Maybe everything will be ok? No economic collapse. No SHTF scenarios.

Maybe things will be fine? No SHTF scenarios will eventuate. No economic collapse. No housing market crash. No apocalyptic financial meltdown. No hyper-inflation. No energy crises or Peak Oil disaster. No Malthusian catastrophe. No catastrophic solar mega storm. No global pandemic. No alien invasions. No runaway nanotech grey goo turning everything to dust. No mono-crop destroying plant virus. No global climate change induced agricultural collapse. No Yellowstone super volcano. No ginormous asteroid impact. No super-intelligent AIs eliminating humans. No gamma ray burst stripping away our atmosphere.

There's lots of doom and gloom stories because doom and gloom sells. During the Cold War we were all going to die in a global nuclear war. We were all going to starve during nuclear winter. Or communism was going to take over the world. Or the hippies doin hippy stuff like smoking joints and dropping LSD were going to cause a moral collapse. Then it was the population bomb and mass starvation. Or the Y2K bug was going to cause all kinds of technological disasters... planes were going to be dropping from the sky! The magnetic pole was supposed to reverse and bring down civilisation. Some people feared the LHC would create a black hole which would suck in the Earth.

Even two thousand years ago people were predicting the immanent END OF THE WORLD with the second coming of Jesus or the Apocalypse or Rapture or whatever. And of course there was Nostradamus who was predicting all manner of bad stuff.

Maybe humans are just perpetual pessimists? Maybe things will be fine, the economy will continue to grow despite some hiccups, technological advancement will continue to accelerate, we'll continue to find solutions to our problems and the future will be really awesome like an Isaac Asimov novel?

 

This good news story was brought to you by Silver Pete. We will now return you to your normal program.

 

I agree.

Maybe they'll kick the can down the road for decades yet. After all .........

.... it's different here

 

In a cruel twist of fate, SilverPete's good news story, is only a hypothetical.

 

I prefer to consider both sides and be cautiously optimistic.

 

Depends on your perspective. Some people have lost the bulk of their retirement savings, lost their job, been evicted from their home, unable to pay off their debt load and struggle to cover interest payments. These are Australians that this is happening to. In other developed countries and third world countries it's even worse for very many people.

An apocalypse where we all struggle for basic survival may be unlikely but economic collapse is very real for many people today. If you keep you job and are able to save your wealth you may not notice much economic collapse.

"The future is already here it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson

 

That is a worrying thought.

What am I going to do with 20 kg of pre dec if there is no scenario where legal tender is worthless?!

 

Xmas puddings, poker chips and wishing wells? :|

 

Well, the Greatest Civilisation on Earth The Roman Empire HAD started to decline...popped 1500yrs ago leading to the dark ages.
then again there was pretty good track record of collapse from the Cartheginians, Greeks, Egyptians, Aztec, Incas, Mespotamians, Tolteks, Myans, Mutapa, Sumarians, Ankor, Mongols, Moai, Han/Tang Dynasties in China, Tokugawas, Babylonians.....

 

It all depends on how you define SHTF. If you are thinking end of the world or end of civilization or anything like that, then yeah, I would say it's pretty unlikely.

If it means a hard economic correction, then I think it's pretty likely at some point in the not too distant future. But will life go on afterwards? Sure. It will be like crashing your car after everything has been going smoothly for years. It will be a jolt. You will get some temporary painful injuries. But after the worst is over you will start to rebuild and the whole thing will be in the rear view mirror. A lesson learned (hopefully).

I don't like the term personally because it is so vague and means different things to different people. It seems to be used more for fear-mongering than anything else.

 

I have asked myself this question many times.

Can the idiots running the show avoid a disaster, and how will they do it? Can the worlds central banks keep on printing forever? Can they EVER balance their annual budgets without telling lots of lies? Can the States and Cities ever get out from under the rock of debt?

Can they make the things balance by simply 'printing' and selling bonds to themselves? Can the big banks holding Bonds worth 10c, have them in the balance sheet at 100c, forever?

Can pensions be paid forever with the proceeds of sales of bonds that no one but the government will buy?

My BS Detector just went off!


OC

 

Perhaps everything will not come crashing down. Nature will just shift everything. Pacific plate fractures and northern fraction rotates anticlockwise colliding with north american west coast. American money leaves the poor to perish. Himalayan scale orrogony begins. American civilization becomes the new Africa as tribal fractions fight for power. Asia takes on the role of superpower. New money flows in destroying centuries old tradition and knowledge that had maintained balance with the earth and kept millions of humans living respectfully and organically from the land, reminiscent of America before the europeans showed up. Europe preserves the lessons of this shift in western language contrasting the new asian consumer driven culture imported by the money fleeing americas death throws. Africa to become the new europe as the upheaval of change gives breathing space from the imperialist powers That have kept them fighting amongst themselves for scraps this past cycle. Tribes and nations trade cooperatively onwards and upwards. Russia and the middle east to provide buffer zones between these changing geological, economic and social swings and roundabouts with annunaki overlords recording this next age of transition in stone. With the fracture of the pacific plate pressure released on himilayas decending south to create the next great ocean from the indian ocean and triggering an increase in speed at the mid Atlantic ridge to eventually grow the Atlantic to dominance.... the cycle repeats as a natural result of ocean currents twisting and tearing earths crust in a repetitive predictable march around the globe driven by our only energy source the sun.

Think not destruction. Think in terms of energy - not to be created nor destroyed, simply transformed and shifted.

 

Here's the contrarian point of view:

The Cuban Missile Crisis, and some later computer glitches in the 1980's bought the world perilously close to precisely this outcome.

True, this did not happen.

You think the world's morals haven't collapsed? Maybe I'm getting too old (I think they have).

Western world, mas starvation hasn't happened yet. There's a whole 'nother continent called Africa, and I am pretty sure some folks around there have gone quite hungry from time to time.

That was probably never on the cards, but the reality is that there were (and still are) automated systems that are date dependent, and an automatic shutdown in some of those systems was possible. Preparations ahead of time prevented this, but honestly, if the US power grid were to shut down, it would take what seems an incredibly long time to restart it all - there are, I'm sure, valid reasons for that, but I don't fully understand them. It wouldn't (then, or now) take a whole lot to shut down the US power grid...

This one is news to me (nor do I know what the LHC is), so let's say that one hasn't happened yet.

Jokes and cotrarianism aside, I would think we're in for some major pain in financial circles. Stock market almost certainly, possibly other areas as well. Will things get bad enough to cause what we would term a "SHTF" scenario? I don't know - the powers that be are getting quite adept at kicking the can down the road, and people seem quite willing to go along. I'd like to think the end will come, the "bad" purged from the economy, and the system resetting with an honest money at it's core. Would I be willing to guarantee it will happen? No, not yet, anyway.

 

Personally I think the U.S will just do exactly Japan did and keep rates low for years and just keep kicking that big can down the road. After 20years Japan still has'nt defaulted and they still manufacture lots of good quality proiducts which has def kept them going.

 

While I think eventually global easy monetary policy will ultimately cause a crash and a loss of confidence in currency, I'm gradually coming to grips that it won't happen anytime soon. Essentially I'm giving myself until about mid 2017 to prepare for any SHTF scenario at which point if nothing has happened I'm changing investment tactics.

 

I prefer to consider both sides, be cautiously pessimistic, and prepared to take advantage of optimists in shock.

 

Good thread Pete, thanks. Great reading.

Just curious to the problems that we face and obviously faced, that we now continue to rectify?



Cheers mate.

 

I'm thinking of things such as technological solutions like genetic engineering to increase crop yields to offset soil degradation and to grow crops in harsher climates to feed a growing world population. Things such as more efficient use of existing energy resources and exploitation of new and alternative energy sources as oil becomes more scarce. Things such as medical advances that will extend our healthy and productive years as we live longer, and medical breakthroughs to overcome things such as the rapidly declining effectiveness of antibiotics.

 

It's better to live a short and exciting life and be killed in an apocalypse, than to spend your life preparing for a catastrophe that never comes.

 

Silverpete is on to something and I now understand.
We all talk about the shit hitting the fan scenario......but.....
Has anyone really thought about that?
With no power, no fan turning, splatter factor is reduced by an enormous amount.
That means things won't be as bad as we might first think.
Food for thought.