The world is not all the same, for one thing. China is doing overall great, as far as I can tell. In contrast, I would not put it past the US going mad max, but it would probably balkanize before then, so the conditions would vary from state to state. As for nukes, the wealthy share a trait with the poor, in that they would prefer not to die and nukes can’t tell what class a person is. Short of a headline that says hundreds of the world’s billionaires have gone into hiding in bunkers, I would not expect nuclear war to be likely. It’s that kind of thing that nobody really wants, but some people who are aggressive enough saber rattle about. Especially now with how interconnected trade and supply are and so on, nuclear war would likely result in mass famines immediately following the destruction and what rubble are the capitalists and imperialists of the world going to rule over then? If they themselves can even survive it.
The form of barbarism that scares me a bit is targeted stuff, using automation. But even that is probably more letting imagination run amok than meaningful material differences compared to past state violence. They didn’t need AI to assassinate Fred Hampton, for example. And the “getting away with it” part in technological advances largely seems to come from the difference in advancement (one state that is way more developed technologically than another) as opposed to something inherent about having the tech. Or in other words, though some tech is far more destructive than in the past, stronger deterrents also get developed, even if it’s not always equal overall, or from one power to another. Sometimes the deterrents are not machines, but in other forms, like the economic interconnection that helps deter global scale hot war.
This is only a small summarized view of it, but the underlying idea is to look at the conditions and motives involved, not just what the worse case scenario looks like as imagined.
There is a historic trend of lessening class antagonisms. And there have been more communist countries after major crises. If America well and truly collapses I think it will switch to some form of socialism.
China is nowhere near as belligerent as the USSR, so this forces the American bourgeoise to deal with them more carefully, since attacking a country that does not export revolution achieves nothing.
The Ukraine war has also shown us that NATO is a paper tiger. The rank and file liberals want a race based nuclear holocaust. They believe that they can roll over Russian forces with a single battalion of aryans. The actual commanders however showed that they don’t give a single guck about Ukraine or ideology. They just want to play the geopolitics and money game.
The only thing liberal belligerency accomplished was electing trump.
I don’t have any optimism. The 21st century seems like a replay of the 20th century, first a depression and pandemic, now the rise of fascism and potentially ww3. I have lost hope that humanity will learn from its mistakes and change.
Fascism
Now that the burger empire can’t do neoliberalism (extremely dangerous, hides its evil) anymore, it has to resort to fascism (dumb and weak, believes its own lies, doesn’t hide its evil because it can’t)
At the same time, the number of people embracing its true face is depressing. But yeah, at least people are now being forced to take a clear side.
China is ascendant and that gives me hope.
As for the nukes… yeah I think we’ll have a nuclear war. The US would rather destroy the world than see it slip from its grasp. That doesn’t necessarily mean the end of progress and descent into barbarism, though. Again, this is where China gives me hope - there are technologies that can rehabilitate and restore our habitat, and with politics in command China will be able to build them.
But wouldnt nuclear winter kills us all though?
Generally, it’s unsure if nuclear winter would actually happen or not. We would surely see global cooling/temperature dips as we saw that with the oil fields in Kuwait so if you mean just a big global cool, yes. Otherwise I think a lot of scientists agree that rain and weather would bring down a lot of the soot and shit in the atmosphere.
Bigger problem in my opinion would be whatever is getting vaporized in major cities and military facilities getting sent into the air. Power infrastructure would likely be targeted as well e.g nuclear power plants. Chemical warehouses/storage facilities. Major industry. All of that would be a chemical nightmare that would be compounded by getting burnt/vaporize and soaking into the environment. I mean, anti-fire foam is horrible if vaporized for example.
This is why Albania should be retaken for the communists, We need a bunker haven to fight the Swiss when the planet is inhabitable again.
“Mr. Chairman, we cannot afford a mine shaft gap!”
Earth will need to be re-terraformed, but this is doable with modern technology.
We’d need to scrub the stratosphere of particulate matter, we’d need to decrease planetary albedo (literally darken the surface of the Earth to absorb more light), we’d need to produce food with minimal sunlight, we’d need to scrub the air inside our buildings so they can be habitable, there are a lot of problems that need to be tackled. With politics in command, though, we can do it. It just takes the political will to marshal the forces of production to actually fight back.
Possibly, but for a brief period of time, we’ll create a LOT of shareholder value. 😒
