Originally posted by CmdrZero
Very few here argue about what's to come. It appears to be more a disagreement over the timing of events than the events themselves. So,....
What event would you have to see to reach the conclusion that Armageddon was a real "here and now" event? Lets give the narrow parameter of seven
days or less from event to total global meltdown.
Seriously, what would you have to see happen to get you to that point that you could say to yourself that "it's here"?
As for myself, I've given this a lot of thought and I just can't seem to wrap my brain around it. Every way I slice and dice this I still figure
that there's something I've left out of the equation and it will be the thing I failed to consider that will start the dance. I don't have much
faith in the Webot but I do have faith in the human mind.
What's going to be THE trigger event?
I think that last question of yours is very pertinent
, and like you, I don't have a simple answer. However, I strongly suspect that as we have
such a highly integrated system for money/financial matters, then a major, long-term breakdown of that system would be a huge bale of straw on the
camel's back.
My pay goes straight into my bank account. I don't like this but I have no choice; direct-credit of pay is mandatory where I work and now is not a
good time to go to my employer and complain about it. Far too many people are out of work as it is and I can easily be replaced by someone who won't
complain. So, anyway... If I want cash I have to either go to an ATM and draw some out (for which I get charged a fee) or into the bank branch itself
(for which I get charged a much larger fee as they would rather not have customers taking up their time with such simple transactions that the ATMs
can do).
However, if the computer system were to go down in a big way, all the ATM's would be "out of order" -- meaning that technically there is nothing
wrong with them but they can't actually do what they were designed for, as the thing that controls their actions doesn't work. (Odd concept, that!)
In that case, I couldn't get cash from my bank branch either because their computers would also be down. And also, I wouldn't be able to buy
anything with my plastic cards.
I've had this experience in the short term here when all our bank's ATM's across the country went down for a weekend a few years back when my wife
and I had just started a short vacation and were out in the country. It was no fun for people like us who happened to be away from home, low on fuel,
and with no food supplies handy and almost no cash. In the end we had to make a choice: use our small supply of cash to buy fuel to get home (where we
always have plenty of food stored), or buy food and just stay where we were until things got fixed and we could continue our vacation. As we had no
way of knowing how long this problem would last, we decided to buy the fuel and got ourselves home. I learned a lesson, though. Now we always keep a
fair supply of cash handy -- enough to live on for at least a couple of weeks. In addition, we stockpile long shelf-life food supplies and also keep a
fair store of drinking water.
Now multiply that weekend in duration and geographical extent.
In the event of a major and
long-term failure at international level you'd soon have hundreds of millions of people who couldn't pay their
bills, buy groceries or even buy gas for their cars. Never mind all the truckies who couldn't put diesel in their trucks, and who therefore couldn't
transport any food or fuel supplies -- not even for people who had the cash on hand to buy it. As for the power companies, water-supply agencies and
so on -- well I don't think I need to spell out what would happen if they couldn't continue to operate. If their employees couldn't get to work,
then as the technical failures mounted up, they'd go down as well. Same goes for hospitals. Most get their food deliveries every day. They don't
stockpile reserves. Their medical supplies would eventually run out as well.
Even police and military do not have unlimited reserves of food, fuel and ammunition... So the effects on what is seen as "law and order" would be
drastic.
I won't even go into details about other things we take for granted, like garbage collection, TV, radio and print media news reporting (also often
another form of garbage collection
), internet services, and even weather forecasting. We can imagine the possible effects if none of these are
being provided.
And then there's the farmers who can't buy what they need to run their farms, grow and tend their crops and livestock, transport produce to the
markets and so forth.
That's why I see this inter-connected globalized banking system -- especially the "cashless" electronic debit and credit methodology -- as a major
threat to stability. If it goes down long-term for any reason then the knock-on effects could be quite drastic. Also, factor in the weather: if such a
thing occurs in a northern hemisphere winter then it magnifies the seriousness of the possible consequences.
So, there's my perspective. I don't feel it's necessarily going to happen like that, but we have all seen the effects of the "banking crisis".
Amplify that to some degree and we have the scenario I've outlined above.
Does this mean it has to occur by the end of October? No, not at all. But it's not reasonable to argue that it absolutely
cannot happen around
that time. There is bound to be a seriously bad time sooner or later, maybe starting tomorrow or maybe years from now. In any event it's better to
calmly consider the hows and whys and look for ways to survive.
[edit on 17/10/09 by JustMike]
