What event will nudge the first domino ?

[MazeRat7]

I reckon most of you, that have awareness outside the political scope, realize our world is at a "tipping point". Like some elaborate game we have a domino for agriculture, environment, financial, energy, and astronomy. If any one of these are stressed, or tipped, all the others will certainly fall in short order.

That is the fundamental problem with systems - nominal operation requires all the sub-components are working as expected. If one of those components fail, the entire system will fail.

So chime in here all you futurists and prognosticators of things to come:

Which domino will fall first and bring the entire social order, as we know it, to its knees?

Peace,
MZr7

[Warpy]

1. A nuclear exchange, no matter how limited, would do it

So would the usual culprits of super eruptions, pandemics and large meteors. Or the end could be well under way and we won't notice until it's nearly over. Or absolutely nothing will happen and the world will go on its merry way, the rich getting richer and the rest of us getting the shaft. All of those events are not only possible, they're all likely.

It's just a question of timing.

[lob1]

2. It HAS to be Brittany Spears.

[Warpy]

4. LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

<sob>

[Deja Q]

9. okay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc

[slackmaster]

17. Be nice to Brittany

[leftstreet]

3. The financial domino has been falling for many people for some time

Don't know about the environment, energy, etc.

[fasttense]

5. After the part time workers are out of a job and everyone else's unemployment runs out.

According to the U6 (a measure of unemployment that the government publishes but the media rarely talks about) is currently 12.5%, the U3 (what the Bureau of Labor Lies uses as the official unemployment rate) is 6.7%. The total US workforce is estimated at about 150 million. That means that according to very conservative government estimates there are currently almost 19 million people unemployed or under-employed.

The U6 is the broadest measure of Unemployment: It includes those people counted by the U3, plus marginally attached workers (not looking, but want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past), as well as Persons employed part time for economic reasons (they want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule).

Almost 19 million people in this country can not get employment to meet their needs. To put that in perspective, Illinois only has about 12 million people in it.

I don't think the current generation of 50 year olds and younger are willing to dig through trash bins and slowly starve to death (it takes a while to starve to death) in the streets like they did in the last Republicon Great Depression. We wont wait until the U3 reaches 25% before we start rioting. The difference being that during the 1930s Americans were willing to die for their country. Today, Americans are willing to kill.

[JuniperLea]

20. People fall off the list of those counted when their unemployment runs out...

Thanks to Reagan diddling with the way things are counted. So, we really don't have a legitimate number. And when people say "this isn't nearly as bad as the 30's" I think they are conveniently ignoring the fact that we didn't have credit cards in the 30's.

Counting all the uncounted unemployed, and taking credit card debt into consideration, I think we are going to be a lot worse off.

[Bandit]

6. Pretty sure it will be the fall of Vietnam

That is what my government told me and I am supposed to believe it without question. So if Vietnam falls to Communism all the Dominoes will tumble... D'Oh

[Jamastiene]

7. I don't now what the first one will be, but I know what will be here

with the cockroaches and the survivors after the rest of us have been bludgeoned, murdered, killed, maimed, destroyed, and declared inhuman...religion.

[ThomWV]

8. "Astronomy"?

[TrogL]

10. Getting hit with an asteroid or big-ass meteor can make for a bad day

[Catshrink]

12. Meteor...

from Despair.com

[Deja Q]

11. Usually a finger

(man, lotsa folks have their fingers in to push down the domino)

[Occam Bandage]

13. Revolution! Revolution! I love ya, Revolution! You're always a day away! nt

[Xithras]

14. Social systems do not simply "fall"

It's like the "fall" of the Roman Empire or the "collapse" of the Mongol Khanates. We tend to envision that the social systems were there one day, then X happened, and they were gone the next. In reality, the collapse of those social orders was a long slow slide that literally took generations to complete. IF our society were to fail (which I'm nowhere near convinced is a realistic probability), it would take decades at the least.

Even if a collapse did happen, it's extremely unlikely that we'd do much more than revert to a 1940's level of technology and food production (e.g. a level of technology that can be built and maintained by local workers without extensive trade). It would be a huge change, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

[Two Americas]

15. I don't think so

In Gaul, for example, the collapse of Roman civilization happened remarkably quickly. I think that the opposite of what you say is true. It does not take generations for cataclysmic change. Massive change can happen, and by the third generation people have forgotten that things were ever any different.

In more recent times, we have seen things go very badly very quickly in various places.

I think we should be careful about thinking that we are immune, that the US is an exception.

Reverting to 1940's food production would not be easy. It would require a massive population relocation.

You may be confident that the end of your world will not happen, but millions are facing the end of their world. There is a group of people in the US who are, or who imagine themselves to be, immune from any disruption or inconvenience. That is a luxury that most of the people in the world do not enjoy.

[Xithras]

18. But what was the impact of that change?

For the average person, there really wasn't one. The collapse of the Roman authority in Gaul simply resulted in a switch in governments from the perspective of the average working person. Meet the new boss, yadda yadda. The social changes that followed the departure of Roman influence took decades to really begin filtering down to the commoners, and the transition from a Gaul oriented on the Roman social order to a Francia with a unique frankish social structure took centuries. High level changes happen quickly, but high level changes to governments don't often impact common people immediately or as drastically.

That said, let me be clear that I would NOT want to be in San Francisco or New York when a transition like this happened. A transportation breakdown (caused by fuel shortages) would have devastating results for urban dwellers. Those of us who live in less densely populated areas with agricultural potential would have few problems in comparison.

[Two Americas]

19. not true

While it is true that for generations the people in Gaul continued to think of themselves as Romans, the collapse of the infrastructure happened very quickly, since the head was chopped off of the civil administration, and the Franks had no clue as to how to run things. Libraries, trade, sanitation, literacy all collapsed quickly.

To say that "the transition from a Gaul oriented on the Roman social order to a Francia with a unique frankish social structure took centuries" is to make the error of looking at things from an upper class point of view, broad sweeping generalizations from a disconnected and lofty perch. Most history is about what the wealthy and powerful did, with the general population playing the role of extras in the drama, if that.

For the people, place intrigue and shifting power alliances and the like don't mean much. We can see people here today making exactly the same error - obsessing over what the politicians and the wealthy and powerful are doing and being oblivious or dismissive of what the people are facing, as though the only reality is the one defined and described by the wealthy and powerful few. The degree to which people here identify strongly with the ruling class - and most do - is the degree to which they are complacent and dismissive of the dangers we face.

[JoseGaspar]

22. The other side of that story

The other side of that story is that when the city of Rome fell, more than half the population turned out to greet the Visigoths as liberators, so corrupt had the Roman Social Order become. In the provinces, where a vestige of the previous tribal constitution remained, people returned to local communes, in many ways a hybrid of Roman and previous norms. It was where the old rural constitution had been swept away that bands of armed men, demobilized soldiers, and refuse from the Roman society planted the seeds of feudalism, created the roots of the stinky European aristocracy, and acted like Hollywood's version of Mexican "banditos", terrorizing the local populace. As you say, most of the populace remained knee deep in mud, newly joined by Rome's "unproductive classes" and by "freed" slaves (many of whom were immediately re-indentured to the estates).

[Two Americas]

24. wouldn't argue with that

Thanks, and welcome to DU.

[slackmaster]

16. The first domino fell in 1797

The Whiskey Tax.

[arcadian]

21. Good answer.

Seems all that change they talked about in the Declaration of Independence was all just bullshit too.

[hunter]

23. It's already falling. These are mighty big dominos we were playing with.

Now all we can do is ride 'em down.

What set it off? It was an economic theory that did not correspond to physical reality. We thought ordinary ecological principles didn't apply to us because we were intelligent beings, or because some Creator had given us the earth and told us to go forth and multiply.

But during the entire history of life on earth every innovative species with a population growth similar to our own reaches a limit where growth is no longer possible, no matter what the innovation was.

We overshot what was sustainable by a large margin and the consequences will be dire.