Apocalypse ...er... soon!

EDIT: This post was first created in December 2010, prior to the revolutions that have occurred in Tunisia and Egypt. Societal collapse can occur within days as is sadly being borne out in these countries. It would be prudent therefore to always be prepared for collapse, and the only reason there is likely to be stability in these countries os because the outside world is still in one piece. If economic collapse occurred for example, the whole globe would be dragged in with no hope of recovery because no-one on the poutside would be able to help due to their own problems.

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As human beings, especially as human beings in a society that is used to answers because of the wealth of information at our fingertips, we find it very difficult to accept when perhaps there is no direct answer.

We tend to scoff at opinions which are open-ended so to speak; opinions that can have do black and white answer. Do aliens exist? Will oil run out? Apocalypse now?

We are accustomed to asking a question of Google, and Google provides a definitive answer. But there are some questions that Google cannot answer definitively, and yet we know by probability alone what the answer must be. Take the questions above as an example.

Economic collapse?
An economic collapse although not destructive to the human population as a pandemic, would cause just as much damage and is capable of bringing complete collapse within a few hours. Alistair Darling who was the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer during the financial crisis of 2008 is quoted as saying that the global financial system was just three hours from meltdown. No banking system, no commerce, no money, no economy. A computer system with everyone's storage of wealth inside is absolutely worthless, only those with a storage of wealth to hand could possibly help in a collapse of society. Paper money has no value unless a government or economic system says it has. This is the most difficult thing for people to understand because they trust money implicitly. Over decades, paper, fiat money has been used to buy whatever we need, so it's natural to see a banknote as value.
The best way to explain this, is to imagine you live in the UK and find an Indian 500 Rupee banknote in the street. What is it's worth? The initial feeling you get when you see it lying there is excitement because you can see it's real, and you know that it has value, but then the realisation set's in that actually, it has no value to you at all. You cannot go and buy anything with it because no one will accpet it here. The best thing you could do is take it to a bank and get it converted to your own currency. But then how much is a 500 Rupee note worth? Will you get the bus fare to the bank back if you cash it in? For all you know, it may only be worth 10 pence!

So it's easy to understand the value of paper money in context and the same is true for many things in that regard. One more example is also easy to understand. Whilst visiting a theme park that uses a "token" system to use the attractions, you buy several tokens at £3.00 each and enjoy your day out. Three days later, you find a token from the theme park in your pocket. It has a date on it which says it expires in a months time, and you know you will never go back that soon, so what do you do with it?
You throw it away, because it has no value. However on the day when you were at the park, it had a value of £3.00, but now it's worthless.

Storage of value
This is the way paper money works in a post-collapsed society. Be warned and store your money as "wealth" in a good storage of value. this can be gold, silver, food even coal, anything that you know will be valuable in a post-collapsed society. The only thing you need to be careful of is that the storage can withstand time. Food is great in initial collapse, but it will soon go rotten and be worthless, whereas bags of coal will last another million years... well it has already done so hasn't it!

Will oil run out? I get asked this a lot because of my opinions on the subject, and the simple and truthful answer is no, it will never "run out", but add a caveat to say that for how we use it in our current paradigm, then yes, it will become a resource that won't be available at some point. There will always be oil under the ground, but it will run out in the sense that we won't be using it to power our lives in the same way as we do today.

To think slightly differently, even if the whole planet was hollow, at some point, like a huge fuel tank, it will run dry. That's an example that anyone can understand.

Apocalypse now? This is the purpose of this post today. I spoke to a good friend, who is not stupid by a long shot, but he laughed at my usual rhetoric of a collapse in society. I'm not one to dictate, so the conversation stopped there. I never convince people, it's usually futile so I don't bother, but let's look at an apocalypse, what do we mean?

A biblical apocalypse would be similar to the flooding like Noah's ark, or a flu-like disease that pretty much decimates the human population.

A societal collapse can be from a breakdown in government or an economic collapse.

Both of these scenarios appear very unlikely and there's a simple reason for people to think like this. We are complacent.

As human beings, we enjoy a continued lifestyle with no upsets.