The Second Great Depression

by on May 13, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The Second Great Depression was far more than merely an economic crisis. It included a diplomatic crisis that morphed into a series of conflicts one step removed from the fabled World War III of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century fiction. The Western World had maintained dominance for a century, with Western laws commanding the seas and international relations via the United Nations. But the economic crisis weakened that world, and many foes rose up to challenge it. Russian ruthlessness, Chinese calculation, and Middle Eastern extremism vied to replace The West as ruler of the world, just as the first primitive artificial intelligences began to see everything around them and understand both life and death. It was a crisis of economic integration, geo-political power, cultural dominance, and the very definition of life as we knew it. There are so very many ways it could have gone all wrong. The fact that we are here today at all is proof that we found a way through it. That alone is victory enough in my book.

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The Second Great Depression

by on May 12, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

So what did most people do when everything fell? Well, most of the ones I know found a safe place, hunkered down, and waited for the chaos to fade. Those lucky enough to be in places like Texas had a good life. The Republic was about as ready as it could be to survive the end of everything. Good weather, natural resources, and a government willing to knuckle down and do the hard things that needed doing. People in the largely rural Midwest States did pretty good for themselves too. Those in Chicago had a rougher time. Detroit was pretty much a nightmare. I’m good friends with one who survived Detroit and she wishes the army had just burned it all to the ground when they rolled in. She and her friends certainly did their part to make certain it was as rough as possible on those in charge at the time. Let’s just say that I never want to be on their bad side.

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The Second Great Depression

by on May 11, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

By the time the Second Great Depression hit America with its full steam, it was far too late for anyone to prepare. People were either in a region that was able to weather the economic collapse or they were not. Those in the good areas sometimes barely even noticed it. Oh, they knew things were bad for other people, but a surprising number of people were barely inconvenienced at all by the greatest collapse of civilization in modern history. Other people died of starvation or rampant crime waves, and some entire cities became ghost towns. Where people were when it started greatly determined whether or not they survived at all.

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The Second Great Depression

by on May 10, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

It began with a whimper, not a bang. A Friday afternoon announcement that the United States of America would no longer make payments on the debt to China a few other select nations that did not have America’s best interests at heart. It was part of the traditional weekend infodump on the networks that included a line item about reducing funding to a few cherished political third rail programs. The networks did report on it, and many analysts of the time said that was the most dangerous part of the entire infodump. But there was far more outrage about the suggestion that the government would limit grandmother’s social security payments than whether or not they would pay some Chinese banker on the other side of the world. It is amazing how an event so important can be utterly invisible to the people of the time. That Friday was another Archduke Ferdinand moment for our world. It was a day few noticed at the time but that started the irreversible tumble into the abyss that was The Second Great Depression.

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The Second Great Depression

by on May 9, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

So what did most people do when the Second Great Depression began? Most of those I’ve talked to didn’t notice it. Not for months, anyway. The networks chattered about it, but they chattered about a lot of fake news and most people had long since stopped taking them seriously. A few people I know did take it seriously. They saw the writing on the wall and if they weren’t already in a safe place, they got to one. That generally meant some family farm at least a hundred kilometers from the nearest major city. Some tried bunkering up a bit closer, but they didn’t have as much luck in the long run. The ones that survived the best made friends with their neighbors, and joined the local PTA, American Legion, or VFA. They took their kids Scouting or to the local 4H. They attended the county fairs and jacked their jaws at the local bars on Friday nights. They were an established and recognized part of the local community when things went downhill.

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