The Coming Apocalypse Ain’t Coming Yet

Posted on December 27, 2011 by myiq2xu (D)


John W. Smart has made his predictions for next year. I’m not going to argue or quibble about them, but I do want to discuss his closing:

I’ve demurred from the most drastic predictions, though a few above are scary. This should not be taken as an assumption that far worse can’t happen in 2012. It can. It might. In a decadent culture – and we are one – the membrane surrounding and protecting civil society is wafer thin. It takes only one black swan event to rip the artifice apart. Reagan did not destroy the Soviet Union. Chernobyl did. The Arab Spring erupted after decades of corruption because one Tunisian man cried out in horrifying anguish. I cannot predict such an event will happen here. I can say we’re closer to one than we’ve been in over a century. A shattering event in 2012 would not surprise me in the least. This society no longer works. Everything has become a commodity. Every moment of our lives is constructed to make a profit for someone else. The worst go unpunished. The good get taken. We claim to love our young, but all our actions say we don’t give a rip about them. We give lip service to responsibility, but never take it. None of this can last. It stands in opposition to humanity itself.

Will the system finally break in 2012? I doubt it. But it could. The membrane holding us together is thin. And getting thinner. If pushed, I’d predict we’ll bumble on until 2016 or so. But 2012 might be just the year for a cleansing fire. Lots of people say so.

I’m not sure who the first post-apocalyptic visionary was but we’ve been seeing this idea expressed in literature and movies for generations. Basically it is humans living like savages in the ruins of cities as a new Dark Age covers the land. Civilization has collapsed and the survivors are trying to rebuild.

The reasons for the collapse aren’t always given – sometimes it’s a war, other stories it was an environmental disaster. The cause changes over the years – in the fifties it was nuclear war, in the sixties we worried about overpopulation. Then Stephen King made the superflu popular, and now it’s the zombie apocalypse.

There are three main alleged causes of the apocalypse, internal, external and environmental. The last is the least likely – least likely to foresee and least likely to take place. A natural disaster like a super-earthquake that wiped out the entire west coast would still leave the rest of the country untouched, while a major meteor strike only happens every hundred million years or so.

An external threat is slightly less unlikely. Like it or not, we’re still the big dog on the block. Neither Canada nor Mexico has the capability nor the desire to invade us. The nations that might have both the willingness and the ability are too far away.

As long as we retain our nuclear weapons the biggest outside threat to us is a rogue state or a terrorist group detonating a bomb in one of our cities. That would be tragic but would not wipe out the whole country, and whoever perpetrated such an act would cease to be a threat to anyone for all time. Carthago delenda est.

As for internal strife, it’s over-rated. Who’s gonna revolt? Poor people? There’s not enough of them, they are too spread out and they are dependent on the current system. The same goes for OWS, and it’s especially true for the government union workers who fill out the OWS ranks whenever they stage a big event. If we overthrow the government, who is gonna pay the government workers?

The fact is most people are too invested in the current system to overthrow it. We don’t have people starving in our streets, in fact we have fat poor people. People in this country don’t realize how rich they really are. People in other countries do, that’s why they want to come here.

Yes, there are a lot of people out of work right now, BUT MOST PEOPLE STILL HAVE JOBS. Most people still have homes to live in and food to eat. For most of us this is the worst economic situation the country has seen in our lifetimes. But we’re still here, and the sky hasn’t fallen. You want proof?

Last week people were fighting over $190 pair sneakers!

For what it’s worth here’s my prediction:

Things will get worse before they get better, but they WILL get better.

So sayeth the Klown.

Filed under: 2012 Elections, Economy, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Politics, Unemployment, Zombies Tagged: |

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59 Responses

  1. myiq2xu, on December 28, 2011 at 1:30 am said:

    BTW – I started writing this post before I got sick last night. I kept falling asleep and dreaming I was writing it and then waking up and finding I had barely started it. Finally I gave up and slept for about 12 hours.

  2. myiq2xu, on December 28, 2011 at 1:45 am said:

    Tarzan co-star Cheetah dies at Palm Harbor sanctuary

    Cheetah the chimpanzee, who acted in classic Tarzan movies in the early 1930s, died of kidney failure Saturday at Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, a sanctuary spokeswoman said.

    Cheetah was roughly 80 years old, loved fingerpainting and football and was soothed by nondenominational Christian music, said Debbie Cobb, the sanctuary’s outreach director.

    He was an outgoing chimp who was exposed to the public his whole life, Cobb said today.

    “He wasn’t a chimp that caused a lot of problems,” she said.

    Cheetah acted in the 1932-34 Tarzan movies, Cobb said. Movies filmed during that timeframe starred Johnny Weissmuller and include “Tarzan and His Mate” and “Tarzan the Ape Man,” according to the Internet Movie Database.

    Sometime around 1960, Cheetah came to the sanctuary from Weissmuller’s estate in Ocala, Cobb said.

    In the wild, the average chimp survives 25 to 35 years and at zoos chimps typically live 35 to 45 years, she said.

    • Three Wickets, on December 28, 2011 at 2:44 am said:

      He had a good life, what with all that nondenominational Christian music playing. Speaking of Tampa Bay, I also learned this today.

      Of all the oxycodone prescribed in America in the first half of last year, 98 percent was dispensed in Florida.

      • Lulu, on December 28, 2011 at 4:43 am said:

        The craziest junkies that I have ever encountered are Oxyheads. They are totally wasted. And extremely violent. In the early 2000′s I worked in a law office that did a lot of PI and WC and finally had to give up on the Oxyheads. They physically attacked pharmacists and doctors. One kept doing it and went to prison, another one died, and the other one was from a wealthy family and was in rehab for about two years only to re-emerge with a heroin habit. Doctors around here will not prescribe it out of hospital. Does Florida not supervise doctors prescribing it?

    • foxyladi14, on December 28, 2011 at 8:48 am said:

      He had a good life, rip. :)

  3. Bull J. Moose, on December 28, 2011 at 7:03 am said:

    I agree. It’s not that bad. It’s not great like Obots from central casting think, and we’re not about to have a revolution like the Obots from occupy casting think. Almost certainly we’ll have a puppet of Wall Street and banks in the white house, either of the D or R variety. No difference. And the corruption will continue.

    If TPTB curb their appetite a bit and things get better, we’ll continue as we were. If they decide the end is near and want to suck everything dry from this country before they move on to the next like the insect plague that they are, then we could be toast.

    I suspect they’d like things to remain as they are. And in the end, perhaps we’re too big for even them to destroy, and will recover in spite of their best efforts.

    Things will continue to suck and get a bit worse, then in spite of the governments best efforts, we’ll turn things around. Because that’s what we do. We’re the hardest working people on the planet despite what both limousine liberals tell us or bloated conservatives tell us. And we get ‘er done.

  4. DandyTiger, on December 28, 2011 at 7:11 am said:

    Nah, the zombies are here already. Have you seen videos of OWS? Or watched MSNBC? It’s like they can move and talk, but they have no brains. Zombies I tell you. We’re done for.

  7. yttik, on December 28, 2011 at 7:53 am said:

    “This society no longer works.”

    Whenever I read a sentence like this, I always think of pirates. Aye matey, let’s go back to the good old days. Or witch trials or feudal lords or some other utopian time when society “worked.” Give me a break.

    I’m dirt poor and getting poorer every day, but I sure love hot running water and electricity. For all it’s flaws, this society works. We have antibiotics, access to goods and services, and a pretty good system of cooperation and distribution of skills and talents.

  8. Zaladonis, on December 28, 2011 at 8:08 am said:

    It won’t be a revolt. You’re right people still have it way too good, well actually not good but too easy. Anyway most Americans who’d be the revolters live inside little screens, TV or computer, and that keeps them sufficiently mollified.

    No it won’t be a revolt but it is not going to get better after getting a little worse; things are going to collapse at least partially and very significantly. We’re headed into a dark era. I think we may end up under some form of martial law, that’s what all these Bush/Obama civil liberties changes are about; remember it’s been both parties, and that’s because power people –including our buds like the Clintons– think it’s likely to be necessary to maintain order. I don’t know what’ll tip the boat but probably it’ll be internal; you’re right we’re too big to be taken down by anybody but ourselves. We’ve compromised everything we need to sustain our lives, and now those in charge are either self-serving or incompetent or both. Where it starts unraveling, natural disaster, fouled food or water, accidents at energy suppliers like fracking or offshore oil wells or nuclear reactors, our reeking healthcare and pharmaceutical cesspool, or something else, will probably not be our undoing so much as the domino effect that follows. It’s stunning how vulnerable we are, it’s so clear when something like an electricity outage lasts a week or more.

  9. DandyTiger, on December 28, 2011 at 8:21 am said:

    I’m still waiting for those killer bees to kill us all.

    • yttik, on December 28, 2011 at 8:40 am said:

      LOL! The swine flu should be making it’s rounds again, along with asteroids, global warming, feminists, the rapture, killer bees, feral hogs, and the ever present zombies.

      When I was a kid we had the threat of another ice age. It was like global warming but we were going to be frozen instead. We had pictures of wooly mammoths coming down from Canada to invade our cities.

  11. Three Wickets, on December 28, 2011 at 8:40 am said:

    I know it’s a very different place, but I lived in Japan during the early years of their lost decade. For some it really seemed like the apocalypse. People broke down, there were end-of-the-world cults, sarin attacks in the subways. For others it seemed to be a time for adjustment, stronger societal bonding, new ways of being productive, engaged, curious. Overall I remember it being a nervous but not unhappy time for most. I think their second lost decade has cut much deeper, especially with the tragedies of the past year.

  12. yttik, on December 28, 2011 at 8:51 am said:

    I guess this is politically incorrect to mention, but how come we always debate the demise of western civilization?? I mean, the ME and Islam has made some tremendous contributions to civilization, mathematics, medicine, archeology. Today they are ruled by religious fundamentalists, subjected to huge political upheavel, and always perched on the edge of war. What’s happened to them is truly apocalyptic, and for many women, hell on Earth.

  13. DeniseVB, on December 28, 2011 at 9:11 am said:

    If you were a kid in the 50′s, you were scared sh*tless most of the time.

    • DandyTiger, on December 28, 2011 at 9:14 am said:

      Big fire coming, hide under a wooden desk, aka, kindling.

      • Mary, on December 28, 2011 at 9:32 am said:

        Or as my Army captain Dad used to say, “Get under the desk, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye.”

        We lived in Boulder Colorado then, near the Atomic Energy Commission’s Rocky Flats plant. :)

        • gxm17, on December 28, 2011 at 11:59 am said:

          LOL! I grew up inside the beltway and my dad said pretty much the same thing. And then he’d console me with: “But at least we won’t suffer like the folks in the fallout zone.”

      • DeniseVB, on December 28, 2011 at 10:21 am said:

        I grew up in the DC area, so we had an evacuation plan ! If a bomb threat came during school hours, we were to be loaded on school busses and driven to the…..MOUNTAINS ! I think that was the Bay of Pigs era?

  14. Benny, on December 28, 2011 at 9:37 am said:

    Hmm….I did drink fresh monkeys brain in the far-east (Its a delicacy there). Was drunk when I did that, but it was delicious. The morning after, when sober, I was shocked at my temerity. Too bad, I can’t change what happened. ;-)

  15. catarina, on December 28, 2011 at 9:57 am said:

    Iowans might feel a bit overwhelmed by the choices for next Tuesday’s Republican caucuses for the GOP presidential nomination, but one independent group has begun running radio ads insisting that there is still room for one more choice. Calling itself “Sarah Palin’s Iowa Earthquake,” the group will target specific markets in Iowa asking voters to line up behind the Republican Party’s most prominent non-candidate, and other ads will apparently follow

    http://hotair.com/archives/2011/12/28/it-begins-radio-ads-ask-iowans-to-caucus-for-palin/

    is VM on the ground in Iowa?

  16. catarina, on December 28, 2011 at 10:25 am said:

    Happy family holiday stuff!
    If you have 30 seconds..

    • yttik, on December 28, 2011 at 10:33 am said:

      LOL, love it! There are some people who say that 2012 is not the end of the world, it’s simply the beginning of a new era. I imagine for some misogynistic dimwads, America electing it’s first female president really would seem like the end of the world.

  17. DeniseVB, on December 28, 2011 at 10:49 am said:

    Here are some of the 1% who support OWS, and their worth :D

    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/paul-wilson/2011/12/28/99-percent-top-25-occupy-wall-street-backers-worth-over-4-billion#ixzz1hqMZ2AOC

    So, why don’t they give their money back, or will they be financing the Apocalypse ?

  19. HT, on December 28, 2011 at 11:56 am said:

    Myiq – as one of the people who have followed you very quietly for years, and as a fellow person addicted to bad habits, please take care of yourself. We’re getting older buddy. We’re not as resilient as we used to be. Shit happens, and lately it happens to persons of our age.

  20. myiq2xu, on December 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm said:

    A little while ago I was enjoying some nice REM sleep when suddenly there is someone banging on my door – my bedroom door. It’s my mom.

    “What?”

    “Are you okay?”

    “Yeah”

    “You were making some strange noises in there”

    “I was asleep”

    “Well you didn’t answer the phone so I came over to check on you.”

    “I WAS ASLEEP.”

    “Well you said you were sick so I was worried.”

    “I didn’t say I was dying, I said I had diarrhea!”

    “Fine, next time I won’t worry about you!” {{stomps out of house}}

    “What kind of noises did you hear?” {{no answer}}

  21. RADIO ETC. | John W Smart, on December 28, 2011 at 12:48 pm said:

    [...] We’ll be talking about Iowa- of course – and the coming new year. On that score read this post. It’s an interesting adjunct/rebuttal to my 2012 predictions piece below. It also got me [...]

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