How Is America Going To End?

[jams]

[quote]A weeklong thought experiment on the United States' demise.[quote]

http://www.slate.com/id/2223851

Slate's series brings up some interesting perspectives.

[Papasito]

another possibility could be the intentional and premeditated destruction of our economy, industry, government, and health care system.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "another possibility could be the intentional and premeditated destruction of our economy, industry, government,"

Possibility? Every trade policy we have F's over the American worker and economy. This was no accident or miscalculation.

[Danny]

How Is America Going To End?

1. Of our governments are too corrupt for their own good.

2. Foriegn invasions [[ keep your eyes on China and North Korea.) Nuclear War is coming soon.

3. Extra-terrestrials with the superior intellects and highly advance weaponry.[[ Keep your eyes on those Centaurians.)

4. Cometary or Meteor impacts.

5. Very deadly superviruses [[ Keep your eyes on the Swine Flu, Bird Flu and Ebola.)

6. A rise of socialism or possible communism or dictatorships. [[ Keep your eyes on President Barack Obama)

7. State by state cession [[ as in break up from the union to become independent nation. Keep your eyes on Texas and Nebraska. Fewer state legislatures are proposing to break away from the United States.)

8. By December 21, 2012 according to the Mayan Calender. The Earth may go through a polar shift. There would be a global geomagnetic reversal that would cause the axis of the Earth to tilt 45 degrees to the sun. Also the geomagnetic field reversal will cause rapid hydrogen fluxing of the nitrogen, oxygen and ozone atmosphere to be blown out to space within 1 million years if geomagnetic field does not reverse to its normal state. A flood of biblical propotions will cover the United States all over.

9. Super natural diasters like the next ice age that would last over 1 million years. Give it about up to 4000 A.D. and it would happen. A supervolcano caused by a lava plume explosion located under Yellowstone National Park and throughout the Rocky Mountian will turn the all of western America into a nuclear bomb. Super Tsunamis will engulf both the east coust and west coust cities. Big earthquakes will destroy all the Southern California. Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland/ Sacremento/ Long Beach, San Diego and other south Cailfornia cities will be underwater.

10. A super solar flare from the sun. [[ The next super solar flare that would set the Earth on fire will occur when the Earth turns 8,879,999,999 years old.)

11. Revelation, during the 1000 years tribulation, Jesus Christ will read the dead in Christ flesh from its graves and the unsaved being thrown to the lake of fire and they will be gathered in new Jerusalem while the rest of the world is burned up.

[elganned]

How Is America Going To End?

7. State by state cession [[ as in break up from the union to become independent nation. Keep your eyes on Texas and Nebraska. Fewer state legislatures are proposing to break away from the United States.)

Um, I hate to point it out, but this was tried once already in 1860. It ended badly.

This ain't Canada and Quebec, y'know...

[elganned]

Hell, he can't even get his own party folks to back his health-care plan.
Pretty sorry excuse for a dictator if you ask to me.

[elganned]

"Great blows"? Oh, you mean equal rights for minorities and women. I get it.
Sorry you can't own anybody anymore. Must suck to be you.

[Jimaz]

My money's on a giant asteroid. Hell, if it could do in the dinosaurs, it can finish us off too.

Only problem is: How do I collect on my bet if I win?

[elganned]

Under republicans women and minorities have made great strides.

You seem to have forgotten your history. The civil rights movement was started by Kennedy and blossomed fully under LBJ--both Democrats. Whatever strides women and minorities have made have been opposed tooth-and-nail by conservative Republicans for 40 years.

But you continue on with your ridiculous brainwashed statements.

My ridiculous statements? How about these:

The liberals /socialists/communists have infiltrated our educational sytem and brainwashed generations of people to hate this nation.
They side with enemies against our state and fight to keep them free all the while using our own Constitution and laws against us all in order to allow them to continue destroying America.

Nothing but unfounded fear-mongering and paranoia. Go back to reading your right-wing propaganda and listening to Rush.

[ghettopalmetto]

Well, based on the majority of posts in this thread, our educational system is for complete shit. I don't think an unwillingness of the masses to use their brains, though, is going to be the downfall of our nation, as Alexander Hamilton well knew.

It's befalls the educated, responsible, and thoughtful folks to sift through the unsubstantiated, fearmongering, emotional bullshit like that spewed above, and make sure that our decisions are based on reason and rationality.

Or, we can make all important decisions based on what they tell us on Fox and Friends each morning.

[Ray1936]

Danny said, "7. State by state cession [[ as in break up from the union to become independent nation. Keep your eyes on Texas and Nebraska. Fewer state legislatures are proposing to break away from the United States.)"

Maybe we can then get the Toledo strip. And Essex county. Eh?

[ccbatson]

I never would have thought it possible to contemplate...but #6 is the greatest threat to our way of life by far.....AND AMERICAN VOTERS ASKED TO PUT THE THREAT IN OFFICE.

[alsodave]

This immediately comes to mind:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[oladub]

Detroit hasn't gained back as much of its former population as New Orleans has. I am sensing something along the lines of other empires that at some point could not keep up their existing infrastructure. Empires often become overextended. Official corruption is usually a problem in collapsing empires. With the likes of Goldman Sachs and the Wall Steet bailout, maybe we are there. Byzantine inefficency is built into our system everywhere from gimmicy give away programs to all sorts of non-medical stakeholders living off our present and proposed health care plans. The demands of governments and favors thrown to large corporations make us uncompetative. We seem to be headed toward a demise similar to that suffered by the Byzantine empire. It was never over run and conquered but it lost its competative edge and gradually had to give up its empire as its homeland slowly became a poorer and weaker nation.

[jams]

From today's piece:

Buffalo and Detroit and Cleveland are today's equivalent of old West ghost towns. They are empty husks that have been strip-mined and abandoned, relics of America's manufacturing age. But when the country melts down, we'll remember that these Great Lakes cities were settled in America's early days for a reason. The five Great Lakes hold 21 percent of the world's fresh surface water—an H2O supply that will come in handy in drier times. As for Buffalo's winning characteristics, Shibley notes that "you've got agricultural land around our perimeter, you have the power from the water and [Niagara] Falls, and you have the industrial infrastructure to die for, the roads and railroads." And even with all of those enticements, there's still plenty of primo waterfront land available for purchase. As he points out one inviting tract, Shibley shouts: "Come home, we're ready to go!"

In Hot America, Buffalo won't necessarily transform into a balmy paradise. Climate change will make extreme weather more extreme, so it's possible the city's brutal winters will become even less pleasant. But if large swaths of the country run out of water and are covered by swirling sands, the occasional blizzard doesn't sound so bad. It's no accident that apocalypticist James Howard Kunstler, who writes extensively about America's devolution in the post-petroleum age, resides in upstate New York. I "picked the place I live in for a reason," he writes in The Long Emergency. "[W]e are surrounded by excellent farmland here and I think my little corner of upstate New York may remain generally civilized."

[vetalalumni]

Thankfully, no one knows the answer to the original question that started this thread.

[elganned]

We seem to be headed toward a demise similar to that suffered by the Byzantine empire. It was never over run and conquered but it lost its competative edge and gradually had to give up its empire as its homeland slowly became a poorer and weaker nation. [[bold added)

Not true.

The Eastern Empire lasted for well over 1,200 years from Augustus until 1204, when the sack of Constantinople by the Christian soldiers of the 4th Crusade was followed by the 70-year period known as the Latin Empire. Though the Byzantines eventually reclaimed Constantinople, they had been weakend enough that the Turks could take advantage and finally put an end to them by taking the city in 1453.

If that's not being "over run and conquered", then I don't know how you could define it.

I'd say a 1,200 years was a pretty good run, and had it not been for the treachery of their fellow "Christians", the Byzantine Empire might still be around.

[elganned]

I never would have thought it possible to contemplate...but #6 is the greatest threat to our way of life by far.....AND AMERICAN VOTERS ASKED TO PUT THE THREAT IN OFFICE.

You and HitsvilleUSofA been reading the same alarmist tripe?

You remind me of my dad, for whom LBJ was the Antichrist and the defeat of Goldwater was the Second Crucifixion. The nation managed to survive, somehow.

[ccbatson]

Yes, survived by correcting the errors with the likes of Reagan.

[jams]

Thankfully, no one knows the answer to the original question that started this thread.

...because it is too difficult to actually read the pieces and respond to them?

[reddog289]

Amen Jams!!. Btw it and the world will end when King RedDog1 picks up his wrong "red" phone and tries to order from Jets.

[jams]

Amen Jams!!. Btw it and the world will end when King RedDog1 picks up his wrong "red" phone and tries to order from Jets.

Damn that Hawaiian pizza.

[oladub]

elganned, You are totally correct. I meant the Ottoman Empire which shrunk to modern day Turkey. Come to think of it, Sweden also had a small empire it lost without being invaded and conquered. [[more hope) When our dollar collapses, our economic empire will collapse with it. This will mean our military will take a funding hit but maybe not as much as our social programs. Our geography will protect us from invasion and we will still be an important regional player. We will, like Turkey, survive.

[reddog289]

Hawaii is part of the U.S. But not really I will have to sleep on that.

[vetalalumni]

...because it is too difficult to actually read the pieces and respond to them?

Maybe yes. Because in my myopic mind, the literal end of the USA is unacceptable. I have kids. Darn you for being so up front.