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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org, livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Fw: Dmitry Orlov : Fragility and Collapse: Slowly at first, then all at once
  • Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2012 15:45:53 -0600


"This ragged arc of decline is already under way; it can be expected to
accelerate in the months, years, and decades to come"

http://www.countercurrents.org/greer070612.htm


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
--Henry David Thoreau

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 6/9/2012 at 12:14 AM John D'hondt wrote:

>No sooner had I answered "25 years ahead" when this dropped in my mailbox.
>john
>
>
>MUST READ!
>
>
>"If you wait until that last moment when, in a spasm of horror, you
>suddenly think to yourself �Oh shit, Dmitry was right!� then indeed
>Doom and Gloom will be your charming new bunkmates. But if you start your
>collapse early and get it over with quickly, then your chances of
>surviving this are quite likely to substantially exceed zero."
>
>
>
>
>CLUBORLOV
>PUBLISHED ON TUESDAYS
>
>
>
>TUESDAY, JUNE 05, 2012
>
>Fragility and Collapse: Slowly at first, then all at once
>
>
> Josh Keyes
>
>
>
>This article is based on the notes from one of the talks I gave at the Age
>of Limits conference.
>
>
>I have been predicting collapse for over five years now. My prediction is
>that the USA will collapse financially, economically and politically
>within the foreseeable future... and this hasn�t happened yet. And so,
>inevitably, I am asked the same question over and over again: �When?�
>And, inevitably, I answer that I don�t make predictions as to timing.
>This leaves my questioners dissatisfied, and so I thought that I should
>try to explain why it is that I don�t make predictions as to timing. I
>will also try to explain how one might go about creating such predictions,
>understanding full well that the result is highly subjective.
>
>
>You see, predicting that something is going to happen is a lot easier than
>predicting when something will happen. Suppose you have an old bridge: the
>concrete is cracked, chunks of it are missing with rusty rebar showing
>through. An inspector declares it �structurally deficient.� This
>bridge is definitely going to collapse at some point, but on what date?
>That is something that nobody can tell you. If you push for an answer, you
>might hear something like this: If it doesn�t collapse within a year,
>then it might stay up for another two. And if it stays up that long, then
>it might stay up for another decade. But if it stays up for an entire
>decade, then it will probably collapse within a year or two of that,
>because, given its rate of deterioration, at that point it will be
>entirely unclear what is holding it up.
>
>
>You see, the timing estimates are inevitably subjective and, if you will,
>impressionistic, but there are objective things to pay attention to: how
>much structure is left (given that large chunks of concrete are continuing
>to fall out of it and into the river below) and the rate at which it is
>deteriorating (measurable in chunks per month). Most people have trouble
>assessing such risks. There are two problems: the first is that people
>often think that they would be able to assess the risk more accurately if
>they had more data. It does not occur to them that the information they
>are looking for is not available simply because it does not exist. And so
>they incorporate more data, hoping that they are relevant, making their
>estimate even less accurate.
>
>
>The second problem is that people assume that they are playing a game of
>chance, and that it�s a fair one: something Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls
>the �ludic fallacy.� If you drive over a structurally deficient bridge
>every day, it could be said that you are gambling with your life; but are
>you gambling, exactly? Gambling normally involves games of chance: roll of
>the dice, flip of the coin, unless someone is cheating. Fair games form a
>tiny, insignificant subset of all possible games, and they can only be
>played in contrived, controlled, simplified circumstances, using a
>specially designed apparatus that is functioning perfectly. Suppose
>someone tells you that he just flipped a coin 10 times and all 10 were
>heads? What is the probability that the next flip will be heads too? If
>you think 50%, then you are discounting the very high probability that the
>game is rigged. And this makes you a sucker.
>
>
>Games played directly against nature are never fair. You could say that
>nature always cheats: just as you are about to win the jackpot, the casino
>gets hit by an asteroid. You might think that such unlikely events are not
>significant, but it turns out that they are: Taleb�s black swans rule
>the world. Really, nature doesn�t so much cheat as not give a damn about
>your rules. But these rules are all you have go by: a bridge is sound if
>it corresponds to the picture in the head of its designer. The
>correspondence is almost perfect when it�s new, but as it ages a
>noticeable divergence takes place: cracks appear and the structure decays.
>At some more or less arbitrary point it is declared unsafe. But there is
>no picture in anyone�s head of it collapsing, because, you see, it
>wasn�t designed to collapse; it was designed to stay up. The information
>as to when it will collapse does not exist. There is a trick, however: you
>can observe the rate of divergence; when it goes from linear to
>exponential (that is, it begins to double) then collapse is not far, and
>you might even be able to set an upper limit on how long it will take. If
>the number of cement chunks falling out of your bridge keeps doubling, you
>can compute the moment when every last piece of the bridge will be in the
>river, and that is your upper bound.
>
>
>Still, your forecast will be subjective (or, if you like, based on your
>luck as a forecaster) because you are still just playing the odds. If you
>measure that the deterioration in your bridge is linear (say one chunk
>falls out per month) then you extrapolate that it will remain linear; if
>it is exponential (2x chunks from the previous month) then you extrapolate
>that it will remain exponential, and, if you are lucky, it will. But the
>odds of it remaining one or the other are strictly in your own mind: they
>are not predictable but subjective. Calling them �random� or
>�chaotic� doesn�t add much: the information you are looking for
>simply does not exist.
>
>
>To summarize: it is possible to predict that something will happen with
>uncanny accuracy. For example, all empires eventually collapse, with no
>exceptions; therefore, the USA will collapse. There, I did it. But it is
>not possible to predict when something will happen because of the problem
>of missing information: we have a have mental model of how something
>continues to exist, not of how it unexpectedly ceases to exist. However,
>by watching the rate of deterioration, or divergence from our mental
>model, we can sometimes tell when the date is drawing near. The first type
>of prediction�that something will collapse�is extremely useful,
>because it tells you how to avoid putting at risk that which you cannot
>afford to lose. But there are situations when you have no choice; for
>instance, you were born into an empire that�s about to collapse. And
>that is where the second type of prediction�that something will collapse
>real soon�comes in very handy, because it tells you that it�s time to
>pull your bacon out of the fire.
>
>
>Let me stress again: the process of coming up with such predictions is
>subjective. You might reason it out, or you might base it on a certain
>tingling sensation in the back of your neck. Still, people like to
>theorize: some declare that the events in question are random, or chaotic,
>and then go on to formulate mathematical models of randomness and of
>chaos. But the timing of large-scale, �improbable� events is not
>random or chaotic, it is unknown. With regular, small-scale events
>statisticians can cheat by averaging over them. That is useful if you are
>selling insurance�against events you can foresee. Of course, a
>large-scale event can still wipe you out by putting your
>reinsurer/underwriter out of business. There is fire insurance, flood
>insurance (not so much any more; in the US it is now underwritten directly
>by taxpayers), but there is no collapse insurance, because there is no way
>to objectively estimate the risk.
>
>
>Plugging in everyone�s favorite Yogi Berra quote: �Making predictions
>is hard, especially if they are about the future.� Well, I beg to
>differ: making predictions about the past is just as difficult. The USSR
>collapsed unexpectedly in 1991, taking the �experts� by surprise. The
>root cause of the collapse remains veiled in mystery; the reason for the
>exact timing remains a complete mystery. Expert Kremlinologists were
>geared up to bet on minor power shifts within the Politburo, expert
>economists were entirely convinced about the superiority of free market
>capitalism over a planned socialist economy, expert military strategists
>could debate the merits of the Strategic Defense Initiative (there
>aren�t any) but they were all blindsided when the whole Soviet thing
>just folded up and blew away. Similarly, most political experts in the US
>are confident in their estimation of the odds that Obama will or will not
>be reelected in November 2012; what they can�t give you is the odds that
>the elections won�t be held, and that nobody will get to be president.
>Mind you, these odds are not zero, and we can be sure that such a day will
>come; we just don�t know when.
>
>
>Experts can make predictions only within their area of expertise. They are
>constitutionally incapable of predicting when their area of expertise will
>undergo a spontaneous existence failure. Not being an expert in any of
>these disciplines, I knew that the USSR was going to collapse a year or so
>before it did. How did I know? By watching carefully, and by realizing
>that things can�t go on much longer in the same direction. I am doing
>the same with the USA now. So, let�s watch together.
>
>
>* * *
>
>
>The US Federal government is currently spending about $300 billion per
>month. To do so, it �borrows� around $100 billion per month. The word
>�borrows� is in quotes, because most of that new debt is created by
>the Treasury and bought up by the Federal Reserve, so in essence the
>government just writes itself a check for $100 billion dollars every
>month. If this continues forever, then the US Dollar will become
>worthless, so a push is on to get foreign central banks to take on some of
>this debt as well. They can do that, of course, but, seeing as the US
>Dollar is on track to become worthless, they have been decreasing their
>holdings of US Treasuries rather than increasing them. Nobody can tell how
>long such a scenario can continue to unfold, so what one looks for in a
>situation like this is signs of desperation.
>
>
>Recently there was a flurry of activity around China: Secretary of State
>Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, each with
>a large retinue, went to China on a high-level visit, during which the
>news coverage in the US was dominated by reports about a blind Chinese
>activist who was kept under house arrest, from which he escaped to the US
>embassy, and was eventually allowed to leave the country and come to the
>US. Hardly anyone in China knows who this person is, and the Chinese
>official reaction to demands that he be released were, pretty much,
>�Okey-dokey.� (The fact that Hillary seems to have given up on wearing
>makeup was considered newsworthy as well.)
>
>
>Why such a powerful smokescreen? What were they hiding? Well, a couple of
>items of interest. First, it turns out that China can now monetize US debt
>directly. That�s right, the ability to print US currency is now
>distributed between the US and China. There is a special private line
>between Beijing and the US Treasury, and China can buy US Treasuries
>without going through any market mechanisms or making the price public.
>Secondly, China can now directly buy US banks. Back in the good old days
>attempts by foreign powers to use US Treasuries to buy equity in
>enterprises in the US was considered as akin to an act of war;
>nowadays�not so much. Basically, Hillary and Timmy went to China and
>said: �Take our financial system, please!� What they got is the
>financial equivalent of a subcutaneous morphine pump: something they give
>to terminal cancer patients, for continuous pain control. But what if it
>runs dry before the patient expires? That would be painful, wouldn�t it?
>
>
>The US is bleeding money in other ways: wealthy individuals are moving
>abroad and renouncing their US citizenship in increasing numbers, like so
>many rats fleeing a sinking ship. A high-profile example is Eduardo
>Saverin, one of the founders of Facebook, who renounced his US citizenship
>prior to the ridiculous fiasco that was the Facebook IPO. Congress is busy
>drafting legislation to stop this sort of thing from happening, or at
>least make it a huge boondoggle from a tax perspective. There is also a
>provision in the works to take away people�s passports if the IRS
>decides that they owe more than $50k. Somebody ought to do something! Is
>it not possible to renounce your citizenship and buy votes in Congress at
>the same time? It should be... In any case, we can be sure that what is
>now still a trickle will turn into a flood. That is what I saw in Russia
>after the Soviet collapse: the former Soviet elite lost all faith in the
>system and tried to grab a chunk and run away with it. This pattern
>continues to this day: once something collapses, it tends to stay
>collapsed for a long time.
>
>
>And why wouldn�t you want to flee like a rat, if you happen to be one of
>the many temporary millionaires who made a fortune in the US economy and
>do not wish to lose it? The US financial system is broken, and by now it
>is clear that it is not going to be fixed. Case in point: Jon Corzine,
>former Senator, former Governor of New Jersey, former head of MF Global,
>made some bad bets, then dipped into his customers� accounts to cover
>his losses. Is he in jail? No, he is still at large and has nothing to
>fear. Furthermore, he is high on Obama�s campaign donor list. JP Morgan
>just reported a $2 billion trading loss (actually more like $8 billion).
>Is anything going to be done about it? Of course not! JP Morgan has a long
>and proud history of mismanaging risk, be it by using preposterous
>mathematical models (Value at Risk) or by having traders with nicknames
>like �the Whale� spontaneously decide that they are God and go hugely
>�naked long.� Since this was all done with taxpayer-backstopped funds
>(like other big US banks, JP Morgan is on government life support) there
>was some discussion as to whether the Whale was hedging, or betting, or
>gambling (with public funds). But nobody even knows the difference any
>more, and you can be sure that nobody will go to jail over this either.
>
>
>And that brings us to the political system. Are the politicians even
>vaguely interested in reforming the financial system? No, they are too
>afraid of it. The financial reform legislation, such as it is, was drafted
>by the financial companies themselves and by their lobbyists. The
>politicians would be afraid to go near it, for fear of endangering their
>electoral campaign contributions. As long as campaign funds are flowing
>into their coffers, and as long as none of their banker friends ever goes
>to jail, they will remain unconcerned about finance. What they are
>increasingly paranoid about is their own physical safety. Both parties
>have repeatedly exhibited an unseemly amount of bipartisanship when it
>came to passing legislation to compromise civil liberties, to increase
>social controls and surveillance, and to take away their citizens�
>rights. The 2013 national security budget promises to top $1 trillion.
>Again, the parallel with pre- and post-collapse USSR is striking: the
>political system there too was unreformable, hollowed out, and used for
>personal advantage, as a private service to the wealthy and the powerful.
>Criminals, such as Boris Berezovsky, ran for public office simply in order
>to gain the immunity from prosecution that came with it. This pattern
>continues to this day, especially in Ukraine: lose an election�go to
>jail. Get reelected�and you can use the voters who didn�t vote for you
>for target practice. Once a political system collapses, everyone
>strenuously denies that it has, but then it tends to stay collapsed for a
>long time.
>
>
>What does tend to change rather suddenly is commerce. If you have enough
>financial and political shenanigans, high-level corruption and rule of law
>going by the wayside, daily life goes on just like before, for a
>while�until suddenly it doesn�t. In St. Petersburg, Russia, the
>difference between the summers of 1989 and 1990 was quite striking,
>because by the summer of 1990 commerce ground to a halt. There were empty
>shelves in shops, many of which were closed. People were refusing to
>accept money as payment. Imports dried up, and the only way to procure
>sought-after items like shampoo was from somebody who had traveled abroad,
>in exchange for jewelry or other items of value. And that occurred in
>spite of the fact that the USSR had a better overall business plan: theirs
>was: �Sell oil and gas, buy everything.� Whereas the business plan of
>the US has come down to: �Print money, use it to buy everything� (most
>consumer products, plus � of the oil used for moving them and everything
>else around).
>
>
>The imported oil is, of course, the Achilles� heel of US commerce. The
>US economy was built around the principle that transportation costs
>don�t matter. Everything travels large distances all the time, mostly on
>rubber wheels, fueled by gasoline or diesel: people commute to work, drive
>to go shopping, taxi their children to and from various activities; goods
>move to stores in trucks; and the end product of all this
>activity�trash�gets trucked long distances as well. All of these
>transportation costs are no longer negligible; rather, they are fast
>becoming a major constraint on economic activity. The recurring pattern of
>the recent years is an oil price spike, followed by another round of
>recession. You might think that this pattern could continue ad infinitum,
>but then you�d just be extrapolating. More importantly, there is a
>reason to think that this pattern comes to a rather sudden end.
>
>
>* * *
>
>
>It is something of a general property of things that things build up
>slowly and collapse quickly. Examples of this sort abound (buildings,
>bridges, dams, military empires, economies, supernovae...)
>Counterexamples�things that appear suddenly and then slowly decay�are
>harder to find (mushrooms and cucumbers come to mind, but these are
>manifestations of an associated process of slow growth and sudden
>collapse, the collapse normally occurring right after the first frost).
>Some time ago it occurred to me that the symmetrical bell curve which is
>commonly used to model global oil depletion, known as the Hubbert Curve of
>Peak Oil theory, should actually be lopsided, like almost everything else,
>but I lacked the math to illustrate this point.
>
>
>Eventually Prof. Ugo Bardi came through with a wonderfully simple and
>clear model, which he called the Seneca Effect. Unlike other models, such
>as the original Limits to Growth model, which, although vindicated, is too
>complex for most people to grasp at a sitting, the Seneca Effect is
>simplicity itself. This model initially includes two elements: a resource
>base and an economy. The rate of development of the resource base is
>proportional to both the size of the resource base and the size of the
>economy. Also, the economy decays over time at a rate proportional to its
>size. Set up the initial conditions, run the simulation, and you get a
>symmetrical bell curve. Now add a third element, which can be variously
>named �bureaucracy� or �pollution� or �overhead�: all the
>inescapable requirements or inevitable side-effects of having an economy.
>This element does not contribute to the rate at which the resource base is
>developed. It also decays at a rate proportional to its size. Divert some
>fraction of the resource flow to this element, run the model, and out pops
>a lopsided curve: rising slowly, falling swiftly: the Seneca Cliff. The
>larger the fraction being diverted, the more lopsided the curve:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>There is one problem with this model: we don�t really know which
>elements of the economy are productive (in terms of contributing to the
>rate at which the resource base is converted into capital) and which ones
>are non-productive and belong in the bureaucracy/pollution/overhead
>bucket. When we look at the world, we see the two summed together and
>can�t tease them apart. With this detail hidden from view, collapse
>becomes hard to see in the aggregate: the people may be starving, but
>there is also a lot of fat bureaucrats carving up, roasting and eating
>each others� ample buttocks, so it all averages out for a while longer.
>But you can still tease it apart based on the fact that certain things
>simply stop happening. The progression to watch for is: things get bigger
>and bigger, then suddenly stop.
>
>
>An associated problem is that the fraction of resources going to
>bureaucracy/pollution/overhead usually starts out being reasonable (a
>quarter or a third or so) but the closer the economy comes to collapse,
>the higher this fraction becomes. We can observe this in the US: more and
>more resources have been allocated to bailouts, make-work �economic
>stimulus� projects and national security; more and more pollution (and
>associated costs) from offshore oil spills and from the development of
>marginal, dirty energy resources such as shale oil and tar sands. As the
>productive part of the economy begins to fail, the bureaucrats grow
>desperate but, being bureaucrats, all they can do is endlessly increase
>the bureaucratic burden, accelerating the downward slide. Most people have
>heard of Gorbachev�s glasnost' and perestro�ka, but there was a third
>initiative, acceleration (uskorenie): the doomed attempt to get the
>moribund Soviet economy to perform better. It sent it into shock instead.
>
>
>Things get bigger and bigger, then suddenly stop. Let us look at the
>example of US retail. Once upon a time there was local industry, which
>sold products through small shops. Over the course of a few decades, the
>industry moved to other countries, mostly to China, and the small shops
>were put out of business by department stores, then by malls, culminating
>with Walmart, which practices �slash and burn retail�: since most of
>what it sells is imported, it empties the local economy of money, and is
>then forced to close, leaving devastation in its wake. Walmart is now
>expanding in China, having finally realized that it doesn�t work to sell
>stuff in a country that doesn�t make stuff once that country is fresh
>out of money. In places where retail has ceased to exist, the remaining
>recourse is Internet shopping, thanks to UPS and FedEx. And once UPS and
>FedEx services become unaffordable because of rising energy prices or
>unavailable because of unmaintained, impassable roads and bridges, local
>access to imported goods is lost.
>
>
>Similarly with US banking. Once upon a time there were small neighborhood
>banks that took in the people�s savings and then lent it out to
>individuals and businesses, helping the local economy grow. Over the
>course of a few decades, these small neighborhood banks were replaced with
>a few huge megabanks, which, after 2008, became, in effect,
>government-owned. Once the megabanks close their local branches, local
>access to money is lost.
>
>
>Similarly with global shipping. Once upon a time there were many small
>ships, called tramp steamers, which were loaded and unloaded by
>longshoremen at local ports, using block and tackle and cargo nets. Then
>shipping became containerized, and moving cargo required a container port.
>Then the container ships became staggeringly huge. Then, as oil prices
>went up, they had to resort to �slow steaming� by pulling pistons out
>of their engines and going slower than the sailing ships of yore. Instead
>of point-to-point trade, these giant container ships can only operate
>within hub-and-spoke networks, with the spokes provided by somewhat less
>energy-efficient trains and far less energy-efficient long-distance
>trucking. These ships are now at the limit of �slow steaming.� The
>next step is, obviously �no steaming� at all.
>
>
>Similarly with medicine. Once upon a time there were family
>doctors�general practitioners who made house calls, and neighborhood
>clinics. Eventually these were replaced by megahospitals and giant medical
>centers staffed with specialists, which, over time, became unaffordable
>for the general population. The US is currently spending over 17% of its
>GDP on medical care�an amount that is exorbitant and unsustainable. Once
>this spending is curtailed, many of the megahospitals will be forced to
>close. The population will, for a time, still have access to WebMD and to
>mail-order drugs, and, in case of serious illness or emergency, medical
>evacuation will remain an option for those still be able to afford it.
>
>
>The state of the communications infrastructure in the US makes a
>particularly interesting case. The US is now behind most developed nations
>in access to the Internet. Many people in rural parts of the US must rely
>on their cell phones for Internet access, putting the US on par with such
>countries as Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. However,
>cell phone service is far more expensive in the US than in any of these
>countries. Given that most products and services are now available mainly
>through the Internet, and that the Internet requires a steady supply of
>electricity, the state of the electrical grid in the US presents an even
>more interesting case. It is a severely overworked network of aging
>transmission lines and transformer farms, some dating back to the 1950s.
>
>
>There is over 100 nuclear power plants, which are growing old and
>dangerous, but their service lives are being artificially extended through
>re-licensing. There are no plans, and no money, to dismantle them and to
>sequester the high-level radioactive waste at a geologically stable
>underground location. If deprived of both grid power and diesel fuel for
>an extended period of time, these plants melt down � la Fukushima
>Daiichi. It bears mentioning that a nuclear disaster, such as Chernobyl,
>is a particularly potent ingredient in precipitating a political collapse.
>Since what is keeping a series of such disasters from happening is the
>electric grid, followed by diesel, let us examine each of these in turn.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>With regard to the electric grid, the incidence of major power outages has
>recently been seen doubling every year. Yes, we are committing the
>inductive fallacy by simply extrapolating this trend into the future, but,
>given what is at stake, dare we not extrapolate? At the very least, we
>would need to hear a very good reason why we shouldn�t. The incidence of
>major power outages can only double so many times before it�s time to
>start handing out potassium iodide tablets and before wig prices shoot
>through the roof.
>
>
>Unless, of course, the diesel generators can be kept running continuously
>for the 15-20 years it would take to shut down, de-fuel and decommission
>all the nuclear reactors and empty the nuclear waste storage ponds.
>Countries that lack a reliable electric grid tend to rely on diesel
>generators. There is currently a lot of pressure on diesel supplies,
>especially since Japan took all of their nuclear generation capacity
>off-line following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, with high diesel prices
>and spot shortages in many countries. Observing the increased incidence of
>power outages and price spikes, many companies in the US have installed
>emergency diesel generators, and are now finding that they run them even
>when grid power is available, whenever requested to do so by the power
>company.
>
>
>Not much of anything continues to operate in the US once the electric grid
>is down. Earlier this year a central part of Boston where I was working at
>the time (Back Bay) went dark because of a transformer fire. For almost an
>entire week every business in the area was shut down. Without power, there
>is no heat or hot water, there is no pumped water, or, more frighteningly,
>no pumped sewage, there is no air conditioning (which is fatal, through
>heat stroke, in places such as Atlanta, Georgia, which often have 100%
>humidity coupled with above-body-temperature summer ambient temperatures).
>Security systems and point of sale systems stop functioning. Cell phones
>and laptops cannot be charged. Highway and subway tunnels flood and
>bridges do not open to let shipping traffic through�such as barges
>loaded with diesel. Can we be sure that diesel will continue to be
>supplied to all active nuclear power plants even as everything else falls
>apart?
>
>
>This is usually the point in my talks when somebody in the audience pipes
>up to say: �This is all doom and gloom, isn�t it?� To which I say,
>�For you, maybe, if you don�t have any other plan except to wait for
>everything to somehow magically fix itself.� You see, building something
>that works takes a lot of time and effort. Things stop working in a hurry,
>but making a replacement takes time, resources, and, most importantly,
>stability. This can only be done ahead of time, and doing so takes
>practice (by which I mean learning from one�s own plentiful mistakes).
>If you wait until that last moment when, in a spasm of horror, you
>suddenly think to yourself �Oh shit, Dmitry was right!� then indeed
>Doom and Gloom will be your charming new bunkmates. But if you start your
>collapse early and get it over with quickly, then your chances of
>surviving this are quite likely to substantially exceed zero.
>
>
>And so, please don�t ask me �When?��do your own thinking! I�ve
>given you the tools you need to come to your own conclusions, based on
>which you may be able to start your collapse early and get it over with
>quickly.
>
>
>
>
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>
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