Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[guest]

The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%. The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.

Not centuries, 1-2 years. Max. The average African lives off of foreign food donations. The average illegal or urban dweller, welfare. Look at the state of the US medical system. It's horrible. There will be no ERs. The cities will burn. They're burning now. I know a veterinarian and he knows how to treat humans, if necessary. If I get shot, I'm driving to his house (or I'll send someone to get him) to get my wounds dressed.

I don't think things will be as drastic as either of you two do, but the state of the world is currently much worse off, in terms of a precipice, than 98% realize. Even the markets are quite a good example, or harbinger of things to come. Guest from TX is right that Africa has exploded due to global supply chains, and even the Middle Eastern countries have benefited among their general turmoil from this. I think John sees this, or many have commented on it (Navi?) in the past. I think the rest of the decade will see a 25% decrease in global population, easily.

India and Pakistan are almost out of water. I know India from personal experience. No way it will solve anything.

Are 2 billion people from India-Pakistan-Bangladesh going to migrate to the UK and Germany?

I was in Europe a few months ago. There is little water, and I could have walked across dry river beds or even walked across the canals of Venice in ankle deep water. The 3rd world can rush north, but we don't have any water either. I guess being an ant hill of hungry and unskilled people pouring out of every corner of a 3rd world country wasn't such a good idea. Open borders will be our end. 3rd world overpopulation has already wrecked us.

[Higgenbotham]

JM Greer is woke. I used to watch and listen to interviews with him, but it became tedious with him always mentioning in every interview that in his novels the future president of the new US is black. Okay. Okay. Virtue signalling noted.

I also hate the way he talks; obviously he enjoys exaggerating his voice for some effect I suppose.

My name is John Michaeeeeeeeeel Grrrrrreeeeerrrr.

I've recommended people read Greer, particularly this: https://thearchdruidreport-archive.2006 ... index.html I haven't read his books.

It was useful reading for me as I sat on the fence between 2008 and 2011 trying to decide whether the world was heading into a new dark age or just a very bad depression. After deciding in late 2011 that the world was more likely heading into a new dark age, it was helpful in thinking about how bad it would be. As I've said, worse than he thinks, and what he is predicting is downright unthinkable to more than 99% of the people out there.

Whether it's politics, dark age theory, or anything else these days, anybody who gains recognition is an area (dark age theory included) is almost by definition going to be liberal in the very big picture. Recently I said that in the very big picture Donald Trump is a liberal. He may be less liberal than virtually any mainstream politician at the moment, but in some future or past moment, he would have or will appear liberal.

Those who are truly not liberals in the big picture will remain aliens and outsiders in a world they barely comprehend or have much interest in until the wheel inexorably turns to change that.

[Higgenbotham]

The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%. The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.

Not centuries, 1-2 years. Max. The average African lives off of foreign food donations. The average illegal or urban dweller, welfare. Look at the state of the US medical system. It's horrible. There will be no ERs. The cities will burn. They're burning now. I know a veterinarian and he knows how to treat humans, if necessary. If I get shot, I'm driving to his house (or I'll send someone to get him) to get my wounds dressed.

Short response is there's a lot of cream that will come off the population that is excess from the industrial age and associated energy sources. Then after that excess gets wiped away in a short time (20 years or so), the grind down that resembles the grind down of the Roman Empire will take place over a longer time. I think, though, that the longer they can kick the can down the road the shorter that "20 years or so" is going to be.

Long answer would be to look at population graphs, draw trendlines and come up with estimates. That doesn't seem necessary to me. We're way into overshoot and the dieoff will be tremendous, just how tremendous is the only question.

[Another Guest]

Awesome thread. I am learning. Thank you.

[Cool Breeze]

The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%. The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.

Not centuries, 1-2 years. Max. The average African lives off of foreign food donations. The average illegal or urban dweller, welfare. Look at the state of the US medical system. It's horrible. There will be no ERs. The cities will burn. They're burning now. I know a veterinarian and he knows how to treat humans, if necessary. If I get shot, I'm driving to his house (or I'll send someone to get him) to get my wounds dressed.

Short response is there's a lot of cream that will come off the population that is excess from the industrial age and associated energy sources. Then after that excess gets wiped away in a short time (20 years or so), the grind down that resembles the grind down of the Roman Empire will take place over a longer time. I think, though, that the longer they can kick the can down the road the shorter that "20 years or so" is going to be.

Long answer would be to look at population graphs, draw trendlines and come up with estimates. That doesn't seem necessary to me. We're way into overshoot and the dieoff will be tremendous, just how tremendous is the only question.

While I'm in general in your camp, and that's why I came here in the first place (though I get labeled a X troll - do you really believe that, Higgie?), it is true that most doomsayers and others - not you guys because you haven't tried to monetize anything - get major clicks and have been wrong for almost 2 decades now. That's why I'm a skeptic, but I see the demonic spirit of the age, no doubt (exemplified in the Bish). I think now they are signalling the end of the dollar reign (no, not saying it goes away entirely), and Richard Werner points out the similar intentional inflation caused by central banks to create the petrodollar system, and now to end it, since no one will willingly be part of it and they don't have to because the US is so weak.

Regarding the bolded, what % do you say is excess? We know that the mRNA thing, at a minimum, will add or not help all the other issues coming (lack of welfare/money/food/health care etc). Why does your "20 year or so" get shorter if they can extend? That's counterintuitive, so you are leaving something out that you are thinking.

[Higgenbotham]

My more specific predictions would be:

• There will be a major global financial panic and crisis. Supply chains will break, resulting in unavailability of critical raw materials and components. Global trade will begin to shut down. As it begins to become apparent that the supply chain linkages are permanently broken, the global interlinked financial markets will shut down and cease to exist. This will all happen very quickly. It will not take years from the initial panic.
• The focus of governments will turn to controlling their panicked and hungry populations. Due to lack of availability of imported goods and adequate storage "sufficient to reconstitute" a system consistent with nation state government, this will prove to be too little too late and most government will devolve to the local level as populations lose faith in their national governments and the national governments lose the resources and ability to control their populations.
• There will be no large scale nuclear war. Instead, the population will be culled through starvation, local strife (including settling of long-standing scores) and disease. Wave after wave of pandemics will sweep the world.
• Similar to national economies and governments, centralized utilities will fail or become so decrepit as to be unsafe and unusable. All centralized utilities including the power grid will shut down permanently.
• The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%. The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.
• Life during the coming dark age will be similar to the last dark age but worse due to environmental damage and pollution.

Short response is there's a lot of cream that will come off the population that is excess from the industrial age and associated energy sources. Then after that excess gets wiped away in a short time (20 years or so), the grind down that resembles the grind down of the Roman Empire will take place over a longer time. I think, though, that the longer they can kick the can down the road the shorter that "20 years or so" is going to be.

Long answer would be to look at population graphs, draw trendlines and come up with estimates. That doesn't seem necessary to me. We're way into overshoot and the dieoff will be tremendous, just how tremendous is the only question.

The scale on the bottom isn't linear, but the trendline (drawn in blue below) gives an approximate idea of what the industrial age and associated energy sources has done for population growth in excess of the growth that may have occurred in its absence. Anything above that line is what I would call excess.



Before the industrial revolution, the human race had a pretty good thing going. Now the conditions that existed prior to the industrial revolution can't be brought back and the most likely result is the population will undershoot the trend line.

Like I said, drawing and analyzing trendlines is, in my opinion, a waste of time because the estimates aren't going to be all that accurate anyway.

"The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%." This is the excess from the industrial revolution. It's a wild ass guess as to how fast that excess will go away but a slow decline seems like a very bad guess.

The longer the can gets kicked, the faster the excess will go away once the downtrend gets going.

"The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries." This will be the long grind down after the excess from the "bounty" of the industrial revolution gets wiped away. A slow decline for this process seems like a good guess.

[Higgenbotham]

"The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%." This is the excess from the industrial revolution. It's a wild ass guess as to how fast that excess will go away but a slow decline seems like a very bad guess.

"The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries." This will be the long grind down after the excess from the "bounty" of the industrial revolution gets wiped away. A slow decline for this process seems like a good guess.

I didn't come up with this idea based on how market crashes happen. But reading the above made me think of it just now.

The 1929 stock market crash lasted about 2 weeks. The grind down from the April 1930 rebound to the July 1932 low lasted about about 110 weeks. I wouldn't hang my hat on this ratio but if the grind down to the population low were to take 250 years, let's see how long the population crash would take if that were the case. It would be 4.5 years, so maybe Guest from TX's guess of a year or two will be closer than my guess of 20 years or so. It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.



At this point, I consider it all academic. Life will change drastically.

[Higgenbotham]

Also, pharma will stop production. infection will kill more than starvation.

Mad Max is an optimistic scenario; The Road is the worst. I fear we are heading for the latter.

I remember when I was in high school in North Carolina in the 80s, there was a popular country song called 'A country boy can survive'. It was true then and will be even truer in the future.

Disease and drug resistant diseases will be large factors after a collapse. STDs are all borderline untreatable now. Any day now, syphilis and gonorrhea will be incurable. I have lived in several third world countries since the 1970s, and sexual transmitted diseases are a massive public health issue. Latin America and Africa are off the charts in terms of disease. With open borders, these diseases are flooding into the United States, Canada, and Europe.

My family has several medical doctors in it, and they all tell me that this is a huge and deliberately hidden problem. Even if there is no collapse, drug resistant disease will ravage the population. This is what people should be worried about.

When I lived in Latin America, the working classes were walking STDs. I encountered (but never befriended) several western Boomers who had retired to Latin America and lived a certain lifestyle that meant they joined the ranks of the infected. The explosion of STDs in America is tied to the black and Latino populations, many of them illegals.

In the UK, one of my former co-workers went to the ER (they call it Casualty') for a hand injury, had to wait over five hours to see a doctor, and was, most likely, infected with TB in the crowded lobby. The ERs are filled with Africans and Indians and they all incurable diseases. My friend lives in a town, not a city, and he was left with TB from a hospital visit. This is the future of the West.

I've said a lot about pandemics in these pages, probably too much, and not so much about disease in general. Not that it should be ignored. I dug up some old posts that cover just one facet, but I think an important facet, of the broader and relevant topic of disease.

...I would expect the casualties related to the collapse of the infrastructure to be higher than the direct deaths from the pandemic, maybe something on the order of another 3 billion within 3 years. Gerald had posted about the hidden people we depend on. There are many. Nuclear power plant operators, drilling rig operators, water treatment plant operators, and so on.

I think this type of thing is something that is not on many people's radar:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/ ... 83191.html

Secondary disease outbreaks could become a fact of life if operator expertise is lost or treatment plants have to be shut down and people have to access highly contaminated surface water. The outbreak was attributed to the intake pipe for the water treatment plant being too close to the wastewater plant discharge and the article says the intake was moved 4200 feet further out into the lake. We are dependent on industrial water treatment processes is what I mean to say. I doubt that has been the case to this extent in the past. The water from another 4200 feet out has to be pumped in and it takes a reliably functioning energy infrastructure to do it. With the water being pumped in from that far out, the diagram shows coal and sand filtration to be sufficient for this case. The way I understand this is nowadays the crytosporidium filtration is done with synthetic membranes more and more. Those membranes have a useful life of a few years and it takes advanced polymerization processes to produce them. They are produced by a handful of companies like Pall and GE. The synthetic membranes are needed due to the contaminated nature of the intake water as they are more efficent at removing pathogens than sand filtration and the other methods used exclusively in the past.

http://www.waterworld.com/articles/prin ... rcity.html

These are the kinds of scenarios that spur communities to consider DPR, because they have few other options, said Guy Carpenter, PE, vice president of the Water Resources & Reuse Group at Carollo Engineers in Phoenix. "The main driver for the use of wastewater treatment plant effluent as a drinking water supply is water scarcity," Carpenter said. "For some communities in the United States, reclaimed water is the only supply of water they have or can access to meet demands, including for drinking water."

Here they have to use the synthetic membranes.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion ... 648285.php

Ingesting wastewater

A recent study by the University of Arizona showed several drinking-water treatment plants in the U.S. get their influent from water sources that, under low-flow conditions, consist of 100-percent wastewater from upstream cities. In other words, the wastewater discharges from one city are not diluted at all by clean "natural" water when the next city takes it for their drinking water source.

Even under average-flow conditions, some drinking-water plants use water containing more than 20 percent wastewater. Of the 11 drinking-water plant intakes in the U.S. with the highest percentage of such de facto reuse, eight are in Texas. So, many Texans are now, probably unknown to them, ingesting water that was recently municipal wastewater. Yes, natural processes in those rivers help clean the water, but those processes are generally slow, so the natural cleanup is minimal when the travel time between cities is only days.

The bottom line of all this being that if the infrastructure collapses due to a pandemic secondary deaths from disease could be higher than from the pandemic itself.

Now let's say at some point in the future there's a water system in Detroit or some other major city in a state of disrepair and the water comes on for a few hours per day. The water system engineers find a way to get the water pumped the required 20 miles and someone out in the far reaches of the system in a suburb of Detroit can open their tap for a few hours per day and get some water. Problem solved, right? No, not in this case. The reason is that all the piping is underground. The underground piping is going to have leaks in it. At present there are water systems that are losing substantial amounts of water to leaks in the system piping. That occurs in the midst of drought conditions. Getting back to the point of this, a water system that has pipe leaks must be pressurized all the time. That is because the underground pipe has pressure acting against it and if the pipes aren't pressurized from the inside all the time you will be basically drinking the runoff that ends up in the soil around those pipes. Most of which is probably contaminated with chemicals and pathogens around the distribution system of any large city. So while it's OK for your lights to flicker on and off a few hours per day, it's not OK for your water system to operate in that manner.

Water pressure is an important factor to consider when planning a distribution system. As a rule of thumb, the water pressure throughout the distribution system should be no less than 17 PSI. In many high value districts, distribution lines are designed for a normal pressure of between 60 and 70 PSI.

Low pressure in the mains can be a health hazard since the pressure in the pipes keeps contaminated water from entering the mains. If the pressure in a pipe is too low or is negative, contaminants from nearby ditches, cross-connections, and poor quality house plumbing can be drawn into the water system.

Investigations have proven that most water-borne disease outbreaks are the result of contamination of water after it is pumped into the distribution system. To prevent contamination, an adequate chlorine residual must be maintained and the residual pressure should never be allowed to fall below 20 PSI. The Virginia Department of Health issues an advisory for extra-precautionary measures during periods of low pressure or vacuum.

http://water.me.vccs.edu/concepts/pressuredistr.html

If the system has elevated storage nearby and enough water can be pumped to elevated storage while power is on to hold pressure in the system the rest of the day, then those people will be OK.

It's surprising how difficult is was to find a reference which describes this in layman's terms. These concepts are very basic to the operation of the infrastructure of a civilization and it seems this knowledge has almost been lost. This reference came from a web site called Virginia Community Colleges.

The effects of leaking sewer pipes are discussed, and the idea that this has recently been identified as a problem. Article is about a year old.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges it could be a problem nationwide. The agency cites research from Southern California showing that people who swam in areas near flowing storm drains were 50 percent more likely to get sick than those who swam farther from the same drains.

This idea that the pathway from sewer pipes to storm drains might be a significant source of contamination even in areas with separate systems is new, as is the ability to track it.

Whether it is happening in Madison is unknown, said Trina McMahon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of civil engineering who studies the area’s Yahara lakes.

Three years ago, when she sat on a multi-agency committee considering how to improve the Yahara lakes’ beaches, she was not concerned about sewer-stormwater cross-contamination.

“I was a skeptic about the (human) bacteria or pathogens being in the stormwater,” she said. “But the work coming out of UW-Milwaukee has really changed my mind on that.”

http://wisconsinwatch.org/2014/05/leaky ... -to-lakes/

My more specific predictions would be:

• There will be a major global financial panic and crisis. Supply chains will break, resulting in unavailability of critical raw materials and components. Global trade will begin to shut down. As it begins to become apparent that the supply chain linkages are permanently broken, the global interlinked financial markets will shut down and cease to exist. This will all happen very quickly. It will not take years from the initial panic.
• The focus of governments will turn to controlling their panicked and hungry populations. Due to lack of availability of imported goods and adequate storage "sufficient to reconstitute" a system consistent with nation state government, this will prove to be too little too late and most government will devolve to the local level as populations lose faith in their national governments and the national governments lose the resources and ability to control their populations.
• There will be no large scale nuclear war. Instead, the population will be culled through starvation, local strife (including settling of long-standing scores) and disease. Wave after wave of pandemics will sweep the world.
• Similar to national economies and governments, centralized utilities will fail or become so decrepit as to be unsafe and unusable. All centralized utilities including the power grid will shut down permanently.
• The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%. The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.
• Life during the coming dark age will be similar to the last dark age but worse due to environmental damage and pollution.

It's much more than just pandemics.

[Higgenbotham]

From the above post:

These are the kinds of scenarios that spur communities to consider DPR, because they have few other options, said Guy Carpenter, PE, vice president of the Water Resources & Reuse Group at Carollo Engineers in Phoenix. "The main driver for the use of wastewater treatment plant effluent as a drinking water supply is water scarcity," Carpenter said. "For some communities in the United States, reclaimed water is the only supply of water they have or can access to meet demands, including for drinking water."

Ingesting wastewater

A recent study by the University of Arizona showed several drinking-water treatment plants in the U.S. get their influent from water sources that, under low-flow conditions, consist of 100-percent wastewater from upstream cities. In other words, the wastewater discharges from one city are not diluted at all by clean "natural" water when the next city takes it for their drinking water source.

Even under average-flow conditions, some drinking-water plants use water containing more than 20 percent wastewater. Of the 11 drinking-water plant intakes in the U.S. with the highest percentage of such de facto reuse, eight are in Texas. So, many Texans are now, probably unknown to them, ingesting water that was recently municipal wastewater. Yes, natural processes in those rivers help clean the water, but those processes are generally slow, so the natural cleanup is minimal when the travel time between cities is only days.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I sat in on a webinar put on by some consulting engineers in Texas who were discussing strategies for using wastewater effluent (DPR) for drinking water in the event the drought and population increase in Texas continued. These engineers are very dedicated to their field and expert in what they do. It was hard for me as a non-expert in the field to follow all the technical discussion. At the end of the webinar, the thought leaders in the field gave their conclusion which was that, while they are aware chemicals are a problem, limited resources would have to be directed toward pathogens.

The background to this was I was doing basic engineering work in the field, taking a lot off their plate, so the heavyweights I worked with would have more time to devote to these kinds of issues. There were two engineers I worked with who were outstanding. One is now retired. There was no younger replacement for him.

[Higgenbotham]

The background to this was I was doing basic engineering work in the field, taking a lot off their plate, so the heavyweights I worked with would have more time to devote to these kinds of issues. There were two engineers I worked with who were outstanding. One is now retired. There was no younger replacement for him.

This brings up another dark age related topic besides the one implied.

Without these two engineers, I would have gotten completely bogged down because those two people were the only ones with the ability and experience to understand everything that went on in the place.

All of our work was reviewed by management at two levels. About 20% of my work would come back with no comments on it. This was the more complex work and it would take a long time for it to come back. One day, I remarked to another engineer that management must be passing that work though one of those two engineers for review because they were unable to understand it. He quickly replied, "I know for a fact that is what is happening."

Before that started happening, management would call me in to discuss assignments during the review process. Sometimes, certainly not the majority of the time, but sometimes they were unable to understand even basic engineering concepts and things would get bogged down as I attempted to find workarounds that they could understand.