The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

corrosion (particularly at high temperatures), dental work (given time, teeth and human saliva can destroy nearly anything), and any product that needs to be able to selectively encourage or discourage the flow of electricity, most notably semiconductors of all types. Some three-quarters of the world’s platinum-group metals (PGMs) are sourced from a single country—South Africa—where nearly everything comes from a single rock formation, the Bushveld Igneous Complex. Imagine if a six-year-old made a twenty-layer cake and then somehow was able to inject frosting up from the bottom, alternatively adding internal frosting layers as well as frosting . . . explosions. Now do it all with magma. That’s the Bushveld. It’s a weird-ass geological hiccup that to our collective knowledge hasn’t been replicated anywhere else on Earth, but its odd combination of consistency and variation has made it arguably the most valuable mineral deposit humanity has ever discovered. The Bushveld practically leaks chromium, iron ore, tin, and vanadium, but the South Africans brush right by all these world-class deposits to go after the good stuff: the platinum-group ores that here—and only here—exist in an unadulterated state, unmixed with other, lesser ores. Lesser ores like freakin’ titanium. Everywhere else PGMs are found, they are a by-product of other ores, most commonly copper and nickel. After South Africa, Russia is by far the world’s largest producer, with nearly one-fifth of global PGMs comi...