10 Years: US economy continues downward spiral, but not a complete freefall, as more money is injected domestically with little avail. Speculation continues to drive up the price of oil. Domestic offshore drilling is approved as a last ditch effort to lower costs of oil at the behest of an angry populace. Despite the approval, drilling does not begin for another ten years.

30 Years: The economy continues to tank. All measures used by the US government to help the economy yield no results. Indeed, they backfire, making things much, much worse. More and more countries begin seeing food riots. Russia and several northern European countries threaten military action over resources in the north.

50 Years: US military occupation finally ends after Iraq and Iran reach a deal that will force an invasion of the Kurdish regions, leading to a giant division of land, but not before forcing out US forces in order to allow this to happen. Venezuela will seek to form alliances with other South American countries in an effort to stay afloat, realizing that the oil supply off the coast is dwindling. Saudi Arabia will take a similar tactic. Smaller nations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe without sources of oil and food will see confrontation. Al Qaeda will become a marginalized and fringe radical group.

100 Years: After fifty years of global strife, China and Russia emerge as the lone superpowers of the world, with the majority of the countries bordering these two falling under their strong influence. A shaky truce exists between the two. The USA and most of the European nations see themselves fragmented and dealing with internal strife, bordering on civil war. Most of the South American nations form a stable union, with most of these countries now having turned to socialism.

The End

I was going to say that teleportation and nuclear fusion will save the world, but then I came to my senses and realized that the nuclear powers whose economy is based on fossil fuels will vaporize everyone else before that happens. So that.

Soylent Green will be proven to have been early by about ten years.

hell. handbasket.

jurgis rudkus wrote:Book: The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler

Great read, fascinating and very funny at times.

Definitely an entertaining read but he makes about thirty assumptions per page in the later chapters to build his case and by the end it is a work of absolute fiction. Funny but ultimately flawed.

The oil thing isn't going to be as big a deal as you might think. The desire for money can fuel incredible leaps in human ingenuity. Right now there's a million scientists who could achieve truly fantastic things with modest increases of funding. As soon as oil becomes a major issue (not going to be in our lifetime, probably not our kids' lifetimes either frankly) a solution to the reported energy crisis will be available, at a cost. The only reason we love oil so much as a resource is that it's making a lot of people a lot of money. As soon as it becomes too much of a hassle, they'll find a new way to make money from our energy concerns or someone else will.

Likewise, I think money will prevent direct wars between the major powers. I very much doubt we'll see major wars outside of the Middle East and Africa any more. There will be some minor territorial disputes same as always but I don't see WW3 between the superpowers. Everyone has their hands in each other's pockets, even more so than the previous century. All the religious bullshit will continue but eventually even that will dissipate in the face of the almighty dollar. As long as a majority of people in the world want to make rent each week, gradually all ulterior motives will decline dramatically.

Bottom line: Rich stay rich at the expense of the poor. Better technology, more people.

This makes me wonder if humanity somehow does not have it out for itself for some reason. Like, everyone is so gloom and doom and well, people unconsciously go about making their predictions come true sometimes you know.
Are we being made into these self hating, self destructive beings somehow?

What happened to people believing in themselves and the essential goodness of mankind? Hope? All that? When did all that just burn away?

It can't be just Bush, he's one man...it's only a few years....he'll be gone soon enough and we start over, remember?

I think there are lots of good and decent people and I also think the younger generations coming up now are filled with intelligent, level headed people who's seen too much nonsense.
I pretty clearly feel a change for the better coming on. It's not impossible. Things can be changed, fast.
We are about to elect a black president.
Just 2 years ago the notion was absolutely preposterous to all the black people I knew and worked with.
When Obama announced, they laughed and said 'yeah right'

Shit changes fast, and will always surprise you.


Wind power is gonna be huge.

Weed will be fully legal

One thing I have on my mind is a-bomb, and it's later versions (like neutron bomb. little damage to facilities, kills all the people. Brilliant, five of that, please). It was used twice, just 65 years without a week from now, and there are thousands bombs like that, but way more powerful (like, 10.000 more) waiting to explode. Just 65 years ago.
I know that cold war is over and all that, but I can't think about about future of human kind and not think of that. There is enough of a-h-n-andwhatever-bombs to kill every human being like 100 times or so. It just can't be a good thing.
I remember a talk I had with my brother, after reading some articles we were wondering how much bombs would be needed to kill everyone instantly in Poland, and there Europe. We were doing this cause one of us read a 'chart' saying what's the instant-dead zone of the most powerful bomb, without taking any radiation effects into account (we presumed there is a large number of bombs like that, which doesn't have to be true). I don't remember the number for Europe, but for Poland it was 4 or 6.
Like this proverb saying that a gun that hangs on the wall in the first act will surely fire in the third act. Well, that's the gun.

Marsupialized wrote:We are about to elect a black president.

Not "we". You are. That's about what, 4.5% of world's population?

Marsupialized wrote:Wind power is gonna be huge.

Weed will be fully legal

Weed power is gonna be even huger.

I'm optimistic about the future if you consider the fact that it's going to be more of the same with faster planes and smellier air a good thing. If you think the world is shit right now, then it's going to carry on being shit. Likewise, if you think it's going alright, then you'll probably find the future tolerable too. Until the point where you realise that you're going to die soon, then you'll hate everything for a while. That won't be the world's fault though. It just sucks to have to die when we live in such a fucking interesting world.

Honestly though, I think that being a heterosexual white male living in the UK who is both sane and employed puts me in the top 2% of the population of the world or something. Compared to the overwhelming majority of humans, I have a life of absolute luxury and indulgence. For people like me, in that top percentage, the world probably won't get really ridiculously shitty overnight but a lot of us have a creeping guilt that it will. Hence all these morbid predictions.

It might have something to do with the fact that our comparatively idyllic lives are forged upon the unrelenting hardship of the absolute majority of human beings. We live at their expense and I think privately, we expect some kind of Karmic retaliation because deep down we know we almost certainly deserve it.

emmanuelle cunt wrote:One thing I have on my mind is a-bomb, and it's later versions (like neutron bomb. little damage to facilities, kills all the people. Brilliant, five of that, please). It was used twice, just 65 years without a week from now, and there are thousands bombs like that, but way more powerful (like, 10.000 more) waiting to explode. Just 65 years ago.
I know that cold war is over and all that, but I can't think about about future of human kind and not think of that. There is enough of a-h-n-andwhatever-bombs to kill every human being like 100 times or so. It just can't be a good thing.
I remember a talk I had with my brother, after reading some articles we were wondering how much bombs would be needed to kill everyone instantly in Poland, and there Europe. We were doing this cause one of us read a 'chart' saying what's the instant-dead zone of the most powerful bomb, without taking any radiation effects into account (we presumed there is a large number of bombs like that, which doesn't have to be true). I don't remember the number for Europe, but for Poland it was 4 or 6.
Like this proverb saying that a gun that hangs on the wall in the first act will surely fire in the third act. Well, that's the gun.

Marsupialized wrote:We are about to elect a black president.

Not "we". You are. That's about what, 4.5% of world's population?

'We' as in America, are about to elect a black president.
From listening to the rest of the world piss and moan about America constantly you'd think it was kind of a big deal to a lot more people than just us