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How many times they said world ends but did it happen ? only ways that can end the world ( as far as i can see ) is a Climate change or maybe a Asteroid
How many times they said world ends but did it happen ? only ways that can end the world ( as far as i can see ) is a Climate change or maybe a Asteroid
This is why I said the first thing we need to establish is what qualifies as: "The end?"
Many people do not understand the degree of our own success and prosperity, today. Much of the planet's population in first and second world nations consume food regardless of seasons. Prices may shift based on season - watermelon is pretty darn expensive in the winter, but it's available. Tomatoes are available year round, various fruits, berries, etc - all of it available fresh and frozen no matter what season of the year you are in.
This has all been made possible by a massive global transportation network that can deliver food all over the world by the thousands of tons. From the global communication network that makes organizing these distribution networks to the steel foundries that turn out the equipment to transport it and even to the sciences of farming that have boosted yields to even greater levels - all of it is a testament to what society has achieved.
Contrast this to how most people lived just 80 years ago - yesterday in generational terms. The only time you really ate fresh produce was when the first crop harvests began in mid June (speaking mostly to America, here - other regions had their own cycles). Harsh weather could delay that or completely wipe it out. Some crops mature faster than others, so getting a wide spread of fresh produce often didn't happen until later in the season when staggered planting strategies could bring various crops into harvest at the same time. The final harvests were conducted in October and the race was on to can and preserve as much food before it spoiled as possible.
In the U.S. - the harvest festival that merged with the celebration of the shift into winter with 'death' (Halloween) was largely brought about to consume extra perishables that would not be successfully preserved. From this point on - most people were eating canned, preserved, and food processed into non-perishable form (pastas, cheeses, etc). This would last into spring and even early summer until the harvesting season began again.
While companies began to spring up that were able to process and can on scales that made community festivals around it more of a rural ordeal, it has only been relatively recently since the development and prevalence of large mega-freighters that societies have been able to become detached from this trend in their markets and offer fresh or nearly-fresh produce year round.
People don't truly appreciate just how powerful... and how fragile... that network is. The world is three days away from food riots at any given time. When emergencies hit in areas, it is pretty much the case that every store is cleared out of food within three days and most people do not have the food stored in their home to last more than a week.
When people stop showing up to work, it becomes more difficult for that transportation network to function - it becomes more difficult to supply demands, and the children who have no idea what reality they are living in will react by rioting and destroying.
Just as they did in Greece. Just as they are in Venezuela.
When that begins to happen to such a degree that the supply of goods and services is threatened, it will be next to impossible to recover from a collapse and we are going to be thrust into a 'dark age' of civilization where our children and grandchildren will live in the shadow of empires they can only dream of reproducing the successes thereof.
Of course - it's also a great opportunity. It's a reset of many of society's conventions. Large amounts of knowledge will survive, even if specific technologies and techniques are lost to time. Industry will restructure around advances made in electronics and small-scale power harnessing. Advances made in individual productivity (3d printing and other such things) will be built upon. The 'mega farms' may end up being greenhouses augmented with species-tuned LEDs using various in-place automation techniques (as opposed to large expanses seeded and maintained by automotive-intensive solutions that will be difficult to make use of without large scale oil refinement and distribution). A lot of the broken pieces of what we know now will be shifted around and used to form the foundation of the next cycle of human civilization.
That is what I interpret as the "end" of the world.
It's the end of the only world we ever knew - but not the end of life on this planet, or even human civilization - just the one we knew and understood... and the birth of a new one.
Society is something we created, and it is something that requires us to continually maintain - or it will collapse due to negligence, arrogance, and abuse. We've been negligent, arrogant, and abusive to our system of society for quite some time, now - so it's only natural that it comes to an end at some point in time.
And it's only natural for those of us who survive and our children to salvage what they can from our accomplishments and put them to use in a new environment with a new respect for the world around them. The cycle will repeat again in the future, to some degree or another.
This is just the first time where society is truly globally interdependent and we will all come crashing down together. It should be a fascinating spectacle when it happens.