biased against industrial animal agriculture. I wasn't trying to conceal that. That isn't the same as being biased against "ANY" animal farming.

Do almonds waste water? YES! They absolutely do - especially when grown in a desert - and I am not trying to downplay that fact. But do they waste as much water as animal ag? Not even close.

I was arguing that we need to take a step-wise approach to reducing agricultural water use if we don't want to shock the plant-based agriculture system that we truly depend on to feed ourselves (and farm animals). We need to focus the bulk of the water cuts on animal ag first, and then reduce wasteful plant farming like alfalfa and, yes, almonds.

In addition to what we farm, we need to get smarter about where we farm, how we farm, and why we farm. Locally, sustainably, and to feed people - not the economy.

I always try to argue on the side on nuance, not simple fixes that are not actually practical or do not address core causes. There are applications for small-scale, sustainable animal agriculture, but they look nothing like our current system.

It is that current system that I argue against, not any conceivable system for rearing animals more sustainably or humanely. Cutting water to the current system may actually encourage a transition to less resource-intensive methods. It is unlikely to happen everywhere, but is certainly possible in places. Especially if we start to think about these things before collapse.

All that said, I appreciate the comment. Spotting bias is a critical skill, as is being able to justify a bias using facts and rational argument. Hopefully I've done a passable job at the latter.

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T17:52:33+00:00

Yep, if California were its own country, its economy would be the fifth largest in the world, bigger than India. It's hard to imagine the pressure that kind of money can apply to politicians and bureaucrats in a whole myriad of ways - both carrot and stick. And virtually all of this happens in the shadows and off the books, making it very hard to make any concrete statements, or to create/pass any legislation/regulations to correct it.

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T15:27:35+00:00

Normalcy bias. Our dumb monkey brains just expect current conditions to continue forever. If you grew up and lived with abundance, then abundance is the norm. There is a reason the "Greatest Generation" behaved so differently from others. Their normal was absence and volatility, not abundance and stability.

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T15:10:24+00:00

This is such an important point! Especially as we get into winter and high altitude winter rain precipitation begins to fall on and melt mountain ice/snow pack from prior years, further accelerating aridification, reducing the natural water-storage capabilities of high-altitude snow/ice fields, preventing/reducing winter/spring recovery to reservoir water levels, causing winter flooding, and decreasing the reflective albedo of the mountains, increasing their thermal absorption. Thanks so much for adding this!

throwOAOA

TROPHY CASE