Someone give me an estimate as to how long it would take for society to collapse without...

[FarLeftFist]

Teachers, Police, Firefighters, Sanitation Dept., (even EPA & FDA if you want)

What is your estimate how long society would collapse?

Think of no Sanitation Dept., the pollution, disease, plague, etc.

Think of no police.

No firefighters, no teachers.

Although Romney said we don't need MORE and didn't say NONE, I can see how as wages get crushed, pensions get crushed, and attack on Unions could eventually make these positions seem far less desirable. The RW keeps chipping away at the incentives and soon people won't find it worth-wile to put their lives on the line for such low wages/benefits/pension/etc. Even with the grueling job teachers have ppl may not see the incentive, esp. with budget cuts & blame games.

So even if there are far FEWER than now I see it as a detriment to society. Less teachers=Overcrowding=Less knowledge. Less Police=Higher crime rates/Violent crime rates. Less firefighters=More abandoned buildings=Lower property values=Lower economic health. Less Sanitation=More infestations/Disease/Healthcare.

The rightwing simply cannot see how society is all intertwined & connected. They're advocating laying off workers while simultaneously complaining about unemployment! That takes AUDACITY! The same audacity it takes to be against abortion while simultaneously against birth control! It's like they live in bizarro-fucking-world!

EDIT: And to show further inter-connectedness; these peoples paychecks are our economy. More middle class workers=more people buying goods & services even luxury items. AND it lowers the unemployment rate.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. You have to define collapse. Sanitation would be really noticeable in a day or two. No teachers takes

years to become apparent, and so on. Pinpoint the moment of collapse by defining it.

[snappyturtle]

2. I would only be guessing but I think we'll be finding out soon. nt

[L0oniX]

3. Hmmm ...no police would bring on a lot of gun fire right away.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. It would collapse a shitload faster without credit

Do away with that one simple thing - credit, and everything would shut down as soon as the fuel tanks of the national truck fleet were empty.

2 days, tops

[girl gone mad]

11. Marx had the banksters' number 150 years ago.

"The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner— and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it.”

We had our chance to rein them in after the crisis of 2008, but we failed to do so. Looks like we might get a second chance soon enough.

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. Unfortunately.....

The need for the type of credit I am referring to is undeniable. Short term - less than 90 days type credit.

If you understand business, and I am pretty sure you do, you know that no business can last very long without a line of credit of some sort, either by extending it to their customers, utilizing one provided from their vendors or both.


When the shit was cocked and ready to be thrown at the fan a few years ago, my greatest fear was the likes of the Comdata's of the world would shut down. It is amazing how many daily transactions for diesel fuel alone this company and it's competitors transact on a daily basis. Millions of individual transactions. What would have happened if every single trucker, delivery driver and anyone who used such a card to fuel a business vehicle pulled into a truckstop and had their card declined.

The truckstops would fill to capacity with parked trucks in less than 24 hours and when the news hit, there would be a run on grocery stores and gas stations.

As it turned out, we were within a strikingly short time from that happening back in late 2008.


If the problem persisted for ANY length of time, that would do it. The entire country would grind to a halt in, as I said, two days, tops.

[tex-wyo-dem]

23. Oh, no doubt, credit is critical to the functioning...

Of our everyday economy and commerce (not to mention, mid- to longer-term issues such as business loans, etc), but that's only because that's the way our system is set up (yes, there are other ways of skinning this onion, but that's a whole other discussion).

Your point does not discredit the point that the OP was making. Fact is that all of these services and people are vitally important in assuring a healthy society. Without these critical functions in place, things would fall apart quite rapidly.

Services such as firefighters, policemen, sanitation and school teachers are (or have been in the past) viewed as so vitally important that they have always been part of the PUBLIC sector since they are too important to the public well being to fail. Credit markets, banking and the like have long been part of the private sector, but have been heavily regulated by the public sector due to their importance. Over time, however, these regulations have been weakened to the point that created the 2008 collapse.

[FirstLight]

25. I would think along side banking

that electricity/power in general.. would be the big undoing... no fuel pumps working, no refrigeration, sanitation, food production, transportation, all stop. now that is a scary thought for me

[Fumesucker]

5. Remember when Newt shut down the federal government?

About that long, twenty eight days to be more specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_shutdown_of_1995_and_1996

[LiberalLoner]

6. They WANT a collapse

They know what they are doing. They want over half of the populace to die within the next decade or two. They will hunker down and survive while the rest of us die off.

[HopeHoops]

7. Yeah - 1980. Reagan drones did it in.

[leeroysphitz]

8. Society hasn't collapsed yet? n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Two weeks to a month

this is based on calculations during disaster situations and range from countries that you could say already collapsed, such as Somalia, to a modern day European city.

Realize after Katrina, that took a week... so the numbers are off.

You may ask about Haiti, in some respects it has not recovered from the quake and it is still pretty much on edge... no international aid (still on the ground) and the story would be worst than it is.

But just repeating here theory.

[Volaris]

12. If I knew FOR CERTAIN it was coming...

I would give it 30 days...and I would spend the PREVIOUS 30 days stocking up on self-sufficiency supplies, simple stuff that would let me survive in the woods for a while lol. I say that because I would think the last place I would want to be is in a major population center where all the idiots are going to freak out and try to kill each other for clean water. And if I can't figure out how to live like humans did for millions of years, I guess I kinda feel like I don't deserve to be breeding.=)

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. In the developed world usual advise is for you to

be able to take care of yourself for three days... personally be ready for at least a week.

Having done the disaster shtick, MOST disasters yup, EMS et al will get to you in 72 hours, worst case a week.

But something like Katrina was not usual, and you would have to be OUT of the zone to increase your chances. Of course out of the zone things should be ok, unless a certain supervolcano goes. In that case all bets are off and it could be an Extinction Level Event anyway.

[Volaris]

17. Agreed. And yeah, if the Yellowstone caldera goes, well....

[Javaman]

27. actually, if we knew it was coming, it would take less than 4 days...

our current food transporation network and storage only, on average, has enough food for any local population for about 3 days. After that, you're on your own.

[agent46]

10. The collapse is in progress

Imagine a tall building collapsing so slowly that people continue about their business for days, weeks, even years while the destruction descends. The damage is done. All that's left is gravity.

[Javaman]

26. +1

as Jim Kunsler calls it, "the long emergency".

Or as I like to call it, "death by a thousand cuts". A little nik here and there doesn't amount to much until you realize you're bleeding to death. By which point, it's already to late.

[randome]

15. They do NOT want a collapse.

Getting what they publicly appear to want would be the worst thing in the world for themselves as well as everyone else.

They know they can safely push their bullshit because the legislature is so evenly divided they haven't a prayer of getting all that's on their agenda.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

16. A taste of their own medicine

we can be selective. Those who support us will get the services and those who don't support us - we can lend you our hoses, yes you can find a nanny to look after the children and we are so sad that you got robbed.

[kentuck]

18. There can be no leaders if no one will follow...

We need leaders.

[LuckyTheDog]

19. I'd give it 20 seconds (nt)

[JoeyT]

20. About four hours from the time the news was announced.

Four hours is plenty of time for the run on gas/groceries to empty the stores and people to start killing one another.

[meeksgeek]

21. Couple of interesting reads (if you like serious science fiction)

Post-apocalyptic fiction is one of my personal favorite genres. I hope I don't get to live it...

First on the list is John Wyndham's spectacular novel "The Day of the Triffids." I don't care for the movie that came out in 1962 and haven't seen any other versions that made it to the screen. The book is amazing, and if you read it carefully you will note that the event that kicks off the novel was brought on humanity by their own actions, it was NOT some outside force.

Second is the Coyote series by Allen Steele. This is more about an inter-stellar colonization effort, but notable is the fact that the majority of the original colonists were fleeing the right-wing United Republic of America and (later in the series) an Earth that had developed serious habitability issues. There's some very interesting material in these books.

Also the Daybreak series by John Barnes... as well as some of his other books. His vision of the future isn't too pretty but it's very thought-provoking.

There are many others; I tried to name some that aren't too well known (like The Road Warrior... ugh).

To respond to the original question: I think the centralized distribution system in the USA is a colossal house of cards and I hope I don't get to see it fall. I think if it did, it would happen very fast - think days - because so few people here know how to do things for themselves. Once the fuel is gone, food deserts expand rapidly, deliveries stop, and trash pickup ceases. The cities would not be a good place to linger, and frankly many people aren't in the physical condition to set out on a miles-long journey on foot or even bicycle.

People like me who have some staples on hand will probably be okay for a little while, and I am certainly capable of hiking 12 or more miles a day with a load, because I've done it. I can cook over a campfire, and have lived that way for as long as a week at a time; but even so, I don't know how to really feed myself in the wild, beyond knowing a little about which plants I can eat, and how to make water safe to drink. I'm no hunter because of vision problems and anyway I don't own a gun or any other hunting weapon. Come to think of it, I not sure I would actually have enough valuable skills to survive, and help others survive, even if I found a community to take me in... that's a big if, though. Most communities in this situation would be small, isolated at first, insular, and later under the control of local "warlords" for lack of a better term.

Note that the Mormons are supposed to keep a one-year supply of food and other useful items on hand for emergencies...

There is a Chinese curse that goes, "May you live in interesting times."

[Javaman]

28. Thanks for the book suggestions!

I too am a Post-apocalyptic reader. I eat it up. (I'm also a giant fan of alt-history as well).

I always tell people, if society were to collapse, knowing how to garden will be more valuable that anything else. A simple head of cabbage or a clutch of tomatoes will be worth more than a pound of gold.

People will alway need to eat. Can't eat gold or bullets.

[jtuck004]

22. Trash removal - Something rarely addressed in survival novels iirc - Dean Ing being an exception.

But I think there is a worse scenario.

Society probably won't "collapse", despite the best effort of elected and/or wealthy terrorists.

More likely will be a much slower death, continuing to "kick the economic can down the road" as we are doing today, working through 25 million or more people who want jobs who will work for less and less, further increases in poverty, food stamps, people retiring on little after an employer never paid them enough to put in a retirement account. Tens of millions of people who might have lived a "middle-class" existence in the 1950's will become low-paid and serfs for a relatively small global group of higher-income people.

That could stretch out 50-100 years or more, slowly but surely sapping every bit of wealth and moving it to the greedy bastards account. Human spirit could become a thin shadow of what it once was.

As scary and tragic as it might be, a collapse might be kinder, a quicker death for many. The ones that do survive will learn to cooperate or die, and at least have a chance of starting over with the new Religious leadership.

But the folks who live in these divided states are relatively fat, and fat people make better serfs than survivors, in my experience.

[SheilaT]

24. You ned to be just a little more specific,

almost as if you were writing a novel.

Do you mean all of a sudden all schools, public, private, and parochial close down? All police and firefighters somehow disappear completely?

Those things in and of themselves would be part of a total collapse of society, and you can write the scenario that causes that.

For the past fifty years or so various people have been predicting the total collapse of everything and I personally think that all of those predictions are quite overblown.

Larger classroom sizes are not in and of themselves a total disaster. My best elementary school year was sixth grade, when there were forty of us in the classroom. My class was the larges of the four or five sixth grades in that school, although we were tracked (a concept that has fallen in to disrepute) and my class was by far the academically best. However, in that long-ago semi-paradise, the kinds of kids that today are special needs kids simply didn't exist. Kids with Down syndrome didn't go to school. Kids with even moderate, let alone serious physical, emotional, or other disabilities likewise either didn't even exist or certainly did not attend public school.

The underlying aspect that you've brought up, the interconnectedness of everything is very much the point. If we fire a lot of teachers, fire-fighters and police, all those now not working people will have no money to spend, and that will reverberate through the economy. It's exactly what made the Great Depression so terrible, and those making decisions to fire the various public employees clearly have absolutely no knowledge of the past.