The BBC looks at how Western civilization could collapse

[MillCreek]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

My thought is wars over oil are all very well and good, but just wait for the wars over potable water for agriculture and life support.

[RevDisk]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

My thought is wars over oil are all very well and good, but just wait for the wars over potable water for agriculture and life support.

If we crack fusion, I'm not overly worried about us getting through the next couple of centuries. If we don't, it gets more dicey.

If we handled issues in a rational manner, I'm also not overly worried. We have the physical resources on the planet to handle our current standard of living for the next two thousand years at current figuring. It wouldn't be necessarily easy or cheap to get the infrastructure in place, but it's entirely possible. We have roughly 200 years at current rates of consumption of known uranium mining reserves. Hopefully in those two centuries, we could figure out economic seawater-uranium mining. It's currently possible, just not exceptionally economic.

Thankfully uranium reserves are mostly in stable countries. Australia has a third of the world's known reserves. Followed by Kazakhstan, Canada and Russia. This assumes we can't sort out fast breeder reactors, which would give us about 50-fold or more utilization of our existing uranium. "Nuclear waste" is exceptionally high uranium ore that can easily and cheaply be reused. Bad part of breeder reactors is getting essentially weapons grade plutonium as a byproduct. Contrary to my general leeriness of international organizations, we could easily set up some kind of international breeder reactor program where some neutral party gets paid to generate damn near unlimited cheap electricity in exchange for handling the uranium processing. France is a good candidate, as unlike us, they already smart enough to be doing this.

That'd give us enough time to work out the kinks in thorium. Of which, there are many. I know everyone loves liquid salt, I'm generally not as much a fanboy of it. Nuclear power with a corrosive coolant that is a solid at room temperature is not something to be taken lightly. That'd last us a thousand years. If we can't crack fusion in that timeframe, we don't deserve to continue.

With cheap enough electricity, we can make our own hydrocarbons via Fischer–Tropsch. Or a nuclear powered Sterling engine to change seawater to drinking water via vapor compression distillation.


Are we smart enough to do this? Do we have the political will to survive and use our engineering to handle humanity's growth? Can we keep out large refugee populations fleeing oil and water wars? Can we handle climate/weather geoengineering challenges over the next century or two? (Note, I'm not talking the apocalypse level stuff some loonies advocate. Weather is a thing, it does change over time, and keeping on top of it isn't easy. See Mississippi river.)

I honestly believe we can.

[TechMan]

Rev, how close are we to cracking fusion?

[wmenorr67]

Rev, how close are we to cracking fusion?

You think he is going to share that info on a public forum?

[TechMan]

You think he is going to share that info on a public forum?

I could hope. 

[Scout26]

He runs his secret liar on a Mr. Fusion.  What did you think he did ??  Actually pay the electric company for power

[AJ Dual]

Rev, how close are we to cracking fusion?

That's a tough one to answer. Since we can produce fusion at-will already. Hell, bright kids can do it in their basement. The "easy way" of course is just pile enough hydrogen together until gravity does the work for you. Second easiest is stick a pile of lithium deuteride or cryogenic liquid deuterium on the side of a fission nuke, where the heat, pressure, x-rays, neutrons etc. set the larger pile of deuterium off and makes it fuse.

The problem is that producing fusion continuously, with net energy gain, and in a manner you can extract energy from it is kind of like trying to hug a greased pig.

And it's certainly being attacked from several different directions.

Laser inertial confinement at the National Ignition Facility, where they produce fusion by zapping a tiny metal coated pellet of tritium from all sides with gonzo-powerful lasers. The problem there is that if it's to be a working power-plant, to be more than a big research experiment, you have to figure out how to fire those pellets into the laser focus and zap the lasers all in time like some giant machine-gun.

There's the old standby, Tokamaks, a big magnetic donut. Kind of like a hollow inside-out MRI machine. Where they try to contain the fusion plasma and keep it from touching the walls and dying through energy loss, but it has a lot of those "hugging a greased pig" problems.

The Germans have the Stellerator, which is essentially a "twisted Tokamak" where the donut shaped inside twists in a spiral, and in theory the twist solves the "greased pig" problem of holding onto the plasma, but it's just now getting started and even if it works hasn't gotten anywhere on the next big step of actual energy extraction.

Then there's more dark horse fringe-y ideas.

Polywell, which is a six sided cube of magnetic rings and the fusion plasma wants to scrunch together in the corners.

Some thing I forget the name of which essentially crushes a vortex in fluid from all sides (Isn't Birdman friends with some of them?) with explosive pistons. Looks like a giant overgrown WWII naval mine.

Then Lockheed SkunkWorks has their fusion "jet engine" of sorts, where they're suggesting fusion powered airplanes in a decade... It's a single jet of fusion running through a pinch point contained by magnetic rings, and right at the pinch, they fire a particle beam through it to kick off fusion.  The relative simplicity of it, and SkunkWorks reputation for pulling off the "impossible" including things that are probably still classified to this day and that we don't know about lends the credibility there...

And there's others too.

So there's a good chance one of these approaches has "nailed it" and it just needs to be refined and commoditized, but there's also a good chance none of them have fixed the "greased pig" problem of generating and holding onto fusion, and it's hinging on some breakthrough in technology, materials science, or engineering we haven't thought of yet.

Hell... dig a REALLY BIG DEEP CAVE miles underground fill it with salt, kick a Teller-Ulam type H-bomb down the hole every year or so, let it go off, and extract geothermal from it, like having mini on-demand Iceland's all over.  

[MechAg94]

Rev, how close are we to cracking fusion?

20 years.  Hasn't that always been the answer for the last 50 years?

[wmenorr67]

20 years.  Hasn't that always been the answer for the last 50 years?

That is the answer to everything isn't it.

[agricola]

The issue isn't whether or not we can survive technologically over the next couple of centuries / millennia - that is eminently feasible - its whether or not Western society will continue if it travels down the path that it is on. 

Sadly there are only a couple of things in the past fifteen years of politics, both here and over there in your neck of the woods, that would give anyone confidence that things might change.   

[Scout26]

I would say Western Civ is bound and determined to commit suicide by 6th century religious fanatics.

[TechMan]

I would say Western Civ is bound and determined to commit suicide by 6th century religious fanatics.

Agreed.

[MechAg94]

Certainly Western Civ seems determined to self destruct.  I think eventually it will, I just don't know how long that will take. 

I don't think it will be a resource issue or even due to natural disaster. 

[Andiron]

I would say Western Civ is bound and determined to commit suicide by 6th century religious fanatics.

Yep.

Hopefully it at least spawns some Arthurian remnant that battles said goat lovers in spite of all odds.

[RevDisk]

20 years.  Hasn't that always been the answer for the last 50 years?

This is the correct answer. Someday. Probably within a century. Certainly within couple centuries unless we implode.

I would say Western Civ is bound and determined to commit suicide by 6th century religious fanatics.

Na. Communism was a thousand times more dangerous than militant Islamic fundamentalists. They were the only ones with the power to destroy Western civilization. Russia is mostly Westernized these days. Japan, South Korea, Singapore and other Asian countries are 'Western' in the general sense of being liberal democracies with civil rights, science and whatnot. The PRC is a bit of a gamble, but we'll see.

Not everyone who follows Islam is hostile to democracy, science, civil rights, free speech and whatnot. Yes, there is a higher than normal correlation. Yes, they are a quarter of the global population. But until Islamic countries have manufacturing, competent militaries, stable governments, science, research and development, actual economies not based on exploiting natural resources and the like... They'll always be left behind.

It's not a coincidence that countries that have freedom become prosperous and those without it are not. The two are linked. Sure you have counter examples like the PRC and UAE. But for the overwhelming majority? Higher the freedom, higher the economy.

[AJ Dual]

Indeed, people here get angry when it's pointed out, but Obama wasn't completely off-base when he called ISIS the "JV squad" or whatever it was. Obama's real faux pas was the ENORMOUS power vacuum his foreign policy left in Iraq, a power vacuum so bad that ISIS with AK's, RPG's riding in pickup trucks saw the Iraqi army armed with export-grade M1 tanks, Bradleys, HMMV's, FREAKING AIR POWER ASSETS, and all sorts of American weaponry and training, at best sit on their hands, and at worst... flee.

Wich in of itself is another prime example of "Why Arab militaries fail" because they lack the esprit de corps, and mutual trust and teamwork Westernized nations have. And it's a problem that ISIS, operating as something less than a state-level actor has just as badly, if not even worse. And ISIS didn't actually "spread" across the ME and N. Africa either. To a large degree, these were all existing militant Islamist factions, who all declared themselves as "ISIS" because they were the cool kids with the branding, the gruesome executions, and some slick media and propaganda videos and a magazine...

As to their competence, I admit, ISIS has got brutality in spades, I'll give them that. However, as an actual military and force projection... These are people who manage blow themselves up as often as they do their enemies. Groups like the Kurds/Peshmerga have done a damn good job holding their own, despite the fact that they operate on a shoestring financially and logistically, simply because they have a bit more unity and trust within their larger group and culture.

ME Radical Islam is simply is not a region, a culture, or any one nation that has the wherewithal, in terms of money, resources, or simple ability to threaten us the way the Warsaw Pact did, or before them, the Axis powers in WWII did. And even then, when faced with those powers in WWII (Granted, with the help of the absolute bloody meatgrinder that was the Soviet Union and Eastern Front) we kicked the *expletive deleted*it out of these "peer militaries". And then in the long drawn-out Playoff match more or less did the same to the Warsaw Pact economically in the Cold War until they collapsed.

Also, while I'm no fan of unfettered Islamic/Middle Eastern immigration into the U.S. there's a big reason there's so much more onesy-twosey gun, truck ramming, and small bombing attacks in Europe.

ME immigrants or refugees, and even 2nd and 3rd generation-born in Europe pretty much occupy the bottom rung socially and demographically.  In America... uh... (cough cough) that rung is already filled, and to a degree, they don't start out automatically on the "bottom" here. And added to that, there STILL ARE large remnants of European social stratification and America is still much more of a meritocracy than Europe is.

That's not to say there isn't the same potential for someone from the ME to be disgruntled or radicalized, but in America they're simply more likely to be able to build some sort of life good enough that it makes them resistant to actually pulling the trigger so to speak and throwing it all away. It would seem a lot of them like to conspire or stay in the networks, but never seem to get around to actually pulling off an attack.

Announcing the death of Western Civ is a lot like hand-wringing over today's "crazy times", when they don't really hold a candle to the 1960's in terms of tension and unrest. Which is somewhat funny, since the 60's and malaise of the 70's is something in living memory for many of us.

In the same way, by real measures of human prosperity and well-being, and global metrics for war, disease, (extreme) poverty, we are reaching heights unimaginable to people of the centuries that have preceded us. And Western Civ was much more "on the ropes" many times during the fall of the Western Roman empire, the Dark Ages, and during the Bubonic Plague.

It's kind of perverse to view an era of conflict that's largely defined by terrorism and asymmetric warfare, and a few medium to small-sized "rogue nations" as a "good thing", but in a very real sense it is. Because it means there's a dearth of any real immediate threats from peer-level competitors that actually would pose an existential threat to America or Western Civ as a whole.

[Mannlicher]

since it's BBC, I am sure their answer is Communism

[grampster]

"Announcing the death of Western Civ is a lot like hand-wringing over today's "crazy times", when they don't really hold a candle to the 1960's in terms of tension and unrest. Which is somewhat funny, since the 60's and malaise of the 70's is something in living memory for many of us."

^^^^This.  And at some point the Silent Majority is going to get fed up with the nitwits running the colleges, universities and to some extent, high schools.  Education monopoly is ripe for a paradigm change.

"It's kind of perverse to view an era of conflict that's largely defined by terrorism and asymmetric warfare, and a few medium to small-sized "rogue nations" as a "good thing", but in a very real sense it is. Because it means there's a dearth of any real immediate threats from peer-level competitors that actually would pose an existential threat to America or Western Civ as a whole."

^^^^ And this.

Throw in that America could shortly be energy independent.  Russia has a good deal of oil and gas and wants to supply Europe with it.  Means mucho ruble for the Ruskies.   Couple that with Russia really doesn't like Islam at all.  Neither does China who is buying American coal.  Mexico, Central and South America are ripe for pulling into the 21st Century.  Venezuela and Mexico are good examples of how communism and criminal states don't work well.  I think there is more opportunity for Western civilization.

[gunsmith]

I'm glad to hear the optimistic viewpoints, at least now we have a probably over quick moment in which gun prices lower slightly

[agricola]

Yep.

Hopefully it at least spawns some Arthurian remnant that battles said goat lovers in spite of all odds.

I hope not - after all, Arthur did lose in the end

[agricola]

Indeed, people here get angry when it's pointed out, but Obama wasn't completely off-base when he called ISIS the "JV squad" or whatever it was. Obama's real faux pas was the ENORMOUS power vacuum his foreign policy left in Iraq, a power vacuum so bad that ISIS with AK's, RPG's riding in pickup trucks saw the Iraqi army armed with export-grade M1 tanks, Bradleys, HMMV's, FREAKING AIR POWER ASSETS, and all sorts of American weaponry and training, at best sit on their hands, and at worst... flee.

Wich in of itself is another prime example of "Why Arab militaries fail" because they lack the esprit de corps, and mutual trust and teamwork Westernized nations have. And it's a problem that ISIS, operating as something less than a state-level actor has just as badly, if not even worse. And ISIS didn't actually "spread" across the ME and N. Africa either. To a large degree, these were all existing militant Islamist factions, who all declared themselves as "ISIS" because they were the cool kids with the branding, the gruesome executions, and some slick media and propaganda videos and a magazine...

As to their competence, I admit, ISIS has got brutality in spades, I'll give them that. However, as an actual military and force projection... These are people who manage blow themselves up as often as they do their enemies. Groups like the Kurds/Peshmerga have done a damn good job holding their own, despite the fact that they operate on a shoestring financially and logistically, simply because they have a bit more unity and trust within their larger group and culture.

ME Radical Islam is simply is not a region, a culture, or any one nation that has the wherewithal, in terms of money, resources, or simple ability to threaten us the way the Warsaw Pact did, or before them, the Axis powers in WWII did. And even then, when faced with those powers in WWII (Granted, with the help of the absolute bloody meatgrinder that was the Soviet Union and Eastern Front) we kicked the *expletive deleted*it out of these "peer militaries". And then in the long drawn-out Playoff match more or less did the same to the Warsaw Pact economically in the Cold War until they collapsed.

Also, while I'm no fan of unfettered Islamic/Middle Eastern immigration into the U.S. there's a big reason there's so much more onesy-twosey gun, truck ramming, and small bombing attacks in Europe.

ME immigrants or refugees, and even 2nd and 3rd generation-born in Europe pretty much occupy the bottom rung socially and demographically.  In America... uh... (cough cough) that rung is already filled, and to a degree, they don't start out automatically on the "bottom" here. And added to that, there STILL ARE large remnants of European social stratification and America is still much more of a meritocracy than Europe is.

That's not to say there isn't the same potential for someone from the ME to be disgruntled or radicalized, but in America they're simply more likely to be able to build some sort of life good enough that it makes them resistant to actually pulling the trigger so to speak and throwing it all away. It would seem a lot of them like to conspire or stay in the networks, but never seem to get around to actually pulling off an attack.

Announcing the death of Western Civ is a lot like hand-wringing over today's "crazy times", when they don't really hold a candle to the 1960's in terms of tension and unrest. Which is somewhat funny, since the 60's and malaise of the 70's is something in living memory for many of us.

In the same way, by real measures of human prosperity and well-being, and global metrics for war, disease, (extreme) poverty, we are reaching heights unimaginable to people of the centuries that have preceded us. And Western Civ was much more "on the ropes" many times during the fall of the Western Roman empire, the Dark Ages, and during the Bubonic Plague.

It's kind of perverse to view an era of conflict that's largely defined by terrorism and asymmetric warfare, and a few medium to small-sized "rogue nations" as a "good thing", but in a very real sense it is. Because it means there's a dearth of any real immediate threats from peer-level competitors that actually would pose an existential threat to America or Western Civ as a whole.

This is the sort of post that makes me wish we had a like button.

[K Frame]

My personal theory on how western civilization is going to collapse is a monumental war with Islam. The west no longer has the will or ability to fight a total war of survival.

Radical Islam doesn't have those compunctions.

[RocketMan]

My personal theory on how western civilization is going to collapse is a monumental war with Islam. The west no longer has the will or ability to fight a total war of survival.

Radical Islam doesn't have those compunctions.

The bold section is the main reason the West will eventually fall.  It's not that we individually lack the will, it's that those we place in authority over us lack the will, for myriad reasons.

All of the peer-level competitors that at some point posed an existential threat to the West started out as JV teams.  Just something to keep in mind.

There is no reason Islam cannot eventually get its act together and organize well enough to kick our asses.  The past is not always prologue.

And the Silent Majority doesn't really exist in my opinion.  It's been claimed for over forty years that the Silent Majority would eventually get fed up and put a stop to whatever nonsense was pissing people off at the time.  They never have, the election of Trump notwithstanding.

[K Frame]

"It's not that we individually lack the will, it's that those we place in authority over us lack the will, for myriad reasons."

Actually, a HUGE number of individuals lack the will to extend the necessary ruthlessness even when faced with annihilation, and it's a position that's rubbed off on more and more politicians.

The Western apologists, the terminally guilt ridden, the ones whose collective consciousness only allows them to see the inherent evil in western culture, and those who are actively supportive of fundamentalist Islam as a viable social structure (often the same ones who think that socialism/communism is a wonderful thing) have become an increasingly powerful segment of society.

You really saw it in the aftermath of 9/11 when there was a significant under current discussion of "well, we really deserved it because we're Americans..."

 

[RevDisk]

The bold section is the main reason the West will eventually fall.  It's not that we individually lack the will, it's that those we place in authority over us lack the will, for myriad reasons.

All of the peer-level competitors that at some point posed an existential threat to the West started out as JV teams.  Just something to keep in mind.

There is no reason Islam cannot eventually get its act together and organize well enough to kick our asses.  The past is not always prologue.

Meh. It's possible. But there's a substantially higher chance of us developing fusion tomorrow than Islam unifying within the next two hundred years. Unless facing an enemy that goes genocidal or whatnot. Even then, not likely. Most Westerns don't really grasp how much different Islamic groups hate each other.

For every one USian or Euro killed, radical Islamists kill between eight and a dozen Muslims. This includes our voluntary occupations as well, btw. Nope, sorry. A huge number of Islamic folks would often rather cut their own throats than be civil towards a member of the rival Islamic group.

Remember what happened when ISIS re-invented the caliphate? Did they immediately unify and start taking long held Christian, Jewish, Hindu, etc lands? Nope! Immediately started killing and enslaving anyone that wasn't them. Sure, any Coptics or whatnot that didn't run fast enough got clipped off. But mostly they were murdering, killing and murdering 'infidels' that were other Muslims. Then rammed what economy did exist firmly into the dirt. Even in moderate Islamic countries, there's little to no advanced manufacturing and the agriculture is very inefficient.


If a huge block of Islamic persons become unified and politically, you will know because they will start killing off the smaller ethnic groups in the area. Genocide and economic stability, let alone growth, are kinda mutually exclusive from historical perspectives. So, anyways. Once you have the huge block unified and finish their genocide without outside interference, THEN you have to wait for the country to actually develop an economy that has a healthy mix of manufacturing, agriculture, services, etc.

Then you have to train a professional army. In the Middle East. Good luck with that. Folks here actually TAUGHT Afghani and Iraqi forces. HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS were used to train and equip those forces. Which crumpled to a handful of Islamic rednecks in pickup trucks.

Starting to see why I think people are insane for thinking Middle East Islamic countries are a super dangerous threat? At best, they can cause regional issues with former Soviet gear. Which continues to age, I might mention. Oh, don't get me wrong. We'll have a 9/11, car crushes and random small scale murder sprees... Well, forever. Sorry to put it that way, but that's just how it is. There's no solution for it. It'll become more common or less common, but it's going to be around for hundreds of years. Some of them might get lucky and detonate a radiology particulate bomb, or poison gas, or whatnot. But it'll just be the slightly more intelligent version of the annoyance level terrorism.

With respect and I swear I'm not trying to be insulting, the reality of the situation for the last couple hundred years has proven the exact opposite. Islam has had significant problems with unifying. And definitely organization. Always have, always will.