"Cobra" TV series, doomfest.

[adam2]

Worth watching IMHO. A large solar flare damages electrical infrastructure and leads to large scale civil disorder.
Cheerful viewing.

Available on youtube at present https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OVeNitY0g0

[clv101]

I've read and watched a lot of post-apocalypse stuff over the years, most recently John Birmingham's Zero Code Day and Fail State. Frankly, I've had enough of this western focused, unimaginative stuff. I'd be a lot more interested in what *actually* happens during collapse. We don't have to go back hundreds or thousands of years, I'd like to read some good, detailed accounts of what happened in Syria, Iraq, Lybia when the power went out, when the logistics collapsed. These three were highly developed countries in the 1970's forty years later benefits of modernity were lost.... BUT the social response doesn't seem to mirror post-apocalypse fiction.

[PS_RalphW]

Iraq, Syria, Libya. These are all predominantly Muslim countries. It may not be a popular view in some places, but Islamic religion is strong on family loyalty, charity and community and tribal support. Centrally managed socialism went down less well because it failed to overcome nepotism, corruption and tribal prejudice - precisely because these are seen as virtues in the Islamic tradition,

Collapse simply sent these nations back to their previous social control measures. The UK, and especially the US, has much less recent tradition to fall back on. We may not fare so well,

[BritDownUnder]

I liked that series but imagining the same actor who played Francis Begbie as being Prime Minister was hard.
I thought the unions were not portrayed well.

Fully agree that Muslim societies might manage collapse better than Western societies but they also face the same issues as everyone else such as overpopulation, soil degradation and global warming that they did not face when the Caliphate was much stronger. The kneejerk reaction of Sunni Arabs to try to murder anyone who is different, even slightly, to them is a bit worrying though.

[UndercoverElephant]

Iraq, Syria, Libya. These are all predominantly Muslim countries. It may not be a popular view in some places, but Islamic religion is strong on family loyalty, charity and community and tribal support. Centrally managed socialism went down less well because it failed to overcome nepotism, corruption and tribal prejudice - precisely because these are seen as virtues in the Islamic tradition,

Collapse simply sent these nations back to their previous social control measures. The UK, and especially the US, has much less recent tradition to fall back on. We may not fare so well,

There's certainly a different dynamic in play in the western world, and especially in the United States. If you read what is written in places like Reddit's /r/collapse, you see a load of things all mixed together. They struggle to distinguish between the end of US hegemony and the total collapse of civilisation. They are in shock and grief at the realisation that they aren't going to have the chances or the lives their grandparents had, but they also skip straight from there to "everything's going extinct". There's no consideration that once the cheap air travel and chinese electronics are no longer available, there's a much more important game to be had in terms of everyday survival and transformed politics. There's not much room for "Deep Adaptation". Survivalist themes tend to be too focused on surviving in a shack in the woods rather than building a new sort of society.

There's a huge gap here for thinking. For books, TV series, etc... A couple of years from now I hope to be in an almost perfect position to try to write such a book. I've been working on a sort of utopian-apocalyptic novel - an attempt to write a story set in the forseeable future which actually could happen - a sort of "least bad realistically possible outcome". It is really about how people's behaviour is influenced by the ideologies which underly modern civilisation, and trying to imagine what could happen if those ideologies are smashed to pieces by the early stages of collapse.

[kenneal - lagger]

Pre organised armed groups are likely to be the future in many places in the west and in the US that would come down to a three way fight between the military forces, survivalist groups and militias and criminal gangs. They will probably initially each win in their own areas and who prevails long term will depend on their ability to organise food for the population, probably a much depleted population.

In the UK it would be different as we don't have large armed militias and survival groups so it comes down to criminal groups and the military again. In rural areas there might be cooperation between farmers who mostly know their neighbours well, are armed to an extent, and can provide food in exchange for labour. A return of the feudal system in the countryside?

People would also probably coalesce around religious groups, local churches, mosques and temples, as, in the initial stages of a crisis these are places which often offer charity and have a core of organisation at their heart. Those religious groups would also probably work together, especially in urban areas where there has been good contact between the heads of these groups for some time now.

Longer distance cooperation will depend on the extent to which communications systems break down and, if they do breakdown, how quickly alternative modes of communication can be set up. Here the army would be in a god position as they have the ability to communicate independently of any mains or wired system. This communication will be vital in the distribution of any water supplies and surplus food stocks.

I would think that the major problem with any break down in the power supply would be the failure of the water supply and then the sewage disposal system as this will lead to the rapid spread of disease and a decimation of the population, especially in urban areas, as most people would have no idea about the importance of safe sewage disposal and how to clean and disinfect water.

How bad any of these scenarios becomes would depend on the speed of the breakdown and whether TPTB realise what is happening and put in place a system of local organisation with central coordination. I would think that the army have a plan in place for almost any situation.