2210: The Collapse?

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Ratings: 7.45/10 from 42 users.

2210: The Collapse?Imagine if hundreds of years from now, scientists excavated the abandoned ruins of some of our largest cities, what conclusions would they come to?

It happened to the Romans, the Anasazi, and the Mayans and, inevitably, one day our own modern civilization will also fall. In this two hour special discover how a future civilization might be baffled as to why the population of these once-great cities would suddenly abandon their technology and architecture, and turn their homes into ghost towns.

Some experts believe that there is a very real risk this could happen, and the collapse of the world as we know it is closer than we think.

Examining the parallels between cultures separated by hundreds of years, explore whether the key to preventing such a global collapse today could lie in finding renewable alternatives to our dwindling energy supplies and sustainable resources. Can we learn from the mistakes of the past before it’s too late?

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79 Comments / User Reviews

  1. Graeme Kessey

    Background music was annoying & distracting. Turned off after only 10mins. Damn shame as premise was good.

  2. Bobby-z Lambert

    The heavy metal poisoning came as a result of extensive use of lead pipe not copper. Your right though this factor is worth some consideration. Diamond is normally pretty accurate... check out his books Collapse and Guns Germs and Steel... most people talk about his books but have never read one, a perennial occurrence Mark Twain spoke of.

    On the preceding Cree proverb. I quite agree. That said it is interesting to examine Cree history and their quick uptake of horse and rifle and use of these weapons on their native enemy's. He who gets the guns germs and steel first wins. The Cree were smart and saw the potential of the fir traders technology and the importance of communication with these strangers.

    Humans are primarily designed to survive and I thank this program for helping us to understand the importance of (extending timelines in our thinking and planning) This I think is our true Achilles heal as we just don't live long enough to learn form our mistakes. Certainly I do agree with the film's idea that humanity will live on. I tend to think massive collapse is inevitable in the shorter time. As Jarod points out not because we are just stupid, rather because systems change on a mass scale is complex.

    Some books that might interest people here... Donella Meadows Thinking In Systems a primer. and Meadows Limits To Growth.

    Also worth looking into are the different writings that came out of Clare Graves work on Spiral Dynamics tho I would add a word of caution that as with all academic endeavours egos often contaminate the search of knowledge. If you want to watch Donella Meadows on YouTube I highly recommend it... Donella sadly died in a car accident but her deep wisdom lives on in her lectures and writings she helped people to see hope and put in place the necessary vision this film refers to at the end.

    PS forgive my spelling etc., my capacities are limited to conceptualization and practical experience ahahahah spelling and gramma still eludes me.

  3. Larry Woodall

    Very late to this. Just a small point but adding to the effects: Romans were mass poisoning themselves with their wine-liquor making apparatuses. Namely, copper poisoning went on for many decades. It reduced their critical thinking skills, effected the upper classes the most because they could afford to drink more. Also wondering what of the roles of diseases in the demise of three ancient civilizations?

  4. Kaz

    Collapse is inevitable simply because you can show it by simple numbers.

    The rate at which we are consuming natural resources.

    The rate of human population growth.

    The rate the earth is warming.

    The rate plastic is filling up the food chain.

    The rate of shear mountains upon mountains of garbage we produce....etc. ..etc etc..

    It is not the first time a population collapsed from these trends, it happens in nature and it has happened to isolated islanders in the past....except now it is in a global scale.

    THIS IS SIMPLY FREAKING UNSUSTAINABLE....AND WE FREAKING KNOW IT!!! BUT SO MUCH BUSINESS INTEREST IS IN THE WAY OF STOPPING IT.. We are literally in a run-away train...smart people should be preparing for the crash....forget about stopping this one. I wonder if there was one person in Easter Island who knew the crash of their society coming as their population continued to baloon and they consumed more and more of their accessible natural resources.

  5. Michael Hankins

    Lol ! I am working on my first 10 Kw A.E system.

    1. PERSON

      will you please STOP!!!!! short hand writing things because not everyone knows what that means. NOT TRYING TO BE RUDE BUT SERIOUSLY DUDE QUIT IT :)

  6. Liam Todd

    Very interesting...
    I've thought for a while that society is f***ed (at least as we know it).
    Backround music and filler annoying, but it's good to see the whole range of plausibilities all in one doc.
    All that's left now is to re-watch, and see how to blame the Illuminati for every point raised:P

  7. Guest

    when you are saying : " we did this and that " - you are talking about the usa, dont you ...
    coz there is no other country in the world who is living as "you" are - 3 - 4 cars for 1 fammilly, huge ammounts of food and watter waisted in everry fammilly way way over the needs ... , huge houssess for allmost everry fammilly way way over the needs..., huge ammounts of gas and oil and ellektreekall power waisted per allmost everree fammillee ... and manny other natural goods waisted too ... and so on and so forth ... do "you" really need 4 cellphones per 1 fammeellee ?? do "you" really need 4 tv sets per 1 fammeellee ??... etc etc etc...a doctor or another proffessionall in the rest of the world is getting less then 1/4 or 1/2 of the wage of an american worker ... why ??...your kids are starting to drive from 16 yrs old ... why ?? the bus is a no no for them ??...
    so, you really should explain the net surfers who are the "we" you are talkin about in this fantazee / sf documentary.

    1. Alexander Owen Spencer

      I live in America. The image you have been sold is lies. America consists of over 50% of people living in apartments and trailer homes. I own one car that I will be in debt forever to have. I have 2 computers and 1 TV. I use gas to heat my home and everything else is electrical, which is not being wasted as it is too expensive. I have 1 cell phone. The average wage is 7.75 USD an hour where I live. That is far less than the doctors of Europe and Russia make. Buses don't run everywhere, there are not bus lines to MANY MANY places. Also if you are going to call people out you may want to take the time to spell-check yourself. The image you have bought into is that of the New Yorker, we have more rich people this is true but it just makes the divide between rich and poor more jarring.

  8. Liz Miller

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but where will the energy to power the VR display sets of the future come from? For that matter, where will the energy to produce the technical components come from? Name a single piece of new energy technology that has reached full-scale development and can produce as much energy as per unit extracted as petroleum, which yields 100 times or so as much energy as is required to extract it. No vaporware allowed to prove I'm a kook. No tech that is at or near full scale but requires oil to make its component production and/or transport viable. Newsflash: the future will look a lot more like 1910 or even 1810 tech-wise then is implied by this 2210.

    1. Sebasu Chan

      You are right that fossil fuels seem irreplaceable today, yet in principal, we could use solar and wind to generate electricity, and then create synthetic fossil fuels (which has been done already by the way). That will not solve our ecology problem though....

  9. Mark Pratt

    why do future scientists look like jedi padowans? In all seriousness, this looks like an unusually reasonable documentary. I think however, that this decline in society will be somewhat gradual -- thanks in part to awareness projects like this. All but the willfully ignorant know that energy, water, etc. are resources that require innovation to increase the supply and more conservation to decrease the demand. We will have to adapt, as the Romans, Anasazi, and Mayans did. I don't think there will be a massive collapse, unless the majority of people refuse to believe that a transition(and coeval economic recession) is probably inevitable.

  10. gsjikwblao

    It is completely natural that the world is as troubled as it is, as it is a projection of our nature. We are on the threshold of a new and better world because we are on the threshold of a new and better human being. This evolutionary process is effected by the withdraw of a motivating force that generated the creation event 13.7 billion years ago from all those in rejection of the same, and is stressfully entering into those who are compelled to embrace it's inconvenient influence. This motivating force is a drawing force which cannot function as such without something to draw upon. Thus, we can understand human mechanical intelligence, facilitated by the complex physical existence that it directly engages, to be an inevitable by-product of the drawing force which created it. This motivating force is in the process of subduing the destructive nature of the processing of information through our five physical senses which gives each of us our individual perspective. This world is the result of the excessive influence of individual perspective, which is the first state of our evolving nature. When our convicting consciences (which is a unifying perspective) increase in influence, as a result of the movement of a drawing motivation away from some and into others, then will we be of a nature to see clearly how to structure our world from the foundation up. All the problems in this world extend from the foundation. Without changing the foundation you cannot eliminate these problems without creating more problems. The new problems are actually the original ones taking on a deceptively different form. Inasmuch as love is a binding motivation we can also understand it to also be an illuminating one. Thus a diametrically opposed motivation would not only be division-justifying, but it would also have to be deceptive. This is the nature of individual perspective, generated by our mechanical reasoning, independent of and diametrically opposed to our convicting conscience.

  11. pseudonamed

    The book is so much better than this. This has so much filler and this whole pretend "documentary from the future" just seems silly to me, personally. The book is straight forward and chock full of actual research, statistics, etc. so I realise it could be a bit academic to read, and could stand to be more concise, but I found it went far more in depth, covered more civilisations and landscapes, plus you don't have all the melodramatic music like this doc.

  12. Amber Dragon

    why was it all desert? as far as i can remember where i live, there is rarely a grain of dust? and way too much water.... what would happen there. they just talked about the desert climate places and not about sub- rainforest arias such as washington or canada or the tropics, and europe is wet, not dusty. well the upper parts that is. and where did the people come from? where did their water come from? their energy? their cool computers? their labs, there ignorance despite the other regions doing okay?

  13. Tomo Jones

    Anyone else get annoyed by the ridiculously over dramatic music and the CONSTANT dragging out of the subject? It takes them about 10 minutes to even ask anything. Just KEEP asking, "What happened? How can we learn to avoid it?" "In this show we ask the question, "Why did society...... COLLAPSE?"" then repeat. And repeat, while slowly dripping out little bits of information. I end up skipping most of these documentaries now if they've been on TV because the amount of actual information in them could be presented in about 15 minutes.

    Apologies for the rant. I'm just frustrated!

    1. simon

      could not agree more with your post. Well said.

    2. terry smythe

      Re the overly dramatic music: who are the insufferable, narcissistic idiots creating the musical soundtracks for virtually all the docs? They set the volume of their backgrounds to equal - and often exceed - whatever narrative there is, so it becomes an infuriating struggle trying to hear the narrative. I turn these off most of the time. And yes - most of the docs on NatGeo and History are 70% filler & fluff, or asinine speculation. No wonder the Amerikan population is so damn dumb.

    3. Hammerstrike

      The real reason for the collapse is that no one was able to think rationally anymore.

      Engineers, computer programmers and so on where too busy reading fashion, gossip magazines and watching MTV, pretty much all the jobs that required some skills and an attention span of +30 seconds just wheren´t done anymore.

      Modern civilization quickly broke down, people asked themselves How do we avoid starving to death? How do we stop the rats from eating our feets? again and again instead of taking whatever actions they needed to survive, they soon perished by the billions.

      Then, for dramatic effect, rain stopped falling around cities, turning the ruines and their surrounding into desertic post-apocalyptic landscapes.

      Insectoide creatures from an alternate Earth came and saw that it was SAD, out of pity they genetically engineered the remaining human populations to be far more intelligent and less emotional than the humans 200 years earlier.

  14. Rachelnico

    I figure it will happen a long time after I'm gone, so it's all good.

    1. David Bembridge

      Unless your about 70 now then there is a damn good chance your gonna be walking head first into it with the other sheep.

    2. Ella Silver

      I like how you talk as if the same fate isn't awaiting you. Charming.

  15. Emanuel Faisca

    The Venus project is the way to go!
    Join the zeitgeist movement now!

    1. athenascurse

      Yep, sure is. We just gotta get ppl into even knowing about the Venus Project. Most have only heard about it on Zeitgeist. Ppl need to google The Venus Project.
      They will be amazed!

  16. CatnipBubbleGum

    uhmm is anyone else getting really irritated that this documentary starts with comparing an isolated village with a global, consumerism/disposable generation heading towards a change in life style due to lack of natural resources?????

    1. CatnipBubbleGum

      Possibly the ONLY thing I do take away from this docuentary is the lack of Europe spreading sensationalized/realistic forecasts. What happens to the rest of the world. USA isnt even bigger than Canada!

    2. Ella Silver

      1. not much is.

      2. Define "bigger"

  17. KsDevil

    strange. no video when i go full screen.

    1. Amber Dragon

      its sometimes behind your web browser

  18. geeyore

    I watched most of this. It is doomsday masturbation, which itself has been one of humanity's plagues since humanity existed. But ya never know, an asteroid could hit the planet next month.

    1. CatnipBubbleGum

      and you'l only have an after life if you embrace GOD as your true power! Sound familiar??

  19. Conners

    Does anyone actually care if society collapsed? I mean seriously, we all have a bit of a vested interest, in terms of our individual survival, but does it really make a difference if human society continues? Id argue that the age of progressive organized humanism has passed. i cant think of a single culture on earth, at present, that is specifically concerned with the advancement or even sustainability of humanity, even in terms of its own populace. getting caught up in various partian struggles is what tanks societies. the illusion of affluence has peeled mankind away from a survival based economy.

  20. Rich

    Interesting points, but where would these people be sleeping when the society collapsed? It's presented as if people went to some other planet and came back a century later.

    It's not a thing that happens instantly. We witness this as change just like anything else.

    Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel make historical sense but to extrapolate this to the future is debasing his credibility.

    However, I do believe in peak oil. I think we are here.

  21. morehame

    only zilla would be complaining about this kind of thing. Wormholes are strange but not so if they are unactive... Who should stop this, why ?

  22. Abdullah Hafez

    Interesting documentary but meh... The points it made were not strong enough, just general things that people already SHOULD be aware of, if they stop distracting their minds with entertainment and try to understand the global mindset of how our world runs...

    The Laws of Nature are similar to the foundation as is the Constitution. You f--k with the Natural law of things and disaster and corruption is bound to be embedded within the system, so if you FUCK with basic humanistic rights (the Constitution,) for the sake of reaping profit, then you are f--king with the foundation, the support of the many.

  23. POZZIMYSTIC

    Vlatko, Thank you for assembling a Fine website! This is Youtube, Grownup. I tell everyone about it. I've never done that before. The new comment upgrade is "the next level" Best of luck to you
    Larry

  24. POZZIMYSTIC

    "By 2010 the Writing was already on the walls"

  25. POZZIMYSTIC

    This is a Great Doc. One of the most effective!

  26. mmjvnt

    need to grow your oun organic food and medicine ,drive hovercraft on hydrogen ,catch water on v shaped roof,dont waste oil left on roads or gas.

  27. James del Valle

    not watched it yet but everything is recorded these days so it doesn't make any sense unless it is aliens who are trying to understand it, I'll watch it later.

  28. Arnold Vinette

    Special thanks to Vlatko for finding this documentary to host. I really enjoyed watching it.

    The History Channel, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, National Geographic did a very good job putting together this documentary that is a very good summary of the events that are currently leading the United States and the rest of the world to our eventual societal collapse between 2020 and 2030. Although neither of these dates were mentioned specifically it is now widely understood among those who understand Peak Oil and the connection of available oil supplies to the current banking system that when oil becomes exhausted and too expensive to maintain the current industrial complex then the worldwide banking system will collapse.

    This is not the end of the world but it is the end of the era of oil based modern societies. It is not the end of global trade as this will simply transition to wind powered ships. When the oil supply collapses, so too will modern agricultural practices leading to a drop in human population as there simply will not be enough food to feed everyone.

    I enjoyed this documentary as it incorporated scenes from both the past, present day and the future as correlations were made between past societal collapses and future societal collapses.

    One question came up over and over again. Is current civilization learning from the failures of past civilizations like the Mayans and the ancient Romans?

    My answer to this question is yes and no. Our current civilization has learned to protect society from things were not regarded as dangerous in ancient times. However when it comes to energy usage, water usage, over population growth our current civilization has not learned a thing.

    The single biggest problem today in the United States and around the world is that large corporations control governments and in turn control the laws that govern the land. Current governments across the world do not serve the people and their better interests. Governments serve the interests of large corporations and their bottom line for profits.

    This message has been repeated over and over again in numerous documentaries focusing on what the United States government needs to do to prepare for the collapse of oil supplies between 2020 and 2030 and what it is really doing.

    Today in 2011 the United States, Canadian, British, European, Middle East, Chinese, Japanese and Russian governments are spending enormous sums of human energy and resources to build military weapons in order to either get or defend their natural resources of remaining fossil fuel energy.

    This expenditure is being done because it is in the benefit of the energy corporations that will sell this energy to make a profit that will be used to buy government influence.

    There is a fictitious lie circulating around the world that governments are heavily in debt. This is completely false. As everyone has learned money is created by private banks like the “Federal Reserve”. It is the most ironic and nonsensical thing in the world that a government supposedly borrows money / capital from a private business that is then lent to banks nationally and around the world.

    The private bank then earns interest on the money it lends that it fabricates out of thin air.

    Does this practice make sense to anyone?

    The reason seems to be that the private bankers of the Federal Reserve wan to get richer?

    How can you get richer when you can already print all the money you want out of thin air?

    It is the most ludicrous thing in the world and for regular people to believe it.

    Federal governments do not owe the Federal Reserve anything.

    All you need to do is think about what the “Federal Reserve” does and then the whole notion of its existence is irrelevant.

    The very existence of the “Federal Reserve” makes no economic sense on any level. The very concept of taking money from people to pay taxes makes no sense at all.

    The current excuse is that the Federal Government and State Governments need to collect taxes to pay their employees and pay back Federal debt to the “Federal Reserve”. The “Federal Reserve” prints its money out of thin air. Exactly why does it need to collect this money from the people? The Federal and state governments could easily pay their own employees by printing their own money.

    Or better yet adopting the system of “Work Credits” that assigns a value to each person in the country and paying them to do work that benefits their community, city, state and country.

    The very concept of the private bank “Federal Reserve” is outdated and it needs to be abolished by the people of the world. Not just the United States, but the entire world as this very concept is detrimental to society and no longer serves a useful purpose.

    The collapse of the Mayan Civilization and the Roman Empire can be traced to two similar events.

    Recent evidence that is not incorporated into this documentary is that the Mayan Civilization collapsed around 1200AD. The reason for this collapse was brought on by extreme drought that was caused by the dramatic cooling of the Northern hemisphere.

    This dramatic cooling in and around 1200AD could have been brought on by several causes. 1) A large volcanic eruption that ejected a lot of ash into the atmosphere cooling the climate. 2) An asteroid strike that ejected a lot of dust into the atmosphere cooling the climate. 3) Lower solar output that cooled that earth's climate. See 200 year solar cycle is also a weather cycle. 4) An interruption of the Atlantic Gulf Stream from melting Arctic glaciers.

    In either of the above cases a dramatic cooling northern climate induces a drought in the equatorial regions of Mexico by shifting the rains northward. This event happened in 1200AD and other periods.

    In the case of the Roman Empire the Barbarians were forced out of their northern territories by a dramatically cooling northern climate that was causing crops to fail and thus starvation. This occurred in and around 400AD and other periods.

    The Black Plague that swept through Europe and Asia in and 1350AD is thought to have originated during one of these colder periods that had weakened the human population living at that time.

    The collapse of our current modern civilization is forecast for the period of 2020 to 2030. This collapse is inevitable as oil resources to power our modern day oil infrastructure will become exhausted across the world and too expensive to use. Food production will decline and along with it the human population. Society will collapse as the oil based transportation infrastructure collapses.

    Even if the United States is successful by grabbing the rest of the world's oil resources it will still collapse because the world is now a global economy. If one part fails there is a domino effect.

    Meaning if everyone in the United States and Canada can still drive to work on Monday morning, but China cannot make anymore products to ship to the United States, what is the point of going to work on Monday morning? International trade collapses, international banking collapses, and intentional investment collapses.

    Either everyone does well or no one does well.

    So people need to mentally prepare themselves for a dramatic shift in current economic well being over the next five years based on our current economic and energy based civilization that cannot exist after 2030.

    Dramatic changes need to made in how we live, where we live, and the origin of our money supply.

    1. The first priority for a new civilization is that the “Federal Reserve” needs to go. It is a drag on the economy and serves absolutely no useful purpose for civilization. The concept of “Work Credits” needs to be made law as the basis of a nations money supply. “Work Credits” are independent of energy supplies and therefore everyone can work to the best of their ability from cradle to grave benefiting their community, city, state and country.

    2. Large city populations will have to disband and spread out into smaller sustainable communities.

    3. Expect large losses of life as the population of a country adjusts to the lower levels of food available due to the collapse of modern agricultural methods based on oil and natural gas fertilizers, harvesting and distribution methods.

    4. Increases in energy production from wind, solar, tide and space solar arrays. And Earth magnetic fields. It may be time to relearn Tesla's knowledge for global free energy transmission using the energy of plasma that surrounds the earth and is in the earth's magnetic field.

    All a great program and I look forward to more like these as solutions are put forward for preparing mankind from the transition from an oil based economy to a non-oil based economy.

    Mankind has lived without oil for tens of thousands of years and I feel very confident that mankind will endure and adjust to his new situation without abundant sources of oil and natural gas.

    It may even be a blessing as the rampant population of the oil and natural gas age will stop.

    Arnold Vinette
    Ottawa, Canada

    1. Robert M

      Please Arnold, you make us Canadians look pretentious, keep it simple ;)

    2. Guest

      refer to my comment in "Invisible-empire-new-world-order-defined" it applies here too.
      I am surprised Vlatko allows your ranting...and to a certain extend i think you must be too. You are taking this as your new forum until...

    3. PaulGloor

      I like your enthusiasm, but save it for your book and give us the summary :D

    4. terry smythe

      the "Summery" - is that a seasonal thing?

    5. PaulGloor

      Every ones a critic, apparently I didn't catch the spell check squiggle :P
      I'm actually surprised it made it so long without comment !

    6. Ruairi McGuigan

      Jesus....lay down. Your attempts to sound intelligent have only served to make you look a fool

  29. StillRV

    My first comment was just me being a wise a$$. My take on the documentary is that it is an overly dramatic scare tactic representation of the future. 200 years? Trust me if it all went south today it would take at least half that till the war ended. Then thousands of years to change the appearance of entire regions. Do these folks actually believe that it is man and his irrigation that keeps the north Easterns US from being like the sahara? I will not take the time here to explaint to them soil composition, stone degredation, or the role of local plant life in an ecological area. They did manage to get their point across. That point bein the same old everyday alarmist talking points of the globalist environmentalist farce.

  30. aaangie123

    well made without too much drama!

  31. Nathan Cory

    The root cause for our destruction?

    $$$$$ money $$$$$

    Hopefully a few of them kept copies of Moving Forward...

  32. PaulGloor

    Our information will not be so easily killed.
    Software to read the data will not simply go obsolete and there's no shortage of people that will convert it to new formats as we go. we have paper, magnetic, optical, and solid state media that can and will last centuries. Our history will not be left open for interpretation.
    What will be a mystery is why we didn't do anything about it when our data gave us so much forewarning. What were we thinking as we emptied the oceans, polluted the environment, burned fuel and wasted our precious food and water.

    1. Cool E Beans

      I've said this once before, it is like you are playing poker in a casino. The dealer represents industry and the pit bosses represent the government oversight. The problem is that at the end of the day, win or lose, it's the house who sets all of the rules and the house is the reserve banking system world wide. They decide how much money is in existance and at what interest rate it will cost you. Since the government also borrows its money from the reserve, they also determine how much money the government needs to collect in taxes to pay that interest charge. Likewise, business, in order to continue existing, must increase its incomes to pay back its loans to its bankers. The businesses get their money from consumers/taxpayers to pay their loans and the government gets their money from taxpayers/consumers to pay their interest on their loan and all of that money goes to the reserve bank in your respective country because member banks also pay interest on money they have to borrow from the reserve.

      And it is an interest only loan to the government for the use of our entire economy. All money is borrowed as principle but must be paid back with interest. So where do you get the interest money? From somebody elses principle either making them short on their payback (seen any bankruptsies lately?) or from the principle that the government isn't paying back. The problem with government borrowing is that at interest only, eventually you will have paid back all of the money that you borrowed in interest while you still owe the original principle. The only solution is a constantly growing defecit which causes a continual degradation of the buying power of existing money due to the necessary influx of replacement money.

      The American dollar is now worth 97% less than when the Federal Reserve began, just as they want it to be. That averages out to a one percent loss per year since 1913.

  33. princeton

    awesome film I liked it!

  34. NAND Gate

    The Technocracy fixes most of these problems. Technology enables the technical to subvert, and then overide. It distributes power throughout the class structure. Private interests become supplicated as technologists establish their chosen utopia. Money means nothing when you can control technology. And so true technologists can not be bought - because their technology goes further than your money.

    You can only beg for their benevolence - luckily, almost 100% of technologists are scientists and engineers - certainly a darn sight more trustworthy than your "democratically elected representative".

    I sometimes wonder why this train of thought is not represented - as technology becomes the dominant paradigm, the actual PEOPLE IN CONTROL of the old ways are forced out. The new breed bring with them a completely different paradigm - one that will entirely alter the future landscape of our civilisation. It wont be done in court rooms or through politics - it is happening now, on the internet, and in bedrooms worldwide.

    And no amount of voting will make one iota of difference to the coming technological tidal wave.

  35. GeoBear

    good psyops piece -- sustainable practices interwoven with industry talking points. for example, the film presents genetically engineered food as a savior to food shortages, but several studies show a Failure to Yield. GE crops also require pesticides -- and, in fact, were developed by chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, Bayer and BASF to be resistant to herbicide. Their whole point is to sell chemicals.

    We produce more than enough food to feed the world. We have problems with distribution, and we have problems with bankster speculation on food commodities, driving up food prices.

    The film nearly wholly failed on the true nature of economic collapse except when it acknowledged great income disparity in ancient Rome. Today's financial crisis was wrought by crimes, compounded by the greatest income gap in the history of humanity. Because of their great wealth, banksters continue to avoid jail. Thus, they continue to drive more of us into poverty so Johnny can have his 12th helicopter.

    The mass protests around the planet are a benevolent response by honest, decent folks who demand an end to these economic shenanigans.

    The film barely touched on ecocide wrought by the dead fuel industry: gas, oil and coal, and mining. Yet environmental collapse (like the mass animal deaths so widely reported lately) is a direct result of 150 years of corporations polluting our water, air and land. Future archeologists will not gloss over the mass extinction spasm wrought by industry.

    After saving much of what Jared Diamond said, I'd toss the rest of this film in the trash.

    1. Jo McKay

      hello Geo Bear... I agree re: gm foods/crops, and that the film could have said much more about a lot of things. However, at this point, in my humble opinion, we need more films, coming from many approaches, in order to reach the majority who "just don't get it yet" - and finally, I think Mr Diamond said a LOT - so well worth watching & sharing. ps. had to look up psyops? (did you mean psychological operation as desire to influence & persuade or as propaganda/manipulation)?

  36. Gwayne Li

    This is quite Naive indeed. However the message is genuine and ''alarming''
    The idea that if 90% of people dies out, the whole world will be a big desert. Not gonna happen. People die, Nature's gonna come back up.... Unless some sort of Nuclear Holocaust.. and even so, nature is pretty resilient...

    Another thing in this doc that is missing is, it doesn't take into consideration the world outside of Occident. When they compared our civilization to the Roman Empire, it is actually just accurate to the Western World. If the collapse is due to the financial system, and blindness because of spoils of the achievements of Corporations and all.. There is 1 thing missing: (This is my theory and in no way funded) but however hear me out. The good thing in this case would be an authoritarian Government. If Government commands the Corporations (instead of the opposite in Democracy) *IN which the only goal of said institutions is to make profits*.. Then It might be easier to get the WILLPOWER to come out of this Status Quo on Environment issues.

    (Just look at some examples of Innovation in China)

    I am willingly to sacrifice my freedom if it is to achieve the greater goal towards Sustainability. And indeed, everyone must make sacrifices, or everyone is gonna be sacrificed later.

    1. Jo McKay

      I am happy to sacrifice the corporations, but not my freedoms (such as they are).

    2. Gwayne Li

      fruit of the labour i say, can't get one without the other! It's also called assuming responsibilities :P. But that's another debate. Sometimes the world seems depressing :S

    3. Jo McKay

      :)persevering myth I'd say. How do you spell corporate theft, labour exploitation, money markets, marketing, irresponsible media, politics, etc, etc. Many work and do not gain, many gain and do no 'good' work! (& some can not work).Can be depressing for sure; I decided a long time ago that depression and pessimism wasn't an option (I have held to that w the exception of a few detours :), which reminded my why I made that choice in the first place :)

  37. Chicken Little

    Except for the dreary Hollywood ending that does all it can to "collapse" the info in this documentary, this is the latest evidence we have to offer the cockroaches of the future who inherit this ash pit that a few of us -- a VERY few of us -- saw this coming. But there simply are too few Chicken Littles out there like Mr. Diamond to spread the word, and this civilization, like every one before us, is destined to collapse and fall for the simple reason that there is no will to change the course of history, period, no matter what these sappy little Hollywood endings will lull us into believing.

    1. Matthew Gammett

      And yea, the little chickens approached the ledge, and outward looked upon the sky as if into the face of a long lost lover and friend. Collectively they remembered the moment they were ripped from the arms of father eternity and reborn through mother infinity. Now shall we all sucke from the tit of a great sow! that whore mother earth! she spreads her legs a wide and so enticing is her roundness to the touch! How can Man ever forgive her for being so giving and naive?

  38. Jo McKay

    Well done National Geographic. Very credible and an interesting take - I hope that will translate into many more views and lots of discussion, healthy enough to lead to change " Can we learn from the mistakes of our past before it's too late" That sums it up. This film, I think would be a good one to forward to everyone we can think of in GOVT - send it with the message that we want our concerns (per the film) addressed and want to know what specifically they are doing about it... ( I will, will you :>)

  39. Muzar

    It is very naive to thing that civilization would crumble and leave someone behind. today's world is so interconnected it is most likely that if one civilization collapses, it will take the rest with it.

    1. Gwayne Li

      /agree... meh imagine blue avatar Na'avi people came and discovered earth in ruins o_o.

  40. Pål Christie Ryalen

    I fear there is not enough sanity in the world..

  41. Cool E Beans

    The fall of Rome as well as our own collapse was and will be due to the existance of the reserve system of banking now used by the world. Crops are being grown not to provide food for people or livestock but simply because of the cash return on the crop.

  42. kiokio23

    If they find the porn... say its from canada
    The hemp... canada
    Republicans... uh... canada ;)

  43. PaulGloor

    @StillRv
    LOL, the main difference there is a written and video record of why those women had the saline orbs. They do represent worship, but that of the female breast :P

    Gonna watch this tonight after work, sounds interesting !

  44. StillRV

    The answer would depend on the city. Here in the US they would come to the conclusion, in some areas, that we began to bury our women with two orbs of saline as some sort of religious offering. They would probably infer that it was part of some long forgoten religion that worshiped a connection between women and celestial bodies like the sun and moon.

    1. Jo McKay

      :) tho' I imagine the saline would 'collapse' well before 2210. lol