• Would the Second Coming of Christ accompany such a disaster?
  Can we handle a Great Depression as well as ‘The Greatest Generation’ did?
• Hypothetical future:  Actions the Left may take if given power that could aggravate an already bad situation.
• The problems created when the highest aspirations of  millions lie in X-box, tattoos, auto detailing, and internet porn suddenly find themselves without an income and a government with little ability to assist.
• What happens when the ‘knowledge gap’ currently filled by foreigners opens again because they find home more attractive?
• 8-billion people are easy to support when times are good.  What happens to endangered species and rain forests when 8-billion people can’t enough to eat?  Our cities are larger than ever.  What if trucking can’t deliver necessities?
• Would the United States survive as 50?  Or perhaps might the true red, white, and blue reorganize as just 10 or so united states?
• Could the “tribes” among us (red states, blue states, etc.) result in a peaceful dissolution into smaller unions?
• Can we effectively defend ourselves against terrorist’s mass destruction plots (including nuclear) if we are reeling from internal chaos brought to a head by several generations of selfishness and lack of concern for the future?

Will “the next big challenge” signal the Second Coming?
I used to think that something like a major depression in my lifetime would surely be accompanied by the Second Coming - indeed it perhaps indicated the Second Coming. Now I don’t think that’s necessarily true. People thought the same in the last great wars and depressions. I think we could easily suffer temporal trials of biblical proportions (unparalleled economic troubles, civil unrest, nukes, etc.), and yet live to watch things recover.  I do think it would be more evidence that we will ultimately arrive at “Armageddon” some day, but not necessarily with the next traumatizing event.

“The Greatest Generation” and their parents handled depression, but can we?
I do think our nation may not handle a depression as well as we did in the 1930’s.  I don’t think as a whole they were vastly more virtuous than we are.  For example, they wrestled with racism probably more than we do, and I think the depression was God’s way of calling many back to their roots after the “Roaring 20’s”.  Still, they were a people accustomed to hard work, and their families were still largely God-fearing and in tact.  Today there are too many poorly raised children of the selfish and spoiled baby-boomers who are now poorly raising their own.  Self defense could become pretty important.

Might the “tribes” among us separate peacefully?
I think true red, white, and blue would emerge from a massive depression (and likely related world-wide wars and strife), but perhaps not as the original 50 United States.  Maybe just 20, or even less than 10.  Another aspect of the Book of Mormon that intrigues me is how one faction seeking power murdered the Chief Judge, and contrary to the hopes of that faction (who planned to rule over all the people) their nation disintegrated into tribes, which no one liked as well.  Nonetheless they found themselves unable to reorganize and reconcile their differences.
 

For a long time I’ve imagined that we also have potential for this.  There are many “tribes” among us:  Red States/Blue States (conservative/liberal); Gay; Black; Mexican; Christian, Atheist, probably more.  If things get bad enough, I suppose we could see a relatively peaceful and willing dissolution of the union into smaller unions, one of which would espouse the US Constitution pretty much the way it was originally formed (and for which today many aspects of it are not practiced as intended), but with key amendments that would clearly help but would limit the power of the Nobles, which is why the Nobles (most of the Democrats and many Republicans) won’t pursue.

One scenario: Could this be in our future?
Imagine this.  It’s 2012 and the national economy is struggling.  Republicans who traditionally were less inclined to create wealth draining and personal responsibility draining programs angered their base in a host of ways (fiscal responsibility being among them), giving opportunity for the left to seize power in 2008 on promises that “we can do better”.  Of course they shine for a few years as some of the responsible policies that the scared-witless Republicans enacted just before their ouster begin paying off.  But the leftist being leftist cannot control their wallets either, and further created extensive regulations on autos and power plants which raised costs by 30%, for greenhouse gas reductions of 5%. 

Nukes in Iran
When their “economic sanctions and strong talk against Israel” diplomacy didn’t stop Iran from joining the nuclear club, they turned to approving billions in aid for Hezbollah and Iran and holding “summits” to address their grievances as part of their new “diplomatic solution” to that crisis. 

Mini-Mexico’s in every city
While they “cured” immigration by building a fence, they really just renamed it by still allowing record numbers of “guest workers”.  As “guests”, they see no need to integrate Mexican immigrants into American life, and instead do all in their power to accommodate Spanish, ensuring that “mini-Mexico’s” with culture, language, and unwritten laws from the old country become very large, almost completely taking over the first suburban ring of lower-end homes in every major city and even have become dominant in many border cities.  They’ve also nationalized health care. 
 
“Sixty years of partying like it’s 1999!”
By 2012 it is clear that they have not been more successful in managing the economy.  Further, there are pressures on the economy that were pushed back for decades by the self-seeking.  Not just congress, but nearly everyone seeking to eat, drink, and be merry for just a little longer, and lobbying for a turn at the federal trough in what became a 60 year American tradition of “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can take from others to get for yourself”. 

Now it is clear to more and more economists that even the dream of a fiscally responsible congress could not bail out the water faster than it is now coming in.   The national debt is at $13 trillion; boomer retirement is beginning (along with their 401k draws on the Stock Market); boomer’s parents are hanging on to life in record numbers, but are doing so only off of high-taxes which support Medicare.  The generation that came of working age between 2000 and now was not only relatively small (due to their parent’s and boomer-grandparent’s selfish refusal to ‘multiply and replenish the earth’), but also relatively lazy and unskilled at anything but X-box, rap music, auto detailing, and finding internet porn. 
 
The “brain drain” from Asia reverses
With fewer workers and less wealth generated per worker, taxes have increased to the tipping point on those who still have wealth, will, or talent.  Where manufacturing jobs left in the 90’s, but were replaced by tech-sector jobs spun off in large part by foreign-born Ph.D.’s, the reverse now appears to be underway!  China and India are now showing themselves more capable than the Americans in a host of high talent areas, and the Ph.D.’s are going home!
 
What of our own kids?
In 2008 the U.S. did greatly increase the H1-B visas as part of a long overdue and ineffective immigration reform package.  This did increase the number of Ph.D.’s from China and India who stayed in America, subsidizing our knowledge gap.  The gap was created by decades of unloved, undisciplined, unchallenged children whose early years were marked by Twinkies, Ritalin, and 46 re-runs of The Little Mermaid as they were shuttled from unionized bureaucrats to daycare where they waited for the womb-donor to get them(who knows where the sperm-donor is).  Their adolescent years saw them comatose on potato chips, substance abuse, orgies, and Grand Theft Auto.

Now Asia’s low taxes and increased standards of living are attracting back their own citizens, many of whom believe the future back home is looking brighter than America’s. The trend was recently highlighted by an early 2012 news story featuring California’s six-figure software engineers who have now trained their replacements in India, and their million-dollar bungalows are going into default.   Bankruptcies which were high in good times are now higher than ever.   Unemployment is high but not crazy yet (maybe 8%).  Tax revenues are down and unemployment checks are up.
 
Panic sets in
By 2014, the market has had no gains for several years, due in part to the weak economy, but also to the massive need of retirees to pull out of the market and use their 401(k)’s.  The market enjoys a brief run up between 2014 and 2016, fueled more by gambling and the Greater Fool theory than by any underlying strength.   But by 2016 the writing is on the wall as investors are now convinced of America’s inability to make good on T-bills.  As the market tumbles 50% below its most recent low, retirees panic and move what’s left of their 401(k)’s into Asian markets, bonds, money markets, gold - anything but American or European companies.
 
A mega-depression?
By 2020, the full brunt of the problem has impacted the nation, and it is clear this is turning out to be a mega-depression.  Unemployment is topping 35% and bank failures abound.  Armed robberies, murders, and suicides are at all-time highs.  Civil unrest is at a crescendo with everybody playing the blame game, and daily riots among the poorest demographics. 

“Survival of the fittest” food chain
With sprawling American megopolises so much larger than during the depression of the 1930’s, and having consumed all the farmland for miles, it is difficult to supply enough food to such massive populations concentrated in a single point other than by truck.  Where previous generations enjoyed a measure of ability to live off the land while unemployed, by 2020 there are few skilled enough to even partially support themselves.  Nearly all wild and domestic animals in and around the cities, with the exception of attack dogs maintained by the wealthy, have been consumed by the hungry masses who have finally discovered a successful weight loss program!  Trucks supplying food for the cities are routinely ambushed to supply the gangs that have resurged, and more brazen attackers have even begun taking on trucks that are accompanied by armed escort.

Voluntary segregation
To be an American became a secondary means of self-identification decades earlier, and with the current strife and blaming going on, “tolerance and diversity” of all peoples and views other than white or Christian is no longer the highest value of the godless.  They’ve in fact embraced the opposite!  Mexican-Americans (Mexicans first, American “guest workers” second) are no longer comfortable anywhere but in the south-west, and begin moving there en mass.  Gay-Americans (gay first, Americans second) likewise are being targeted across the nation and have begun to trade homes with what Christians remained on the northwest coast.  African-Americans and Evangelical Christians have long been together in the South, but with their cultures and political views so significantly different, Christians concentrate in Texas and the mid-west, while African-Americans across the nation have begun a migration to the South-Atlantic.  Atheistic-Americans who have long looked to Europe as their model of perfection (liberals who didn’t fit a previous mold) are congregating in the New England area.
 
The Melting Pot cools and Tribes coagulate
By 2030 the migrations are largely complete.  The melting pot has cooled and coagulated.  What was once Americans of diverse traits making them all minorities in some way, and hence a functioning system based on mutual respect, has given way to super-majorities in large and distinct geographic areas not unlike tribes.  In Lincoln’s day divorce was not an option either in marriage or as a nation, and though the fight was bitter, clearly the outcome was worth it!  In our times, “till death do us part” commitments are rare, and there is little reason to believe that either “The Red States” or “The Blue States” would go to war (physically) if each had become more red and more blue, and one wanted to form their own government uninfluenced by the other.  I suppose they would mutually agree that they no longer want to be influenced by the other, and would hire the hosts of attorneys to get all they could when the federal assets are split.
 
What happens when 8-billion people are in economic peril?
World-wide, with nearly 8-billion people who could be sustained in good times, are having a hard time during this tough time.  Extinctions on a never before seen scale are occurring as hungry masses struggle for survival.  Wars are up all over, and modern killing efficiency, combined with mass starvation and disease, reduces the population from 8-billion to 6-billion before stability is regained and prosperity begins anew.
 
What’s going on among Muslims?
Islamic extremists have grown in power and influence by 2020.  They have successfully captured the governments of many nations and their propaganda harping the failure of the West and the pain that their infidel ways has inflicted on Muslims has been influential with the masses.  They claim western troubles as proof that Allah is punishing the “Great Satan” and they actively, though still covertly, support terrorist organizations. 

The position among Muslim regimes
While the regimes agree with and fund the terrorist in principle, they do not support the terrorist desire for a nuclear attack, fearing a “civilians be damned” retaliation with nukes in their own lands, and the regimes being easy to find.  They prefer the “death by a thousand cuts” method, to which the west has never been able to muster the strength necessary to mount an effective defense, and could almost certainly not now with their present domestic troubles.
 
The position among the Muslim shadows
The terrorists, however, care only about murdering and further burdening the object of their enmity.  Of course they want to live to fight another day, but they are not afraid to die and will do so willingly if it looks like a job with high returns on the investment.  They’ve deceived themselves into believing they are doing the will of Allah even if they put massive cities of their own people at risk.  They know the Paper Tiger too well by now, and are convinced that even a nuclear strike will at most be met one for one, and more likely will be met with simply more aggressive conventional tactics in an effort to at least temper large-scale, instantaneous collateral damage.

They are also more elusive than the regimes, and will have removed their networks from likely targets in the homelands many years in advance of their nuclear attack - knowing the Americans will target the obvious.   For nearly two decades they’ve had access to bulky weapons of mass destruction, but little confidence in their ability to deliver such weapons undetected.  Now 2030 technology and reduced scrutiny of the black market brought on by the chaos have finally allowed them to gain smaller devices that they have more confidence they can deliver to the target undetected. 
 
A successful, crippling attack
They succeed in detonating three of five nuclear devices.  Where a hydrogen-based conventional nuke could easily kill millions, the uranium-based suitcase nuke killed only 100,000 in a suburb of Atlanta.  Likewise the one in down town London killed 220,000.  The third surprisingly didn’t target a city directly, but instead destroyed the Glen Canyon Dam which holds the Colorado River’s Lake Powell.   Few were killed in the blast, but an ocean of water was set in motion which scoured the Grand Canyon smooth, washed out the Hoover Dam at Lake Mead, killed tens of thousands in smaller towns on the banks of the Colorado, and has left major cities in the southwest (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles) bone dry.

Yes, I’ve delved into the realms of science fiction with this one - but I can see a pretty believable Stephen King novel around some of these themes.    Next, how to prepare for the potential of a Perfect Financial Storm.

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