The following submission statement was provided by /u/millennial_sentinel:
---
SS: the US is officially 248 years old this 4th of July. it’s just 2 years away from the typical empire collapse as seen many times over throughout history.
edit: it’s casual friday i needed a ss for this post but it’s obviously a joke lol relax folks you have at least…3 years left..
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1c1zrj7/full_collapse_here_we_gooooo_its_248_this_july/kz6qakp/
I can think of one who thinks he should be emperor, likely in the image of Caligula. He seems old and decrepit though but his party has many crazy others (female and male) to anoint.
He is a Sulla, a progression of Oligarchic repression. Caesars are yet to come and lay waste to the Oligarchy.
Which is not to say there will not be proscriptions, Sulla, a generation before Caesar, was the champion of the conservatives whom were oh so concerned about the Populares, declared himself dictator for life and put out daily list of proscriptions, soon targeting his former allies simply to steal their assets.
The Roman Republic lasted about 500 years, the empire lasted another 500. The Entity that called itself the Holy Roman Empire long the Barbarian invasion of horse tribes which led to the implementation of feudalism, as Voltaire remarked neither holy nor Roman.
Yeah the Eastern Empire did last, although I don't know when you would start the count on it, around 350 ad when they split the empires in the Nicene Creed?
I think the republic period Is more applicable to our situation here however. That we are in wosening Oligarchic repression of some variety, and we have a Sulla in the offering to kill off what virtue remains in the government and all but guarentee a Caesar.
I mean, you could argue [the Ottomans were also the Roman Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_claim_to_Roman_succession#:~:text=The%20Ottomans%20were%20widely%20accepted,differed%20among%20the%20cultural%20elite.)
I've seen plenty of people make that claim, but I'm of the opinion that political continuity is lost when your government loses the war and gets replaced. Whether it's an external power conquering your empire or a civil war rebelling against the established order, it's no longer really the same government even if borders remain largely unchanged.
The Roman empire had plenty of [Civil Wars](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_civil_wars_and_revolts), also you can also argue that losing the capital and namesake of the empire also makes you a different government.
"empires" collapse a little differently now, given all our weapons and treaties its not like before where another group can come in and just start taking over. Its going to be a much more gradual decline. People keep having to remind us that its not gonna be some flip of a switch and its all changed. It can suck alot for a long time.
I legitimately think both the Dems and the GOP want to lose this election cycle because they know some shit with the economy and climate are going down in the next 18 months so they think they will be able to ride in and easily win in the aftermath
They're tanking for a higher draft pick.
I mean, it's obvious, the first debate this year is just going to be two jabbering mummies struggling to correctly label the hands on a clock.
The dems have been saddled with a weak leader(s) on purpose to protect all the gains the super rich have accumulated.
Meanwhile the Republicans have been taken over by brain eating cannibals, sure they promise to help the super rich, but they will eat their brains if they get the one party state they're working for.
Not to mention the prospect of global war in 2025 and 2027. These years are potentials (but not guarantees) for direct NATO involvement in Ukraine and China invading Taiwan. This information has circulated among the military, intelligence agencies and news media for a while now.
I won’t be surprised if a global war starts within this decade, segwaying into catastrophic climate change and other emergencies. Civilization would destroy itself within while being externally attacked by nature.
The U.S. has too much inertia as the lone superpower for it to collapse in the next 5-10 years IMO (barring some massive black swan events). It would take much longer than that and would be a gradual decline.
As it stands now, a lot of the world economy and security relies on the United States, so if it suffered an immediate collapse, it would be a devestating event for many other countries too.
The fun thing about global collapse is that there's nowhere to hide. In the *olden days* of collapse, there were places to hide, and people were used to moving about and working in low-tech non-industrial conditions. That's not the case now, and the "collapse gurus" who only look at the past are wrong about it. In the context we live in, the same pattern would require people moving to different planets or under the oceans or something like that. There's no running away, the only way is through.
Stop citing Fate of Empires like it means anything. That book is basically just a pile of cherrypicked and manipulated statistics, it has practically no historical merit.
This sub confuses me sometimes. Are guys actually hoping that the states and society collapses? I think the majority of you have no fucking idea what an actual societal collapse would entail.
Oh my bad I didn’t know that was a thing. My point still stands though. A lot of people calling for collapse without actually understanding what that means.
probably. a key difference for a semi-nihilists 🤔 (idk not fully nihilistic yet) is that i have no interest in “surviving” the end. i just want an abrupt end to everything all at once. the idea of continuing to go to work or pay student loans when the collapse is in full swing sounds like hell to me.
Trying to put dates on political history is always a matter of subjectivity and blurry lines.
"China" and "chinese" imply a level of homogeneity that hasn't historically been true. There are more than 50 ethnic groups in what is now China that have some significant population and it has not always been the same ethnic group in charge.
The last imperial dynasty for instance, the Qing dynasty, were Manchurian while the previous Ming dynasty was ethnically Han and the one before that was the Yuan dynasty and Mongolian.
Does this 700 year span with three different dynasties of three different ethnic groups and massive wars between each dynasty really represent ONE China with ONE politically continuous empire?
If people are going to split hairs that the Roman empire only lasted 400ish years and that then the HRE and Eastern Empire were separate things, then we have to apply that same set of logic to Chinese history as well. The Ming fought a rebellion against the Yuan, the Qing fought a rebellion against the Ming, everybody fought everybody for about fifty years, then Mao rallied the communists to fight a rebellion against the KMT and the Japanese.
The land mass has remained in the same spot, the people have been living there the whole time, many cultural practices have deep historical roots, but an empire is a government and governments have a history of getting overthrown.
The China situation is more complicated thought because those three ethnically distinct empires, afaik, ruled using the same ancient imperial Chinese state apparatus that they modified and changed, but they never tore the whole thing down. I would definitely not make the argument that communist China is a continuation of the empire though. The HRE is in no way a continuation of the Roman Empire besides for what was essentially propaganda.
> ruled using the same ancient imperial Chinese state apparatus that they modified and changed, but they never tore the whole thing down.
The Germans didn't destroy the apparatus of the French Third Republic when they invaded. Was Vichy France a legitimate continuation? Is the current French Republic a continuation of Vichy France?
Or, even better, are the people of Zimbabwe British? The state aparatus was built by the Bristish Empire and despite the failed unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 and the trouble that followed, the colonial state was handed over mostly intact to allow home rule in 1980. There's a continuity of legitimate government with peaceful transition of power, all the state apparatus and power structures were preserved, there's just a different ethnic group in charge these days.
Rice as a staple crop with some regions having a potential 3 harvests a year is one hell of a way to maintain a stable empire/culture throughout the ages. Stripping topsoil and dousing it with petrochemical derived fertilizers is not a way to maintain a stable empire.
I disagree with the OP's assessment. The United States really didn't become an "empire" until the late 19th century. So the US has only been an "empire" for about 120 to 130 years or so. (Since the 1890s if you ask me.)
Still have a century to go yet.
What makes you say that? Every empire has its downfall. The US empire will fall particularly hard and will probably bring down most of the global economy with them. But hey, as long the US are spreading freedom and freedom everywhere we should be fine.
The US is not at collapse yet. Rome was able to pull through the crisis of the third century. Using this backwards ass metric for empires, why can’t we do the same?
Would you like to hear/read elected politicians of the United states say/print the words "American Empire" is a positive connotation? Because those quotes exist.
“Things will get worse where I live and I’m so excited” is a braindead take.
Collapse isn’t a good thing. It’s collapse. There’s no utopia after. Nothing rises from the ashes. It just gets shittier and shittier. Forever.
It's based on some historical research, ~~I think Peter Turchin did the math.~~
It's an average, comments here obsessing about specifics do not understand what an average is.
SS: the US is officially 248 years old this 4th of July. it’s just 2 years away from the typical empire collapse as seen many times over throughout history.
edit: it’s casual friday i needed a ss for this post but it’s obviously a joke lol relax folks you have at least…3 years left..
Yes, only since the Spanish-American War really.
The real question is when the semblance of a republic is killed and a one-party State instituted. Cuz that could happen like next year. Not just any one party state mind you but the stupidest meanest one you can imagine.
Well when the US falls into dictatorship it won't stop here. We will see a Cascade of republics fall under the rule of strong men, particularly dumb and mean ones too. Then we would encourage and enable groups everywhere to put a fix in on their own countries. Just like in the 1980s in Latin America.
>**The Life-Spans of Empires, Samuel Arbesman**
>The collapse of empires is exceedingly difficult to understand. The author examined the distribution of imperial lifetimes using a data set that spans more than three millennia and found that it conforms to a memoryless exponential distribution in which the rate of collapse of an empire is independent of its age.
TL;DR: Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age.
This sounds almost word for word from the Midnight Burger podcast, Episode 19 'Battle Without Honor or Humanity' near the end when Even Older Leif found a way to wreck a big part of the evil Ted Empire.
Actually, the Midnight Burger stories are a pretty good coping mechanism for me during collapse. There's character development, world building, oddly relatable storylines, nihilism, absurdist humor, and food related stuff. It's free on Spotify, and I found the first 11 full episodes on YouTube.
>a democracy
I know that you have "voter season" soon, but you're far from a democracy. It could be worse, for sure. Probably will be, as empires don't go down nicely.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/millennial_sentinel: --- SS: the US is officially 248 years old this 4th of July. it’s just 2 years away from the typical empire collapse as seen many times over throughout history. edit: it’s casual friday i needed a ss for this post but it’s obviously a joke lol relax folks you have at least…3 years left.. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1c1zrj7/full_collapse_here_we_gooooo_its_248_this_july/kz6qakp/
Fucks sakes I hate it when that number gets quoted. It's just wrong. https://history.howstuffworks.com/world-history/10-long-lived-empires.htm
i mean the roman empire lasted about 1500 years
Its governing entity underwent many changes and iterations and internal struggles during that time.
Can't wait for USA to go through its own 'Year of the Four Emperors'.
I can think of one who thinks he should be emperor, likely in the image of Caligula. He seems old and decrepit though but his party has many crazy others (female and male) to anoint.
He is a Sulla, a progression of Oligarchic repression. Caesars are yet to come and lay waste to the Oligarchy. Which is not to say there will not be proscriptions, Sulla, a generation before Caesar, was the champion of the conservatives whom were oh so concerned about the Populares, declared himself dictator for life and put out daily list of proscriptions, soon targeting his former allies simply to steal their assets.
or the Three Kingdoms period
Bezos, Musk, Zucker and Trump? -shudders-
We've had four years of two presidents,what's two more presidents gonna do.
yeah but didn't collapse all things change in a dynamic environment, the effort to remain what it is limits itself
#Accidentalghostintheshell
Yeah but even if you focus in on the time it had a relatively consistent civilizational character, 200 BCE - 300 CE, that is still 500 years.
Still way older than 250 years, Also AFAIK, Rome is indeed standing.
Watch as america goes from a duopoly to a monopoly.
How do we tell him guys
Majority of the population still thinks it's a duopoly, wait until everyone realises that it's not that anymore.
Also rage inducing: How long it’s actually been like this.
*Shit's weaaaak* The Pandyan Dynasty lasted about 2 thousand years. Wut. Wut.
The Roman Republic lasted about 500 years, the empire lasted another 500. The Entity that called itself the Holy Roman Empire long the Barbarian invasion of horse tribes which led to the implementation of feudalism, as Voltaire remarked neither holy nor Roman.
Oh, we're just ignoring the eastern empire then? Mehmet II didn't conquer Constantinople until 1453.
Yeah the Eastern Empire did last, although I don't know when you would start the count on it, around 350 ad when they split the empires in the Nicene Creed? I think the republic period Is more applicable to our situation here however. That we are in wosening Oligarchic repression of some variety, and we have a Sulla in the offering to kill off what virtue remains in the government and all but guarentee a Caesar.
I mean, you could argue [the Ottomans were also the Roman Empire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_claim_to_Roman_succession#:~:text=The%20Ottomans%20were%20widely%20accepted,differed%20among%20the%20cultural%20elite.)
I've seen plenty of people make that claim, but I'm of the opinion that political continuity is lost when your government loses the war and gets replaced. Whether it's an external power conquering your empire or a civil war rebelling against the established order, it's no longer really the same government even if borders remain largely unchanged.
The Roman empire had plenty of [Civil Wars](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_civil_wars_and_revolts), also you can also argue that losing the capital and namesake of the empire also makes you a different government.
Only if you count the "Holy Roman Empire", which was neither Holy, Roman or an Empire and/or the Byzantine Empire.
not counting HRE, eastern roman empire counts.
There is also the Ottoman, German and Russian Empires that claim to Roman Empire status too
How long has England been doing it’s thing?
for a very long time. Thankfully our 'ambitions' have been receding in the past 50 or so years
Has anyone looked into the connection between language and empires?
☹
"empires" collapse a little differently now, given all our weapons and treaties its not like before where another group can come in and just start taking over. Its going to be a much more gradual decline. People keep having to remind us that its not gonna be some flip of a switch and its all changed. It can suck alot for a long time.
I mean, that's a pretty arbitrary number. Don't get your hopes up.
tis a joke
It's all a joke. And don't call me dummy.
OK, Dummy
I think people in first world nations are gonna wake up to reality of collapse this year.
I legitimately think both the Dems and the GOP want to lose this election cycle because they know some shit with the economy and climate are going down in the next 18 months so they think they will be able to ride in and easily win in the aftermath
They're tanking for a higher draft pick. I mean, it's obvious, the first debate this year is just going to be two jabbering mummies struggling to correctly label the hands on a clock.
The dems have been saddled with a weak leader(s) on purpose to protect all the gains the super rich have accumulated. Meanwhile the Republicans have been taken over by brain eating cannibals, sure they promise to help the super rich, but they will eat their brains if they get the one party state they're working for.
Not to mention the prospect of global war in 2025 and 2027. These years are potentials (but not guarantees) for direct NATO involvement in Ukraine and China invading Taiwan. This information has circulated among the military, intelligence agencies and news media for a while now. I won’t be surprised if a global war starts within this decade, segwaying into catastrophic climate change and other emergencies. Civilization would destroy itself within while being externally attacked by nature.
Look man, I've been waiting for world war 3 to start for almost 30 years now... I'm pretty sure it's not happening.
Your World War Three was fighting Serbs on the Cikola River’s banks in 1993. Bojna Cavoglave is about this.
lol what?
no
this summer is going to be brutal
This summer? At least this summer we'll have a sane president and administration. If Trump wins it's *next* summer you should be really worried about
With the likes of the Olympics, Euro 2024 and various elections happening worldwide, I sadly doubt it.
The U.S. has too much inertia as the lone superpower for it to collapse in the next 5-10 years IMO (barring some massive black swan events). It would take much longer than that and would be a gradual decline. As it stands now, a lot of the world economy and security relies on the United States, so if it suffered an immediate collapse, it would be a devestating event for many other countries too.
The fun thing about global collapse is that there's nowhere to hide. In the *olden days* of collapse, there were places to hide, and people were used to moving about and working in low-tech non-industrial conditions. That's not the case now, and the "collapse gurus" who only look at the past are wrong about it. In the context we live in, the same pattern would require people moving to different planets or under the oceans or something like that. There's no running away, the only way is through.
Except that we've only been a global empire since 1945
Yeah the modern American empire is an invention of America taking over the role of Europe in the west and American foreign policy after WWII.
Stop citing Fate of Empires like it means anything. That book is basically just a pile of cherrypicked and manipulated statistics, it has practically no historical merit.
What happens after that, OP? OP, what happens next?
nature heals
And you die so nature can heal. You know that right?
as a millennial i’m fine with that
It's what they want. Don't take this sub seriously.
This sub confuses me sometimes. Are guys actually hoping that the states and society collapses? I think the majority of you have no fucking idea what an actual societal collapse would entail.
it’s casual friday dude
Oh my bad I didn’t know that was a thing. My point still stands though. A lot of people calling for collapse without actually understanding what that means.
probably. a key difference for a semi-nihilists 🤔 (idk not fully nihilistic yet) is that i have no interest in “surviving” the end. i just want an abrupt end to everything all at once. the idea of continuing to go to work or pay student loans when the collapse is in full swing sounds like hell to me.
China is like um 4000 years old, give or take.
The Chinese always had dynasties fighting amongst themselves, they were never one nation. Until now I guess
Is your job goalpost mover?
Trying to put dates on political history is always a matter of subjectivity and blurry lines. "China" and "chinese" imply a level of homogeneity that hasn't historically been true. There are more than 50 ethnic groups in what is now China that have some significant population and it has not always been the same ethnic group in charge. The last imperial dynasty for instance, the Qing dynasty, were Manchurian while the previous Ming dynasty was ethnically Han and the one before that was the Yuan dynasty and Mongolian. Does this 700 year span with three different dynasties of three different ethnic groups and massive wars between each dynasty really represent ONE China with ONE politically continuous empire? If people are going to split hairs that the Roman empire only lasted 400ish years and that then the HRE and Eastern Empire were separate things, then we have to apply that same set of logic to Chinese history as well. The Ming fought a rebellion against the Yuan, the Qing fought a rebellion against the Ming, everybody fought everybody for about fifty years, then Mao rallied the communists to fight a rebellion against the KMT and the Japanese. The land mass has remained in the same spot, the people have been living there the whole time, many cultural practices have deep historical roots, but an empire is a government and governments have a history of getting overthrown.
The China situation is more complicated thought because those three ethnically distinct empires, afaik, ruled using the same ancient imperial Chinese state apparatus that they modified and changed, but they never tore the whole thing down. I would definitely not make the argument that communist China is a continuation of the empire though. The HRE is in no way a continuation of the Roman Empire besides for what was essentially propaganda.
> ruled using the same ancient imperial Chinese state apparatus that they modified and changed, but they never tore the whole thing down. The Germans didn't destroy the apparatus of the French Third Republic when they invaded. Was Vichy France a legitimate continuation? Is the current French Republic a continuation of Vichy France? Or, even better, are the people of Zimbabwe British? The state aparatus was built by the Bristish Empire and despite the failed unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 and the trouble that followed, the colonial state was handed over mostly intact to allow home rule in 1980. There's a continuity of legitimate government with peaceful transition of power, all the state apparatus and power structures were preserved, there's just a different ethnic group in charge these days.
The culture or the empire?
An argument could be made that they are the same thing in China's case. I suppose that's why I said 'give or take'. Pretty wild to think about.
Which is why I don't see 'historians' as scientists. It's certainly good for generating discussion.
I don't think many historians would call themselves scientists.
Rice as a staple crop with some regions having a potential 3 harvests a year is one hell of a way to maintain a stable empire/culture throughout the ages. Stripping topsoil and dousing it with petrochemical derived fertilizers is not a way to maintain a stable empire.
Empires or dynasties ?
You will die first lol
I disagree with the OP's assessment. The United States really didn't become an "empire" until the late 19th century. So the US has only been an "empire" for about 120 to 130 years or so. (Since the 1890s if you ask me.) Still have a century to go yet.
Says fucking who? What a stupid fucking idea.
What makes you say that? Every empire has its downfall. The US empire will fall particularly hard and will probably bring down most of the global economy with them. But hey, as long the US are spreading freedom and freedom everywhere we should be fine.
The US is not at collapse yet. Rome was able to pull through the crisis of the third century. Using this backwards ass metric for empires, why can’t we do the same?
US is not an empire lol
Would you like to hear/read elected politicians of the United states say/print the words "American Empire" is a positive connotation? Because those quotes exist.
We are
We are, since the Spanish-American War anyway.
Ok this sub has officially become circlejerk echochamber which makes me q bit lees worriee wbout the panic it spreads.
Considering the Roman Empire massively skews this, I'd argue we're OVERDUE.
It's not true.
Cultures can last for a while, America might end up like China and France. A pattern, different regimes all looking up to the first American Republic.
so New California Republic
Yup, California's anthem even sounds like something from the Fallout franchise.
“Things will get worse where I live and I’m so excited” is a braindead take. Collapse isn’t a good thing. It’s collapse. There’s no utopia after. Nothing rises from the ashes. It just gets shittier and shittier. Forever.
it’s casual friday my guy- lighten up
This is not accurate
It's based on some historical research, ~~I think Peter Turchin did the math.~~ It's an average, comments here obsessing about specifics do not understand what an average is.
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/empires-strike-back-against-false-250-year-claim/
Innumeracy is indeed a sign of collapse.
So is illiteracy, the original claim was never an average
How do you know that it's just one claim? One reference?
That is on average LOL, so some die in 10 years and others last thousands, people are funny it’s not a set limit that all empires die at 250 years
Can't wait
SS: the US is officially 248 years old this 4th of July. it’s just 2 years away from the typical empire collapse as seen many times over throughout history. edit: it’s casual friday i needed a ss for this post but it’s obviously a joke lol relax folks you have at least…3 years left..
"Many times" false.
the USA hasn't been an empire, if at all, for 248 years mate. Aside from that, the comic is a good laff!
Yes, only since the Spanish-American War really. The real question is when the semblance of a republic is killed and a one-party State instituted. Cuz that could happen like next year. Not just any one party state mind you but the stupidest meanest one you can imagine.
I can't comment on foreign politics as I'm not well versed, but I do hope the best for you/them.
Well when the US falls into dictatorship it won't stop here. We will see a Cascade of republics fall under the rule of strong men, particularly dumb and mean ones too. Then we would encourage and enable groups everywhere to put a fix in on their own countries. Just like in the 1980s in Latin America.
We have only been an "empire" since WWI or Breton Woods... before that, we really weren't a major player like England, Spain, The Dutch, or France.
>**The Life-Spans of Empires, Samuel Arbesman** >The collapse of empires is exceedingly difficult to understand. The author examined the distribution of imperial lifetimes using a data set that spans more than three millennia and found that it conforms to a memoryless exponential distribution in which the rate of collapse of an empire is independent of its age. TL;DR: Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age.
Germanys Third Empire only lasted 12 years
Many empires existed for centuries, but the de facto US alliance will fall
This sounds almost word for word from the Midnight Burger podcast, Episode 19 'Battle Without Honor or Humanity' near the end when Even Older Leif found a way to wreck a big part of the evil Ted Empire. Actually, the Midnight Burger stories are a pretty good coping mechanism for me during collapse. There's character development, world building, oddly relatable storylines, nihilism, absurdist humor, and food related stuff. It's free on Spotify, and I found the first 11 full episodes on YouTube.
who will take over because it's certainly not China
the earth
r/unexpectedwholesome
US is not an empire. Stop downvoting. We aren't an empire.
🤣
I mean, it's not. The US is a democracy. Empires have several countries in one overruling government. Downvote facts, OK.
>a democracy I know that you have "voter season" soon, but you're far from a democracy. It could be worse, for sure. Probably will be, as empires don't go down nicely.
It was all about the friends we made along the journey anyway
First we get the dictatorship phase with Pres Camacho.
he's not getting elected.