Out of All the Possible Futures . . .

The future is not set in stone. There are always a number of possible futures -- strange attractors -- ceaselessly battling each other for the opportunity to evolve into a transient reality and instantiation.

Mega-Egali-Dystopia

As crucial elections pass and the world moves more deeply into a narrowing set of futures, a few things become more clear. Almost none of the possible futures which have been predicted by pundits, bureaucrats, visionaries, and speculative writers, are likely to come about. That is because the future cannot be created deliberately in the manner of conventional construction. Instead, the future must be facilitated and channeled by the erection of specific, well-placed constraints, keeping in mind the natural forces underlying the movement of humans through time.

The set of constraints being erected by the great powers as of today, combined with apparently inexorable demographic forces at work across the globe, increase the likelihood of a global dystopia of poverty, low intelligence, and constant, low-level violence.

The world’s urban population is expected to grow by 2.6 billion people between 2011 and 2050, bringing the total number of urbanites to 6.3 billion. This urban expansion will be especially burdensome for developing countries, where 82 percent of the world’s population currently lives...

Slum populations are expected to grow significantly in the future, and UN HABITAT projects that 6 million more people live in slums every year.

The World Health Organization identifies the rapid increase of urban populations, especially slum populations, as the most important issue affecting health in the 21st century. The agency cites overcrowding, lack of safe water, and improper sanitation systems as the primary factors contributing to poor health among the urban poor. Slums often become breeding grounds for diseases like tuberculosis, dengue, pneumonia, and cholera, and slum dwellers contract water-borne or respiratory illnesses at much higher rates than people in rural areas do.

Cities and their slums will continue to grow as long as rural populations continue to migrate to cities to find economic and other opportunities, such as access to cultural amenities, education, and health care. _Worldwatch_via_GCC

Across the more developed world -- from North America to Europe to Oceania to East Asia -- populations are aging, fertility is falling far below replacement, and these generally more intelligent and accomplished societies of the world are embarking upon a grand experiment of group extinction. These populations which accomplished so much over a fairly short period of time, appear to have chosen to fade away.

Decline of Average Global IQ Over Time

...nearly all of the world's annual demographic growth - close to 95 percent - is occurring in less developed regions. Top seven contributing nations are India, 22 percent; China, 9 percent; Nigeria, 5 percent; Pakistan, 4 percent; Indonesia, 3 percent; Brazil, 2 percent; and Ethiopia, 2 percent

...African birthrates... stand at more than 4 children per woman, with some countries, such as Mali, Niger and Uganda, continuing to have rates above 6 children per woman. Such fertility rates, though expected to decline, translate into rapid population growth for most sub-Saharan African countries for the coming decades. For example, with a current fertility rate of 5.5 children per woman projected to decline to 3.5 children per woman by 2050, Nigeria's population of 162 million more than doubles to 390 million over the next 40 years.

...The consequences of these major demographic changes affect every aspect of human society, including food, natural resources, economic well-being, security, revenue, politics, employment and healthcare. Neither political rhetoric nor wishful thinking can dispel the enormous impacts. _Demographic Trends Shaping the World

Of those who are left after the depopulation of the advanced world -- the primitive tribal societies of Africa and Asia along with the emerging nations -- only China is likely to have the wealth, resources, technological expertise, and infrastructure to persist in creating grand visions of great futures.

And China is virtually certain to split at the seams into competing factions -- some of them based in modern China, others based overseas in Africa, Latin America, and areas that were formerly part of Russia, Oceania, and Europe.

Already we see the beginnings of "the coming anarchy" across the middle east, central Asia, and sub Saharan Africa. The fault lines for civil wars are setting up across a number of countries in Latin America. The forces of secession are erupting from the UK, across Europe, penetrating deeply into the US and Canada, and are likely to grow in intensity as global instability builds. The schisms -- both old and new -- are building, reaching well into the emerging BRICS -- Russia, China, India, Brazil -- and throughout the first and third worlds.

Up until now, the US has been an anchor to which Europe, Oceania, and Latin America could grudgingly hold -- and an oppositional brace against which Russia, China, and their satellites and hangers-on could orient. But it is clear that the US cannot sustain its role as world-policeman, world financial guarantor, world guardian of the trade lanes, world rescuer in times of war and natural disaster, or world anchor.

The US is now undergoing a designed stealthy undertow and dissolution of internal cohesion and external power that is slowly releasing more and more parts of the world to their own fates. A slow destruction which was already occurring through blind corruption and ambition is now taking place by craft and planning. That intentional process of dissolution of cohesiveness and strength can only accelerate with the re-selection of the current US president for yet another 4 year rule.

The moderating powers of Europe, North America, and Oceania on world affairs are dissipating.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. _WB Yeats . . . The Second Coming

There is no need for peak oil, climate catastrophe, resource collapse, global overpopulation, and all the other bugaboo tools of leftist scare-mongering -- all of those meant only to facilitate the grab of power and resources, after all.

Violence, Fertility, and Low IQ Most Prevalent Among Third World People

Everything needed for a collapse of civilisation after the style of Mao, Pol Pot, or Kim, is contained within the weaknesses of human nature combined with the demographic forces at work around the globe.

Parts of the "civilised world" are likely to cohere and fortify themselves against the coming anarchy. Other parts will ally themselves with the anarchy, in an attempt to bring down the remaining foci of a livable future. Much will depend upon where one happens to be when the camels' backs begin to break.

This is where I am supposed to write: "And then I woke up, and it was all a dream."

But was it really? The shape of the shakeout above is only one out of all the possible futures. Yet the forces of dissolution and anarchy are certainly hard at work. They have always been and always will be as long as humans are what they are. Pax Americana was never meant to last forever, just as Pax Romana and Pax Brittanica could not last.

Those periods of transition can be a bit difficult, and quite unpredictable. You have choices: You can choose to fight a courageous holding action, a la The Tea Party movement and the like. You can take your chances and try to profit from the turbulent volatility in markets around the world. You can sit on your laurels and accept whatever comes. Or you can find a good place to hunker down. If you choose to hunker, be advised that there are no guarantees as to how long you will have to wait for TEOTWAWKI. You may find yourself hunkered for quite some time. ;-)

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

In a Future of Megacities, Most of Earth Will be Wild

Projections for the year 2050 predict that most of the 8 billion people on the planet will live in megacities, with populations over 30 million. And these megacity clusters will form a network made up of smaller cities over 1 million in population. But these incredibly dense clusters will weave through a countryside that is emptying. It is already common to find entire villages in China, India, and South America abandoned by its inhabitants who fled to the swelling cities, leaving behind a few old folks, or often, no one at all.

This is the pattern on Earth. Extremely dense and vast populations in a network of megacities connected to each other with nerves of roads and wires, woven over an empty landscape of wild land, marginal pastures, and lightly populated farms. _Technium

Most of us are familiar with life in cities. Bigger cities will mean bigger problems supplying larger populations with necessary goods and services. For the most part we in the developed world can anticipate and plan for these problems. Taking care of large numbers of people will be a lot of work, but for the places most of us will live, it can be done.

What about other places, where skills, aptitudes, and competencies are not as well supplied?

OVER a third of Africa's 1 billion inhabitants currently live in urban areas, but by 2030 that proportion will have risen to a half. According to a recent report from UN-HABITAT, the United Nations agency for human settlements, the population of some cities is set to swell by up to 85% in the next 15 years. The most populous city in 2010, Cairo, will grow by 23% to 13.5m people.

By 2025, however, it will have been overtaken by both Lagos (15.8m) and Kinshasa (15m). Food and water shortages, poor infrastructure and a lack of housing are among the problems faced by governments during such rapid urbanisation.


_Economist

People move to the city for work, education, opportunity, convenient services and shopping, night life, technology, anonymity, and the company of other people. The trend is well established in the developed world where it continues. The trend is accelerating in the undeveloped world, where most of the Earth's new human population is being born.



As population density inside the megacity grows, the countryside becomes correspondingly depopulated. Wilderness will return to displace former human habitation. Wild animal populations will return to the new wilds.

It is easy to imagine the rise of largely automated farms, ranches, and dairies across the developed world. Energy efficient robot tractors, harvesters, animal tenders, milkers, and more, will be supervised by small numbers of human overseers and maintenance techs, who make sure the products are cleanly and properly prepared for transport to the cities.

Other than during periods of war and short-term natural disasters, most people in developed countries have not suffered prolonged hunger for centuries. The technologists of North America, Europe, East Asia, and Oceania will devise ways of producing food for their cities and megacities, even as the countryside depopulates.

But what of the people of the third world, who have little history of society-scale problem-solving and large scale technological innovation? Will the teeming megacities of the future third world become hungry slum-prisons, infested with diseases and parasites? Who will stay behind in the countryside to work and feed the hungry cities?

And when almost all of the people have finally been herded into the cities, becoming dependent upon "society" for city services -- food, water, sanitation, health care, child care, education, entertainment etc. -- who will be responsible for the well-being of all of these people? Once they lose the ability to take care of themselves?

In multicultural settings, where different peoples with thousand-year grievances exist in large numbers side by side, just a few rumours flying about could set the whole thing off.

A few days without food and water can turn such places into charnel houses. Or more quickly, substances introduced into a common food or water supply on a large scale could have similar effects. Putting all of your eggs in one basket can leave your supply of eggs somewhat vulnerable.

The rise of megacities may be good for the land and the wildlife of the planet. Its effect on the people is likely to be mixed.

Megacities and the Pandemic of Doom

ON OCTOBER 2nd a British traveller, flying home to Glasgow from Afghanistan, began to feel ill. Within hours he was diagnosed with Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever, a virus nasty enough for him to be put onto a military transport aircraft for transfer to an isolation hospital in London. Less than 24 hours later he was dead.

This outbreak, on top of another death last month in Saudi Arabia from a previously unknown virus, a cousin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), has set global health agencies on edge... _Economist

Metropolis of Tomorrow

Fast global travel brings the people of the world -- and their emerging infectious diseases -- closer together than ever before. Pandemics and plagues are spread by travelers, over distances both long and short. The human consequences of a widespread pandemic involving an emerging and deadly contagion, can be severe:

In the 1500s and 1600s, European epidemics killed perhaps 90% of the aboriginal Americans. In the 1400s, the plague killed one third of the humans in Europe. The worldwide influenza of 1918 killed 30 million, and AIDS had killed at least half that by 2000... newly-arising pathogens rarely seem to extinct their host species even in their initial outbreak. Genetically-engineered pathogens may be different. _Future Global Catastrophes

A pathogen would have to be designed to spread easily from person to person, persist in the environment, resist antibiotics and immune responses, and cause almost 100% mortality. Designing for long latency (e.g. months) might be necessary to ensure wide distribution, but no length may be enough to infect every last human. _Bioterrorism

There are barriers to the spread of epidemics. Airports, seaports, and train stations can be shut down for the duration of an epidemic. Infected travelers can be rapidly diagnosed and whisked into quarantine.

But in the emerging age of megacities, how would you stop an epidemic that has already established a strong foothold inside a city of 50 million people?

Infected persons would seek medical help soon after the outset of symptoms. If the early symptoms are not too severe, cases may be medicated and sent home -- but not before passing the infection on to health care workers and others they may have come in contact with in waiting rooms and in transit.

The contagion would rapidly spread through schools and workplaces across the megalopolis, perhaps infecting millions before the extent of the problem becomes apparent. By then, any modern methods of quarantine would not likely be effective at stopping the pandemic.

There are now 23 megacities in the world, compared with just two 60 years ago. Just over half of the population currently dwells in cities, and with the urban population expected to nearly double by 2050, that proportion is projected to approach 70%. “Almost all this growth will take place in the developing world,” says Jalkanen. _Nature

There is nothing new about large scale devastation and collapse from epidemics and pandemics. But the rise of megacities provides emerging infectious diseases -- to say nothing of engineered pathogens -- with an opportunity for devastation that may be too good to pass up.

Human history has been punctuated frequently by epidemics, and occasionally by pandemics, that have shaped the rise and fall of civilizations and the victories and defeats of warring armies. The outcome of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.) between Athens and Sparta—and the future course of Western civilization—might have been very different had it not been for the epidemic that decimated the Athenians at the beginning of the war. Some epidemic diseases, such as the plague, smallpox, typhus, and influenza, have persisted throughout recorded history. Smallpox was eradicated worldwide by 1980. Cholera appeared along the world's major trade routes in several devastating epidemics beginning in the eighteenth century, and it still causes massive epidemics, most recently in South America in early 1990s. _Timelines of Great Epidemics

If the contagion is sufficiently disabling, megacities will lose their health care systems fairly early on. Soon thereafter, parts of the critical infrastructure will begin to drop off line, one by one, as key personnel are put out of action -- or attempt to flee the pandemic.

Public supplies of necessities will be rapidly depleted -- first lawfully, then by mass looting. Organised law enforcement and fire departments will be among the first to go down, leaving most of the megacity to the mobs. Collapse of any remaining services should follow soon after.

There are inevitable problems when one tries to put all his eggs in one basket. Large systems are prone to chaotic instabilities that tend to grow along with the size of the system. It is possible to design redundancies, workarounds, and other attempts at resiliency. But in the third world and emerging world -- where most megacities are appearing -- few resources will be devoted to resiliency when poverty is already rampant, and open sewers are the norm rather than the exception.

The tendency toward centralisation and hyper-urbanisation appears to be inevitable across most of the world. Yet there are many vulnerabilities to such concentrations of people, resources, and infrastructure. Many people have no choice, if they wish to enjoy some of the many benefits and opportunities of civilisation.

But dangerous children know how to bring civilisation along with them, wherever they go. It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

More: Where will the next global pandemic originate?

Even More: The Armageddon Virus

Megacities for Better and for Worse

Frost & Sullivan forecasts that about 4.5 billion people globally will be living in cities by 2025—about 60% of the world’s total population. The growing urban population will lead to the rapid expansion of city borders into neighboring suburbs, resulting in the formation of Megacities. _GCC

GCC

When you hear about the coming urban age, it's really a story about rising Asia and the two countries that will define this new era of the megacity: China and India. Half of Asia will become urbanized, and nearly a billion people will shift from countryside to cityscape. Trillions of dollars will need to be spent on roads, trains, power plants, water systems, and social services. _FP

That is the projection, anyway. All very nice, clean, and orderly. But really now, what will it be like?

...the high density of people can generate problems, including health issues such as the rapid transmission of 'flu viruses and psychological problems caused by poverty and stress.

But whatever we think of them, megacities are not only here to stay: They're growing. New Delhi, for example, is projected to have 29.49 million inhabitants by 2025, according to Demographia -- up from 20.99 million in 2010. _CNN

Megacities are metropolitan areas containing more than 10 million people.

FP

For better or worse, urban-watchers are clear on one point: The quality of life for most people in the future will be determined by the quality of cities.

Those cities will be bigger than ever. A megacity has more than ten million inhabitants. In 1995 there were 14; in 2015 there will be 21. And the ranking will have shifted: Today the five largest cities are Tokyo, Mexico City, São Paulo, New York City, and Mumbai (Bombay), and in 2015 they will probably be Tokyo, Dhaka, Mumbai, São Paulo, and Delhi.

And yet, population numbers by themselves don't determine a city's prospects; after all, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Hamburg, Germany, have the same population. Nor is explosive growth necessarily the determining factor. "City problems," one authority points out, "mostly have to do with weak, ineffective, and usually unrepresentative city governments." _NatGeo

Wikipedia article on megacities

Megacities are a dynamic sprawl of human interaction. Some of them will work fairly well, and some of them will fall into the coming anarchy. Dense concentrations of low intelligence humans will not lead to the benefits of cities which Jane Jacobs wrote about. It will lead instead to the less savoury aspects of Sao Paulo, Nairobi, Lagos, and the Paris banlieus.

Cities are complex organisms which must be fed, cleaned, energised, and have their waste hauled away. In the routine and massive power failures of third world cities of today, we see the bare beginnings of the chaos, and a growing potential for devolutional suffering within many of tomorrow's megacities. Not only will both old and emerging diseases spread through these megacities like wildfire, but all other forms of misery -- and inability to recover from more unpredictable catastrophes -- will propagate through these monstrosities.

As the cities of Europe, North America, and parts of Oceania slowly become one with the third world, we will see the same aspects of decay and a brittle inability to recover from setbacks and natural disasters. The disorder ratchets downward, and the "no-go" zones grow larger.

There are limits, of course. But what are the limits? China has no intention of surrendering to the forces of decay -- nor has Japan. But if the compulsively "politically correct" west continues to surrender to and imitate the voracious, corrupt, and undisciplined third world, we will see only sparse archipelagos of order in the middle of a sea of chaos -- where once lived the prosperous and orderly western civilisation.

Amazing technologies are coming, which will allow for a freedom of movement and a shocking abundance of necessities and luxuries. Other technologies may force a temporary shutting down of the "commons", and of free movement in the open air. In the middle of an amazing blooming of new and promising technologies, we will also see numbing cruelty, suffering, and death.

Luck will partially determine who will emerge on the other side, empowered by the best of the new technologies. Planning ahead may also be of use.

As Nations Collapse, City-States Provide Centers of Stability

The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city. In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. This new world is not -- and will not be -- one global village, so much as a network of different ones. _FP

As national governments grow larger and more unwieldy, corruption and dysfunction become the new normal. Huge, clumsy new government agencies prove easier to form than to dismantle. Unionised government workers and power-hungry bureaucratic king-pins refuse to relinquish power or benefits, until huge national governments become the harsh taskmasters of an increasingly dissatisfied populace. The situation grows more unstable until it can no longer sustain itself. At that point, regional islands of stability form focal points for new organisation.

...we have to look back nearly a thousand years, to the medieval age in which cities such as Cairo and Hangzhou were the centers of global gravity, expanding their influence confidently outward in a borderless world. When Marco Polo set forth from Venice along the emergent Silk Road, he extolled the virtues not of empires, but of the cities that made them great. He admired the vineyards of Kashgar and the material abundance of Xi'an, and even foretold -- correctly -- that no one would believe his account of Chengdu's merchant wealth. It's worth remembering that only in Europe were the Middle Ages dark -- they were the apogee of Arab, Muslim, and Chinese glory. _FP

Accelerating this shift toward new regional centers of gravity are port cities and entrepôts such as Dubai, the Venices of the 21st century: "free zones" where products are efficiently re-exported without the hassles of government red tape. Dubai's recent real-estate overreach notwithstanding, emerging city-states along the Persian Gulf are investing at breakneck speed in efficient downtown business districts, offering fast service and tax incentives to relocate. _FP

...the advent of global hubs and megacities forces us to rethink whether state sovereignty or economic might is the new prerequisite for participating in global diplomacy. The answer is of course both, but while sovereignty is eroding and shifting, cities are now competing for global influence alongside states. _FP

The author of the FP piece linked above envisions the rise of the city alongside the continuing power of the nation-state. But conventional contemporary thinkers too often lack the historical perspective which allows the concept of the "rise and fall" of nations to become a tangible reality inside themselves and in their writings.

A large number of nations in Africa and Asia are teetering on the brink of Yugoslavia-style dissolution. Whether illogically slapped-together by imperial conquerors without regard to tribe, language, culture, or religion -- or simply having outgrown whatever bounds held them together up intil now -- these booby-trap nations sit waiting for the right trigger to explode and dissolve in smoke and flames.

Larger nations which are intimately involved with these "booby-trap" nations stand to be hurt badly when the IED-nations explode. A chain reaction of exploding and collapsing states could easily result -- particularly when dysfunctional governments intentionally place their nations in extreme risk via unwise policies of debt and demography.

Things fall apart, yes. But they also put themselves together, afterward. Consider how the pieces may choose to re-organise.

Rise of the Ultra-Megalopolis Makes Human Dieoff More Likely

As metropolitan cities continue to grow at incredible rates alongside each other across the globe, their boundaries start to blur. This has given rise to a new scale of geography known as "mega-regions". These vastly populated settlements have interlocking economic systems, common natural resources and shared transportation links....According to a new UN report, the world's mega-cities are merging to form these vast mega-regions which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people. _AsianInfrastructure_via_BrianWang

Image from NextBigFuture

The Hong Kong-Shenhzen-Guangzhou region is home to over 120 million people and it is here where a significant chunk of China's economic boom is happening.

..."The top 25 cities in the world account for more than half of the world's wealth. And the five largest cities in India and China now account for 50 percent of those countries' wealth," he added....Asian cities are growing more equally according to the report, but primarily because they were already uniformly poor with a greater volume of slums. _AsianInfrastructure

As the populations of the world huddle together in ballooning megalopolises, what will happen should something suddenly go wrong? What if war breaks out, and the enemy targets civilian infrastructure such as power, transportation, communications, water, fuel, food delivery, sanitation, health care facilities? What will 100 million people packed together to the gills, do when faced with sudden loss of food, water, fuel, medicines, and such?

Clearly, the strong will prey on the weak, until there is no one left to prey on but other predators.

If a diabolical green leftist scientist wanted to eliminate at least 90% of the human population, the task is made so much easier by the concentration of hundreds of millions of people into small areas. Under such conditions, the effect of the EMP, or the bioengineered lethal virus or toxin, will be magnified. Particularly with the calculated demolition of particular bridges and highway overpasses.

A highly centralised population is a highly vulnerable population -- vulnerable to a decapitation strike. The simultaneous loss of transportation hubs, research and production centers, centers for delivery of health care, and destruction of food, fuel, and water distribution along with bureaucratic infrastructure -- would likely lead to rapid collapse and terminal disorder. Particularly when the same thing was happening to most of the megalopolises of an entire region or continent.

The technology of the 21st century will allow for comfortable rural living -- a reversal of the compulsive urbanisation the 20th century bequeathed to the early 21st. But we have to learn to use it, then make the choices that allow us to break the chains that tie us to the urban lifestyle. Otherwise we are the ones who tie ourselves to the railroad tracks while the black-suited villain in the background pulls the track switch lever, sending the hurtling train our way.

Take your pick of black suited villains, but as long as the radically insane third world nations such as North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela are not allowed to possess reliable nuclear weapons and delivery systems, it is most likely that the threat will come from within high tech societies themselves.

The radical greens have never made a secret of their wish to cleanse the planet of most of humankind. Let's not make it any easier for them than we have to.

Previously published at abu al-fin

Building Into the Third Dimension: Super-towers and Arcologies

Architect Paolo Soleri introduced the concept of the arcology, an entire city contained within a large well-integrated building. Soleri designed arcologies for many types of terrain--even sea-floating arcologies and arcologies in outer space.

Other architects have since taken up the theme of the arcology, or megacity. The Ultima Tower seen above is about 3,000 meters tall, and the Sky City seen below is about 1000 meters tall. A million people could live in the Ultima Tower comfortably. Such mega-cities bring the issues of land use, energy efficiencies, and recycling of wastes and resources to the forefront where they belong.



Integrated megacities make better use of land, minimise inefficiencies from long-distance commuting from the suburbs and outlying rural areas, and force city planners to get down to the fine details of energy and resource planning that has never been approached until now. This is close to the type of meticulous planning that will be required for building settlements on lunar or Martian soil, or for large orbiting settlements.



This website presents a description of the key components of an arcology. Theoretically, an arcology could be located virtually anywhere on Earth or in space. An arcology for purists would contain its own energy supply, water supply, waste treatment, and interior transportation system--along with residences, recreational areas, shops providing necessities and luxuries, restaurants and cafeterias, medical and dental facilities, and places of business and manufacture. Maintenance workers would necessarily be valued members of the community.

Undersea arcologies and outer space arcologies would require special attention to air supply infrastructure. Recycling of air and water would be particularly important in space, and would almost certainly involve intensive use of specially engineered living plants. Protection from high pressure environment (undersea) and low pressure environment (outer space and high atmospheric) would introduce special design considerations, and special training for all residents.