Collapse of Industrial Civilization in the 21st Century

[Myriad]

How sound or unsound is the reasoning and evidence that industrial civilization is heading for collapse during the 21st century? What should a skeptic conclude?

To start out, I'll define "collapse" as a significant (say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita, regardless of the time scale over which it happens (e.g. it could be sustained economic contraction, the opposite of economic growth, over many years; or a sudden calamity, or anything in between), and regardless of its causes or consequences. However, the scenario I'm most interested in, because it seems the most plausible, is of a slow collapse caused by resource limitations, especially energy resource limitations, and irreversible due to population pressure. That is to say, the aftermath of a population overshoot that's already put us above any sustainable level.

I listed the major elements of that scenario on another thread, in this post. As that post is in the members-only area, but contains no content unsuitable for the public discussion areas, I'll reproduce it in the next post.

The alternative scenarios to eventual (slow or fast) collapse appear to be the following:

- indefinite continued growth
- reaching (now or after further growth) an indefinitely sustainable equilibrium at at least the present population
- a future gradual population contraction to a sustainable equilibrium that occurs without collapse
- apocalypse (global nuclear war, meteor impact, solar mass ejection, nearby supernova, supervolcano, superflu, or other event that suddenly causes a radical population decrease)
- singularity (an event or change that makes any comparison with the present impossible, such as being invited to join the Federation of Planets, the Rapture, or uploading our consciousnesses into computers)
- delayed collapse; that is, continued growth or non-sustainable equilibrium through the 21st century but collapse sometime after

I find it interesting that almost no one on any side of any discussion about the future pays any attention to that last possibility. If I'm not mistaken, that suggests that even though predictions of what's going to happen in the 21st century tend to be polarized between doomers and optimists, the perception that the 21st century is indeed a critical time in the history of our species is nearly universally agreed upon.

At the same time, the idea that industrial civilization will collapse eventually is also generally well accepted. For example, the Long Now Foundation assumed from the start, in their project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years, that it will have to be able to survive periods of abandonment or barbarism. They've continued to assume that in their other projects, and to suggest that cycles of collapse and recovery are likely elements of a long-term view of future history. They don't usually get tagged as doomers for this, but as realists.

From what I've seen, the evidence is not clear enough, and the dynamics too complex, to conclude with certainty that a collapse in the 21st century is inevitable, but that it's at least as likely as not. In particular, I find each of the alternative possibilities, that I listed above, individually less plausible.

From bits and pieces of previous threads over the years, I've gotten the impression that some people here agree with that assessment at least in part. Of course, others do not, sometimes because they expect technological advances to solve the problems. What do you think, and why?

 

[Myriad]

Here are the main elements and claims that comprise the "slow collapse" scenario, from the thread in Community (spoilered for those who have already read it).

What is happening/will happen?

- The prospect in the offing is not a sudden catastrophe, but a slow collapse of industrial civilization over the course of decades.

- This process is reasonably well described in books such as Kunstler's The Long Emergency, Greer's The Long Descent, and Orlov's The Five Stages of Collapse.

- Slow collapses involve intermittent crises, between which things get "patched together" at a somewhat lower level of functionality. The crises are fractally distributed in time, location, extent, and severity, producing an irregular stair-step "descent."

- The longer-term trends in slow collapse, that define descent, are decreasing population, fractioning of large polities into smaller regional groups, decreasing energy use, and decreasing complexity of society including of government systems and technology.

- The fall of the Roman Empire is the best-known of many historical examples of slow collapses.

- The fall of the Soviet Union is an example of a single "crisis" event. The population of Russia declined (due to mortality, low birth rates, and emigration), some regions broke away, and a new less complex government eventually patched things together.

-- Similar events are likely to happen to the U.S. as the descent widens and deepens.

- The Club of Rome's predictions in "Limits to Growth" have been consistent with subsequent trends for forty years and are largely accurate.

- The collapse can also be understood in basic Malthusian terms: an organism that stumbled upon an accumulation of an exploitable resource, used it to overrun its normal environmental limits, and faces the inevitable consequences of that once the resource is depleted. The industrial and green revolutions were only temporary reprieves, because they depend on finite fossil fuel resources.

- The slow collapse is already underway.

-- Debt crises in Europe, the U.S. working class turning into an underclass, chronic U.S. budget deficits and foreign debt, neglected infrastructure, and political focus on distractions are all symptoms of early stages of collapse (and are also seen in historical analogues).

-- Just as there's a tendency to see every local weather anomaly as a symptom of global climate change, there's a tendency to see every instance of declining quality or higher costs (of foods, education, manufactured goods, insurance, air travel, job benefits, medical care, etc.) as a symptom of early stages of collapse.

-- The end of steady economic growth means that investment money seeking profit tends to be driven into speculative bubbles -- most recently the real estate bubble that popped in 2008 and the present ongoing fracking bubble.

Why does collapse happen and what can be done to stop it?

- The cause of the slow collapse is decreased production per capita due to increased costs of exploiting the remaining available resources. This in turn is caused by resource depletion and high population.

- Resource depletion must be understood in terms of costs of extraction and use of the remaining deposits, not just how much of the resource exists. It doesn't matter how much oil is in a shale formation, for instance, if it takes more energy to get the oil out than you get from burning the oil.

- Slow collapse cannot be arrested or reversed given the current state of the world. Awareness of the process doesn't help. There is no "solution."

- There was a chance, decades ago, to work toward a sustainable equilibrium by embracing conservation, environmentalism, and appropriate technology, which could have avoided reaching a collapse-inevitable state. That chance was squandered starting in the 1980s, when Western culture and/or governments chose to encourage uninhibited growth and consumption instead.

- Governments, lacking any real solutions, have been pursuing policies of "kicking the can down the road" (such as borrowing and perpetual "stimulus" payments) trying to keep "business as usual" going for as long as possible. A pluralistic government trying to address the problem head-on would not be able to stay in power.

- Sufficiently massive build-outs of nuclear and/or alternative power sources cannot be funded in tight (let alone crisis) times, and cannot be operated at a net profit, and so cannot solve the problem. Such a build-out is more feasible sooner than later, and it's not being undertaken at anywhere near the necessary scale now, so it will not happen.

- Increased cost of resources drives efforts to increase efficiency. But increasing efficiency has a side effect: it tends to decrease resilience, leaving the more efficient system more vulnerable to shocks. For example, many "just in time" inventory systems were disrupted by the Tōhoku (Fukushima) tsunami in 2011.

- Though the greed of the elites or the "one percent" aggravates some symptoms of collapse (e.g. low wages, increased work to maintain the same standard of living), it's not the underlying cause. Overthrowing the oligarchy, though (history shows) is likely to happen at times along the road, does not reverse the process.

So, what can anyone do?

- Since prevention is impossible, the slow-collapse doomers focus on "mitigation" of the effects of collapse, at a personal, family, and community level. Such measures include:

-- Being resilient, that is, able to weather crises, by being out of debt, acquiring useful skills, and being involved in your community.

-- Living beneath your means, putting the money saved into debt reduction, skills acquisition, community building, and personal "infrastructure" (e.g. durable tools) instead of consumption.

-- Considering likely future crises when making major life decisions e.g. where to live, what education to acquire, and what investments to make.
--- Move out of southern California or Las Vegas.
--- Don't take on student loan debt, unless perhaps studying something of guaranteed intrinsic value, like medicine.

-- Seeking means of personal fulfillment that don't require an excess of possessions, stimulation, or energy use.
--- Disconnect from mass media that bombards you with the opposite message; that is, turn off (or if necessary get rid of) the TV.

- Many of these mitigation measures amount to personally "collapsing" by choice rather than waiting until forced to do so.

So, when is the giant crash coming?

- Predictions of rapid collapse due to a single global economic crash (which were central to some Peak Oil predictions, and also adopted by some "preppers," gold bugs, etc.) are unrealistic because:

-- Nothing of real intrinsic value actually goes away in an economic crash.

-- Historically, governments have been able and willing to take measures, extreme if necessary, to re-establish essential production and commerce after an economic crash. They will not sit idly by while people starve in the cities and crops rot in the field for lack of e.g. credit to buy fuel for harvesters and trucks.

- Apocalyptic beliefs of a sudden "end of the world as we know it" -- whether from nuclear war, "near-term extinction" from runaway climate change, the Rapture, zombies, a global crash, or whatever, are the flip side of the idea that we can keep growing and maintain "BAU" (business as usual) forever. Both render any personal actions unnecessary.

-- Our present-day culture seems to oscillate frantically between the two extreme prospects, boundless growth or apocalypse, as if deliberately avoiding any of the messier scenarios in between.

-- This makes slow collapse difficult for most people to imagine, discuss, or accept.

- One useful benchmark for how fast slow-collapse doomers think things will get worse is to set a date for the peak of world population. Current slow-collapse-doomer consensus puts that at around 2035 to 2065. Note that by the time the population peaks, conditions must already be dire, to force the birth and death rates into equality (which the world wars and all the other upheavals and genocides of the 20th century never did).

Where does this lead in the long run?

- Into a dark age, with a much reduced population, much lower energy use and complexity, and the loss of at least some technologies.

- Life expectancies will decrease due to (some combination of) violence, reduced access to advanced medical care, harder work conditions, more frequent childbirth, and less reliable food supply.

- Climate change is something of a wild card in all this. It might contribute many of the crises that nudge a slow collapse along, and it might also make the ensuing dark age more "interesting."

- The dark age does not necessarily regress to the level of previous historical dark ages. Historically, a sort of baseline progress has occurred, due to technologies and intellectual tools that are not lost in collapses.

- So if there's something you particularly cherish and want to see preserved, do what you can yourself to preserve it. Learn how to do it (preferably, how to do it with less) and teach others.

 

[Mark6]

- apocalypse (global nuclear war, meteor impact, solar mass ejection, nearby supernova, supervolcano, superflu, or other event that suddenly causes a radical population decrease)

Note that radical population decrease does not necessarily mean collapse of industrial civilization, even with Myriad's rather generous definition of "collapse" -- 50% or greater decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita. In the aftermath of Black Death economic productivity per capita in Europe went up, not down.

 

[Dinwar]

Mark6 brings up a valid point. While economics improved, society underwent some pretty radical changes--it was the collaps of that civilization, and the institution of a new one.

The same can be said about the fall of Rome. It was a slow, gradual collaps--and as various parts of it stopped being Roman, new social systems took over.

There's a parallel in paleontology: mass extinctions. You can either kill most things off suddenly (mass die-offs, as I put it), or you can rapidly replace the existing things with new things (mass turn-overs, as I put it; the terms are mine, far as I can tell, but the concept isn't unique to me by any stretch). Similarly, a societal collaps can be a destructive collaps, such as the fall of Easter Island, or a shift to a new society, such as the fall of Rome.

All that said, I believe that if history teaches us anything it's that we suck at predicting the future. I don't think estimate of what will happen in the future have any more credibility than Tarot cards. There are simply too many factors involved, and too many unknown unknowns. We don't know what technological innovations are coming in the next decades, much less centuries, and without knowing that we can't predict what society will be like. The internet has created MASSIVE shifts in society, shifts we're still struggling to figure out--it very well could be considered a collaps of the previous society, and the start of a new one. Fifty years ago no one would have considered the posibility, or at least the full implications of it.

 

[Mark6]

The internet has created MASSIVE shifts in society, shifts we're still struggling to figure out--it very well could be considered a collaps of the previous society, and the start of a new one. Fifty years ago no one would have considered the posibility, or at least the full implications of it.

Not directly related to the Internet, but consider how this prediction would have sounded in 1964: "In 50 years Russia will threaten to invade Ukraine"

 

[Myriad]

Note that radical population decrease does not necessarily mean collapse of industrial civilization, even with Myriad's rather generous definition of "collapse" -- 50% or greater decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita. In the aftermath of Black Death economic productivity per capita in Europe went up, not down.

Agreed. That's why I tried to define things to make a clear distinction between apocalyptic scenarios and collapse scenarios.

At the Age of Limits conference I recently attended, one speaker (Greer) acknowledged that a major non-infrastructure-destroying disaster/minor apocalypse, such as a 50% lethal global pandemic, could lead to a better future than a slow collapse, because fast catastrophes are easier to recover from (because the driving force of population pressure is relieved). The population declines less in the long run, and not as much is lost.

Of course, creating such a disaster artificially would require oh, say, some virologists and a state of the art genetics lab. Hardly worth worrying about... Or should we worry about it not happening?

One other caveat: in such a scenario, the positive "aftermath" might take a few decades to kick in. If you survive, expect some disruption in the meantime. Being prepared for a slow collapse scenario would probably still be helpful.

 

[smartcooky]

e

How sound or unsound is the reasoning and evidence that industrial civilization is heading for collapse during the 21st century? What should a skeptic conclude?

To start out, I'll define "collapse" as a significant (say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita, regardless of the time scale over which it happens (e.g. it could be sustained economic contraction, the opposite of economic growth, over many years; or a sudden calamity, or anything in between), and regardless of its causes or consequences. However, the scenario I'm most interested in, because it seems the most plausible, is of a slow collapse caused by resource limitations, especially energy resource limitations, and irreversible due to population pressure. That is to say, the aftermath of a population overshoot that's already put us above any sustainable level.

I listed the major elements of that scenario on another thread, in this post. As that post is in the members-only area, but contains no content unsuitable for the public discussion areas, I'll reproduce it in the next post.

The alternative scenarios to eventual (slow or fast) collapse appear to be the following:

- indefinite continued growth
- reaching (now or after further growth) an indefinitely sustainable equilibrium at at least the present population
- a future gradual population contraction to a sustainable equilibrium that occurs without collapse
- apocalypse (global nuclear war, meteor impact, solar mass ejection, nearby supernova, supervolcano, superflu, or other event that suddenly causes a radical population decrease)
- singularity (an event or change that makes any comparison with the present impossible, such as being invited to join the Federation of Planets, the Rapture, or uploading our consciousnesses into computers)
- delayed collapse; that is, continued growth or non-sustainable equilibrium through the 21st century but collapse sometime after

I find it interesting that almost no one on any side of any discussion about the future pays any attention to that last possibility. If I'm not mistaken, that suggests that even though predictions of what's going to happen in the 21st century tend to be polarized between doomers and optimists, the perception that the 21st century is indeed a critical time in the history of our species is nearly universally agreed upon.

At the same time, the idea that industrial civilization will collapse eventually is also generally well accepted. For example, the Long Now Foundation assumed from the start, in their project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years, that it will have to be able to survive periods of abandonment or barbarism. They've continued to assume that in their other projects, and to suggest that cycles of collapse and recovery are likely elements of a long-term view of future history. They don't usually get tagged as doomers for this, but as realists.

From what I've seen, the evidence is not clear enough, and the dynamics too complex, to conclude with certainty that a collapse in the 21st century is inevitable, but that it's at least as likely as not. In particular, I find each of the alternative possibilities, that I listed above, individually less plausible.

From bits and pieces of previous threads over the years, I've gotten the impression that some people here agree with that assessment at least in part. Of course, others do not, sometimes because they expect technological advances to solve the problems. What do you think, and why?

I am surprised not to see Hari Seldon's name mentioned somewhere in this report!

 

[Earthborn]

To start out, I'll define "collapse" as a significant (say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita,

I think this is a rather strange definition of "collapse". What if 50% more people stop mindlessly buying stuff they don't need, live within their means and decide to work less and/or retire early? Is that "collapse" ? You might as well call it "reaching Utopia".

With current exponential economic growth, we'll get to an economic level where a 50% decrease in productivity will just mean returning to 2014 levels. Is returning to a standard of living comparable to today (with hopefully a bit fairer distribution) such a bad thing that it needs to be described in apocalyptic terms as "Collapse of Industrial Civilisation" ?

The way I see it, sometime in the 21st century we're going to have to decrease economic productivity by 50% or more to avoid collapse.

 

[Myriad]

The same can be said about the fall of Rome. It was a slow, gradual collaps--and as various parts of it stopped being Roman, new social systems took over.

Yes, new social systems take over for the old. Extinction isn't the scenario.

But, in Italy and western Europe after the fall of the western Empire, the population decreased by about 95%. Literacy plummeted, and literature nearly vanished (hence, a "dark age" -- a term invented by historians to describe periods of time from which very little written information emerges). Technology regressed to the point where, by the time the dark age was ending a few hundred years later, the Roman ruins were said, by the people who scavenged them, to be the work of an ancient race of giants. The Greek learning that the Romans had inherited had to be recovered from the Middle East. A change in social systems can be pretty extreme, from the ground.

I'll address your comments about complexity and unpredictability -- that's the rub, ain't it? -- soon but I have to be away for a few hours.

 

[Soapy Sam]

"Current exponential economic growth"?
Where are you living at the moment, Earthborn?

Look- You put 10 billion apes on the same planet, somebody is going to get hurt.
Your investments may go down as well as up.
Terms and conditions apply.

In short- we have no idea.
Local collapse is omnipresent, to judge by all the Monty Python Yorkshiremen in the world. Everything used to be better. Back in the Golden Age. When we were young.

I can't see a global collapse in the next century. We need to get our population under control, but if we do that, and keep global trade routes open, it would take a dinosaur killer or a solar flare to drop the whole world back to the Iron Age.

Local collapses, yes. The western democracies get no free ticket to future rule.
I've said it before though - I don't care a damn if the first woman on the Moon is Chinese, so long as there is a first woman on the Moon. And a first kid.

 

[Myriad]

I am surprised not to see Hari Seldon's name mentioned somewhere in this report!

Pshaw! If I were taking after Hari Seldon, I'd be working on a project to disseminate copies of some sort of encyclopedia...

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm not sure if I'd define a reduction in GDP per capita as a civilization collapse. In the USA for example, the PPP GDP per capita (source: http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/gdp_per_capita_(ppp).html which in turn gets it from the IMF, but I'm too lazy to search the IMF site too) was about 46.8k in 2010 and about 23.2k in 1990.

But let's even get more aggressive with the doomsday scenario. Factor of two? Pssh. Let's go double or bust: a factor of four. Well... a reduction in PPP GDP per capita by a whole whopping factor of FOUR, would put you back in 1980.

Even a reduction in wages by the same factor of 4, would probably put you in the 70's, not in any place where society and civilizations collapse.

So, you know, WTH? At which point did doomsday scenarios get as lame as 'OMG, we'd have the purchasing power of 1990'?

Especially since in realistic terms, we really would be back to the 90's. You'd have a bunch of jobs shifted to industry, and a bit less stuff like pizza places and money spent on advertising.

Way back, civilization collapse meant stuff like being overrun by the barbarians and taken into slavery. Now the big scare is that you'd have to wait more than half an hour on a pizza, and might have to do without a TV in the kitchen too? THAT's when people now see as the breaking point of a civilization?

I think it just shows how pampered we've become...

 

[macdoc]

(say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita,

You hit a very difficult area as current economic metrics suck. Is cleaner water and air "economic productivity".
The world is transitioning from frontier expansion economics metrics which do not take into account sustainable factors or full accounting of externalities like say coal burning's cost to the biome and human health ( tho it's starting ).

Until you can come up with a set of measurements that are meaningful now and then.....it's very difficult to discuss.

If you take fishing as an example.

A 200 lb tuna in 2100 may be worth 1,000s of times ( in adjusted dollars ) what one is now which is worth dozens of times what it was 10 years ago.

If you are catching millions of dollars worth of tuna....is each case - you may have the same dollar amount of "economic activity" but a totally different frame of reference of value.
But 200 lb tuna could be extinct, super rare or thanks to breeding or fish farming....used as dog food.

If you take computers and high tech entertainment....the "economic value" has plummeted even as numbers and feature sets have skyrocketed.

Without a useful metric....this sort of discussion becomes difficult if not impossible.

•••

I've give you an example of the kind of disruption we can expect even in the near term.

Clothing people generates an enormous amount of activity right now...fibres, fabrics, fashions....
But coming soon is 3d printed clothing and soon after that the recycle bin in your home that instead of washing puts the clothing for that week back to components and readies that material for next week's printing.
http://3dprintingindustry.com/fashion/

Now take it further and apply it to houses....a Chinese company printed 10 houses in 24 hours....

http://mashable.com/2014/04/28/3d-printing-houses-china/

Solar power is almost too cheap to measure now - batteries are just about to get a jolt from ....wait for it...aluminum smelters...

Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
CBC.ca ‎- 1 day ago
That's theoretically possible with a special kind of battery being ... to take a car 3,000 kilometres with 100 kilograms of aluminum-air batteries.

I don't think anyone can even begin to approach 86 years out framed into todays silly and already outdated metrics.

The communist town in Spain builds one home every week of local materials with shared labour and each family waits it's turn to get into one.
With no loans and no money changing hands that home and town barely registers on any current metric as each home carries no debt.

Yet the well being of each family and by extropolation the town has increased. I think even a few decades out decentralization and a great deal of self sufficiency will be in play that will be next to impossible to measure under current broad stroke/frontier thinking that simply cannot account for quality changes and more from less.

10,000 phones in 1950
10,000 smart phones in 2015

trying extrapolating what the implications of 10,000 smarter phones will be in 2050...
Replacing most medical devices, thought controlled, implanted, ..oh wait ...that's next decade

Peak oil was a big risk 5 years ago...that has just about been eliminated.
So what are the barriers???

Religious memes perhaps the worst. Even a massive epidemic would be useful.

 

[a_unique_person]

"Current exponential economic growth"?
Where are you living at the moment, Earthborn?

Look- You put 10 billion apes on the same planet, somebody is going to get hurt.
Your investments may go down as well as up.
Terms and conditions apply.

In short- we have no idea.
Local collapse is omnipresent, to judge by all the Monty Python Yorkshiremen in the world. Everything used to be better. Back in the Golden Age. When we were young.

The Yorkshiremen were arguing about how bad it was when they were young.

 

[macdoc]

Note that radical population decrease does not necessarily mean collapse of industrial civilization, even with Myriad's rather generous definition of "collapse" -- 50% or greater decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita. In the aftermath of Black Death economic productivity per capita in Europe went up, not down.

Japan is expected to get to about 50% of it's current population around 2060 or so yet it's already existing wealth then concentrates into fewer citizens and the natural wealth of the nation's environments will have increased with re-wilding and cleaner technologies.

Another issue is taking into account outcomes...

Cuba and Domican Republic are similar in population and regions. Dominican has twice the per capita gdp yet does not do as well in many of the human welfare stats from the GINI co-efficients - longevity, child survival, literacy, general health as Cuba does with its technically smaller economy.

 

[macdoc]

indefinite continued growth

this is foggy. We can right now transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress anywhere in the world there is a fibre cable in seconds.
Is there a limit to growth of knowledge, digitized entertainment. Look at the impact of Google, Netflix, almost any and all communication technology.
If we get the same transformation in energy and raw materials to finished product and back to raw materials.....then what are the limits on what our brains can contain.

The planet is surely big enough to support a large sustainable population. WHy do we need to postulate a collapse.

 

[Brian-M]

How sound or unsound is the reasoning and evidence that industrial civilization is heading for collapse during the 21st century? What should a skeptic conclude?

That there is insufficient evidence to support this.

To start out, I'll define "collapse" as a significant (say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita,

I'd say that there's a major flaw in your definition. That flaw being that you've failed to consider that there are vast numbers of people living in societies that are not industrialized and never have been.

If the populations in non-industrialized societies were to increase, then we could have an industrial "collapse" by your definition without industrial societies being affected in any way.

Another flaw is that you don't specify what the 50% decrease is being measured against. A 50% decrease from what?

How about we re-word your definition to remove these flaws? Something like...

Global Industrial collapse: The point at which annual per-capita economic productivity in industrialized societies falls below 50% of peak annual per-capita economic productivity in industrialized societies.

But even this definition has a major hole in it. Exactly how do you define "economic productivity"?

For example, isn't a person who gives massages for a living also contributing to per-capita economic productivity? But their contribution to economic productivity is completely unrelated to industry.

Shouldn't the measure of whether or not industrial civilization is collapsing be a measure of industrial production, not economic productivity?

 

[BenBurch]

Because we have failed to open the system, we will suffer what happens to creatures expanding without bound in a closed system.

It will not be pleasant.

 

[Loss Leader]

What's supposed to collapse exactly? "Civilization" isn't going anywhere, though some forms of it will wax and wane. I would bet on new and/or more efficient energy sources pushing the production curve and making decent living more affordable indefinitely.

 

[Brian-M]

Not directly related to the Internet, but consider how this prediction would have sounded in 1964: "In 50 years Russia will threaten to invade Ukraine"

They'd be thinking: "My God! That could destabilize the USSR!"