Collapse in a Nutshell

First the SHTF, and then it could be TEOTWAWKI

WTF is with all the acronyms? I don’t know, I just work here. When it comes to the traditional “prepper” community there is a common habit of breaking down complex ideas into acronyms. Basically, SHTF stands for when the “Shit Hits The Fan”, meaning a disaster or catastrophe that causes upheaval and the breakdown of social order on a large scale. TEOTWAWKI hits a bit more heavily with the meaning “The End Of The World As We Know It.” If you have never heard this phrase before, it can be simply defined as the end result of a series of events that leads to the complete collapse of our current societal, economic, and political systems on a global scale. If you’re new to thinking about collapse you have probably come across these acronyms long before you reached my little article here. But there is a big difference between knowing what the letters stand for and understanding what these events actually are and how they will affect you and your family.

So, what’s the difference? It can be difficult to separate the two as they connect on so many levels, and to an extent, they can seem nearly identical. The best way I have found to define their differences is by looking at how they go together. To make sense of it, just look at a SHTF event as the short-term effects of some disaster or upheaval, and TEOTWAWKI as the long-term result of an SHTF event that went uncorrected for too long or a series of compounding SHTF events that simply overwhelmed all ability to correct at all.

Even more simply, you can look at it like a SHTF event could be the start of TEOTWAWKI and might even resemble such utter collapse for a time or in a certain area or region, but it also might just be temporary or isolated to one region. Additionally, SHTF events are more likely to happen and probably won’t lead to the complete collapse of civilization, but they can be triggers that compound together with other events and thus possibly reach the level of cataclysmic destruction for TEOTWAWKI to set in. A potential cascade of failures that bring the entire machine down.

To sum it up, SHTF events on their own are not necessarily permanent. They are events that can be severe enough to destroy the lives of many people, but eventually, everything can return to normal. TEOTWAWKI, on the other hand, is the complete and never-ending collapse of everything with no going back to “normal life” or “the way it was before.” It is a final transformation of the world and our civilization that cannot be undone.

Getting Ready for The End of the World

A world-ending cataclysm has been a staple of fantasy and science fiction films and books for a very long time. And having any belief in the possibility of its occurrence in the real world has mostly been just that, a fantasy and a viewpoint looked on as just a little crazy. Our world and its economic, political, and societal systems have always been looked at as quite stable foundations. The people who have always believed in the potential for these catastrophic scenarios were usually looked on as being unstable or paranoid, their viewpoints mostly being regarded as irrational fears of an imaginary future.

Yet now, when you look back on the events of just the last few years, the reality of a collapse does not just seem possible, but maybe even inevitable. There isn’t any way to know just how far away we are from seeing some kind of systemic collapse, but there is quite a bit to be worried and frightened about. One of the best ways to overcome such fear of the unknown is to learn about it and try to prepare for it in whatever ways you can. Understanding something like TEOTWAWKI and the future it may have in store for us is crucial to such preparation.

What Could Cause Such a Collapse?

Given the current state of the world, it is no wonder that many people are starting to think to themselves, “What exactly would it take for the world around us to come crashing down?”

The quick answer is that almost anything can disrupt the fragile mechanisms and components of the systems that allow us to live the lifestyles we have grown accustomed to. It has taken humanity tens of thousands of years of discovery and innovation to create the tools and infrastructure that produce and transport the resources needed to provide all of the comforts we enjoy.

Despite all of the scientific and technological advancements that we have been able to achieve, it only takes a single significant event to bring it all down. In fact, it is the very complexity and interdependence of the system that provides us with our conveniences that also make it more vulnerable to disruption. The more connected and complex it becomes, the less resistance it has to damaging shocks from major events.

There are so many ways that it could happen I will only briefly touch upon some of them in this article. Future articles will go into the deeper details of all of these scenarios and the destructive upheaval they can create. For now, I will just list some brief notes about a few of the more commonly mentioned events that could be the beginning of TEOTWAWKI.

Increasing Extreme Natural Disasters

Whether it be a flood or hurricane, wildfire or tornado, earthquake or volcanic eruption, a natural disaster is one of the most devastating, and most common, catastrophic events that can happen on our planet. Throughout the history of humanity, there have been countless instances of the destruction nature can hurl upon us and our civilizations.

The good news is that events like these are more easily prepared for than others, mostly due to our ability to predict relatively when and where they will happen. Whenever a natural disaster occurs, we record the effects, and that gives us a frame of reference we can use, both to make plans for such a thing happening again, and to make sure that our plans match up well against the expected severity of the event.

The bad news is that the increasing influence of climate change is not only making these events more common and more extreme but also much more unpredictable in both timing and location. Disasters that once typically only happened in certain areas and at certain times are now moving beyond those norms, often with little warning, and are hitting with more force than we are used to. Furthermore, this trend is only expected to increase over time, and at an accelerating rate.

Before, the potential for natural disasters to bring about a global collapse was not very great. But now, the possibility of natural disasters leading to TEOTWAWKI has risen significantly, especially if multiple disasters strike close together or hit hard enough to disrupt some of our critical infrastructure for a long time. Such a thing could set off a chain reaction of damage and potentially bring on the systemic collapse that leads to the end of the world as we know it.

Grid Down Scenario

A very big concern is an event that could cause a total failure of our electrical and/or telecommunications network infrastructure, or “The Grid,” as we call it. No power, no cellphones, no internet, none of it. Events like this are usually localized and short-term, one of those SHTF events we went over. Bad for those caught in it for sure, but unlikely to bring the world to the edge of destruction. However, what if there was a more far-reaching disruption to our electrical grid? Such as a terrorist or state backed computer hack, or an occurrence like an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) from a nuclear weapon, or CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) similar to the Carrington Event? Well, then the results could be quite a bit more apocalyptic.

Just imagine, if you can, that all of the power in your country went out and showed no signs of coming back on. How would you even know how far it reached? How could you find out the reason why it even happened? Think about it. What would happen if people could not heat their homes in the winter, or refrigerate their food? How would they react to not knowing what was happening, to not being able to get any news? What of the critical systems for life in hospitals or the multitude of aircraft in the air? If it was an attack, how would a nation respond to it? I could go on, but you get the idea. Try and imagine not just all of the possible physical effects, but also what it would do to people’s state of mind and how they would react to such a thing. It is not a pretty picture.

This is an illustration of our collective reliance on an increasingly fragile system. Any grid-down situation that was widespread or that went unresolved for very long has a very high potential to bring about a complete and total collapse of all social order within a very short timeframe. One of the scariest things about such an event is that it is not theoretical. It has happened before. The Carrington Event back in 1859 is a documented example of what could happen completely naturally, without any interference by humanity. Good for the people back then there was no real “grid” to go down, so the world escaped the massive damage that such a thing would cause today. But the simple fact is that it could happen again, right now, today. And the result would be…TEOTWAWKI.

Political Instability and Civil Unrest

Our governments play a big part in our lives, setting and maintaining parameters for what we can and cannot do. The policies and regulations are supposed to protect us, enable us to provide for our lives, and guarantee our human rights while protecting us from outside interference so that we can live our lives according to our chosen directions.

That being said, politicians are just human beings that have flaws the same as the rest of us. And they tend to fall victim to them, just like we do. The difference is that our bad actions very rarely can have consequences at the very foundational level of society. Corruption, abuses of power, loyalty to lobbyist agendas, and overall bad decision-making can lead to a turbulent political and social climate filled with division, civil outcry, and even violence among the people of even the most comfortable of nations. More and more these days government actions, for political rather than practical reasons, have been doing everything necessary to send people into a chaotic frenzy of social upheaval. Within that chaos, incredible amounts of damage can be dealt to physical, cultural, and social institutions. Trust in government is becoming a very rare commodity across the world.

Revolutions and rebellions, civil wars, and violent takeovers of government have happened before, are happening now in the world, and can happen again in even the most stable of nations. In a scenario such as one of these, there will be years, maybe decades, of unrest and possibly conflict as people fight to create some new government or try to return to the old one.

Conflict and War

Of all of humankind’s creations, there are hardly any that can wreak as much havoc, or as quickly, as a large-scale war. And in the advanced world of today, such a war would be fought by powers that possess the ultimate incarnation of mankind’s destructive nature. Nuclear weapons. Even a limited exchange is almost unimaginable in the sheer magnitude of the wave of destruction such an event would cause. A single detonation alone will cause enormous damage from fire, heat, and shockwave for miles surrounding the explosion. After the explosion comes the intense radiation that makes its way into everything around it, including the ash that spreads as fallout even further from the site of the explosion. And strikes across many targets in multiple nations? I don’t even really have to go into detail here, anyone can see such a thing is certainly the end of the world we know.

The threat of a nuclear exchange has always been talked about, all over the world, and I don’t just mean in prepper communities. The possibility has given birth to many post-apocalyptic books and films that tried to imagine what life would be like after such a war.

The extensive destruction, incredible death toll, and persistent widespread radiation will force those people who remain to move into a limited selection of dubiously safe areas, especially if a multitude of strikes occur. A nuclear winter can render the sun unable to sustain most of the plant life on Earth causing massive die-offs of animal life. Survivors would be left with only limited amounts of processed and preserved foods to live off. The list goes on, none of it good. Talk about an end-of-the-world wasteland!

Preparing for the Collapse of Everything.

Preparing for something along the lines of TEOTWAWKI is significantly different than preparing for a SHTF situation. When all hell breaks loose and everything that supports us in this world gets shattered, the urban population centers will see tremendous levels of destruction. People will explode out of the urban and suburban landscapes trying to distance themselves from, and take advantage of, one another. In the short term, you will have to have a defined plan, with contingency strategies, and stick to it as closely as possible before someone, or something comes along and takes you out. You need to plan for not just the short-term like in a SHTF scenario, but for the mid-term and the long. It is a daunting prospect.

As time passes, more and more people will die, resulting in more space for you to move through what remains of the world and less pressure on whatever natural resources are available, but anything remaining from the old days will end up being fought over or you’ll have to come up with some other alternatives. There are tons and tons of survival strategies out there. Many of them work well for short-term scenarios but quickly become less capable as time goes on. Creative problem-solving and intuitive thinking will be two of the most important skills in a fallen world. As will the willingness and ability to let go of some of the personal restraints that civilized living has conditioned into all of us.

And so…

A lot of folks spend quite a bit of time wondering about how our civilization will eventually come to ruin, and even more time when it comes to planning out the strategies for surviving such a catastrophe. One thing is for sure, however. The collapse, when it comes, will be anything but a hike and a campout. When the moment arrives and we know we have to get the hell out of wherever we are, it will be the most stressful and crazy day of our lives. We must try and prepare for the physical and emotional impact, but no matter how well we do so, it will not be easy. And the decisions that we will have to make later in the struggle to survive will exact a heavy toll.

Most people won’t be ready, or willing, to try and accomplish such preparation. And the truth of the matter is that luck will be the biggest factor in determining how well we do, not planning or readiness. The largest portion of people will get caught up in the chaos and destruction, and that will be that. but in general, we are a pretty hardy species, and capable of amazing feats when we put our minds to it. The more effort you invest in getting ready for TEOTWAWKI, the more likely you are to make it through to whatever world emerges next.