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Collapse
Collapse of our civilization is a concerning scenario in which basic structures of society relatively rapidly fall apart and cause unusually large, possibly world-wide horrors such as chaos, wars, famine and loss of advanced technology. It is something that will very likely happen very soon due to uncontrolled growth and societal decline by capitalism: we, the LRS, are especially focusing on a very probable technological collapse (caused by badly designed technology as well as its wrong application and extreme overuse causing dangerous dependencies) but of course clues point to collapse are coming from many directions (ecological, economical, political, natural disasters such as a coronal mass ejection etc.). Some have said that a society can deal with one crisis, but if multiple crises hit at once this hit may be fatal; however the dependence of current society on computer technology is so great that its collapse could be enough to deliver a fatal blow alone. Recently (around 2015) there has even appeared a specific term collapsology referring to the study of the potential collapse.
There is a reddit community for discussing the collapse at https://reddit.net/r/collapse. WikiWikiWeb has a related discussion under ExtinctionOfHumanity.
Collapse of civilizations has been a repeated theme throughout history, it is nothing new or exceptional, see e.g. Maya empire collapse, Bronze age collapse, the fall of Rome etc. It usually comes when a civilization reaches high complexity and becomes "spoiled", morally corrupt and socially divided -- just what we are seeing today.
In technological world a lot of people are concerned with the collapse, notable the collapse OS, an operating system meant to run on simple hardware after the technological supply chain collapses and renders development of modern computers impossible. They believe the collapse will happen before 2030. The chip shortage, financial, climatic and energetic crisis and beginning of war in Europe as of early 2020s are one of the first warnings showing how fragile the systems really is.
Ted Kaczynski (a famous primitivist mathematician that committed mass murderer to warn about the decline of society due to complex technology) has seen the collapse as a possible option. Internet bloggers/vloggers such as Luke Smith and no phone man advocate (and practice) simple, independent off-grid living, possibly to be prepared for such an event. Even proprietary normies like Jonathan Blow warn of a coming disaster (in his talk Preventing the Collapse of Civilization). Viznut is another programmer warning about the collapse.
The details of the collapse cannot of course be predicted exactly -- it may come in a relatively quick, violent form (e.g. in case of a disaster causing a blackout) or as a more agonizing slow death. CollapseOS site talks about two stages of the slow collapse: the first one after the collapse of the supply chain. i.e. when the production of modern computers halts, and the second (decades after) when the last modern computer stops working. It most likely won't happen overnight -- that's a very extreme case. A typical collapse may take decades during which all aspects of society see a rapid decline. Of course, a collapse doesn't mean extinction of humans either, just deaths of many and great losses of what has been achieved culturally and technologically.
{ I've read a book called Blackout by Marc Elsberg whose story revolves around a fictional large collapse of power supply in Europe. A books called The World Without Us explores what the world would look like if humans suddenly disappeared. ~drummyfish }
Late 2022 Report
It seems like the collapse may have already begun. After the worldwide Covid pandemic the Russia-Ukraine war has begun with talks of nuclear war already going on. A great economic crisis has begun, possibly as a result of the pandemic and the war, inflation is skyrocketing and breaking all records, especially gas and energy prices are growing to extremes and as a result basically prices of everything go up as well. Russia isolated itself, new cold war has begun. Many big banks have gone bankrupt. War immigrants from Ukraine are flooding into Europe and European fascists/nationalists seem to be losing their patience about it. People in European first world countries are now actually concerned about how not to freeze during the winter, this talk is all over TV and radio. The climate disaster has also started to show, e.g. in Czech Republic there was the greatest forest fire in its history as well an extremely hot summer, even tornados that destroyed some villages (tornados in this part of world are basically unheard of), winters have almost no snow unlike some two decades ago. Everything is shitty, food costs more and is of much lower quality as basically everything else, newly bought technology cannot be expected to last longer than a few months. Society is spoiled to an unimaginable level, extreme hostility, competition and aggressive commerce is everywhere, kids are addicted to cellphones and toxic social media, mental health of population rapidly deteriorates. Art such as movies and music is of extremely low quality, people hate every single new movie or video game that comes out. A neofascist party has won elections in Italy, in Czech Republic all socialist parties were eliminated from the parliament: only capitalists rule now -- all social securities are being cancelled, people are getting poorer and poorer and forced to work more and to much higher ages. Ads are everywhere and equate psychological torture. The situation now definitely seems extremely bad.