The Deluge

by Stephen Markley

“The famines, the violence, and the stagnation of growth all point to a vicious economic contraction, one that won’t stop in any of our lifetimes. We’ve recklessly burned through three hundred years of fossilized energy to build an immense house of cards. Industrial civilization has grown to unprecedented scale and therefore the costs of disintegration will be at a scale not previously contemplated. We are already seeing intimations of breakdown in the atrocities of the League or the Kansas governor essentially declaring himself king or The Pastor all but demanding his followers massacre his way into office. These are the early signs that the rule of law is coming undone. One can always count on the fact that there are many, many people who very much want to see the collapse of centralized authority because they believe they will prosper amid a rewiring of all the known rules. Mass media have created a distorted perception of what breakdown will actually look like. They believe it will be orderly and quick, a wall of fire advancing, while others indulge in comforting fantasies that they will return to subsistence farming and holistic medicinal practices. But the truth is that for all of us, it will be grueling and unfamiliar, hunger and thirst and disease will be constant, and many will watch loved ones raped, tortured, and murdered by men who have the stomach for unlimited violence. To be clear, everyone in this room, in the congressional chambers, and in the financial, p...