Ask HN: What are your thoughts on the r/collapse community

I love to read history. Folks on Reddit should too. Every generation thinks that they’re living in the end times. There is no single indicator of impending societal collapse or widespread conflict, but there generally are clear and unambiguous indicators. I don’t see anything right now to indicate that I should be worried for the future.

All that said, the most likely existential risk for most of us is getting laid off and losing income. If you’re gonna prep for something, that’s a good one to prep for.

If the indicators are ambiguous, how would you know when to be worried? Honestly curious.

> Every generation thinks that they’re living in the end times

In a sense, every generation is right. We’re all living in our own end times.

It is an echo-chamber of negativity/despair. If you feel like it reflects the general sentiment then it's time to explore, there is a whole big world out there.

You and another person said I need to go touch grass but I do... I live in the pnw, I spend all my weekends in the woods. I travel a lot. Idk seems too dismissive of a comment imo.

I meant explore other corners of reddit/the internet so that you are not constantly exposed to doom and gloom that negatively affect mental wellbeing. The other commenter suggested /r/futurology or check out /r/solarpunk. In general look for places that also discusses viable solutions/actions not just problems.

It is dismissive. It's also judgemental and harsh. However, IMHO it's an appropriate response for the subject and the context. With the advent of the internet so many people with fringe ideas can get together into an echo chamber rather than dealing with the ideas and derision of the sane people around them.

"... the potential collapse of global civilization, defined as a significant decrease in human population and/or political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time."

I suppose it's possible. I don't think it's very likely on any given lifetime. I could see a more deadly pandemic, another world war, or natural event causing a significant decrease in decrease in population or social structure. The risk of these occurring is not zero, but I would guess approaches zero when looking at say 100 year period. Then there are a number of factors during/after the occurrence that would determine if the impact fits that scale.

It's a lot like people talking about the next market crash - given a long enough tineline one is nearly certain to occur. It doesn't really happen when and how the doom sayers tell us, and it's usually not as bad either.

It doesn't hurt for some people to discuss these possibilities and even prepare for them, provided they don't go overboard. It could even be beneficial to the survival of the species if one of these rare possibilities does happen.

Personally, I think we will see another pandemic, or near pandemic, in my lifetime. I'm hopefully that what we are dealing with right now will help us better deal with the next one, maybe even containing it, and that it won't be too deadly. But my experiences say that maybe I'm putting too much trust in government competency.

It doesn't make sense. A total collapse of global civilization means that all major governments have been knocked off, which can only result from either a full-scale nuclear war, or an impact of an asteroid or something similar in scale. I don't really see that coming in the near future.

Of course one can always retreat to the woods or some remote places. There are people who do this and I enjoy watching their vlogs. But overall I don't consider it healthy to completely withdrawn from human civilization. After all even those vloggers use modern technology for transportation, vlogging and all other stuffs.

To add that I don't think a full scale nuclear war can wipe out all governments. I believe countries with vast areas such as US, Canada, Russia and China can still survive with a rather intact government.

Depends on what is meant by 'global civilisation', but it has happened several times in many countries during the 20th century. The US has been immune to events like that throughout its short history, so there seems to be a very strong sense of "can't happen here", but it can. These things happen and people live through them. It's not a collapse you'd see in a Hollywood movie, in real life it is more mundane.

Just look at what happened with the collapse of the USSR, for example - that was just 30 years ago and affected a massive part of the world. Hyperinflation, many people had to resort to small-scale farming to feed themselves, specialists and academics with advanced degrees had to become taxi drivers and many older people had to resort to dumpster diving to survive. Crime of all sorts went way up. All sorts of factories/organisations/societies/buildings were near abandoned/were sold off for scrap and became derelict.

There was no collapse of global civilization or anything close to it in the 20th century. The collapse of USSR is indeed a tragedy event for their civilians but I'd not consider that a collapse of civilization. You still have a government. Yes there was an economic crisis but that's not a collapse of civilization.

I'd 100% agree if the wording is something like collapse of economy.

There was also a government during the collapse of the Roman Empire, which surely must qualify for any reasonable definition of a 'collapse of global civilization'.

The US going through something akin to what happened to the USSR would be a similar event for today's world, given the massive role that the US plays in the current world order.

You might want to re-read the wording in the post, which specifically said, "...political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time."

Depending on exactly how you interpret that phrase, there have been multiple country/regional collapses in recent history. As far as the USSR, it no longer exists. Sure, new countries replaced it, with some matching to countries that existed pre-USSR, but that country is gone. That seems like a collapse by any definition.

Imagine ebola with a 14 day incubation time... that could end civilization fairly quickly. Covid could still mutate into that.

I am happy there are many people (and a whole community of Effective Altruists and academics) who are concerned about Existential Risk (X Risk / Global Catastrophic Risk) and are working on ways to reduce it.

https://futureoflife.org/background/existential-risk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk

A few days ago I ended up reading through this entire thread from January 2020 with predictions for the upcoming decade, it was a LOT of reading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278

There were almost zero entries about the pandemic that changed life as less than 3 months later.

The ability to predict the future just doesn't exist. Take the general advice about how to be more resilient, that stuff will age fairly well... but don't buy into any predictions of doom on a specific date, etc. That kind of worry doesn't do any good.

If you want fellow travelers who are also worried, you'll find them there to hang out with.

HN has a "prediction" post every year. It's really interesting to read them (I found them using Algolia https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

Could you see the wider Reddit community thinking that this promotes rampant misinformation and harm?

Do you think it would take a more wider and wilder popularity or the adoption of the subreddit with a political viewpoint for that to happen?

The funny thing I noticed, people who talk most about it owns more than 2 cars per person in their household and sometimes use private jets or aircrafts to move around the globe.

Why to worry about changing earth if the earth is changing for last x millions years more than imagine.

I think most important thing is to be able to adapt. Millions of people died in ww ii with stuff discussed in this topic... many more will die, no questions

I think about this a lot as I recently joined as a mod there this summer.

It is a raw look at the world absolutely through the rose tinted lens of emotion. You know, the ones that turn all flags into red flags or red flags into normal flags.

Misery loves company and at the end of the day I feel that camaraderie despite the doom and gloom. The subreddit is a net positive because it allows people

a)to share and discuss their deepest fears with likeminded individuals b)to share and discuss how they are coping.

This has an untold value in today’s world, in my honest opinion.

Thinking that society is going to collapse is a matter of timeline. Some people think it is inevitable and maybe coming in a timescale of decades or centuries while others feel that we are already on the roller coaster down and are about to hit the loopy loop. Both views are almost unfathomable without being “too-online.”

My advice if you feel society is becoming too unstable: go on a backcountry camping trip for a few days and chill out. Knowing that that is what life may be like in the worst case scenario future ;).

TLDR; I have seen a community member describe /r/collapse as the other side of the coin of /r/futurology.

I check and comment on the subreddit on an almost daily basis, and have for about a year now.

It takes a while to believe that it can happen, for sure. I didn't start seriously believing it for at least six months of checking the subreddit periodically.

But when you see how much damage we're doing to our oceans (National Geographic warns there might be no (human) seafood at all by 2048[1], ocean acidification, coral bleaching, etc), how more and more regions are getting into emergency situations with water (which will lead to people getting more and more desperate to get that water, and possibly wars being waged over it), positive feedback loops from global warming that can shoot us way past 1.5c if we get that far (I've seen speculation that it could get up to 12c, which would likely wipe out humanity), and know how terrible humans are at dealing with exponential and compounding escalating situations (as proven by our current pandemic), and yeah, I'm pretty sure it will happen. The only question is how soon.

It's also looking like even if we could do enough about it, we'd have to dedicate almost 100% of our efforts towards it, and basically everyone on the planet are being distracted by petty shit, or even other very important issues, just not as threatening to our existence and society like climate change is (including myself, it's hard to avoid the distractions with our monkey brains). So instead we're doing basically nothing but lip service towards these issues, still, after more than 50 years of warnings by scientists.

So yeah. I'd love to be wrong, but I suspect I won't be, and within the next 10-20 years some unprecedented terrible shit is going to to happen as a result of climate change. It's already happening right now and people are dying from it (wildfires, floods, droughts, heat domes, more intense storms), but I'm betting it's going to get a lot, lot worse.

But hey, in the meantime I'm still working on dumb stuff like designing board games in my free time and not really doing as much as I should be to prepare and/or try to prevent it (tried buying an electric car and there's basically none in the Midwest right now, I am still working from home so at least my emissions are way down, I did try finding a job in green tech and found very few jobs and those that did were terrible about getting back to me).... so yeah, not like it matters all that much that I am aware of the trajectory our planet and society seems to be going in.

Anyway, during the week (not on Fridays, fridays they let dumb shit get posted), it's generally just articles from legit news sources (along with some self posts). Try reading those articles for a while and see if you still think everything is going to be okay.

Also if you do nothing else, watch these videos in their sidebar. You'll get a lot of information from those:

Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc

How to Enjoy the End of the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8

[1]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/seafood-b...