My country is extremely dependent on the US, and we tend to do whatever the US tells us in trade relations. Russia was a huge trading partner for us, especially for energy but of course we jumped on board with sanctions when we were told to. Things are already pretty grim this year. Electricity costs have almost doubled across my country, outside one area that has maintained their nuclear power plants, and we have had over 20,000 people hospitalized for heat stroke this summer. Annually we have over 1000 people die to heat stroke, mostly among eldery who didn’t want to use A/C at home to save money.

I actually saw some people suggesting that people dying from heatstroke would help with the “aging population epidemic”. Absolute ghouls.

On one hand, the US collapsing would probably mean we collapse too, but longterm if we still somehow exist we would probably be better off decoupled.

I’m honestly not sure. Americans have been very infantilized. Many are very lazy and in poor health. I’m increasingly worried about how incompetent a lot of people I meet are.

I think the true rot of capitalism will show itself soon: collapsing buildings, infrastructure, etc. Hopefully the anger can be directed back at the ruling class, but many Americans have never even heard a true critique of capitalism.

I think the true rot of capitalism will show itself soon: collapsing buildings, infrastructure, etc.

Edit: this is already occuring, but I think the scale will continue.

Probably a lot less ‘go juice’ would be available after the first couple weeks/months. That’s why riding a bike is extra cool, you’re training for the collapse.

No, there wouldn’t be that much gas for cars in the collapse.

I would probably die, so I hope not.

I don’t think we should cheerlead a mad max united states or its collapse. That would create an extraordinarily dangerous situation for the entire planet. I think instead what we’ll see is a decline in global power projection and in the dollar. It’s going to be an incredibly painful situation in america as a result. So much consumption is built-in because of car culture and how spread-out and unwell the population is. Having a sharp decrease in living standards would condemn a vast majority of the country into poverty, and they will basically be forced to move to cities. So I think you’ll see some kind of eventual re-industrialization with these formerly middle-class suburbanites now living in rough urban conditions. The rich will probably see some kind of managed decline - sell the cape cod house, no european vacations, etc. There is a trend towards rich dense villages in the suburbs that will accelerate. So ultimately I think it will look like rich people kind of clinging on in their wealthy village centers trying to hang on to their lifestyles, and urban areas of huddled masses desperately trying to build some kind of real economic base. As for rural areas, I do think things could get violent and there could be insurgencies of MAGA-type people trying to bottom-up rebuild their country. I’m especially worried about how white supremacy will play into this, Tulsa style, since we’ve seen how bad this is during times of relative prosperity.

I mean, this is just one guy’s perspective. But pretty much no matter how you cut it, a transition to a multipolar world is going to be a rough ride for america. Eventually, it will be good in that there will be a more balanced economy with a reasonable trade and fiscal deficit, less dependent on services. The question is whether that transition will be so painful as to create a Weimar-esque environment and the world has to deal with a nuclear yankee reich. However, I think this is an extreme scenario, since there would be substantial domestic pushback. Or at least I’d like to think…

US collapse is going to be slow. We’re going to dwindle into corrupt fiefdoms led by various wealthy families and individuals. These people will be in various overt states of war and treaty, just like olden times. As it becomes more obvious we are nothing like the liberal ideal of America, they will further entrench themselves in patriotic and nationalist decoherence. Some will perform a ritual where they dress up as the Founders and pretend to be them, warping history around their present. Some will turn to Lincoln, JFK, Obama as the focus of their nationalist emanation. These strange outbursts of black comedy will be punctuated by bouts of violence. Domestic terrorist attacks, organized crime.

We’ll slowly become a reflection of our projections against the global south. A third-world country with world-leading poverty and a corrupt government funded by foreign capitalists trying to keep The American Project going long enough to finally defeat communism.

I think a lot of them will try to go all “mad max” then realise how much effort that is, and how much it sucks to not have clean drinking water and food and will just give up on the whole thing and wait for someone else to come and fix everything.

Probably not but something similar perhaps. Also, it will take decades to get there. The banks and oligarchs will buy up the local police forced and for their own little fiefdoms. They would then send them out to loot and pillage resources from the workers. Cities will be a hellscape. Most farmers will be killed and their land will go to the families and friend of the cops that show the most loyalty to their masters. There will be lots of fighting and killing. Most of these “preper” types will get killed in their bunkers and looted. Unless they are also part of the oligarchy and/or cops that serve the oligarchy. Normal people will either wind up as serfs, slaves, or dead.

The big issue is, is there electricity? Things will stay civilized for a lot longer if we have it. If it goes out for a month 10-20% of the population is gone depending on the season. Cities will crumble and chaos will ensue. Rural areas will quickly get overrun as people trying to flee.

There was a report released by the Pentagon some years ago that showed just how ill equipped the US power grid is. All it would take is the destruction of 13 specific sub stations and the US power grid could be shut down for 18 months. In that time it’s estimated 80% of the population would be gone. Not saying this will happen just showing the importance of electricity to todays people. If you can’t survive without it, learn how to. When it goes, you got maybe a week before things start to get violent as the less equipped become desperate, fight with those that are better off, and not long before stuff starts to cascade. I won’t even go into the exodus of people fleeing cities. Those in rural areas think they are safe and will just farm their land but what happens when thousands from the city start to flee every day?

I do not doubt the ultra rich would use a situation like this to wipe out the population in certain areas intentionally. Keep the power for themselves. Cut it off to the rest, and use the cops as their enforcers.

More like idiocracy (the documentary), a slow decay into stupidity rule.

I listened to the Fall of Rome podcast a while back, and there’s a fascinating episode discussing what happened to Britain when supply chains started collapsing. Much like modern countries today, Rome relied on the economies of scale. Commodity production was centralized in different provinces, and then they would be exported across the empire. When the trade routes started breaking down due to lack of security and other problems, some provinces ended up being largely cut off from the rest of the empire and experienced rapid decline. British provinces in particular were hit hard and ended up regressing to subsistence farming within decades as their exports and imports collapsed.

While modern US empire is very different from Rome in many respects, I’d argue that supply chain risks are even higher than they were in Rome. Very few parts of the US can be said to be self sufficient, and millions of people living in large population centres rely on goods being shipped to them from across the world. What’s worse is that the whole economy is organized around just in time supply chains with little to no local inventory. We saw how a single ship getting stuck in the Suez canal was a catastrophic event, this gives a bit of a preview of what can be expected on a much larger scale.

mad max with shitton of automatic weapons, explosives and high caliber rifles

I’m curious if there are any historians who can chime in on what “imperial collapse” looks like on a week to week, month to month basis.

Because all “collapses” take a certain amount of time. Even those rich idiots and their unfortunate victims down near the Titanic took a few milliseconds. (Too soon?)

What “USA” is collapsing in this conjecture? All governments - federal, state, county, city - simultaneously? Or just the feds? Or the feds and some domino effect?

What precipitates the “collapse” is important, too. Disease? Economy? Social upheaval? Natural disaster? War (are we the aggressor or defender)?

After Jan 6th and with the prosecutions and convictions and jail sentences for the perpetrators, I think as long as Trump isn’t elected President, we’re actually protected from a “social upheaval” collapse for a good long while now.

I don’t think there’s a war on the horizon that would collapse is, either. No matter how much the pro war people (on the right and left for different reasons) want one, I don’t see Xi deciding to provoke one, and Putin has blown his wad already (I think by now all of his nuclear guys would refuse a launch order - her missed his chance when all the hot blood was running 12 months ago).

Economic? Maybe. I can pretty confidently predict that the billionaires think if they were deposed from their stranglehold on American government we’d devolve into a thunderdome situation. I don’t think so. People like Bernie have a plan in their back pocket for when We The People actually take charge. It would be messy for a while. We would probably overcorrect in some unfortunate ways. But when everything settled out, if we eat the rich, all of us (probably including them) would be better off. So a “Happy Hank” instead of a “Mad Max” situation.

I think disease or natural disaster are most likely, but they’ll probably be very spotty and leave some government in place that might be able to re establish order.

I mean we’re not getting to Mad Max 2 Road Warrior level shit until the climate crisis fucks us all up, until then we’re slowly sliding over to Mad Max 1 territory. Speaking of, I really liked the Mad Max video game from several years ago, a lot of grinding but it was worthwhile

Local warlords and slavery, most likely