The ending of an era
Ok, this is a rather cryptic title, so I'd better elaborate. Bare with me, since I feel this will be a rather long post.
It all started a few weeks ago, when I accidentally found out about a certain John Titor. This person claimed, in 2000-2001, to be coming from the future (2036, to be precise), and he made a series of statements on some internet forums, after which he disappeared, presumably returning to his own time. I won't get into details here, since the wikipedia page I linked to is fairly comprehensive. Additionally, you can check at the bottom of that page for the link to the archived posts, to get the statements "from the horse's mouth".
Long story short, John Titor said that he came from a time recovering from a nuclear war, and that war would show its first signs as early as 2004, but that it will become obvious in 2005. If I remember correctly, the war would slowly escalate until it gets global, culminating in 2015 with a "short nuclear war", in which Russia would bomb the american cities. At that time, the american cities would have already been at war with the countryside-America, so don't think about it as of a Red October-type of thing.
Anyway, just reading the guy's posts is fascinating. He describes a world from which all the opulence and luxury are gone, where every family grows their own food, and where there are no more mega-cities, society being now formed of small communities, spread across the country. Well, to get the whole picture, I encourage you to read the threads, but be warned, it took me an entire day to finish them (it was worth it, though, even if it doesn't turn out to be true).
Time went by, and I stopped thinking about the story, since I didn't find any proofs supporting his theory. I didn't see riots starting in the U.S. (maybe I'm just too far ;-)), and the "war-against-terror" thing seemed to cool off. Until, one day, I ran into this (and, while you're at it, you could also read this too). Apparently, little George is getting bored and wants to bomb Iran too. Does the nuclear war sound far into the future? Think again.
If you've read the articles linked in the last paragraph, you might be asking: "WTF is wrong with the american administration? What's their problem?". The answer might lie in the article that prompted me to write this post: The Long Emergency. The situation described in this article is strikingly similar to John Titor's world. In fact, this article has impressed me so much, I'm even adding it to the readings section of my site.
If what any of those articles says is true, then we've been living in a dream world. But that era is about to end. Maybe now would be a good time to brush up on those agriculture skills?
