Pages tagged collapse:

ClubOrlov: Social Collapse Best Practices
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html

Frightening look into the future of a social collapse in the US (and by extension other western countries) based on the experiences of the Russian collapse.
save
Hmmm. Trying not to panic.
Goodbye Dubai | Smashing Telly - A hand picked TV channel
http://smashingtelly.com/2009/02/15/bye-bye-dubai/
Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.
And so it goes, quite predictably too.... "As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?"
"people who have hundreds of millions or a billion in the bank are not going to change their lifestyles"
Surviving in Argentina: Thoughts on Urban Survival (2005)
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban-survival-2005.html
were born, that they will hurt and humiliate you as much as they can. Letting a criminal inside you house almost guaranties you that he will rape/beat/ torture and abuse
some notes/thoughts on urban survival
200 yar
This is a pretty good blog about practical survival in a tought country.
The Collapse of Complex Business Models « Clay Shirky
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t. In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden decoherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake—”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites.
"When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t."
Charlie Bit My Finger
EastSouthWestNorth: Daily Brief Comments, June 21-30, 2009
http://zonaeuropa.com/200906c.brief.htm#012
Building on the Lianhuanan Road in the Minxing district of Shanghai city toppled over
building falls_from silver girl @ delicious
1. First, the apartment building was constructed 2. Then the plan called for an underground garage to be dug out. 3. The excavated soil was piled up on the other side of the building. 4. Heavy rains resulted in water seeping into the ground 5. The building began to shift and the concrete pilings were snapped 6. due to the uneven lateral pressures. 7. The building began to tilt. 8. And thus came the eighth wonder of the world.
The building FELL OVER. Let me say that again. The *whole building* *fell over*.
"At around 5:30am on June 27, an unoccupied building still under construction at Lianhuanan Road in the Minhang district of Shanghai city toppled over."