As likely many people on this sub I've recently discovered a theory on how the chaos currently going on in America is likely a conspiracy of oligarchs to overthrow democracy inspired by a fascist ideology concieved by Curtis Yarvin. Currently the most popular video on the topic seems to be this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

In my opinion, many of the arguments presented here make a lot of sense. However, I've noticed that its view count is really low even after it was doing the rounds this weekend, which is strange considering that all this is a very hot topic not just in the US, but arguably most of the civilized world. Currently it has 547K views, 300+K of which it already had around 2 days ago.

So I've thought, since Google/Alphabet CEO seems to be one of the alleged conspirators according to this theory, could the view count be now falsified? Google has absolute power over what's going on on YouTube servers since they own it, and since the controversy regarding the removal of YouTube dislikes, we can clearly see they are absolutely not above hiding or distorting information to serve corporate interests. They'd only need a simple special algorithm to have the video accumulate a tiny portion of the views it's actually getting.

Google, being a business extremely familiar with the way internet works, knows that removing the video would only risk causing the Streisand effect. They definitely can't risk that, since that could pose an absolutely existential risk to the oligarchs allegedly involved in this. They can however try to make it seem like a very fringe idea by making it seem like it's obscure to the public or even controversial.

If the theory presented in that video is true, I'm convinced they will do every dirty trick in the book they can get away with to make this campaign succeed, including faking view and comment counts and not recommending this video to any YouTube visitor. In this case, I would expect pretty much all of the American social media platforms to play dirty as well.

Obviously, all information I've personally presented here is alleged. I just think this could be a useful discussion to have.

All comments in this thread MUST be greater than 150 characters.

You MUST include Location: Region when sharing observations.

Example - Location: New Zealand

This ONLY applies to top-level comments, not replies to comments. You're welcome to make regionless or general observations, but you still must include 'Location: Region' for your comment to be approved. This thread is also [in-depth], meaning all top-level comments must be at least 150-characters.

Users are asked to refrain from making more than one top-level comment a week. Additional top-level comments are subject to removal.

All previous observations threads and other stickies are viewable here.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned;” - W. B. Yeats

Last Week in Collapse: January 26-February 1, 2025

This is the 162nd weekly newsletter. You can find the grisly January 19-25, 2025 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these newsletters (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox by signing up to the Substack version.

——————————

The Doomsday Clock ticked one second closer to midnight. It is now 89 seconds away. The non-profit managing the metaphorical clock, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, said in a statement that…

“In regard to nuclear risk, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, looms over the world; the conflict could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation….the United States has alleged that Russia has tested a satellite with a dummy warhead on it, suggesting plans to place nuclear weapons in orbit….The global greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change continued to rise….despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course….climate change is viewed as a low priority in the United States and many other countries….emerging and re-emerging diseases continue to threaten the economy, society, and security of the world….advances in artificial intelligence have increased the risk that terrorists or countries may attain the capability of designing biological weapons for which countermeasures do not exist….corruption of the information ecosystem undermines the public discourse and honest debate upon which democracy depends….The United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization. These three countries have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink…” -selections from the brief 2025 statement

More data has come in about the LA fires, and scientists say that, from an air pollution perspective, calling them “wildfires” is an understatement. Due to the mass-burning of various chemicals and materials—high concentrations of lead & chlorine were detected 11 miles (17 km) away in a few hours of the burning—it would be more accurate to call the event a “wind-driven urban firestorm.” A similar study from Canada found that “urban surface grime” {polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons} is aerosolized by wildfires. Meanwhile, in Victoria, Australia, bushfires spread across tens of thousands of hectares (equivalent to the size of Ibiza, or St. Lucia) in several hours; no humans were killed.

A PNAS study from December 2024 concluded that “the AMOC slows down more when the rate of atmospheric CO2 change is faster, even when the level of CO2 change is the same, and that this can be explained by a positive feedback cycle….the same amount of carbon emissions released over different amounts of time can lead to qualitatively different climates….the rate of forcing change is itself a key driver of global climatic change.” In other words, the AMOC is more sensitive to the rate of CO2 being added to the atmosphere.

Another study, published last week in Environmental Research Letters, concluded that the rate of sea surface temperature warming has accelerated, and that the projected temperature increase in the next 20 years will probably surpass the warming done in the last 40—if when mitigation measures aren’t taken. Research published in Earth’s Future last December suggests the maximum sea level rise we could see by 2100 is 1.9 meters—0.9 meters above the upper limit warned about by the latest IPCC. “Under a low-emissions scenario, the fusion's very likely range (5th–95th percentiles) of global mean sea-level rise is 0.3–1.0 m by 2100. Under a high-emissions scenario, the very likely range is 0.5–1.9 m.”

Sinkholes and increasingly salty water are affecting the Dead Sea—where water levels drop more than one meter every year, a result of water extraction and aridification. Regional conflicts also complicate efforts to address this “ecological disaster” because Israel & Jordan share the Sea, and its tributaries run through Syria & Lebanon.

Indonesia has seen a 4th consecutive year of increasing deforestation, especially in the region around where the country’s new capital is being constructed. However, annual totals of deforestation are much lower than figures from 2016, when over 4x as much land was deforested (1,000,000+ hectares, almost the size of Jamaica) in a single year.

Paris is planning for a once-in-a-century flood, the type of natural disaster which officials believe would be the most costly. Although severe Parisian flooding has traditionally been associated with the winter, climate change could create conditions for a historic flood in summer nowadays. Meanwhile, a study in Nature Medicine examined about 850 metro areas across Europe and concluded that “with no adaptation to heat, the increase in heat-related deaths consistently exceeds any decrease in cold-related deaths across all considered scenarios in Europe” over the next 75 years.

Peatlands cover 3% of the earth’s land surfaces—but reportedly store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined. A study on peatlands concluded that the near future (2061-2080) might see climate change in the UK which becomes too dry/warm for the liveable range for lots of peatland moss. Once these peatlands dry out, they will release large quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, becoming carbon sources instead of carbon sinks. This phenomenon will of course not be limited to just the UK.

Some writers believe that the reason “Why Climate-Change Ideology Is Dying” is because the so-called elites championing environmental awareness and various green measures live hypocritical lives, talking the talk—but still flying on private jets, engaging in large-scale environmental exploitation in one form or another, and generally behaving as if earth’s problems aren’t quite so terminal.

A PNAS study on West Greenland’s lakes examined the sudden change, starting in late 2022, of the previously blue lake waters going brown—from iron & organic material runoff. The “lakes shifted from being summer carbon sinks to sources, with a >350% increase in carbon dioxide flux from lakes to the atmosphere….after a series of atmospheric rivers that simultaneously produced record heat and rainfall hit the region in autumn 2022.”

Locations in mainland France, Switzerland, Hungary, and Germany saw record January temperatures. Australia recorded its highest minimum temperature for late January, 36 °C (97 °F). In southern Italy, over half of wildfires are supposedly started by mafia members or other criminals, including “seasonal workers eager to prolong firefighting contracts, farmers who want to clear forest for grazing, protestors or people with vendettas.” Money, power, and spite—the unholy trinity.

Cyprus ended its second-driest January in 124 years. The overuse of pesticides on Kashmiri apples has elevated cancer rates in the region. New January heat records felt in Thailand as a heat wave passed through. Portland, Oregon set a new record for the longest January without rain. A big chunk of the megaberg A23a broke off as the main iceberg moves menacingly towards South Georgia. And there was a new January high in Kenya, 39.8 °C (104 °F). A marine heat wave is being blamed for a fish dieoff in Western Australia which killed 30,000+ fish. Meanwhile, Arctic temperatures are expected to be “more than 28°C (50°F) above average” in the next few days……and Arctic sea ice hit another record low on 31 January.

——————————

Trump’s implementation of crippling tariffs, on allies and adversaries alike, is threatening to destabilize much of the global economy as retaliatory tariffs were imposed. And, for some reason, Elon Musk has been granted access to sensitive Treasury Department information, including the payment system (some $5T annually), people’s social security numbers & social security payments, and more....a rather large return on investment for contributing around $300M to Trump’s election.

Rampant inflation has come to Libya, where people are being priced out of daily supplies. Germany’s unemployment rate hit 10-year highs. In South Africa, load-shedding worsened over the weekend.

A depressing study published last week in Science confirmed that it takes only hours for nanoplastics, once consumed, to arrive in the brains of mice and “breach the blood-brain barrier, leading to neurotoxic effects.” Once there, micro/nanoplastics can block blood flow, leading to blood clotting and changes in animal behavior. The only way to remove microplastics in our blood today is through blood donation.

A 26-page interdisciplinary report on wealth inequality in the UK was published last week, based on talks held in November 2024, days before the U.S. election. The possibility of “societal collapse” is explicitly discussed in the paper, and the word Collapse is used, on average, more than once every page. The paper proposes

“When we carried out a quick straw poll, everyone in the room — without exception — thought it plausible that growing wealth inequality could be a major driver of societal collapse in the UK within the next decade….The social contract has demonstrably collapsed, along with public trust in government and democratic institutions…The political system has neither the will nor the ability to think and act in the long-term interests of the country, or to consider wide-ranging structural reforms….wealth inequality makes society more vulnerable to other threats while simultaneously reducing our capacity to respond….Wealth inequality robs people of hope for the future, creates a sense of entrapment and reduced ambition….since the 1990s confidence in Parliament has halved….” -selections from the report

A variety of “neglected tropical diseases” {NTDs} are being amplified by conflict, particularly in Africa. The UK announced one more case of the new & more transmissible mpox clade; China declared 5 more cases of the same clade last week as well. In South Sudan, authorities are failing to prevent a fast-moving cholera outbreak from spreading further, because of a fragile healthcare system, underfunding, and fallout from Sudan’s ongoing Civil War.

Toronto’s tuberculosis cases hit 23-year highs. Kansas is also currently home to the largest TB outbreak in American history. Shoplifting offenses hit record highs in England & Wales. A lake in New Mexico tested for “the highest levels of toxic PFAS contamination in wildlife and plants worldwide” last week, too—including a record for “the highest recorded concentration of PFAS in any wild animal {a Merriam’s kangaroo rat} worldwide.”

The U.S. public health emergency from COVID turned 5 years old on Friday—and the coronavirus is still killing almost 3,000 people in the U.S. every week… Over one third of Long COVID sufferers experiences “exercise intolerance”, while about two thirds deal with symptoms like “fatigue, cognitive issues, breathlessness, and mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances.” The scientific/medical community is still learning new things about COVID—and children’s academic scores are still suffering from COVID’s impact (but let’s not blame just COVID for everything).

Scientists say microplastics in the placenta are linked to premature births. The mass use of plastics, and in their disposal, is poisoning soil as well. And microplastics are being found in tea bags now, too.

——————————

Italy is attempting to process refugees in Albania, after having built two detention facilities in the country. In India, 35+ people died in a crowd crush at a huge Hindu festival. The release of a Chinese AI product, Deepseek, is alarming (inter)national security officials; its use of OpenAI’s data has supposedly helped it leapfrog American competitors.

In Colombia, tens of thousands of children are out of school due to fighting which increased in the northeast; tens of thousands of others have been displaced. Meanwhile, displacement and hunger are rising in Myanmar and expected to worsen throughout the rest of 2025. In the UK, about half of Gen Z reportedly prefers dictatorship to democracy, according to a recent survey. In El Salvador, where the largest prison in the world opened in 2023, thousands of convicts have been put to work (slavery?) at clothing factories, farms, and construction sites. The worst is yet to come. The global disorder has alarmed some people who believe that the “territorial stability” of the world will soon end because powers large and small no longer feel the same restraints on using force to take land.

The border city of Goma (pop: ~2M estimated), sitting in the DRC but adjacent to Rwanda, was reportedly captured by a combination of Tutsi M23 rebels coming from the west and Rwandan forces entering from the east. The border has since allegedly been closed, though the damage to the long-suffering city, teeming with refugees, has already been wrought. Reports indicate 700+ people have been killed already, with 2,800+ injured—numbers that are likely undercounted.

Thousands of prisoners in Goma have been released (who have already committed atrocities ), and the rebel forces are presiding over the disarmament of government forces (and their mercenaries, and allegedly some UN peacekeepers too). House-to-house searches are ongoing for government sympathizers. Food prices have soared. Looting & fighting & dead bodies in the streets. Electricity connections have been severed. Hospitals are flooded with casualties—as are the morgues. The Red Cross is warning about the possibility of ebola being released from Goma’s biolabs. The handover & management of the populous city has been far from smooth, especially considering that government forces are reportedly contesting the city. This may yet become the flashpoint for a Third Congo War in the region. South Africa may get involved next.

As the American government tries to depopulate the federal workforce dramatically, climate initiatives are getting hit. It is unclear if the proffered buyout is legitimate or legal, and if the government will fund agencies after they are set to run out of funds on 14 March (unless another budget deal is reached). A plane & helicopter crash also killed 67 near Washington DC, and a medivac plane crash killed 6 in Philadelphia. Trump is now floating the idea of holding up to 30,000 migrants in Guantanamo Bay as they await deportation…or a worse fate.

Turkish airstrikes reportedly killed 13 civilians, injuring 20 others, in Syria. Elsewhere in Syria, observers fear that ISIS prisoners might get released, or otherwise escape, now that American aid has been cut. In northern Benin, jihadists were said to have slain 28 soldiers, though 40 of the attackers are reported “neutralised.” Last week, French troops officially & finally left Chad. Israeli forces, claiming that Lebanon failed to uphold some of the terms of their ceasefire, killed 22 people (plus 120+ wounded) en route to return to their homes in the south—which are still occupied by IDF forces.

Post-apocalyptic scenes are playing out in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of IDPs have been allowed to return to the ruins of northern Gaza after over a year of War. For most, there is nothing to return to. Exchanges of Hamas’ hostages for people held by Israel is ongoing. The U.S. moved 90 Patriot missiles from Israel to Poland, from where they will soon be moved to Ukraine. Last week, a ban from Israel’s government on UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of a huge amount of Palestinian aid, came into effect, prohibiting the UNRWA from operating in Gaza & the West Bank. Israel is theoretically planning on managing aid operations from now on…

Facing the possibility of the U.S. pulling back from some commitments to European defense, Poland’s PM urged EU members to take responsibility for their own security. As a ceasefire in Ukraine seems unlikely in the near future, reports about Ukrainians going AWOL become more common. One soldier on the frontlines, after deserting, said “I realised I’m nobody…just a number.” President Zelenskyy again replaced the top commander on the eastern front. Ukraine’s strikes on oil facilities continue, as do strikes in Zaporizhzhia; on Saturday, strikes killed 11 in Poltava, and 4 more elsewhere, damaging energy infrastructure as well. On the day before, Russian strikes hit Sumy, killing several pensioners and a few others. In a few weeks, the full-scale invasion will turn 3 years old.

——————————

Things to watch for next week include:

↠ Tit-for-tat tariffs from the U.S. against Canada, Mexico, and China might mark the opening salvo of an economic War, the impacts of which have already spread beyond North America. Trump is already discussing tariffs on the EU which could begin within days.

Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:

-The Texas healthcare system is not prepared for massive fiscal cuts and more pandemics, but the writer of this weekly observation is.

-The United States is full of morons—to paraphrase this well-sourced, thoughtful thread on collective, willful ignorance and its progression through the years. Agree or not?

Got any feedback, questions, comments, memories of democracy, AMOC predictions, maps, cool stretches, upvotes, travel warnings, etc.? Check out the Last Week in Collapse SubStack if you don’t want to check r/collapse every Sunday, you can receive this newsletter sent to an email inbox every weekend. As always, thank you for your support. What did I miss this week?