------------------ This time, it is for real! --------------------
Guest post by Herbert Krill
March 23, 2020
These are interesting times for
collapsologists and for anyone interested in collapse. For many years, we all
studied the past, historic collapses like the Fall of Ancient Rome, and
speculated about future collapses. We studied Joseph Tainter, Jared Diamond,
read the Blogs of Dmitry Orlov and James Howard Kunstler, re-read "The
Limits to Growth" and "Overshoot", enjoyed "The Long
Descent" and so on ... But now, something that could end in collapse is
really here. There is a very fast decline of things as we speak, a
"cliff" just as Seneca and Ugo Bardi and others have described.
Is the Coronavirus disaster our collapse? Is
that "it"?
It might not "the Big One". But it's
a big, fat Black Swan. And big enough to learn a lot from it. Like one learns from a quake, even if it's
not the Big One.
What is it that we have learned so far?
All the big systems need redundancy
Next time we will have to be better prepared.
All this "slowdown", this trying to "flatten the curve"
that's happening now (and disturbing the economy and the people themselves,
although there are also positive sides to it, see below) could have been
mitigated if a better health infrastructure would have been in place. The thing
is, you have to build redundancy into the system, some overcapacity.
If you have capacity, then you don't have to
slow down things so much. Think of fire-fighting. Fires are quick, they need to
be attacked quickly. You have to have overcapacity. Fire engines sitting around
idly, seemingly uselessly, until the call comes. Firefighters being bored,
playing cards (or, rather, playing their smartphones). But no-one will say,
"We don't need so many of them if they don't actually work." At some
point, they will be needed, in a flash.
And that goes for the health care system as
well. There should have been many more hospital beds available (even if empty
most of the time), more respirators, protective suits, and so forth. If you
don't have that infrastructure, you will have to build it quickly, like you do
in a war. It was funny to see those
pictures of dozens of caterpillars digging the foundations of emergency
hospitals in China, but a week later, those hospitals were actually ready.
America did that sort of thing in World War II, regular factories were
converted into producing arms, planes, ships, at an incredible rate. But for
that to happen you need leadership. There was a Franklin D. Roosevelt then, not
a Trump.
And the rest of the infrastructure?
For collapsologists, it will be interesting to
see how the rest of the infrastructure holds together. Here in California, the
Internet works (thank God), electricity flows, the mailperson makes his or her
rounds, and amazon deliveries are still happening, albeit a bit delayed
already. Even though there are lines in front of the supermarkets (people
spaced two meters apart), there are not real food shortages. But will it stay
that way?
The other day, I was reassured by reading an
article in the L.A. Times about electricity distribution in California. "Say what you will about the
utility industry – they’re pretty good about contingency planning,"
Stephen Berberich, president of the California Independent System Operator, which
manages the electric grid for most of the state, was quoted. The big electric
grids, though sometimes weak, are systems that have always planned for
disaster. They might be more vulnerable by a computer virus than a biological
one.
But still, things can get stressed way too
much. What if an earthquake decides to strike us right now? For example, a
major rupture of the Hayward Fault, running through Oakland and Berkeley, about
10 km from where I live, is way overdue. Kamala Harris, California senator and
recently a presidential candidate, worried aloud about this. It's not just a
fantasy. Just a couple of days ago, there was a mid-size earthquake outside
Zagreb. People running out on the street and congregating, instead of staying
inside, as per official Coronavirus mitigation strategy.
A cure worse than the disease?
Isn't the current cure what's causing the
"slow collapse"? That's probably what President Trump and his people
think. They don't want the economy fall to pieces. "The U.S. was not built
to be shut down," he said today. He
wants to get things running soon again. But what's more important, the economy
or the people? Or are they one and the same?
It's a big, bold and perhaps desperate
experiment, all this shutting down of everything, of "non-essential
businesses", of more activities day by day, including most transportation
and especially flying. There is certainly a danger that the whole economic
edifice, or house of cards, depending on your point of view, could yet fall
down. So interesting to watch this in real time! But just let's not be caught
underneath the rubble.
Gail Tverberg (students of collapsology will
know her) wrote recently on her blog: "Human beings cannot stop eating and
breathing for a month. They cannot have sleep apnea for an hour at a time, and
function afterward. Economies cannot stop functioning for a month and afterward
resume operations at their previous level. Too many people will have lost their
jobs; too many businesses will have failed in the meantime."
There is already talk of "cascading
effects" in the mainstream press. And today, on Bloomberg, the word
"domino effect": "Real estate investor Tom Barrack said the U.S.
commercial-mortgage market is on the brink of collapse and predicted a domino
effect of catastrophic economic consequences if ...". This is classical
collapsology.
The psychological impact
You cannot tell people just to stay at home,
not to do anything, for a long time. It's bad for their mental health. Many
will become slightly unhinged. The "Guardian" just had an article
about domestic violence increasing, in China in February and now in the U.S. as
well: "A domestic violence hotline in Portland, Oregon, says calls doubled
last week." And "The New Yorker" came out with this story: "How
Loneliness from Coronavirus Isolation Takes Its Toll".
The "shelter in place" policy
actually exacerbates the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. You were
lucky if you had booked a suite with a balcony on the "Diamond
Princess" cruise ship when you had to wait out fourteen days of
quarantine, instead of an interior room without any windows at all. The same
goes for small apartments in a crowded city.
Stay-at-home and creative types like writers
can cope with this, but most people are dependent on going out, having a drink
at a bar, going to the movies, be part of a crowd. It's bad for the average
guy, for the working classes, to be cooped up like that.
Positive sides, unintended
If you are not too stressed out, it's a time
for reflection. Cherishing nature, family, or even thinking of death, it's good
for you. Strangely enough, most churches are closed, as well. It will be a most
unusual Easter this year.
Less greenhouse gases getting released, the
air becomes clean again, for example in China. Time slows down, becomes
available again. It's a period of deceleration. And by and by it starts to
resemble a "World Made by Hand", the title of a novel by James Howard
Kunstler, in which the post-collapse world was not a bad one indeed.
And despite of the new etiquette of
"social distancing" (a brand-new expression, only ten days old or so)
there is more face-to-face friendliness. And people are more in touch with each
other via telephone, email, Facebook and such.
Just a dress rehearsal?
It's a big moment in history and therefore
exciting. There is a "global feeling". Awaiting the coming days,
weeks, and months. I communicate with my friends in Austria, Germany, and the
Czech Republic as much as I can. Everyone does this now. When will we see each
other again? We are united in isolation. And it's a global unity against an
unseen, common enemy.
But perhaps this is just a fire drill, a dress
rehearsal. The real thing, a much worse pandemic, might come later. A more
contagious, and/or more deadly virus could emerge. Peter Daszak, a well-known
"disease ecologist", thinks the current crisis will prove to be
manageable, noting that the mortality rate of Covid-19 isn’t as great as SARS
and the spread isn’t rampant. "I’m not hiding in my bunker right
now," he told the "Wall Street Journal" at the beginning of the
month. "We’re going to get hit by a much bigger one sometime in the next
10 years." Really?
So we collapsologists may get our "Big
One" after all. We may even die from it.
Up to now, we were more or less theoreticians.
Now it gets far more real. We were Cassandras, collapse aficionados, we kind of
enjoyed our post-apocalyptic visions.
But who would have thought that we would
really experience something like this?
Now we should stop speculating and start
analyzing this event, the Coronavirus Crisis of 2020 or whatever it will be
called. Create a framework, set rules, detect mechanisms, make Collapsology a
real science.
Herbert Krill is an Austrian documentary
filmmaker currently working in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2012, he directed
"American Collapse", a 45-minute documentary for the German-language
Public TV network 3SAT.
