Survivalist conspiracy crap.....

[tackattack]

That was my point that a perfect God wouldn't need nukes, also I believe my hint of sarcasm was missed.

Side note, Theists as a whole possibly, but for North American Christians, it is a common concept among most denominations of Christianity. They may disagree as to the when and how, but it's a belief.

[Brian37]

That was my point that a perfect God wouldn't need nukes, also I believe my hint of sarcasm was missed.

Side note, Theists as a whole possibly, but for North American Christians, it is a common concept among most denominations of Christianity. They may disagree as to the when and how, but it's a belief.

If you claim to believe in a God yourself, you are still stuck in the same boat. There still would be no evidence for a perfect or imperfect God. There are only humans who desire this fictional idea born from human imagination as a projection of our own qualities.

[tackattack]

If the rapture happens Brian, you can have my big out supplies and shelter, if it’s nukes then we are in the same boat, but you’re on your own ;p. I guess that makes me a hopeful pragmatist

[Brian37]

If the rapture happens Brian, you can have my big out supplies and shelter, if it’s nukes then we are in the same boat, but you’re on your own ;p. I guess that makes me a hopeful pragmatist

The "rapture" is a fictional story out of a book of mythology. And like I said, if humans get stupid enough to start a nuclear war, I want to be under the nuke and get vaporized.

Excuse me, but there is nothing pragmatic, about fighting your neighbor for food, only to end up eating tainted food from radiation, there would be no quality of life at that point. 

Really no different with physical health. I would rather die quickly than to die in prolonged pain.

[Yonadav]

I'm a little disappointed that this discussion turns out to only be about 'the rapture'. I was expecting survivalist conspiracy theories. You know, because that is what was promised in the title.

Personally, I have found survivalists and preppers to be rather entertaining. A whole bunch of them are not religious. I have known business executives in Chicago who were preppers and kept a bugout bag in their home, and a plan for where they were going to go if 'shit hit the fan'. I've known tons of pot smoking hippies who were preppers. And of course there are white supremacists who believe that shit is going to hit the fan and they are prepping to survive it and they intend to establish their white world order afterwards. They have various strategies for survival, and they have various theories about what is going to cause shit to hit the fan.

For example, a bunch of pot smoking hippies on the Big Island of Hawaii are rather enthusiastic about their prospect for survival after a world economic collapse that is going to be virtually apocalyptic. I have not been able to follow their reasoning about what they think is going to cause such a catastrophic failure. They have a passionate hatred for money (although they are always interested in whether I have any), and they just really seem to believe that money is going to fail catastrophically.

I am a fan of survival strategies because they are so damned entertaining. They have an enormous amount of thought put in to them while at the same time not being very well thought out. In my opinion, surviving shit hitting the fan would be far more about cooperation than hunkering down in isolation. It is sort of like those post-apocalyptic movies and novels where the survivors live primarily by scavenging for years after shit hits the fan. That's not possible. All food is going to be scavenged within weeks of food production shutting down. If you don't get food production started up almost immediately after food production stops, your chances are not very good. That pretty much requires collaboration.

We are extremely dependent on modern technology. The survivalists aren't completely wrong about how tenuous our grasp on modern infrastructure might be. I can imagine a few possible scenarios that would lay waste to it which don't entail nuclear annihilation. But without knowing what the nature of the shit is that might hit the fan, it is sort of hard for an individual to prep. A plague could cause shit to hit the fan, but I think that it would vector out and survivors would pretty easily manage to at least restore a 1950s level of civilization. Cyber warfare could do that too, I think. A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India would rack up an extremely high worldwide death toll. An AI attack is not completely unrealistic, and I am sort of a fan of the AI scenario in which the AI is way, way better at code than we are, and permanently blocks us from using electronic technology.

[I_am_not_mafia]

You know what's currently making me nervous, it's finding out about the collapse of Bronze age civilisation. The extra history youtube videos are really interesting and I highly recommend watching them. But for me the Bronze age one really hit home because it chimed with what I am seeing happening with our current civilisation.

Progress essentially means increased efficiency. It's why we are living in a just-in-time society for example. A manager comes along, sees ways to reduce costs, gets a bonus and then moves on. But reducing costs to a business means reducing redundancy. And reducing redundancy means that it becomes less robust to shocks to the system. This will continue to happen until the system can no longer deal with stressors. Unfortunately due to the long emergency, i.e. exponentially increasing rate of consumption and depletion of resources and the resulting pollution, the future is going to be more hazardous as a result. For example over population means a pandemic will be harder to control. Climate change means that there is more energy in the atmosphere, the jet stream becomes more lazy and less likely to move for periods at a time leading to more extreme weather events etc. We're already looking at 60 harvests until top soil depletion. The revolution in food production relies on cheap oil. Guess what's running out? We're most likely at peak oil right now.

Decreased redundancy also means increased inter-dependence. And this is mooted to be the reason for the collapse of Bronze age civilisation.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I strongly recommend 'Alas, Babylon'.  After sixty years, it still holds up a pretty reasonable description of a post-apocalyptic world.

Boru

[Dmitry1983]

For example, a bunch of pot smoking hippies on the Big Island of Hawaii are rather enthusiastic about their prospect for survival after a world economic collapse that is going to be virtually apocalyptic. I have not been able to follow their reasoning about what they think is going to cause such a catastrophic failure.  They have a passionate hatred for money (although they are always interested in whether I have any), and they just really seem to believe that money is going to fail catastrophically.

They are not wrong. Deflationary collapse is definitely possible in developed countries.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I strongly recommend 'Alas, Babylon'.  After sixty years, it still holds up a pretty reasonable description of a post-apocalyptic world.

Boru

Yeah. The grave robbing thing was "instructive".

[Yonadav]

For example, a bunch of pot smoking hippies on the Big Island of Hawaii are rather enthusiastic about their prospect for survival after a world economic collapse that is going to be virtually apocalyptic. I have not been able to follow their reasoning about what they think is going to cause such a catastrophic failure.  They have a passionate hatred for money (although they are always interested in whether I have any), and they just really seem to believe that money is going to fail catastrophically.

They are not wrong. Deflationary collapse is definitely possible in developed countries.

I didn't say that deflationary collapse wasn't possible. Our economy is dependent on continuous growth, so it seems obvious that there is a point at which continuous growth will no longer be sustainable. I am not a big fan of economic theories that are based on continuous growth. But I am a little skeptical about that causing an apocalyptic event of global magnitude. At least, not a lasting apocalyptic event.