My observational work expands upon the standard duality of climate change and conflict with yet another two c-words: Contagion and complexity. I guess we can call it my “Four Cs for a 4°C World.” Simply put, these are the primary collapse factors for our world. The categories into which we can parse and collate the data of our doom. 

The first “C” is Climate, and within this category I include more than just the factors attributable to climate change itself, but all environmental and ecological issues that act as either accelerators or multipliers of the climate crisis itself. Pollution, resource depletion, the loss of biodiversity and even the scarcity of energy, all of those are individual force-multipliers of climate change.

Next up is my second “C” of Conflict. Other than just the new world war we seem to be currently getting ramped up, there are also issues of societal and economic conflict that are presented within this category, future wars that are just now in the budding stage, as well as the inevitable outbreak of the global resource wars. Even the political and cultural divisions within society itself create forms of conflict at the individual and community levels. Large or small, there is no escaping the growing conflict in our world.

After conflict comes the “C” of Contagion. From COVID-19 and the recently showcased monkeypox to the various strains of bird flu and the rise and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There is even the new problem of ancient pathogens lying in wait inside the quickly thawing ice of glaciers and permafrost, unknown contagious diseases that are a scary, independent enemy all their own.

Finally, there is Complexity, my fourth and final “C.”. This deals with the problems of our incredibly complex world of interdependent and interconnected systems, with every aspect of civilization wrapped up in one big machine just waiting for the right wrench to be thrown into the works. We can look at how everything is so vastly complicated in our world that we have abdicated almost all function to automated systems and algorithms not under any real human control. All that complexity is moving towards being managed by artificial intelligence… we’ve all seen that movie and we know how it ends.

            The data presented here will allow you to engage in one of the most important aspects of learning. That is “Doing Your Own research.” You don’t have to take what I say, or what anyone else says, about collapse at face value. In fact, I recommend never doing that. I am hoping to simply provide a starting point for people, an awareness of the issues that can spark their own journey down the rabbithole that is the collapse of civilization. And so, here are some of the tools that can help you in that endeavor.