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Old 03-24-2010, 05:47 PM   #2
scandum
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 315
scandum will become famous soon enough
Re: 2nd Great (greatest? worldwide?) Depression

You'll need a gun to protect your belongings, keep in mind that ammunition typically expires after a couple of years, and if things go really bad you need a reliable community. So going to church every Sunday is a great investment, regardless if you believe in God. Even better would be finding a local group of well prepared pessimists as you'll end up with a lot of useless mouths when finding shelter in your church.

Regardless of the current situation there will be a civil war in Europe in 30 to 50 years which will likely escalate into a third world war, this civil war will be because in Europe muslims will become a majority around 2060, and if you look at history pretty much every nation with a 30-60% muslim population ends up having a civil war. The Balkan wars, Kashmir, Indonesia, Sudan, the Armenian genocide, just to name a few, and if the Balkan wars are any indication it'll be very messy, especially when the middle east and North Africa gets involved, while an economically weakened America stands by the side line.

Economic collapse is more difficult to predict, at the current rate inflation will decrease the average wealth, causing the population to eventually get tired of the fact that the rich get richer, and demand a bigger redistribution of the available wealth. This can express itself in various forms, typically communism, national socialism, and national libertarianism. Neither are pretty, and mostly not sufficient to fix the problem right away, and easiest is to default on your debts and fight a big war while at it. Truth is typically the first casualty of war, and after that a government can do all kinds of nifty things the population wouldn't put up with otherwise.

So my advice is to get the hell out of Europe if you currently live there and aren't an old fart. Avoid living in locations with populations prone to rioting (I won't go into specifics as that'll upset certain people), gangs are going to be the biggest problem in some areas, while they won't exist in others - which is where you want to live. Don't tell anyone about your two years worth of food, cause they'll come knocking when things go bad, do tell them about your guns. Don't live too far north, winter will be rough, do grow some nut trees.

Personally I think you're best off living in New Zealand, or anywhere else with a lot of space and decent people. So you could utilize MUDs to find a cute New Zealander, or go the non marriage route. For those in doubt, about 50.000 Dutchies (typically young middle class families) immigrate each year to the USA, New Zealand, Canada, and Austrialia, few of them return. In 40 years that's 2 million, about 15% of the current Dutch population, add that on top of other demographic trends and you've got an interesting vision on the future.
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