Pentagon video warns of “unavoidable” dystopian future for world’s biggest cities

[Exiled_Child]

theintercept.com/2016/10/13/pentagon-video-warns-of-unavoidable-dystopian-future-for-worlds-biggest-cities/

**THE YEAR IS 2030. Forget about the flying cars, robot maids, and moving sidewalks we were promised. They’re not happening. But that doesn’t mean the future is a total unknown.

According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of “Escape from New York” and “Robocop” — with dashes of the “Warriors” and “Divergent” thrown in. It will be a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers.**

The article continues at the link, along with an interesting five minute video.

 

[mikekle]

For that to happen, some MAJOR disaster would have to happen, to throw a wrench into the machine that throws everything out of whack, so bad, large metro areas cannot recover and become a sort of ‘mad max’ type city.

The disaster would make 9-11 look like a holiday, something like an asteroid strike, financial collapse, new madrid fault going off, etc, something very severe.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

If we have energy, then we can overcome problems.

The difficulty is that our society is being controlled by people who want to make energy difficult or impossible to obtain. “The cost of electricity would necessarily skyrocket” … quote from Barack Obama … on causing coal production and use to be shut down .]

Our best energy is nuclear generated electricity.

But we are shutting down our nukes.

Instead we are turning to wind and solar which are boutique power sources. There are no really workable energy storage devices. So at night and when the wind doesn’t blow [or blows too fast], then we have no energy available.

Boutique power costs around 36 cents and doesn’t work some of the time. Nuclear and coal costs around 6 cents. Natural gas generated electricity via gas turbines is more expensive because you need to pay off the purchase cost of the turbines @$50 million each.

It is concerning that the Russians keep talking about a nuclear war.

They seem to be worried that an unreliable president … I’m thinking of Hillary Clinton … might decide to attack them for no good reason.

The easiest attack to launch on the United States would be an EMP attack, which would destroy our electrical infrastructure, unless we harden it.

 

[Exiled_Child]

For that to happen, some MAJOR disaster would have to happen, to throw a wrench into the machine that throws everything out of whack, so bad, large metro areas cannot recover and become a sort of ‘mad max’ type city.

The disaster would make 9-11 look like a holiday, something like an asteroid strike, financial collapse, new madrid fault going off, etc, something very severe.

They seem to just be projecting current population growth rates, along with projections of huge percentages of people migrating to big cities. I don’t know. Considering the source of information is the Pentagon, they seem to be saying that the military needs to prepare for an urban combat environment. I got the impression that it was sort of an in-house suggestion, saying in effect, “We don’t so much need to train for desert environments, arctic environments, jungle environments, etcetera; we need to train for almost a Blade Runner-type environment.”

 

[JimG]

For that to happen, some MAJOR disaster would have to happen, to throw a wrench into the machine that throws everything out of whack, so bad, large metro areas cannot recover and become a sort of ‘mad max’ type city.

The disaster would make 9-11 look like a holiday, something like an asteroid strike, financial collapse, new madrid fault going off, etc, something very severe.

Financial collapse is not out of the question. It could arise in several ways, beginning with an increase in interest rates making the national debt even more unsustainable. It could be a deflationary spiral, or hyperinflation. If the government was forced to reduce or stop such things as social security, Medicare, medicaid, welfare, people would be thrown upon their own resources.

And no one today has experienced true hard times—the sorts of privations that occurred during the Great Depression, the world wars, heck, during most of human history. We have become soft and vulnerable. Those programs are not supportable indefinitely with a shrinking fertility rate. With a triggering event, things could get bad.

 

[Beryllos]

Financial collapse is not out of the question. It could arise in several ways, beginning with an increase in interest rates making the national debt even more unsustainable. It could be a deflationary spiral, or hyperinflation. If the government was forced to reduce or stop such things as social security, Medicare, medicaid, welfare, people would be thrown upon their own resources.

And no one today has experienced true hard times—the sorts of privations that occurred during the Great Depression, the world wars, heck, during most of human history. We have become soft and vulnerable. Those programs are not supportable indefinitely with a shrinking fertility rate. With a triggering event, things could get bad.

Yep.

 

[zaffiroborant]

It is concerning that the Russians keep talking about a nuclear war.

**They seem to be worried that an unreliable president **… I’m thinking of Hillary Clinton … might decide to attack them for no good reason.

The easiest attack to launch on the United States would be an EMP attack, which would destroy our electrical infrastructure, unless we harden it.

Of course what we want to do is elect a president that Putin decides is “reliable”.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

: “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” and a “growing mass of unemployed.”

That’s not 2300, that is our cities today.