The Collapse Calendar

This article, by Mike Adams, appeared in The International Forecaster under the title: "The Collapse Calendar reveals when failures likely to occur in banking, agriculture, nuclear power, pandemic disease and more". You'll be tempted to shoot yourself in the head after reading this, but don't!  Adams obviously put a lot of work into this article, but it is still his opinion and not preordained. Use it to fuel your will to survive and your commitment to prepare for the collapse.

Adam's article:

In the movie Knowing, starring Nicholas Cage, the main character is faced with the burden of comprehending a written code revealing the exact dates and GPS coordinates of large-scale catastrophic events. The movie is outstanding and well worth watching, by the way, but could it ever be true?

Not at such precision, I would submit, but we can know when certain catastrophes are likely to occur based on an understanding of human behavior, historical patterns and modern-day trends. In fact, much of modern-day human behavior is pushing us directly into a long list of catastrophic, systemic failures which are mathematically inevitable. This article aims to help sort out the likely calendar years of likely emergence for such events, which include things like the irrigation aquifers running dry, the world's oil supply running dry, nuclear energy disasters, a global banking collapse and more.

The legacy of human civilization and its tragic self-destruction

To date, the legacy of humankind is a tragedy of chemical poisoning, nuclear weapons, short-sighted resource extraction and corporate-driven war. Humans are a species suffering from astonishing tunnel vision interwoven with insatiable greed and a thirst for violence. The fall of human civilization from its current unsustainable exploitations is not in question... only the timing of events remains unknown. As the final chapter of human civilization seems to draw ever closer with each passing crisis, many of the more observant people wonder what's going to spark the collapse first. Pope Francis (yes, the Pope) recently warned that the global economy is approaching a moment of collapse.

At the same time, many of our world's most brilliant computer scientists are warning about the rise of AI and why super intelligent machines will soon make humanity obsolete.

Those concerned about global warming say climate change will collapse the food supply (due to weather radicalization) and cause mass starvation while drowning the world's largest cities under ocean water. This scenario, fortunately, is one of the longer term predictions, taking centuries to fully unfold.

Peak Oil observers point out that the petroleum economy upon which the world is based is rapidly heading to "EMPTY." Once the oil runs out, what will power the transportation system upon which nearly everything in the economy is based? (Food, medicine, manufacturing, agriculture, employment, etc.)

UrbanMan's comment: Oil and therefore gasoline will become unaffordable long before the world run's out of it. We may see that this year for some people as gasoline is projected to hit $5.50 a gallon, which of course will drive up every single commodity,...food, clothing,...everything, and perhaps fuel a food crisis and economic collapse.

Independent economists warn that the global debt-based banking system is headed for imminent collapse that will shutter the world's largest banks and cause all customer deposits to be forfeit.

Meanwhile, environmentalists rightly warn about genetic pollution from engineered crops, the mass poisoning of our farms and oceans with toxic pesticide chemicals, and the dumping of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and hormone disruptors into the environment. How can life be sustained on a planet that's increasingly covered in industrial poison?

In truth, every one of these groups has a valid point in one way or another. But each of these risks for humanity has a very different likely timeline of likely emergence. So for the "Collapse Calendar" shown here, I've put together a "best guess" of the likely times in which each of these issues might become a legitimate concern. These years are not entirely my own personal guesses but rather an aggregate extrapolation of trends and predictions I've observed across many fields: the scientific community, environmentalists, alternative economists, geologists, astrophysicists and so on.

The Collapse Calendar: when the events are most likely to unfold. This list is ordered from the most near-term to long-term. The year range indicate years in which the named events MAY occur (are most likely to occur based on current trends).

2014 - 2025 World's debt-based banking system suffers catastrophic debt collapse due to wildly over-leverage derivatives combined with endless money creation by central banks.

2014 - 2034 Over the next 20 years or so, the odds of either a major nuclear power disaster -- or a catastrophic worsening of the Fukushima Daiichi facility -- is shockingly high. As we've already seen, nuclear disasters can be set off by natural disasters such as earthquakes. Nuclear power plants can also be compromised by power grid failures and EMP weapons (see below).

2015 - 2035 Over the next two decades, the chances of a deadly global superbug rising out of the failed medical deployment of antibiotics is extremely high. We have entered the "post-antibiotics era," medical authorities have now admitted, and superbugs are widely circulating in hospitals and among the public that have no known treatment or cure. Just this last week, over 75 scientists working at the CDC accidentally infected each other with anthrax, proving that even the government's own infectious disease experts can't reliably contain these diseases even under strict laboratory conditions.

2015 - 2035 Nuclear war: The risk of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism is higher than ever, with new conflicts now taking place in Ukraine as well as Iraq. Tensions are heating up between America, Russia and China, in large part over the choice of which global currency will be used for petroleum exchanges (presently it is largely the dollar, but Russia wants to change that). There's also the ever-present wildcard nation of North Korea, which continues to possess and test nuclear weapons.

2018 - 2060 EMP attack on America's power grid: Once North Korea manages to figure out how to affix high-yield nuclear weapons to long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, it will be able to fire those missiles into high-altitude detonation patterns over North America, causing a voltage cascade that will destroy the entire power grid across the nation. It's called an "EMP weapon," and the threat is very real. Fortunately, North Korea is still several years away from successfully deploying a long-range missile. Should it ever get close to actually being able to deploy such a weapon, I have full faith that the American CIA will find some covert, off-the-books method of nuking the North Korean government back into the Stone Age (and maybe even setting the Korean people free from the "Kim Kult" in the process).

UrbanMan's comment: Nuclear war, nuclear disaster, EMP attack are all very possible and doubly so if radical Muslims gain a caliphate in the Middle East. Imagine these ass wipes gaining control of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Access to weapons of mass destruction and drawing the U.S. and a host of other nations into a giant middle eatern war - well, sounds like Aramgeddon to me.

2020 - 2120 Peak Oil kicks in, causing a century-long steady decline in global oil production combined with a steady rise in oil prices (which translate into more expensive food and other consumer goods). Look for massive socioeconomic changes across the Middle East, and especially in Saudi Arabia which is likely to experience a popular revolt and violent government overthrow before the year 2040.

2025 - 2090 Many of the world's water aquifers that irrigate the mass food supply run out of water, turning agricultural lands into deserts. The map on the right shows the Ogallala aquifer that provides irrigation for much of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and even New Mexico. Once this water runs out, it can take centuries for it to be replenished.

2029 - 2099 Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that 2029 is the year AI machines become "smarter" than humans. Right now, Google and DARPA are developing advanced humanoid robotics that can walk, climb stairs, run, carry weapons and track humans. Once AI systems take command of these hardware platforms, many experts predict humanity's days may be numbered. If true, the remainder of this list is irrelevant unless you are a machine reading this for the historical record.

2014 - 2114 The Earth is struck by a massive space rock that destroys a major world city. Technically, this prediction timeframe is not a true indication of the situation. The reason I chose to show 2014 - 2114 is because a very large meteor strikes the planet (actually, exploding in the atmosphere and causing widespread devastation) roughly once every century. In 1908, for example, a meteor exploded over Tunguska, Russia, devastating nearly all complex life across an area of 1,000 square miles.

2030 - 2100 The chronic loss of farming top soils starts turning once-arable lands into Dust Bowl deserts. As Eddie Albert wrote in 1980 (yes, over 30 years ago!) In the past 30 or 40 years, the heavy use of synthetic fertilizers, anhydrous ammonia, nitrates, pesticides and herbicides, DDT, etc. have doubled and tripled the yield of grain per acre . . . but at the expense of the organic matter in the soil. Rotation of crops has been replaced with monoculture: corn, corn, corn, or wheat, wheat, wheat. Everyone knows this method exhausts the soil and increases pest infestation, but people are hungry and the cash register is jingling. Yet for every bushel of corn we harvest, we lose two bushels of topsoil.

2040 - 2140 Environmental collapse accelerates after tipping point of chemicals and heavy metals is reached. Mass extinction events ravage the planet, collapsing the fragile web of life and leading to the widespread emergence of infectious disease (Mother Nature's "CTRL-ALT-DEL" for rebooting civilization).

2100 - 2500 Oceans rise enough from global warming to start flooding lower elevation cities, but this disaster, if it turns out to be true at all, will happen in slow-motion, with ocean levels rising only fractions of an inch per year.

2014 - 202,014 Yes, the window of this prediction is 200,000 years, during which time the massive caldera known as Yellowstone National Park is likely to violently explode, blanketing much of North America in ash and causing extreme global dimming for 1-3 years which would result in a global food supply collapse. Yellowstone explodes roughly every 600,000 years and is currently understood to be "late." But in terms of a human lifespan, the odds of Yellowstone erupting while any of us is alive remains extremely remote.

Year 2,800,000,000 Approximately 2.8 billion years from now, the sun will balloon into a massive "red giant" whose diameter is so large, it will physically engulf the entire orbit of planet Earth.  As this happens, of course, all life will be extinguished on our planet. But don't worry... humans are far more likely to have already destroyed themselves before then.

The Coming Collapse, Late November 2012 Edition

The Economic Collapse blog consolidated many different sites as they composed the massive list of lay offs and firings after Obama won re-election.

From the Blaze,.... major corporations have all announced layoffs in just the past two days...

Energizer; Exide Technologies; Westinghouse; Research in Motion Limited; Lightyear Network Solutions; Providence Journal; Hawker Beechcraft; Boeing (30% of their management staff); CVPH Medical Center; US Cellular; Momentive Performance Materials; Rocketdyne; Brake Parts; and Vestas Wind Systems; Husqvarna; Center for Hospice New York; Bristol-Meyers; OCE North America; Darden Restaurants; West Ridge Mine; United Blood Services Gulf;

From the American Thinker, we get a list of other companies downsizing,......

Teco Coal officials announce layoffs; Momentive Inc plans temporary layoffs for 150; Wilkes-Barre officials to announce mandatory layoffs; 600 layoffs at Groupon; More layoffs announced at Aniston Weapons Incinerator; Murray Energy confirms 150 layoffs at 3 subsidiaries; 130 laid off in Minnesota dairy plant closure; Stanford brake plant to lay off 75; Turbocare, Oce to lay off more than 220 workers; ATI plans to lay off 172 workers in North Richland Hills; SpaceX claims its first victims as Rocketdyne lays off 100; Providence Journal lays off 23 full-time employees; CVPH lays off 17; New Energy lays off 40 employees; 102 Utah miners laid off because of 'war on coal', company says; US Cellular drops Chicago, cuts 640 jobs; Career Education to cut 900 jobs, close 23 campuses; Vestas to cut 3,000 more jobs; First Energy to cut 400 jobs by 2016; Mine owner blames Obama for layoffs (54 fired last night); Canceled program costs 115 jobs at Ohio air base; AMD trims Austin workforce - 400 jobs slashed; 100 workers lose jobs as Caterpillar closes plant in Minnesota; Exide to lay off 150 workers; TE Connectivity to close Guilford plant, lay off 620; More Layoffs for Major Wind Company (3,000 jobs cut); Cigna to lay off 1,300 workers worldwide; Ameridose to lay off hundreds of workers;

From a Sy Harding on Forbes we get the analysis that people are generally ignorant of the coming collapse,...

The global economic recovery from the 2007-2009 financial collapse stalled last year and continues to worsen this year, with the International Monetary Fund cutting its forecasts for global economic recovery yet again, including for the U.S., and warning last week that risks of the world dropping back into a global recession “are alarmingly high”, and that “no significant improvements appear in the offing.”

That certainly sounds like the IMF doesn’t have much confidence that the ‘Troika’ (the IMF, EU, and ECB) will be successful with the euro-zone rescue plans and stimulus measures announced a month ago.

Meanwhile China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, are in a serious economic slowdown. China’s stock market is down 40% from its peak in 2009. Japan’s market is down 22% from its 2010 peak and still 51% beneath its peak in 2007.

U.S. corporations seem to be preparing for the difficult times ahead. They are hoarding capital and refusing to invest it in their futures, apparently being to make sure they can pay their bills and survive anything that might lie ahead.

The fear of corporate managements could also be seen in the way that corporate insiders sold off holdings and continued even after the Fed announced its QE3 stimulus measures. Hedge-fund managers likewise did not participate in the June rally, instead selling off as well.

Private-equity funds are having a similar under-performing year, up on average of only 4%. As the Journal says, that is not what their investors planned on. The funds were also suspicious of the rally, and are sitting on close to $1trillion in cash.

However, U.S. consumer confidence has jumped to 83.1 in October from 78.3 in September!!

And at 83.1, consumer confidence is getting close to the 87 level it averaged in the year prior to the 2008-2009 recession. That’s a lot more recovery than global economies have achieved, including that of the U.S. Is it just due to the pixie dust being puffed out by Wall Street and the Fed, about to be blown away by the gathering storm others see coming? We are likely to soon know the answer.

All this before we face the Govermental Fiscal Cliff that is finally in the mainstream news after heading this way for the past five years. Wait until the Department of Defense lays off a butt load of civil service and downsizes the military. Further military cuts will impact negatively not only major defense contractors (see Boeing in the list of lay offs) but local businesses around military installations.

Taxes are going up; more government spending and debt; inflated prices from everything from fuel to food.

Then there is the National Drought,...
And finally, the ability of the United States to produce food to feed the people has greatly diminished simply because of the great drought that has occured.  The worst U.S. drought in decades has deepened again after more than a month of encouraging reports of slowly improving conditions.

60.1 percent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought as of Tuesday, up from 58.8 percent the previous week. The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — increased from 18.3 percent to 19.04 percent.   Read the entire article on the national drought conditions here.

Stock up people,..prepare well. 

Alt-Market Prepper's Site

Came across another preppers site previously unknown to me. I don't know, I may be the last Survivalist in the U.S. to know about it, but in case one or two of you don't, the title of the last article on the site, Americans Are Being Prepared For Full Spectrum Tyranny will take you there.

Alt-Market states that is an organization designed to help you (the prepper) find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. I think that local, careful recruitment to a prepared lifestyle provides much more OPSEC that on-line or otherwise non-local exposure on the internet.

It's not like you should be ashamed of being prepared for anyting from natural disasters to total economic collapse, but not every Tom, Dick and Jane needs to know about it.

Back to Alt-Market,....a lead in to the last article begins:

Totalitarian governments, like persistent forms of cancer, have latched onto the long history of man, falling and then reemerging from the deep recesses of our cultural biology to wreak havoc upon one unlucky generation to the next. The assumption by most is that these unfortunate empires are the product of bureaucracies gone awry; overtaken by the chaotic maddening hunger for wealth and power, and usually manipulated by the singular ambitions of a mesmerizing dictator. For those of us in the Liberty Movement who are actually educated on the less acknowledged details of history, oligarchy and globalized centralism is much less random than this, and a far more deliberate and devious process than the general unaware public is willing to consider.

Unfortunately, the final truth is very complex, even for us… ...

So, not an endorsement, just wanted readers to know about this site.