askchapo

As far as causes, I don’t think the current Team Red/Team Blue partisan bickering will have anything to do with the collapse. That bickering is just theater to keep the narrative going. It inspires the occasional random actor to go adventurism mode but nothing organized on the level to get real collapse/balkanization.

I firmly believe it’s going to be the supply chain of treats getting compromised that will trigger the collapse. It’s the only collective national glue, and the combination of climate change reducing productivity in the equatorial third world, the shortage of oil resources with no real transition plan to renewables, international shipping capacity insecurity due to prices, resources, piracy, other countries like China positioning to adapt to that new normal more smoothly, there ain’t gonna be enough treats to go around. That’s going to mean some states/regions attempting to hoard, ports will become points of resource distribution contention, whomever loses out on the federal fight will have motivation to split/rebel/attack opposing states, and we’ve got collapse/balkanization on our hands.

Timewise, thinking somewhere in the 2040-2050 range. There’s enough buffer right now but that’s the range where a lot of the “shit hits the fan” climate points hit and that’s when the equatorial supply chain will be crippled.