If Collapse Is A Process, Then So Is Rebuilding
Something BIG is coming — and we're all feeling it
It’s just past sunset at a five-star off-grid fly fishing lodge where I work as a host. The infinity pool is glowing under soft ambient lights and the group of travelers — a London-based energy consultant, a Berlin hedge fund manager, and a retired couple from Sydney — sips Malbec as they watch the river bend through willows and steppe.
“Honestly, I pay for this. Not the view or even the adventure — but for the escape” sighs the consultant.
He wasn’t the first to say it, and won’t be the last. Because this Patagonian retreat isn’t just about the thrill of wilderness but also a temporary illusion that everything is fine. No phones buzzing with breaking news, no algorithm feeding panic, no collapsing world creeping in through a screen. Just stillness.
“Another bottle?” someone asks, and a waiter materializes before the glass is even empty.
And between bites of lamb and pictures of trout from all over the world, the conversation takes a familiar turn, their voices dipping into an honest tone.
“You all feel it, right?” says the consultant, swirling his wine. “Like… something BIG is coming.”
The hedge fund guy — with that characteristic German seriousness — agrees and sharply adds. “Markets are weird. The system’s strained. Supply chains, inflation, geopolitics… it’s all out of sync.”
The Australian woman, until now choosing silence as a refuge, mutters. “And it’s not just the economy. The planet’s pushing back. The heat waves, the fires, the floods. We’re already living through it.”
Even here, in curated luxury, the tension lingers — like they’re drinking at the edge of a world they no longer fully trust. And maybe they’re right. The feeling isn’t paranoia. It’s recognition.
So, that leads me to some inner reflection over dessert: paying to escape from what?
The thing about escaping reality is that it only works for so long. The world out there still exists, whether they unplug from it or not. The wildfires still rage. The markets still shake. The storms still come. And deep down, everyone at that table knows this isn’t just a rough patch. The foundations are cracking, not from a single event, not an asteroid or a sudden collapse, but a slow-motion unraveling.
The funny thing is, it doesn’t even matter why they think it’s happening. One blames neoliberal authoritarianism. Another thinks runaway climate change is the inevitable endgame. Someone else is convinced our plastic-poisoned brains are short-circuiting civilization. Fine. Great. Whatever. The reasons vary, but the feeling is the same.
The old, predatory narratives of endless growth, infinite progress, tech saving us at the last second are crumbling in real time, and this isn’t some fringe conspiracy.
It’s the new, uncomfortable truth that no one can quite name it, but everyone feels.
That collapse isn’t coming — it’s already here.
The Grinding Process of Collapse
For years, I pictured collapse like a scene from Mad Max — a sudden, violent unraveling of everything. A planet in freefall. Societies fracturing overnight. No way out.
I don’t see it that way anymore.
Not because I think we’ll prevent it — decline is locked in. We’ve already baked in at least 2.5°C of warming, our oceans are hot-tubes laced with microplastic debris, and the geopolitical noose is tightening.
What’s changed is how I see it playing out.
People struggle to imagine life beyond this system because it’s all they’ve ever known. So when they hear it’s falling apart, they assume that means the end. But collapse isn’t binary. It’s not a single apocalyptic moment. It’s a slow, grinding process.
No, we’re not heading for the sudden breakdown doomers fantasize about. But we’re also not gliding toward the sleek, greenwashed utopia Silicon Valley keeps peddling. Just look at the political circus in the U.S., spilling into my own country, Argentina, where our libertarian cosplay president is busy forming a bizarre bromance with Trump and Musk while the country is on fire.
Reality is (even if that seems unfathomable after seeing that) messier. There are infinite ways this decline can play out but one certainty: it won’t be fair. Some places will claw their way into something survivable. Others will spiral — fast and hard. Some communities will hold together. Others will fracture.
And if you’re paying attention, you’ll see it’s already happening. Just not all at once, and not in the same way everywhere, but unevenly, unpredictably, and at different speeds across the world — or do you think South Sudan is experiencing collapse in the same way as Iceland? Of course not.
But it’s everywhere:
In cities where storms hit harder every year, yet real estate prices somehow keep climbing.
In the record heat waves turning farmland to dust — while the world gears up to create five trillionaires within a decade.
In the toxins laced into our food and water, and the governments bailing out Big Oil while pretending they’re solving the crisis.
However, here’s the part no one talks about: there are also lifelines.
Think about this:
Resource depletion is inevitable. Infinite demand isn’t. We’re running out of oil, coal, minerals, topsoil, and water — no debate there. But the idea that GDP must double forever? That the economy must grow infinitely? That’s a scam built on a dead ideology. The parasitic economy driving this destruction is already unsustainable — meaning, quite literally, it cannot be sustained. And that is a good thing.
We’ve been wildly wasteful. With energy, food, water — with everything, like we never believed in limits. But that era is over. Whether by choice or by force, we will have to use resources differently — and we can do it better.
Disasters don’t instantly turn people into violent mobs. The myth of chaos is just that — a myth. More often than not, people help each other. They adapt. They organize. I saw it firsthand when wildfires devoured over 250,000 acres in Patagonia. While politicians postured, neighbors became each other’s safety nets. Sure, the usual opportunists lurked, but solidarity and togetherness outweighed selfishness.
Where you live will shape your fate. The level of awareness (or lack thereof) of your leaders will define your options. Whether your community adapts and cooperates or unravels — that will determine how you experience collapse.
Because either way, the ground beneath us is shifting.
And no one is standing still.
This Won’t Be A Soft Landing
For the wealthy enjoying their Malbec dinners, it could be easy to feel insulated from the fragility of the world around you. They could think that a slowdown in global trade or rising inflation is just a temporary blip. But, as seen over and over from my hosting point of view, that’s not the case — even they are feeling it.
What’s coming is a shift in systems too large to simply adjust to. The change won’t be gentle. It’s more like a slow churn of reality crashing into the comfort you’ve come to expect.
The transition is coming, and it won’t be a soft landing, no matter how expensive the wines you sip. Trade wars. Financial implosions. Resource scarcity. Natural disasters leveling entire regions. The rise of extreme politics feeding off the chaos. All symptoms of a climate and an economy that’s overshot its limits.
So, let’s get specific.
→ Global Trade — Recalibrating Production
Take a moment to think about how much of what you consume every day crosses borders — from your clothes to the phone in your pocket to the exotic fruit in your granola.
Now, let’s go back a few years.
Remember Trump’s first economic circus? That was just a glimpse. His chaotic attempts to pull manufacturing back to the U.S. weren’t about sustainability — they were about nationalism, with no regard for the bigger picture. Yet, in the most self-destructive way possible, it revealed a simple truth: global trade has always been an overstretched system, and we are just starting to acknowledge it.
Think about it. When a single chokepoint like the Suez Canal gets blocked, the world watches in panic. Or when a global pandemic causes supply chains to seize up. Now, imagine these disruptions aren’t rare — they’re the new normal. What happens when extreme weather turns key ports into disasters? When oil shortages make long-distance shipping unfeasible? When geopolitical conflicts transform once-stable trade routes into battlegrounds.
The old mantra — cheap labor, endless shipping, constant production — just won’t work anymore. And countries will have no choice but to rely more on local production — not as a policy decision, but as a hard-nosed survival mechanism.
This won’t mean the end of all trade.
The focus will be on what actually requires international networks, like high-tech goods, pharmaceuticals, and specialized materials. These goods justify the energy cost. Shipping tons of plastic garbage across oceans or outsourcing basic food production to faraway countries? That’s simply absurd. So, that sense of security as you browse Amazon for whatever you want, whenever you want it? Don’t expect that to continue indefinitely.
That’s the system that will collapse first.
And so, the world will be forced towards a new, more localized and, why not, better way of doing things — where resilience, sustainability, and self-sufficiency will matter far more than the next fast-fashion trend or imported gadget.
The future won’t be about isolating countries from the world — it’ll be about recalibrating production. We won’t manufacture everything locally, but we’ll rethink what needs to be, and what’s worth the trade-off.
→ Financial Systems — To Build Something Worth Saving
Take a long look at what’s already happening with inflation, currency depreciation, and collapsing markets. But then I looked around at places like my very country Argentina, Spain, and even Japan. They’ve been through their own financial hell, and yet, life kept moving. People still wake up, eat breakfast, and keep pushing forward.
The markets will tremble. Debt will spiral. Insurance will become a relic. Stagflation will grip economies. And the jet-setters, high-end everything for a while longer, won’t be spared either. Because the real crisis won’t come from markets crashing; it will come from the decay of a system that was never built to last. Global markets have been built on endless borrowing, a fantasy that’s beginning to crumble. Governments are already running out of ways to bail out their collapsing financial institutions.
So, the real question isn’t if this system will break — it’s what you’re going to do about it. Are you still holding on to the illusion that stocks, cryptos, and your retirement savings will be your lifeline? Or are you ready to put your faith in something real?
Invest in local businesses. Pool resources to fund community energy projects. Support food security where you live. Because when the financial dust settles, the real question won’t be how much you’ve accumulated, but whether you built something worth saving.
→ Unemployment — A Better Way to Live
Sitting at that Malbec-fueled dinner, the hedge fund manager worried about markets, the energy consultant felt something big was coming, and the retired Australian couple feared climate disasters. But none of them talked about work — what it means, who does it, and how it will change as the world we know crumbles. Because while collapse is a process, labor isn’t disappearing — it’s being reshaped.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that if the economy shrinks, jobs simply vanish. That unemployment means stagnation. But what if that’s the biggest lie of all?
As global industries stumble, we won’t be sitting around helplessly, waiting for jobs to appear. The world doesn’t need more corporate emails, more meetings, more profit-driven busywork. It needs cities redesigned for people, not cars. It needs rivers cleaned, forests restored, hands in the soil.
And if that sounds idealistic, ask yourself — what’s the alternative? Another decade of selling your time to a job that serves no purpose beyond keeping the machine running? Watching billionaires hoard wealth while the rest of us fight over the scraps?
The truth is, work will change. We will need fewer investment bankers and ad executives and more people growing food, building community energy systems, and maintaining local infrastructure. The way we value labor will shift — because it will have to. And that’s not a disaster. That’s an opportunity.
Because at the end of the day, all we need is a future worth waking up for.
And that’s a better way to live.
→ The End of Oil — Wise Energy Transition
So, let’s say fuel prices triple overnight. Reserves shrink. The era of cheap energy ends. Does society collapse? Do supermarkets go empty? Do cities grind to a halt? No, no and…no. People will adapt — because they’ll have to. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. The industries built on cheap energy will crash, and economies will be forced — kicking and screaming — into the post-fossil fuel era. And those are, again, very good things.
Because here’s what most people miss: we already waste an obscene amount of energy. The idea that we need fossil fuels at their current scale is a myth. We drive when we could walk. We ship food across continents when we could grow it nearby. We burn through resources as if there’s no tomorrow — except tomorrow is here.
Yes, oil plays a role in food production, but that doesn’t mean an instant famine. The real supply shocks will come from climate disasters tearing through infrastructure, not from a lack of crude oil. And if history tells us anything, it’s that humanity can survive without oil. We did it for thousands of years. We can do it again.
The real crisis isn’t running out of oil — it’s the system’s refusal to access and use it wisely. So, transition will be rough, but it won’t be the apocalypse.
→ Climate Change — To Plan Ahead
The science is clear. We’re witnessing unprecedented warming, and Hansen’s latest research confirms what many feared: not only are we changing the planet, but the pace is accelerating.
And this isn’t an abstract problem. It’s personal. It’s families being displaced by rising seas and failing infrastructure. It’s entire communities forced to abandon their homes because of fires, floods, and droughts. It’s up to a billion people that could die this century due to climate-related disasters — 26 times the death toll of World War II.
One in three families losing someone. Your family. My family. Their family.
But here’s the thing — humans are remarkably adaptable. We’re the ultimate survivors. We can eat almost anything, live almost anywhere, and most importantly, we can plan ahead.
Take our food system. Right now, it’s hemorrhaging waste. Perfect vegetables trashed for being “ugly.” Grains lost in transit. Meat rotting before it reaches shelves. Your leftovers from last night joining the mountains of garbage. UNEP’s 2024 Food Waste Index shows we’re throwing away 19% of our food — 1.05 billion tonnes annually. Add the 13% lost in supply chains, and we’re wasting enough to feed two billion people, more than double the number of undernourished people worldwide.
So when climate shocks hit food supplies — and they will — we already know the solution: waste less, grow smarter, adapt faster. But that should be easy: we already waste more than we need. We all should be more conscious about how we handle our meals.
And water? Forget oil. Forget even food. Water is the real puzzle of our century.
We treat water like it’s infinite, yet 90% of it is consumed by industry and agriculture. The solutions aren’t science fiction. Smarter irrigation. Drought-resistant crops. Large-scale water recycling. We have the technology — we just haven’t been desperate enough to use it at scale.
But we will be.
If Collapse Is A Process, Then So Is Rebuilding
The world we’ve built is a glass box with golden keys — luxurious, fragile, and designed for the few. For over a century, humanity has engineered comfort on a scale so vast it numbed us to the cost.
Today, hyper-individualism, entitlement, and (self)destructive narcissism are not just encouraged but rewarded. Cheap energy gifted us lifespans our ancestors couldn’t imagine, global supply chains that turned indulgence into routine, and cities that glow like artificial constellations. And we were taught to see ourselves as separate — separate from each other, from nature, from the consequences of our actions.
But none of it was free.
We’re not just trapped by this predatory system in destructive habits — we’re addicted to them. Every morning we wake up to smartphones built with conflict minerals. We scroll through social media algorithms designed to fragment our attention and polarize our views. We drive fossil-fuel powered cars to jobs that often do more harm than good.
The system isn’t just broken — it’s breaking us. But what if our collective “assholeism” isn’t a moral failing, but a symptom of a deeper disease?
What if recognizing our shared brokenness, that something we are all feeling, is actually the first step toward healing, toward the difficult work of decluttering our way out of the mess we’ve created?
The impulse to change is easy. The reality of it, of unlearning what modernity has wired us into, well, that’s another story.
But limits are not the end. They are a reckoning. A forced re-evaluation of what we value, of what we call progress.
The systems that fail will be the ones that refuse to adapt. The ones that survive will be those built on resilience, on interdependence, on the recognition that we are not separate from each other or from the planet that sustains us.
If collapse is a process, then so is rebuilding. A process of unlearning, of rethinking work, energy, and value — not as something to hoard, but as something to sustain.
We can’t stop what’s coming. But we can decide how we meet it.
So be loud.
Yes - Glad to see others understand this. "Disasters don’t instantly turn people into violent mobs. The myth of chaos is just that — a myth. More often than not, people help each other. They adapt. They organize. I saw it firsthand when wildfires devoured over 250,000 acres in Patagonia. While politicians postured, neighbors became each other’s safety nets. Sure, the usual opportunists lurked, but solidarity and togetherness outweighed selfishness."
This is an excellent update but, as noted in comments, unsupportable population cannot be ignored. These are hyper problems that are entangled in nonlinear complexity. Too many countervailing variables.
Our archaic political processes are now almost always backward worsening a very bad situation; e.g., pushing to increase population to maintain the workforce and production growth.
And you are using the old time scale. I think the faster and worse results are now most likely. That means tipping points to scattered chaos in the next five years with two billion + deaths (humans alone) by 2040. This will produce major ungoverned areas, primarily in equatorial regions but also in some unlucky temperate areas.
You are thoughtfully correct but the devil is in the details.