I am looking through several scenarios here. It would take me a long time to dump all of it into a written form, so I’ll just do an abbreviated version.
Low-probability option, war fizzles out because America runs out of time, and Pentagon decides against the nuclear option for some reason. Funding for the CIA political control projects worldwide runs dry due to total economic collapse. The opposition to the installed and controlled politicians and media grows and grass-roots political options form, but the populace is mentally and emotionally weakened by the Internet hypnosis and is not capable of reversing the fatal economic trends quickly enough to avoid collapse. Welfare financing of Muslims and Africans in Europe ceases due to economic collapse, and they enter a state of perpetual riot outside of the rule of law. Collapse of the petrochemical industry leads to the collapse of the food supply, energetic sector and transportation. America and Europe descend into chaos, with various degrees of kinetic conflict and a paradoxical combination of anarchy and totalitarianism. Russia pacifies Ukraine, and it turns out that without America, all the current hot-spots of conflict suddenly cease to be a problem. Israel is in a desperate situation of either brokering a harmful peace or being destroyed. China replaces the USA with the rest of the world as a market, but the volume of trade scales down significantly due to deindustrialization and impoverishment of the major centres. Taiwan was only ever a problem because of America. Japan suffers a terrible economic collapse. South Korea reintegrates with the North. America and Europe are violent, poor, vicious shitholes sidelined by history.
Low probability option, war escalates to the point of ten million dead but then shock and panic force America to de-escalate. Russia establishes total victory in Ukraine. Poland enters the conflict with 300k troops. Russia responds with an extremely vicious counter-attack, inflicting over 70% casualties on NATO within the first week. American bases in Poland and Germany are destroyed. America responds by attempting a decapitation attack against Russian leadership. This results in several high military officers killed, and the Russians respond by destroying the entirety of American military with nuclear strikes. All the Ohio nuclear submarines are sunk, all the shipyards are destroyed, all the military bases are destroyed, all the aircraft carriers are sunk, CIA HQ and Pentagon are destroyed, America launches an attempted nuclear response, Russia takes down 90% of the ICBMs, Russia loses several major bases and industrial cities. Russia issues an ultimatum, requesting American unconditional surrender or total nuclear retaliation will ensue. Since most of the Russian nuclear forces are intact and most of American nuclear forces are destroyed, America stands down and surrenders.
Extremely low probability option, something unexpected happens and disrupts everybody’s plans – supervolcano, aliens, asteroid, supernova, extreme onset of the ice age or whatever. Since the parameters are unknown, precise modelling isn’t possible.
High probability option, same as above but the Russians are more heavily compromised and shaken, and launch total nuclear retaliation without even attempting a political outcome. Several hundred warheads of 100kT or above pepper American cities, industrial and military installations. Tens of millions dead within days, hundreds of millions dead within the year. Russia and China lost most military and industrial installations and all major cities. UK is completely devastated and its population dies off. Several major points in Europe suffer the same fate. Total collapse of the Internet, total collapse of world trade and finances. Predictive ability past this point lost due to chaos.
Cumulative probability of “good outcomes” is below 10%, but those include totalitarian governmental/corporate/AI control over the populace and a complete loss of freedom, so “good outcomes” might be a misnomer. Probability of Western economic collapse within the timeframe of 5 years is over 99%. Probability of Western civilization recovering to pre-2019 normal is zero. Probability of nuclear exchange within the timeframe of a year is over 80%. Probability of nuclear exchange within a month is over 20%, but then starts growing as several parameters simultaneously converge to the critical points. The main critical point is the collapse of American control over the global economy, and resultant loss of American military budget, creating a “use it or lose it” situation for the people behind this entire mess. In this scenario, it is over 90% likely for them to use the nuclear option to degrade the rest of the world and give the collapsed America a chance of recovering ahead of others, according to the original plan. The likelihood of them proceeding with the plan is exceedingly high because we’ve been living in this scenario since at least 2008, and likely longer.
America (but I can’t eliminate the possibility that sources of power in UK, Israel and elsewhere participate in the problem) still controls the entire roadmap, but approaches the point where they aggravate other actors to the point of no return.
Probability of the sudden global glaciation is showing a non-null percentage within the timeframe of a century, so that too is a “dark horse” to be mindful of. This is due to extreme winter events in North America and indications of permafrost melting in Siberia, which indicates climate approaching the conditions in the last glacial phase. Also, the Sun has been acting strangely, departing from its usual 11-year cycle, which still doesn’t feature significantly in my analysis but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on.
I don’t exactly read your blog to get my daily dose of optimism, but whoa, what a way to underdeliver on Christmas cheer. 🙂
Expanding on your last point regarding Sun cycles, I recently stumbled upon a work by Valentina Zharkova, established expert on Sun cycles, which seems relevant. Short version, she expects period of grand solar minimum during next three solar cycles, between 2020 and 2053, similar to Maunder minimum. Maunder minimum is a period with almost no sun spots between 1645 and 1715, also known as “Little Ice Age”. This will result in average temperatures on Earth dropping up to one degree (which is a lot – just ask climate change scaremongers). That puts Europe in precarious position due to agricultural land in Ukraine currently being seeded with metal instead of wheat, and cooling relations with Russia preventing cheap gas imports.
After that, she predicts short and intense period of increased Sun activity between 2053 and 2370, followed by another grand solar minimum in 2370.
I’m linking directly to conclusions.
And there’s also an in-depth video where she goes through all of it.
Actually, the truly pessimistic prediction would be that this would linearly extend into the future where the leftist technocrats enslave everybody and directly own absolutely everything. Fortunately, I don’t see that; it relies on the underlying assumptions that are false, the same way people with money think they can dig a hole in the ground, store all their stuff there, and pay the armed guards and servants to take care of things. However, the underlying assumption is that there is the state that will protect their property rights with laws and courts and prisons. This is because they don’t understand how things actually work, and of course their guards will turn out to replace the police in the role of “men with guns who control you”, so basically the rich guys that are now untouchable get to be killed off unceremoniously and the men with guns get all their stuff. There are similar underlying premises of a super-technological society that can just finance everything by printing money from thin air. The premise is that America is able to use threat of physical force in order to coerce other nations into accepting the dollar in foreign trade and as a gold-replacement. You tell me how much of that still stands; the current system functions only due to inertia, until the bad wolf blows at the house of cards. Also, the value of money is derived from the fact that you can use it to buy stuff. If there isn’t enough gas on the market, you can’t solve the problem by printing more money. I don’t want to go into describing the subtle mechanisms of control and interdependence that make things work in a sophisticated globalized society, but let’s just say that those mechanisms were compromised so badly by sanction warfare, that failure is mathematically certain, the way fall into a gravity well is certain if you lose enough speed.
One of such mechanisms was that Russia was “convinced”, mostly by means of promoting corruption there, to function by selling energy and raw materials to the West, and just buy everything it needs, and neglect its own manufacturing. The result was that the West found itself in a position where it had such cheap energy and raw materials that even nuclear felt expensive in comparison, and they basically had all the benefits of colonialism without even having to invest effort in controlling or oppressing the colonies. This financed the entire economy of Europe, and it seems that nobody was even aware of it. Aggravating and sanctioning Russia was a great case of cutting the branch you’re sitting on, and from the Russian position it’s the best thing that ever happened to them, because this relationship with the west crippled their industry to a dangerous point, and now they can start to recover.
So, basically, the danger is always in some premise nobody thinks about because they just assume things work the way they do and everything will be fine; in essence, optimism is why people fuck up really badly.
Some long time ago I heard some US ex military types who were working as guards for rich guys talking in a YT video, that the rich guys are “driving their Mercedes’ and holding onto their houses” (meaning, those are actually owned by the guards) until shit hits the fan. Basically these guys are counting on killing the rich guys immediately after the collapse of some kind, and they have detailed plans worked out between them on what to do, which I am sure include the families of guards, and don’t include persons who think that they are in charge now.
Although not many people actually realize it, since creation of eurodollar in the 50ies, US has increasingly less control of dollar. Most “dollars” are actually created by banks outside of the US, and the only way the Fed is “in control of dollar” in the same way Wizard of Oz was in control of Oz. Even worse actually, as I’m not confident this wizard even realizes that he’s a fake.
The runaway system they’ve created is like a nuclear chain reaction because a lot of it is time-locked; it can’t be easily stopped. Dollar will continue to appreciate before it fails and everybody will suffer for it, US less than others. At a point when the US tries to reverse this process, and discovers that they can’t, the process will already start hurting them more than anybody else, as others will one by one reach escape velocity from the dollar system, or fail and go bankrupt if they can’t.
So I’d say that we’re already way past the point where US needed to use force to convince anybody to use dollar; now we’re at the phase where they have weaponized the dollar itself. This is a good thing, as you mention, as it will accelerate this process. The faster all of it plays out, the more countries will manage to actually survive it without going bankrupt. But unfortunately, it will likely take longer than anybody anticipates.