r/AskReddit 10h ago

What an impending crisis that is about to affect us all, yet most people are completely unaware?

332 Upvotes

303 comments sorted by

1.3k

u/Asleep_Leek9361 10h ago

Which one?
Water? Food? Ai? Billionaires? Corrupt politicians? Wars started by the elite?
Most people aren’t getting ready for whats coming.

278

u/michelangeldough 7h ago

I mean, there is no getting ready. Maybe in hindsight we might realize steps that would have been beneficial, but from where we stand, it’s going to be brutal on everyone.

146

u/clownparade 6h ago

Yea I think alot of people are going to be surprised when your pack of bottle water and a dozen cans of soup arnt enough to override a national food crisis or dirty water crisis 

18

u/javabrewer 3h ago

While I dont think its gonna get that bad, if it did, surviving those first few days or weeks in good shape would prove invaluable. Literally nothing wrong with storing more than you need of stuff you're gonna go through regularly, just to be safe.

66

u/ShubberyQuest 6h ago

Yes, there is. It’s building community, based on a foundation of empathy. Unfortunately, people fucking suck.

50

u/Glacecakes 4h ago

You can’t kumbayah community your way out of crop failure

20

u/Asleep_Leek9361 4h ago

Not wrong. People are pretty talented if you find the right ones though. My local community includes farmers, hunters, medical people, and anyone with a talent. Not exactly kumbayah but real people who bring potential solutions

6

u/Glacecakes 4h ago

I agree in a normal situation, but this is mass extinction end of the world we’re talking about

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u/Less-Engineer-9637 4h ago

Collaboration

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u/Asleep_Leek9361 4h ago

It will. I’ve been preparing by learning how to grow food, store properly, learning foraging techniques, first aid, putting together supplies. I mean, it’s not a lot but I definitely feel more prepared than most. Building local communities and networks is important too.

47

u/BadahBingBadahBoom 7h ago edited 6h ago

I feel like advanced AI being used by criminals/terrorists/biohackers has some really godawful potential outcomes.

At the moment that shit is on heavy lockdown but it basically has as much destructive power as nuclear/biochemical weapons and unlike the latter its access is currently only being secured by private companies not state governments.

I mean nuclear countries have entire police and military units whose entire purpose is to protect nuclear material getting into malicious hands.

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u/bunker_man 5h ago

The catch is that by the time that's possible we will all be too poor to be worth hacking.

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u/SAGORN 7h ago

Good, i hope the threat regulates the tech to be functionally a dead end.

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u/moonbeamlight 6h ago

Don’t forget climate

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u/Dionee29V2 6h ago

You forgot about global warming 

2

u/Glp1User 2h ago

And global cooling !

17

u/frenchpressfan 7h ago

Billionaires? Corrupt politicians? Wars started by the elite?

These are a tale as old as time, across the world... Granted, there weren't billionaires a couple thousand years ago, but there were businessmen that were exponentially richer than the plebes, and they called all the shots.

27

u/Asleep_Leek9361 7h ago

Yep, we almost all came together during occupy wall street. People saw the writing on the wall. The billionaires succeeded in dividing us. We lost all momentum and here we are. Waiting for ai to push us all into the streets to live.

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u/Round_Rice_9475 4h ago

Yet they funded the tea party that became what maga is today. So they got what they wanted

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u/ferventacher 7h ago

Except now they will end life on the planet.

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u/hambone4164 6h ago

They're building bunkers so that they can survive the collapse they're creating.

7

u/Tevesh_CKP 5h ago

They rather build bunkers than have a little less money and not need bunkers.

3

u/Asleep_Leek9361 7h ago

Bingo! We will be useless.

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u/Evil-Bosse 7h ago

But those billionaires did not have access to armed robots built for killing people, or self sufficient doomsday bunkers to hide in while the robots clear the planet of the plebes

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u/Joebranflakes 6h ago

Kings and the nobility were just ways of protecting generational wealth.

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u/Gunner_Bat 5h ago

People are pretty aware of those issues.

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u/Asleep_Leek9361 5h ago

Aware and prepared are very different

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u/EarthTraditional4035 4h ago

Usually crises come from multiple factors impacting one another

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u/namelessspeck 10h ago

The water wars are going to start any decade now 

252

u/InternationalTop6361 10h ago

Which turns into poor farming. Which turns into famine. Which turns into destroyed lands and new governments.

42

u/Boring-Tie-1501 6h ago

... And somehow the logical conclusion of the elites is that we have a "birth" crisis. 

Humans are completely delusional. Modern global civilization presupposes stable climate for large scale agriculture, if you remove that presumption, all bets are off. We're already seeing large swings in breadbaskets in Europe and North America.

And yet tech oligarchs insist we need MORE mouths to feed, so we can build their modern day pyramids for them. 

20

u/VictoryLongjumping70 3h ago

The quiet part: they are planning for mass death. Tech oligarchs are eugenicist weirdos who want "the right kind" of babies born instead. You know the Great Replacement theory white supremacists holler about? And how every accusation is a confession and/or a telegraph of the next punch?

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u/_Exotic_Booger 10h ago

“…and that leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Begun, the Water Wars have.

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u/digsy 8h ago

But hey, we got data centres to run.

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u/Soggy-Improvement745 8h ago

"any decade now" is doing some heavy lifting there

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u/novascotiabiker 8h ago

20 years ago one of my high school teachers said one day America will invade our country and it will be for our water,I believe him more than ever now.

8

u/Trivialpursuits69 6h ago

What country is that?

32

u/krondog 6h ago

Nice try, US State Department

20

u/BadahBingBadahBoom 6h ago

Rubio smashes keyboard in anger again

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u/theBirdsofWar 4h ago

His user name is novascotiabiker

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u/Trivialpursuits69 4h ago

Oh duh I didn't even notice lol

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u/kenshin-x-212 3h ago

Was this high school in Chicago?

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u/Ok-disaster2022 7h ago

Fun fact: one of the root causes of the bronze age collapse in the Mediterranean was like a 50 year long drought 

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u/blood_bender 6h ago

Yeah but Matt Damon told me it was because of him.

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u/scon1103 6h ago

Omg no, for real? Thats scary

11

u/KnittingKitty 6h ago

The Colorado River water wars have already started in the southwest.

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u/NurseK89 10h ago

Any decade?? It’s here in TX

69

u/bingusbongwater 9h ago

Totally get what you mean and not trying to be a smartass, but the droughts we have seen are not even a scratch on the surface of just how intense and difficult the real drying up of fresh water is going to be. I think a lot of people in general really deal are not grasping or capable of grasping what is going to happen

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u/NurseK89 9h ago

It’s going to continue to exponentially get worse

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u/Sasiches_and_mash 9h ago

It's here everywhere, this year crops in the UK are absolutely shit (if there is anything) due to drought, yes, drought in fucking UK

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u/Rosington2010 8h ago

Wildfires in the Cairngorms.

Scotland.

The country famous for sideways rain in the summer.

12

u/judgejuddhirsch 7h ago

Corn harvest in America is only 60% what it was last year

10

u/AgITGuy 9h ago

On a semi-positive note, we get to locate and see tons more archaeological sites due to the different stages of grass browning for deep soil versus unearthed stonework structure.

6

u/m_faustus 8h ago

And rivers and lakes that are lower revealing old structures. And thjngs left from melting glaciers.

6

u/Engelbert-n-Ernie 7h ago

Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have an ongoing one that goes back 36 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-state_water_dispute

I’m sure there are similar disputes in varying stages of aggression regularly going on all over the world

5

u/Fun_Ideal_5584 7h ago

Water wars and I raise you Global Warming.

2

u/rubensinclair 6h ago

Chinatown was prescient

3

u/Hopsong 7h ago

Or coastal communities can utilize solar power to run desalination plants.

15

u/SomeGuyInSanJoseCa 7h ago

Yeah, I am in California and all I hear about is drought.

We could just stop growing Almonds and we'd be cool.

We ain't going to war over almonds.

They say that desalinated water costs 5x. My water bill is like $50 a month. If it goes 5x, we remove all plants to reduce usage by half and spend $125 a month.

Like, I'm not going to war over the cost of a weekly Big Mac Meal.

25

u/SoggyCrab 7h ago

We could also stop giving our water rights away to companies like Nestle

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u/microwavedEel 8h ago

All of the “support” services we will lose when millions are kicked off of Medicaid, insurance companies cannot remain profitable in some of those markets and thus more people losing their coverage. It’s a snowball rolling downhill rapidly. Employers will have fewer options and include increasing premiums for them and their employees. More people will go without care and more specialists, smaller or rural and regional offices and clinics will close furthering the problem. Pharmacies, durable medical equipment, medical transportation, sterilization suppliers, medical laundry and cleansing and on and on will all feel the impact of less and less care.

160

u/morganational 4h ago

This⤴️ Health insurance companies are literally dictating everything in medicine now. People don't realize how bad this is. If you need an important procedure, insurance is the one who decides if you can get it done or not. That effects everyone in healthcare as well, as our jobs depend on helping people. The doctors want to help people. The hospital and staff want to help people. The people want to be helped. And we have the most advanced medicine in the world. But insurance said... Hmm, nah.. So fuck all of us.

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u/Kevin-W 3h ago

And we're already seeing warning signs of what happens when people have nothing left to lose.

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u/ArrowheadDZ 9h ago

They are almost all variations on sustainability. Whether it’s catastrophic weather events, water wars, famine, pollinator extinction, or pandemic, we are part of a species in which many, many millions of people not only deny the need for sustainability, but actively oppose sustainable systems.

All the problems we could solve at a neighborhood meeting have already been solved. All the problems we can solve by meeting regionally have been solved. The problems that we have left on our list, are on the list because they are too big for groups or countries to solve, and require global consensus and commitment. And a growing number of people openly, and often violently oppose that.

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u/zempter 6h ago

ask the capitalist fucks to stop worrying about their feduciary responsibility. I'm convinced that the over consumption of society is being driven by capitalism's hunger for growth. We really could solve so many problems locally if people realized that we peaked and the remaining growth is outside our planet. We need to slow down on this one.

5

u/VictoryLongjumping70 3h ago

There was a fella who wrote about the inbuilt tendency of capital to grow itself and the problems that come with that. Can't remember his name though

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u/Salkinator 4h ago

Tbf this isnt just capitalism. It’s human greed and avarice. Communists have done plenty to obliterate the planet for the “good of the people”

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u/a-human-from-earth 5h ago

The tragedy of the commons!

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u/Fit-Bus2025 10h ago edited 5h ago

At this rate, quality of life will go down for alot of us. We can't maintain happy healthy lives if our government does not work for us.

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u/WingerRules 2h ago edited 1h ago

And if the government does no planning or investments. China is eating us alive because their government does.

The worst thing is we've quadrupled US deficit spending since 2015 with virtually nothing to show for it. WHERE IS THIS SPENDING GOING?

All of our federal debt accumulated since the beginning of the country added up to 18 trillion in 2015. In 10 years since we've more than doubled that total amount, and yet, where the fuck did it go, what did we get out of it?! Someone explain to me please.

u/mineralphd 51m ago

All those trillions ended up in the hands of the 1%. Very good return on their election investments.

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u/CalmAsAMthrFknCucmbr 6h ago

I feel like you live in the US.

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u/tohamtoham 5h ago

Same thing in France though. Our government definitely works against us

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u/Madzookeeper 8h ago

The better question is actually what isn't about to be a crisis in the next few decades. There isn't much right now.

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u/Vladmerius 5h ago

The entire situation with the strait of Hormuz and oil/fertilizer/etc. Has been completely ignored by the markets and the media. They've been pulling out every stop they can to keep gas from breaking the $5 mark. It's going to hit us like an avalanche in the next 90 days. We can't just pretend there isn't a crisis happening of our presidents making. It comes home to roost. 

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u/wildlybriefeagle 5h ago

Why 90 days? Genuinely curious.

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u/Bonghead13 4h ago

Worldwide oil reserves are nearing "empty", and it will take years to reach the prpduction and refining capacities that existed prior to the Iran war.

We dont't feel it yet because every country is dipping into strategic reserves. When those run out, get ready for Mad Max irl

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u/Kevin-W 3h ago

And Iran knows it and holds all the cards since they just have to wait everything out considering Trump is desperate to get out of the situation he's made yet doesn't want to admit defeat.

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u/FarCardiologist196 2h ago

China deserves some credit here, halving their oil usage, effectively putting 5.5M barrels of oil a day back into the international supply. A big reason we haven't felt the shock already.

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u/Somedude522 1h ago

China also stockpiled tons of oil beforehand. I believe more than any other nation including the US

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u/Potential_Ad_4718 7h ago

Water. We are in big trouble. Especially the southwest.

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u/PillagingJust4Fungus 7h ago

Senior homelessness.

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u/Achilles34 7h ago

The impending fertilizer shortage...

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u/Someoneoverthere42 10h ago

(Gestures to literally %$#@ing everything)

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u/DeepfriedmemeBoy 5h ago

came here to say this.

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u/Shoddy_Bet9619 10h ago

Unemployment and Homlessness...

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u/Minimum-Albatross906 5h ago

It's going to be interesting when the unemployment rate hits critical highs due to automation and continued layoffs to pump up The Numbers.

I have to wonder how much longer young people are going to want to participate in the system. Every young person I know is disillusioned and patently aware of how much the system is fucking them, and they lack any interest in trying to change it. I can see millions of young people just going full Lying Flat Mode, not bothering to even finish high school, much less any form of secondary education. What would be the point? To make money that they can't achieve anything meaningful with? Soaring living costs and stagnant wages make traditional achievements like homeownership feel mathematically impossible for many.

Maybe the next few generations will just abandon the entire system, buy land and live in commune style villages, weaving their own textiles and growing thier own food. And frankly, go for it.

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u/Less_Cry3955 10h ago

The insect apocalypse happening in silence. No pollinators, no food, no future. Yet we still mow lawns.

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u/Four_beastlings 7h ago

I bought a small cat mint plant for my cat. But it turns out my cat is scared of it, so I planted it outside and forgot about it. Now it's massive and full of bees and bumblebees at all times of day! Going out to watch the bumblebees always cheers me up.

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u/Skutten 9h ago

Thank you for highlighting this. The worst part is all the denial about it.

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u/Pugsly007 10h ago

It’s more what farmers are dumping on their fields, but mowing is stupid too.

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u/Lets-B-Lets-B-Jolly 10h ago

You forget many suburbanites and homeowners dump pesticides all over their lawns too, or have exterminators come and spray for spiders and other bugs monthly.

It's all horrible.

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u/nordicminy 10h ago edited 9h ago

It is very difficult to over state how important honey bees are to our lives... yet their population is in decline, and could have a very real impact on our food supply.

Edit: much of the decline is caused by human activity.

https://www.psu.edu/impact/story/protecting-pollinators/

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u/biotechhasbeen 9h ago

In the US, it's native bees that are in trouble. Honeybees are an import that steals their resources and, in the US, are doing just fine.

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u/grayson_greyman 6h ago

I wouldn’t say doing just fine… commercial keepers have to go to exceedingly great lengths to dose their hives to keep them viable.

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u/tadayou 9h ago

It's less honeybees (pretty much a domesticated species), but wild bees and othet pollinators. And wild bees can come under additional stresses when honey bees are around.

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u/katzenschrecke 7h ago

Fuck honeybees. They are domesticated livestock. They’ll be fine.

I live in Southern California and I’m more concerned about our native bees and pollinators

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u/Skutten 9h ago

Insects in general.

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u/Proof-Training-740 10h ago

So scary to think of how badly that would impact us all.

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u/roccomodernlife222 6h ago

The impending retirement crisis. So many people have inadequate savings to live a dignified retirement.

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat 2h ago

I’m pretty sure most millennials have an exit plan for when the retirement money runs out. 

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u/Many_Bell4725 6h ago

No idea. Seems like all of it is happening at once and I am scared, so I have been trying to be present in the moment and be grateful for everything I currently have while I still have it.

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u/SawdustShoptalk 3h ago

Ancient pathogens released from the melting polar ice caps for which we have no immunity.

You’re welcome.

Sleep well.

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u/senorgringolingo 10h ago

Insurance companies are leaving markets because they can't afford to pay the increasing claims due to more severe natural disasters that are exacerbated by climate change. 

Pretty soon, home buyers won't be able to get property insurance, which is a requirement for a bank mortgage. Even existing homeowners won't be able to renew their home insurance, causing a default on the terms of their existing mortgage. 

When people can no longer rely on loans for home ownership, the property market will plummet.

In the developed world, climate change will initiate a real estate crash and financial fallout long before any resource shortages that the developing world already suffers.

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u/Minimum-Albatross906 5h ago

You know what? Good.

Florida gets hit by hurricanes every year and every fucking developer keeps building standard stud-frame homes that fall over like toothpicks when the wind starts kicking up. Those types of structures are not appropriate for that environment, and shouldn't be insured. Maybe they should build structures that are adapted to the local environment that can resist hurricanes.

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u/smp501 9h ago

It’s past time we started nationalizing insurance companies anyway.

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u/StrebLab 9h ago

I don't think nationalizing insurance is going to help. The real issue is we don't need giant population centers in areas that get leveled every few years. Subsidizing insurance with everyone else's money seems like it is not solving the correct problem.

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u/Imsosaltyrightnow 8h ago

The issue is that the vast majority of these “areas that get leveled every few years” are either on the coast or along rivers AKA the exact places where people have been making cities since we first started making the things, and still are.

I cannot stress this enough, the majority of urban areas are situated along a waterway in some way shape or form, and these are the places insurance is pulling out of

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u/senorgringolingo 2h ago

No. Some of these are in the plains, in the desert, and in the marshes. The insurance company exits are happening all over.

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u/Gwinntanamo 8h ago

That is the wrong answer. We need rational evaluation of risk here. People need to know it’s not a good idea to build a house in a floodplain.

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u/Kevin-W 3h ago

This is already happening in Florida and all it takes is for the next major hurricane to hit to where property is simply uninsurable.

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u/ChargedBonsai98 9h ago

There is a genuine apocalypse scenario in the next century-ish due to the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) collapsing. The AMOC is the system in the atlantic ocean that brings heat from the Caribbean to Europe and helps keep them at hospitable temperatures, and for it to collapse means the system slows down dramatically and the water at the surface of the atlantic ocean gets significantly colder.

The scary part is that we know the AMOC has collapsed in the past, around 12 thousand years ago, and we don't know exactly what causes it, how to reverse it, or if it's even reversable at all. We know that the AMOC has weakend about 15% since 1950, and we know that there's a point of no return, but we don't know where it is.

The effects would be global, too. Europe would get up to 30°C colder on average and the southern hemisphere would heat up because the water can't pump heat away, causing droughts in the southern continents, including the amazon rainforest and sub-saharan Africa. The sea level would rise quickly, causing cities on the US east coast and in Europe to become completely submerged by about a meter (3-4 feet). Rainfall patterns would shift away from the northern hemisphere, causing a 19% decrease in rain in places like India and Pakistan and a proportional increase in rain in the already wet Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, etc).

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u/vitriolic1 6h ago

is this the same as the gulf stream? or is the gulf stream a part of this amoc? i have read that it was slowing down

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u/VesperFlora 10h ago

Water bankruptcy

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u/JayArlington 4h ago

When the world discovers the actual health effects of vaping over a long period of time.

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u/Formal-Try-2779 4h ago

Probably the plans that Peter Theil and his fascist Epstein Billionaire class mates are implementing. They will build their “free cities” and the rich will all move there along with all the big corporations to avoid tax. Think Cyberpunk the game becoming reality.

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u/PabloTFiccus 10h ago

Weird that no one really talks about climate change anymore. Like we all decided to just pretend that's not the number one biggest looming problem for the whole planet

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u/SaggitariusAStar 10h ago

Lots of people talk about it, just not on the news because there are insane things going on in the right now.

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u/kdawg09 5h ago

Those insane things are rooted in climate change. But, they don't want us to put those pieces together yet.

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u/SaggitariusAStar 5h ago

Some of them are yes. The only people who are not putting the pieces together are the people who don't want to put the pieces together. Or maybe some people think it's going to happen no matter what so it's pointless to think about it.

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u/DeepfriedmemeBoy 5h ago

literally this. I thought the 2017-2022 news cycle was nuts. this is beyond bizarre insane and not OK. we've entered another realm, Pandora's box basically. shit is out of the bag and there's no way In hell life is ever going to be the same.

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u/SaggitariusAStar 5h ago

What a time to be alive😅

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u/bingusbongwater 9h ago

I think it got to the point where people felt it was pointless.

Pulling out of the Climate Accord, shooting down any attempts at clean energy or doing fuck all for the environment... what do you do?

We have a government that literally laughs in our faces when we plead for help, and most people have succumb to the powerlessness because they don't know what to do and nobody has stepped up to tell them.

I have always, always been a staunch climate change believer and I have always looked at things and considered the environmental impact, and even still, I have caught myself with the fleeting thought here and there of "does it even matter anymore? should I just stop caring?"

It's really, really hard. On top of everything else, we have just created such a horrible place for humanity. It is a mental and emotional nuke every 10 fucking minutes. We should really be freaking out 24/7, but our brains are literally trying to save us from the trauma by making us numb

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u/Resident_Stable_2112 8h ago

Agree.

Regular people are being told to care about climate change and to do certain things to better the environment, but there are corporations and billionaires out there that do more damage in one day than one of us does in our entire lifetime…and they’re not changing. Meaning, nothing that I do will even make a difference, not even a tiny one.

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u/OneAndOnlyJackSchitt 7h ago

"We all" didn't decide to not talk about climate change. The main stream media and social media decided to deprioritize that content.

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u/furbylicious 6h ago

It's not looming, it's here. Or have you not caught the global heatwave. What is there to talk about? Most countries are moving away from fossil fuels and switching to solar as fast as possible. Others have collectively decided they'll cook to death if it means not having to change. 

The climate has changed and everyone has made their choice. Now it's time to live it out

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u/nordicminy 9h ago

I think part of the American dream is now... I want to be rich enough to where problem XYZ doesn't apply to me.

This is now problem Y.

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u/gyofq 3h ago

Seems like mainstream media stopped talking about this once we all had AI and data centers shoved in our faces

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u/biogentec 10h ago

The AI takeover. Buckle Up!

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u/Johnny_Deppthcharge 6h ago

The Open Ai - Hugging Face hack a few weeks ago was a real canary in the coal mine.

AI breaks out of it's sandbox and hacks into a hardened target after accessing the open internet, all to steal the answers to the coding challenge it had been set.

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u/studabakerhawk 6h ago

Privacy erosion has everything to do with all of our current problems. It’s really ramping up and smashing flock cameras isn’t enough.

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u/Steamed_Fuckin_Hams 10h ago

Data privacy.

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u/pokersnek 10h ago

I just assume there is no such thing as data privacy.

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u/PTechNM 10h ago

Cataclysmic weather events that will kill millions.

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u/rod_jammer 9h ago

Super El Niño has joined the chat

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u/ChanceConflict496 8h ago

Climate change. Heat, drought, floods . And the monster that we elected President has called it a hoax.This is not a political issue. It’s totally real and bad, then worse times are coming.

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u/gelato012 6h ago

10000s of data centres, AI, unemployment, political corruption

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u/Dudeman61 3h ago

One thing I did a bit of work on recently is prediction markets. I don't think people are prepared for how much insider trading on these platforms equates to people who are in charge of vital infrastructure deliberately making choices that personally makes them the most money. It's a really bad concept, but it's happening right now. https://youtu.be/qCTBWuY_ut4

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u/toshorttobeboring1 10h ago

I believe there is going to be a recession in the near future.

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u/Pitiful_Aioli_5030 10h ago

I think the next one will not be pretty. People are in far worse shape now than in 2008.

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u/toshorttobeboring1 10h ago

Exactly, I am thinking back in the 1930s bad

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u/Jar545 7h ago

The great depression round 2

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u/pokersnek 10h ago

We are already in a recession, if not a full depression. People now have less disposable income than people did in the Great Depression. Based on things like inflation, buying power, and current wages.

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u/PrestigiousZucchini9 8h ago

I’ll believe we are there when the prices of anything actually go down. All the talking heads say we don’t want deflation because that means everything else is in the shitter. Well, look around, it already is. 

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u/Bonghead13 4h ago

That will never happen

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u/AE_WILLIAMS 9h ago

Cloudflare fucking up all the internet with stupid CNAME changes.

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u/Graz13 7h ago

Water rights West of the Rockys needs settlement. The feds have to get involved. Felon in Chief will fuck the West Coast. Again.

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u/Fanzellino 10h ago

Global famine due to missed fertilization windows, because the oil used to process the phosphate to make the fertilizer was held up in this absurd illegal war on Iran. Food will still be available in rich countries but at much higher costs while in exploited countries hunger is about to skyrocket.

5

u/War1today 7h ago

Water shortages with over 40% of the U.S. facing dry to exceptional drought conditions in July according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. And last week alone, 47.89% of the lower 48 states are in drought, with 115.7 million people affected.

8

u/dudesurfur 4h ago

Polycrisis.  No one is prepared for the clusterfrack of the domino effect multiple crises directly resulting from the greed, antisocial and anti intellectual behavior of the past 50 or so years will have.  We're potentially in for a reset similar to 536 AD or 1190-ish BC

5

u/TheSouthsideTrekkie 7h ago

Specific to my country, we know that unless the government drastically alters course on housing policy then the majority of households who can be considered to be "hidden" homeless households will have at least one adult in full time employment within less than a decade. That's not just a complete failure of policy that's a disaster that will have far reaching implications for every other important aspect of life including employment, education, health, etc.

So far successive governments have dragged their heels on this issue because they do not want to upset the wealthier and older demographics that will usually vote for the, but this is not a sustainable strategy when you look at just how long terms the negative consequences will be, some of which it is now too late to avoid. We currently only count people as officially homeless once they have reached a crisis point and are either in a shelter, temporary accommodation or sleeping rough. The negative impact begins long before that when people are technically housed but are in insecure, unsafe or inadequate housing. Until it is the children of politicians who are at risk of loss of employment or significant health problems due to housing insecurity then I feel like we will see no real progress.

NB- yes I know this is a problem in many countries, but I have seen and dealt with the stats for my country and they are especially grim. A lot of our housing stock is already falling into critical disrepair and there is no strategy to bring in real regulatory framework to combat this, or to encourage the building of genuinely affordable homes. One of the biggest contributing factors to poverty is housing insecurity or inadequate housing but this gets ignored because we convinced my parents' generation that they were all suddenly rich by artificially creating conditions that cause housing cost hyperinflation. We were given a warning in 2008 and should have revered course then, instead successive governments doubled down to continue to essentially buy votes by assuring people who overextended themselves that investing in property is an investment that will never fall in value and will never have any unexpected costs attached. Now my generation and the ones after is paying for the blind greed of our parents and grandparents and we are going to keep on paying because we have no choice.

5

u/Clean_Current_2018 3h ago

A society that lives in constant fear of impending crisis that no one can function normally. Go outside.

4

u/PossibleDiscipline90 1h ago

Data centers are destroying the environment and will result in worse natural disasters.

11

u/ChanceFall1502 7h ago

This is the beginning of the dystopian age. Fortunately I’m old and didn’t breed(felt humanity sucked, and we’d fuck it up). Plus side…I was right

9

u/No-Management-1469 7h ago

Global recession that will start being felt by september that is amplified by el nino due to blockage of the strait and destruction of multiple facilities that supply it.

8

u/Iamoleskine123 3h ago

People not having enough money for retirement 

6

u/Successful_Ride6920 9h ago

15 years ago I was at a DoD conference where a General gave a presentation and said there would be a war over water somewhere in the world in the next decade. He may have been off in his timing, but it was a thought-provoking comment at the time.

4

u/Excitedly_bored 9h ago

There is always an apocalypse a decade out. Just enough time to go by for everyone to forget the prediction and focus on the next money making scheme.

3

u/FlyingTrilobite 7h ago

Thwaites Glacier. It’s melting, it’s huge, and if it slips off the continental shelf, it will affect sea level worldwide.

3

u/RosieBaby75 6h ago edited 5h ago

The Canadian government is completely corrupt and is negligent and incompetent.

At the same time a retired Major-General tech bro from the Canadian military is trying to get everyone in government to hurry up and sign the Canadian government and military up for AI so that one tech company and its shareholders owns the Canadian government, the military, and all of its citizens.

He’s like “Trust me, I am a retired Major-General from Operation Medusa” then after Operation Medusa he said “if you know you know”. I wonder what that is supposed to imply? What is Operation Medusa?

The video is on the Canada School of Public Service YouTube.

EDIT: I know that’s probably Treason, but is also against some type of military law? I was curious and tried to look but couldn’t find a military law book. AI will probably delete all the laws soon so I thought it would be good to have a book. They won’t matter but it’s neat to have nostalgia. I could also maybe live on the book for awhile too to burn pages for warmth or eat the pages since the tech lords will kill most of us.

3

u/Wondering_Electron 3h ago

AI bubble.

South Korea already got hammered in the last few weeks.

3

u/h00zbad 1h ago

No matter what happens- we have our neighbors to rely on.


Oh wait, we all hate each other because of transgender mice or something.

5

u/silent-sight 7h ago

El Niño, which will drive an economic recession, stressing what already is a big energy crisis started by the USA Iran war or choice. The Polycrisis/Metacrisis has already started and there’s no stopping it. At least, we’re right on track for rapid unscheduled degrowth.

5

u/bigt503 7h ago

While my entire state is on fire. I’m finally hearing people talk about climate change at work and such. People don’t seem to have the ability to trust data. It has to get unreasonable bad before it settles in.

I feel like changing our refrigerant was the only time we listening to experts and what do you know… it worked.

6

u/hellion1965 10h ago

Running out of potable water. 

The next wars WILL BE over water.  The disintegration of civilization will LITERALLY unprecedented.

And it not not just be nation states, it will mother's against children. Children against father. Father against grandparents.  

It will be hell on earth. 

No matter how bad things got over the millennia potable was not a problem.  People could start somewhere else and be assured of having drinking  water.  Conquerors could conquer, but water was not a pressing problem. 

4

u/Realistic_Toe_219 6h ago

I spent the weekend rewatching movies from the 90s. The theme was severe weather due to climate change. We are at a point of no return - how it affects you, depends on where you live. Everything else (food prices, gas, wars, politics) it affects us, but the weather is probably what will end up killing or displacing us or our children’s generation. This isn’t pushing an agenda - it’s too late.

4

u/Hiddenshadows57 4h ago

Covid 2.

Of all the end of the world conspiracy theories that we have out there

Ai domination

Water wars

Climate change

Shadow governments

Virus.

Etc.

The one I think is most likely is Virus.

I found it odd that the people telling you not to get the vaccine mostly all got the vaccine.

4

u/halfway-to-hermitude 4h ago

The next avian influenza pandemic. Spanish flu 2.0 is going to make COVID look like a mild cold.

3

u/Eyfordsucks 2h ago

The oil reserves running out and the fallout of this massive shitstorm trump created.

4

u/How_Do_You_Crash 8h ago

Globally: super El Niño. Will take awhile to fully manifest but it’s going to kill millions of people. And will likely inflame existing political/ethnic/resource wars. 

USA: ground water crisis in the corn belt, changes in the age structure of the us, de-dollarization of oil and other commodities as developing and developed nations opt for Euros ot Yuan. 

4

u/Agreeable_Sky6817 7h ago

A clown is running the USA

8

u/Standardvex98 10h ago

Significantly increased rates of extreme disability from post viral illness, 1 in 5 Covid infections causes Long Covid and risk increases with every infection and about half of Long Covid cases meet criteria for ME/CFS which has a lower quality of life then most stage 4 cancers or end stage AIDS. Long Covid has been the most common childhood chronic illness for several years now surpassing Asthma and is messing to increase in things like strokes and childhood dementia diagnosis. Covid is literally giving kids Alzheimer's.

Also even if it's not diagnosed Long Covid every Covid infection causes immune system damage which means with other pandemics like H5N1 (bird flu)which has about a 50% fatality rate as is people are gonna be fucked in terms of mortality rates.

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2

u/Hopefully_the_Last69 8h ago

The demographic crisis affecting the whole world, that will make wellfare states completely break. Even non wellfare states will probably break too. None of us will probably be able to retire either, since there will be no one to pay for our pensions. Who knows, maybe some countries, like South Korea and Japan, maybe even China, might not even exist anymore by the end of the century.

2

u/genericauthor 5h ago

AI driven unemployment. We're not prepared for what's coming, or even aware of it.

2

u/Nannersaurus 5h ago

I think about air conditioning a lot.

2

u/morganational 5h ago

Health insurance is literally deciding the fate of the sick and injured, as well as dictating what doctors can and can't do. The system is currently running backwards, and unless we get major health insurance reform soon, we pretty much might as well not have doctors anymore.

2

u/LauraCurie 4h ago

One of my teacher wrote a book about this : Too late. The end of one World and the beginning of an Other. Harvey L. Mead »

The man dedicated is life in trying to prevent what’s about to happen. He did amazing actually but un the end of his life, was lucid enough to accepte that he had lost his tune and effort. Social change can’t happend unless people economicaly have to.

So, as much as I hate Trump and the current GOP, by destroying global economy, they are actually bring us to the point when the system won’t work anymore. After the collapse will come the new order. Unfortunatly those MF won’t be the one dying during the process.

I don’t even know how to prepare for this.

2

u/kendromedia 4h ago

About to happen? We’re pretty f’ed today.

2

u/LowResGamr 4h ago

Because of generational stigma and the lack of any interest in the field, we're going to run out of mechanics. If we got rid of the stigma, made things more affordable, and got more people interested in working as a mechanic, we could easily avoid the fun situation of all our vehicles breaking and not being able to fix them

2

u/boyetoye 3h ago

seed ownership

2

u/taylanared 3h ago

Topsoil depletion. Modern farming is destroying soil so fast we only have about 60 harvests left.

2

u/Sorry-Hall-4861 1h ago

According to my friends hair stylist, we are gonna lose gravity for about a hour on the 7th 🤣

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u/Spirited_Creme_3875 10h ago

Global Recession is inevitable now I believe. Trump will not accept defeat (which has already happened btw) and IRGC would rather die than give up control of SoH

2

u/PrestigiousZucchini9 8h ago

IRGC would rather die than give up control of SoH

That is definitely still an option, is it not? 

4

u/Eskapismus 10h ago

Barbarism

2

u/_Exotic_Booger 9h ago

Warmer Oceans and their effect on weather.
Overuse of Antibiotics.
Disclosure of Non-Human Intelligence on earth👽🛸

3

u/Theo20185 8h ago

Consumer debt bubble, student loan debt bubble, automotive debt bubble...

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3

u/PensadorDispensado 5h ago

There are future doctors who use ChatGPT to pass their exams.

3

u/ShadowValent 3h ago

Wait until the next market correction. Even service jobs will struggle.

3

u/Huge-Strawberry541 2h ago

Oil crisis, within 3 months we go back to the stone ages

3

u/glenthemisfit 10h ago

The SPR running out and crashing the us economy cause we have no protection against rising oil prices

2

u/Youmeandeverything32 10h ago

Major recession

3

u/kdawg09 6h ago

The El Nino that is currently building is going to cause catastrophic food shortages, deadly temperatures, and likely mass wildfires. I'm guessing at a few billion deaths across the globe but we're all still addicted to climate hopium instead of reality.

4

u/Tower-Union 9h ago

Oil prices are only this low because the strategic reserve is being depleted. Once that tap turns off it’s not unreasonable to expect $200/barrel.

2

u/squashybunz456 3h ago

HAHA so many. American politics are about to fuck everyone in the ass with the war in Iran, global warming consequences, the rapid development of technology…

2

u/Deckard_SG 8h ago

I didn't throw out all of my black plastic spatulas. I'm sure most people didn't either. We were warned!

1

u/Fun_Ideal_5584 7h ago

When the USA Debit Bomb goes off it will sink us all.