Our Uncertain Future Archives

Fatal delusions and the curse of ‘maximum power’

‘When spectacular success spells calamitous failure’ What is real? One of humanity’s more curious traits is an unlimited capacity for self-delusion. And if you don’t think you are delusional, you are doubly deluded. There are numerous causes of this enigma, many springing from basic human nature. Perhaps the most obvious is that human groups

Flooded and forgotten: the UK’s waters are rising and we’re being kept in the dark

Rescue operations in Wales, submerged railway lines in Cornwall – these events are ever more common. So why have we utterly failed to prepare? As autumn blurs into winter, the news is once again filling up with a familiar story: overflowing rivers, inundated streets and overwhelmed infrastructure. Since Friday, England, Wales and Ireland have

Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization

Highlights The stable climate of the Holocene made agriculture and civilization possible. The unstable Pleistocene climate made it impossible before then. Human societies after agriculture were characterized by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses. Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as

Iran faces unprecedented drought as water crisis hits Tehran

Iran - especially its capital, Tehran - is facing an unprecedented drought this autumn, with rainfall at record lows and reservoirs nearly empty. Officials are pleading with citizens to conserve water as the crisis deepens. President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if there is not enough rainfall soon, Tehran's water supply could be rationed.

Life On The Slippery Slope

Two scenarios for what a world with a declining resource and energy availability could look like We, the lucky 1 billion living affluent lives, are completely technology-blind. We take all what has been discovered, developed and scaled up in the past as a given for eons to come. Electricity. Food in the supermarket. Gas

Towns may have to be abandoned due to floods with millions more homes in Great Britain at risk

Every constituency projected to be at greater risk, with many areas likely to be uninsurable, Guardian investigation finds Millions more homes in England, Scotland and Wales face devastating floods, and some towns may have to be abandoned as climate breakdown makes many areas uninsurable, a Guardian investigation has found. New analysis from the insurance

Doomsday prepper to gorge on ‘freeze-dried’ Christmas dinner ahead of ‘collapse’

Gubba, 25, is preparing for the worst by stocking up on everything from food to medical supplies, seeds and soil - and every spare bit of cash goes towards her homestead A doomsday prepper who is preparing for worldwide 'collapse' revealed she'll be tucking into 'freeze-dried' Christmas dinner this year. Gubba,25, has "scaled up"

6 ways batteries provide a lifeline for customers in an outage

More than 2.5 million Americans depend on durable medical equipment, such as oxygen delivery systems, ventilators, and dialysis machines. For these vulnerable customers, even brief power interruptions can cause their equipment to malfunction, and longer outages can be life-threatening, if power isn’t restored quickly. Yet the U.S. power grid is aging and under increasing

I’m a scientist and think society will collapse by 2050 – how I’m preparing

In 27 years’ time, society as we know it will have collapsed. Food will be extremely limited. Lawlessness will have taken over the land. Gangs will roam the countryside scavenging for resources like food, water and fuel. This breakdown won’t be sudden. It will happen over a period of months. It might even have

The climate solution both the right and the left can get behind

We’re beyond Mel Gibson’s Mad Max era. We no longer need oil to make it through the apocalypse As I write these words, the No 1 trending story on the Guardian is titled: “The history and future of societal collapse”. It is an account of a study by a Cambridge expert who works at

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