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Why does the author think the global supply chain will collapse in the next ten years? What scenario do they envision? Climate change? Will cost trillions of d

Why does the author think the global supply chain will collapse in the next ten years? What scenario do they envision? Climate change? Will cost trillions of dollars and billions of lives, but will likely be played out over course of several decades. We will be stressing out about it but its not going to be electronics-ending apocalyptic Nuclear war? Please. The countries that have the capability are also level-headed enough to use them to play brinksmanship, despite what the news is telling us. These countries want deterrence, not to blow stuff up. Disease? We're too widely distributed and the most successful viruses are ones that infect but do not kill. Ebola is scary but its too destructive for its own good which makes it easy to contain. The most successful virus is the common cold, and possibly HIV which is certainly a serious problem, but nobody's out there building shelters because of that. Water/food supply? Fresh water is a function of energy, and if anything is a plus about climate change its that we're gonna have a lot of fresh water raining down on us from the Earth trying to compensate for higher temps. Second order effects from climate change will likely affect arable land and is worrisome but it may also open up new areas for growth and will likely play out over time, so I'm considering this more of a political problem. The only things I can think of are either: 1) A sudden disappearance of rare earth metals needed to make electronic, which would be massively inconvenient but we'd figure out a way around that, either by it suddenly becoming more valuable to recycle old electronics or not needing them in the first place. Besides if this happens we'd just get extra motivated to start mining asteroids. 2) Celestial events like asteroid strike or Coronal Mass ejection hitting Earth in the wrong way. The first problem is mitigated with asteroid tracking and we're getting better at that, and the second one would make for an interesting 6 months but pretty sure we'd get back on track pretty quick. I am all for technology that does not depend on a complex global supply chain - we will need to manufacture simple but sophisticated tech in space and mars in the future but this prepper BS is just fantasy driven by a hyper-apocalyptic news cycle shlepping around clickbait. What am I not worried about that I should be? What massively apocalyptic event is going to happen in 10 years to turn us back to the middle ages? Seriously.

Fnoord 7y ago
I believe there to be a different reason than the ones you mentioned. I believe what might happen is the end of "the Internet" as we know it. Russia is ready to detach their networks from the rest of the world. China has the GFW. Hackers from around the world are targeting each other for their governments and getting a get out of jail for free card (scratch that: a carte blanche). I like FOSS, but it is also easier pirated by a country who don't adhere to the licenses. There is a country who pirate en masse, who steal trade secrets. That country is called China. Worse, the USA does it as well, via NSA etc. Either way, I don't think such is a good premise to start this/an OS. There are much better argument to be made to prefer a lightweight OS. Intellectual curiosity, for one.
robbrown451 7y ago
Obviously, you spend way too much time consuming reasonable, balanced, non-hyperbolic media.
BlueTemplar 7y ago
Peak oil. Also, "middle ages" are going to take a good century at least. Think instead of the collapse of Soviet Union (with some places playing the part of the Balkans / Caucasus), but worse... Btw, rare earths are not so rare - it's just that the US got rid of this industry.
philipkglass 7y ago
Regarding "A sudden disappearance of rare earth metals needed to make electronics", you (mostly) don't need to worry about that either. Fluorescent tubes and white LEDs use rare earth elements to convert blue/UV light to broad spectrum visible light -- these are how non-OLED displays generate back light. High strength permanent magnets contain the rare earth elements samarium or neodymium (with optional lesser quantities of dysprosium, praseodymium, gadolinium). Those are the only rare earth element applications worth mentioning as far as computer system components go. Strong rare earth magnets are still used in spinning-platter hard drives, but not in SSDs. You could buy a new EPYC server with solid state drives, grind it up and homogenize the whole thing in acid, and the resulting solution would have a smaller percentage of rare earth elements in it than the same mass of ordinary crustal rocks treated the same way. Computers don't need rare earth elements. Nor do solar panels, nor do most wind turbines. See for example the "Consumption" section in the USGS 2015 Minerals Yearbook Rare Earths report: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/rare-earth/myb1-2015-raree.pdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium... In descending order of global consumption volume, rare earth elements are consumed by the manufacture of catalysts, magnets, glass polishing media, and metal alloys. Everything else is just miscellaneous.
codeulike 7y ago
Big solar flare. Grid goes down. Could take years to get it back up. https://www.cnet.com/news/we-arent-ready-for-a-solar-storm-smackdown/ https://www.cnet.com/news/we-arent-ready-for-a-solar-storm-s... Near miss in July 2012: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/2...
- mlyle 7y ago
  We're near a new Maunder minimum, so becoming less and less likely. Also, while I think a big solar flare would break a lot of stuff--- I think we're better prepared for it than many give us credit for. Tens of millions of people might be initially without power; some fraction of them may need to wait for a long time (months or even years) to get it back; and various bits of transport and production may get disrupted. Enough to require rationing and a major pain to quality of life, but not enough for any kind of catastrophic chain reaction, IMO.
  - codeulike 7y ago
    Interesting, thanks
0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
The only reason the supply chain is at risk is because we dispose of a lot of electronics simply because there's a new version. When the product lifecycle changes from 1 year to 10+ years, you'll find that people will just keep their stuff around longer and the demand on the supply chain goes way down. Plus, there will be a shitload of data centers with capacity that will no longer be necessary (because of reduced devices making requests, segregated internet, less connectivity) in apocalyptic scenarios. Those can probably be re-purposed. We haven't had to get clever about computer conservation because there's been so much supply.
sien 7y ago
Imagine it's 1910. The same argument you make against nuclear war can be made happily against a large scale war then.
- ativzzz 7y ago
  Nothing of the sort the OP describes happened as a result of WW1. Yes, some empires "collapsed", in the sense that the ruling parties changed, their governments got completely ripped out and replaced, or countries split up (e.g. Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany). Maybe people went through a few decades of economic hardships. Either way, these collapses were contained to local regions (with cascading global consequences), but resembled nothing of an apocalyptic scenario. No large scale technology was lost. If anything, human civilization became more technologically advanced.
undershirt 7y ago
> this prepper BS is just fantasy driven by a hyper-apocalyptic news cycle shlepping around clickbait Au contraire, it’s the belief that our system can continue like it’s doing that is the real hyperbole. Collapse is just baseline reality of civilizations. - HISTORY: Collapse is a property of every civilization we’ve studied. These people were as smart if not smarter than us, working with societies smaller and simpler than ours. - ECONOMY: The way money is created and managed today is an ongoing experiment that almost ended in 2008, and we are still on uncharted ground. We can only continue paying for debt by increasing consumption in the following year, yet our debt keeps increasing, by the ever-devaluation of our currency, requiring more production and consumption. No one is planning on an end to this model of growth. - TECH: Most of our infrastructure is built under the incentive of increased efficiency and profit, not long-term robustness since profit has to be sacrificed to plan for contingencies like price fluctuations in supply. Short term tech outcompetes the long term, easy. Strong but fragile. And then there’s the incentivized inefficiencies from economies of scale: one calorie of food now requires ten calories of energy from our system to produce. - COMPLEXITY: “More is different.” As everything becomes interconnected, things become entrenched into dynamics that become increasingly difficult to control and even reason about. Rational decision-making must always be filtered by the interests of the current system, thus there is a loss in agency in what we can do (read: incentives), and we are stuck trying to find creative solutions that must accept the framework of what may be a harmful system, often just making that system more effectively harmful. - ENVIRONMENT: Some call it the sixth mass extinction. Whatever it is, the biosphere is changing dramatically. Soil is in a weird zombie state kept alive by oil. The basic line is that the value of life is diminished through the lens of our economy, as dead resources. So our model will continue bringing the real world into consistency with that deadness. - MYTHS: When we live in a civilization that sanctifies all forms of advancement and improvement and growth, there is no fertile soil for the acceptance of limitation. We only have the vocabulary to label it pessimist. Thus, optimism becomes co-opted for the aspirations of a mythical techno-utopia beyond all conceivable boundary.
- heurist 7y ago
  We're doing things all wrong now but we largely know what needs to change to achieve sustainability (hint: it's not more computers). Should a collapse come the transition will come quickly as well, depending on the style of collapse. Long-term effects of climate change are a different beast.

Fnoord 7y ago

I believe there to be a different reason than the ones you mentioned. I believe what might happen is the end of "the Internet" as we know it. Russia is ready to detach their networks from the rest of the world. China has the GFW. Hackers from around the world are targeting each other for their governments and getting a get out of jail for free card (scratch that: a carte blanche). I like FOSS, but it is also easier pirated by a country who don't adhere to the licenses. There is a country who pirate en masse, who steal trade secrets. That country is called China. Worse, the USA does it as well, via NSA etc. Either way, I don't think such is a good premise to start this/an OS. There are much better argument to be made to prefer a lightweight OS. Intellectual curiosity, for one.

robbrown451 7y ago

Obviously, you spend way too much time consuming reasonable, balanced, non-hyperbolic media.

BlueTemplar 7y ago

Peak oil. Also, "middle ages" are going to take a good century at least. Think instead of the collapse of Soviet Union (with some places playing the part of the Balkans / Caucasus), but worse... Btw, rare earths are not so rare - it's just that the US got rid of this industry.

philipkglass 7y ago

Regarding "A sudden disappearance of rare earth metals needed to make electronics", you (mostly) don't need to worry about that either. Fluorescent tubes and white LEDs use rare earth elements to convert blue/UV light to broad spectrum visible light -- these are how non-OLED displays generate back light. High strength permanent magnets contain the rare earth elements samarium or neodymium (with optional lesser quantities of dysprosium, praseodymium, gadolinium). Those are the only rare earth element applications worth mentioning as far as computer system components go. Strong rare earth magnets are still used in spinning-platter hard drives, but not in SSDs. You could buy a new EPYC server with solid state drives, grind it up and homogenize the whole thing in acid, and the resulting solution would have a smaller percentage of rare earth elements in it than the same mass of ordinary crustal rocks treated the same way. Computers don't need rare earth elements. Nor do solar panels, nor do most wind turbines. See for example the "Consumption" section in the USGS 2015 Minerals Yearbook Rare Earths report: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/rare-earth/myb1-2015-raree.pdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium... In descending order of global consumption volume, rare earth elements are consumed by the manufacture of catalysts, magnets, glass polishing media, and metal alloys. Everything else is just miscellaneous.

codeulike 7y ago

Big solar flare. Grid goes down. Could take years to get it back up. https://www.cnet.com/news/we-arent-ready-for-a-solar-storm-smackdown/ https://www.cnet.com/news/we-arent-ready-for-a-solar-storm-s... Near miss in July 2012: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/2...

mlyle 7y ago
We're near a new Maunder minimum, so becoming less and less likely. Also, while I think a big solar flare would break a lot of stuff--- I think we're better prepared for it than many give us credit for. Tens of millions of people might be initially without power; some fraction of them may need to wait for a long time (months or even years) to get it back; and various bits of transport and production may get disrupted. Enough to require rationing and a major pain to quality of life, but not enough for any kind of catastrophic chain reaction, IMO.
- codeulike 7y ago
  Interesting, thanks

0xDEFC0DE 7y ago

The only reason the supply chain is at risk is because we dispose of a lot of electronics simply because there's a new version. When the product lifecycle changes from 1 year to 10+ years, you'll find that people will just keep their stuff around longer and the demand on the supply chain goes way down. Plus, there will be a shitload of data centers with capacity that will no longer be necessary (because of reduced devices making requests, segregated internet, less connectivity) in apocalyptic scenarios. Those can probably be re-purposed. We haven't had to get clever about computer conservation because there's been so much supply.

sien 7y ago

Imagine it's 1910. The same argument you make against nuclear war can be made happily against a large scale war then.

ativzzz 7y ago
Nothing of the sort the OP describes happened as a result of WW1. Yes, some empires "collapsed", in the sense that the ruling parties changed, their governments got completely ripped out and replaced, or countries split up (e.g. Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany). Maybe people went through a few decades of economic hardships. Either way, these collapses were contained to local regions (with cascading global consequences), but resembled nothing of an apocalyptic scenario. No large scale technology was lost. If anything, human civilization became more technologically advanced.

undershirt 7y ago

> this prepper BS is just fantasy driven by a hyper-apocalyptic news cycle shlepping around clickbait Au contraire, it’s the belief that our system can continue like it’s doing that is the real hyperbole. Collapse is just baseline reality of civilizations. - HISTORY: Collapse is a property of every civilization we’ve studied. These people were as smart if not smarter than us, working with societies smaller and simpler than ours. - ECONOMY: The way money is created and managed today is an ongoing experiment that almost ended in 2008, and we are still on uncharted ground. We can only continue paying for debt by increasing consumption in the following year, yet our debt keeps increasing, by the ever-devaluation of our currency, requiring more production and consumption. No one is planning on an end to this model of growth. - TECH: Most of our infrastructure is built under the incentive of increased efficiency and profit, not long-term robustness since profit has to be sacrificed to plan for contingencies like price fluctuations in supply. Short term tech outcompetes the long term, easy. Strong but fragile. And then there’s the incentivized inefficiencies from economies of scale: one calorie of food now requires ten calories of energy from our system to produce. - COMPLEXITY: “More is different.” As everything becomes interconnected, things become entrenched into dynamics that become increasingly difficult to control and even reason about. Rational decision-making must always be filtered by the interests of the current system, thus there is a loss in agency in what we can do (read: incentives), and we are stuck trying to find creative solutions that must accept the framework of what may be a harmful system, often just making that system more effectively harmful. - ENVIRONMENT: Some call it the sixth mass extinction. Whatever it is, the biosphere is changing dramatically. Soil is in a weird zombie state kept alive by oil. The basic line is that the value of life is diminished through the lens of our economy, as dead resources. So our model will continue bringing the real world into consistency with that deadness. - MYTHS: When we live in a civilization that sanctifies all forms of advancement and improvement and growth, there is no fertile soil for the acceptance of limitation. We only have the vocabulary to label it pessimist. Thus, optimism becomes co-opted for the aspirations of a mythical techno-utopia beyond all conceivable boundary.

heurist 7y ago
We're doing things all wrong now but we largely know what needs to change to achieve sustainability (hint: it's not more computers). Should a collapse come the transition will come quickly as well, depending on the style of collapse. Long-term effects of climate change are a different beast.