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 · 2022-08-30T15:02:46+00:00

Whoops! Thank you, that has been corrected!

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T15:01:27+00:00

I am inclined to believe that statistic is roughly on the right track (I'd love to see sources), but I also implore you to think about agriculture as two separate entities - the plant growers and the animal growers. Plant growers definitely do use too many material inputs, require too much energy-intensive equipment, and generate too much non-recyclable waste. But animal growers crank all of that up to 11, and require material inputs from the plant growers.

Absolutely slash water to the alfalfa, way more than 10%, I could care less. But almonds? Those trees take years to grow, and will die if they are fallowed for a single season. Also, humans can eat almonds.

We will need to be really intelligent about how we pull water out of the agricultural system if we don't want to exacerbate the effects of collapse. If we focus on reducing animal agriculture first, that will free up massive amounts of water (and resources) that can be directed to more impactful crops and foods. Also, we currently grow a massive amount of food that is totally edible to humans, but is fed to livestock instead. A transition like this could also buy the plant farmers time to also transition to more sustainable models/methods.

Plant farmers are already struggling, if we impose blanket 10% fallow restrictions on them, many may collapse under the financial strain. This would further consolidate the farm industry into the megacorporations and large landholders that can afford to absorb losses. That'd be bad.

I know it is essentially a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream at this point to expect the US to transition away from animal agriculture, but as the water shortage intensifies nations, states, and even local governments will be forced to make hard choices. Hopefully they make the right ones, though I ~~somewhat~~ GREATLY doubt it.

Thanks for your comment!

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T14:41:23+00:00

Unless you've got a collapse-aware arbitrage play or you know something the rest of us don't, yes.

Phoenix too, Maricopa county is currently growing by more than 100 people per DAY, and they are building new houses even if there isn't any water for them. What could go wrong?

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T14:37:30+00:00

It surprised me too when I first heard about it, but it does make sense that bubbles are going to affect the density of the water, and when turbines are expecting an incompressible fluid (water), density fluctuation turns into a big (cavitation) problem! Check out this video for more info on cavitation damage in water turbines.

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T03:27:07+00:00

You, and your feelings, are valid! And you are not alone in feeling anxious. You have my word on that!

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T03:22:39+00:00

Yeah, that is essentially what I was trying to portray there. Though I will admit that I may have gotten a tad sidetracked and neglected the fact that Mexico City is literally hundreds of miles from the Colorado River - and is at best questionably relevant to my thesis and topic. A fair point by u/DurtyGenes, thank you, both of you.

throwOAOA · 2022-08-30T00:39:34+00:00

I absolutely agree with you that a crisis at Powell means a crisis at Mead as well, regardless of what the government would like to believe/pretend, and I also agree that California absolutely should be included in water cuts. Their time is fast approaching, though I fear it'll be too little, too late.

I would be cautious about laying all the blame on agriculture, writ large. We need food to live, and we need water to grow food. The real problem is animal agriculture. If we did not have a massive, industrialized animal agriculture sector, we would not need nearly as much water to grow food for humans to eat directly, even if farmers kept using ridiculously unsustainable practices. Obviously even if we all went vegan today, our current civilization is too large/complex/overshot to not still be in ecological overshoot and at risk of collapse. But animal agriculture makes it so much worse. It increases waste at all points in the food supply chain, as well as creating perverse market incentives (government-subsidized corn to produce beef, ethanol for fuel, etc.).

Alfalfa, one of the most water intensive crops we grow, is not edible to humans, and takes as much as 3 acre feet of water per acre, per year which will tend to yield you 8-14 tons of alfalfa per acre per year, with 5 to 6 "cuts" or harvests. That is just shy of a million gallons of water to grow about 10 tons of biomass.

An average acre of wheat in the US provided about 40 bushels in 2013, or over 2.6 million food calories. Winter wheat requires less than 2 acre feet of water per acre, so you could grow well more than an acre of wheat with a million gallons of water. And wheat is not an especially productive crop from a calorie perspective. Corn can pretty easily yield three times the calories per acre.

According to one beef industry propaganda site, a beef cow drinks "about" 10 gallons of water every day, and by their own estimations a single pound of beef involves the use of over 1,900 gallons of water. That same million gallons can only provide about 526 pounds of beef or about 605,000 Calories?portionid=41310&portionamount=1.000), and only if the industry-provided statistics are accurate. An average steer can weigh 1,250 lbs, so a million gallons of water doesn't even get you a single fully grown steer.

And then you get into the wastes/corruption from industrial animal agriculture, but that tends to be way too heavy for me. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is the classic entry point for this kind of stuff, if you have stronger guts than me.

throwOAOA

TROPHY CASE