Shining City wrote:
> I think the world will break down, most of it will collapse, and
> new mini-states will emerge based on ethnicity/race/ religion. I
> think there will be city states surrounded by barbarism. The
> closest example might be Israel (I'm no fan of Israel). The ME has
> largely collapsed into warlordism. Israel, for the moment,
> survives. It is heavily fortified, patrolled, and armed to the
> teeth. While not homogeneous (yet!) it is a bastion of tranquility
> compared to the rest of the region. I think you will have city
> states, perhaps islands in Scotland, or in the Channel Islands,
> that become independent. I'm thinking about China 1911-1949.
> The alternative is just barbarism. I'm hoping at least a few
> safe city states will emerge.
> These places will be low tech places, but they will have law and
> order and social cohesion. And the places outside of these cities
> will simple starve to death. Or they will have a Mad Max existence
> (without gasoline).
I've written about this a number of times in the past. In my view,
the world war will kill 3-4 billion people, who will be killed by
nuclear weapons, airstrikes, ground war, chemical weapons, biological
weapons, disease and famine. This will leave 3-4 billion traumatized
people behind to rebuild the world. The history and interpretation of
the war will be written by the winners. The first thing that the
surviving world leaders will do is hold a big international
conference, where national boundaries will be redrawn, a new United
Nations will be created, a new European Union will be created, and
everyone will promise that nothing like that war can ever be allowed
to happen again. However, I still estimate that the Singularity will
occur around 2030, and it's not clear that the human race will survive
too many years after that anyway.