Is the fabric of industrialized society starting to unravel? Highly complex civilizations are more vulnerable to collapse

Thursday, December 29, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: complex societies, collapse, 2012

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(NaturalNews) This is one of the most important trends you'll see in 2012 and beyond: Global supply lines are breaking down. The just-in-time system of deliveries on tap is deteriorating. Have you noticed how often the products or parts you need are backordered or delayed? That's what I'm talking about.

Try to order 3TB hard drives for data storage. You'll discover they're all back-ordered. When you order items from Amazon.com that are shipped by third party companies, they're often delayed due to sourcing problems. Even our own NaturalNews Store has suffered from sourcing challenges, where customer demand is much higher than the available supply, and the suppliers sometimes can't get us products in a timely manner.

This issue is especially notable across the firearms industry, where record firearm sales have pushed gun manufacturers way beyond their normal capacities. Not only was Black Friday the top day for gun sales in the history of the USA, but I spoke with the owner of a local Austin gun shop just a couple of days ago, and he told me that on the Thursday and Friday before Christmas his shop was completely slammed with customers, and many of the products they wanted were simply out of stock or unavailable.

Something is happening across the planet with all this: Supply lines are getting thin and starting to crack. You've probably noticed it when you're trying to buy car parts or appliance parts. Even many service companies are thinly staffed these days. How long does it take now to get a repair man for your furnace? Or a plumber? Remember when it used to be same-day or next-day service? Now it's often 2-3 days (or even more) before somebody can fix the problem, and even then, they often need parts that have to be ordered.

The complexity of modern society is starting to rupture

All this is a worrisome sign to anyone who understands even a little bit about the complexities of modern society. Even to build something as simple as a water bottle, a manufacturer must be able to depend on a very long and highly complex chain of suppliers who individually specialize in metals, plastics or o-ring manufacturing. Then there's the logo printing which requires yet another supply chain of ink specialists and printing equipment. While a stainless steel water bottle may seem simple, it's actually the culmination of thousands of years of specialized knowledge, processes and equipment.

Even manufacturing a pencil is a modern miracle. Try it yourself sometime and you'll discover just how complex a pencil really is. You need sources of metals, rubber, graphite, paint, wood, and all the specialized manufacturing equipment and expertise that goes with it.

Why does this matter? Understand this hugely important point:

The more complex a society becomes, the more the loss of efficiency in just one small area of service or manufacturing ripples across the entire economy, magnifying its negative impact.

You can't build a car, for example, without the microchips manufactured in China. Sure, you can put together the entire car -- minus the microchips -- but all you have is a 3,000-pound piece of junk sitting on the assembly line. Without the microchips, the car is useless, and increasingly those microchips all come from China or Japan. This is even true across the military, where red alerts have been issued recently about the strategic vulnerability of military gear that relies on microchips from China. (http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=321477)

Suppose the microchips you need happen to show up, but then you then have a problem with rubber from Sri Lanka. Most Americans have absolutely no clue how much rubber they need to survive in modern society. The average vehicle contains over 500 pounds of rubber parts, all of which are 100% dependant on international rubber producers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber).

Without rubber, in fact, modern society grinds to a halt. It's one of the most important strategic natural resources in the world, yet barely anyone thinks about it. Without rubber, you would have no transportation (not even bicycles). No trains, no trucks, no cars and no airplanes. A loss of rubber would also hit medical supplies and agricultural equipment in a huge way. Goodbye mechanized farming...

So even a tiny disruption in this crucial global resource could be devastating to the global economy. Rest assured, folks, that if you could read all the secret military documents at the Pentagon, and you could find a report on the world's "most important strategic resources," right underneath OIL, you would find RUBBER. (And no, the synthetic stuff isn't a viable replacement...)

The collapse ripple

The point is that a highly complex society has many points of failure that individually impact the entire web of complexity. Lose rubber and you've lost your entire transportation sector. Lose oil and much the same happens. Lose your source of microchips and you have to revert back to pre-1980's technology. Lose your manufacturing base -- which has already happened in America -- and you have no capability to start building the stuff you need in your own country anymore.

In World War II, America turned its car factories into tank factories and cranked out Armored Personnel Carriers, B-17 bombers, tracked vehicles and Jeep transport vehicles. Today, America's automobile manufacturing has been gutted to the core. All the machine shops have been offshored to Asia. A new generation of Americans has grown up with little or no knowledge of how to actually build anything other than Legos. The entire culture of innovative machining and metals fabrication has been all but lost (not to mention textiles).

What's behind these supply line failures? Criminal banks

There's a reason why supply lines are getting dangerously thin in America: Easy credit is disappearing. The failure of the global banking system is causing a trickle-down effect of decreased capital across the business sector. This, in turn, causes businesses to decrease their inventories and wait for orders to come in before manufacturing anything. So instead of excess supply sitting around, waiting to be delivered, more and more companies are operating on a "you order first, and then we'll make it" basis.

Capital is hard to come by for honest businesses, you see. Sure, if you're a criminal bankster like Jon Corzine, scamming the taxpayers out of billions (or trillions!) of dollars, you get free bailout money from the corrupt criminal enablers known as "members of Congress." But if you're an honest, hardworking American trying to run an honest business supplying real goods to business customers, you get royally screwed with high taxes, heavy banking fees, and a routine denial of operating credit. So you scratch by, doing the best you can with what you've got, even as the government is eroding the value of the Federal Reserve notes (dollars) you've worked so hard to earn.

Everywhere across the economy, honest businesses are getting hammered while the big money goes out to military contractors, weapons manufacturers, anti-terrorism security companies and others who have the right buddies in the right hallways in Washington. An economy that used to be based on manufacturing productivity and abundance is now based on false terrorism driving what is essentially a war economy.

That war economy, by the way, is just a few short years away from total default. It's the oldest story in history: Empire invades foreign nations, empire conquers foreign nations, then the empire goes broke trying to pay for its ever-expanding military to control those foreign nations. Empire collapses into the dark corners of history and becomes a lesson for the next generation which will usually make the same mistake anyway, because humans have a short memory and don't really understand what history means.

Do not fool yourself into thinking America isn't headed down this path right now. With the coming banking failures, the currency devaluation and the ever-expanding costs of running a false war (complete with home-grown false flag terror attacks to keep everybody scared into blind obedience), America's economy is headed for its own inevitable catastrophe, at which point you can fully expect supply line disruptions to be frequent and large-scale.

If you truly understand complex societies, you will prepare now

For a while after the collapse, it will be impossible to buy many items, including many food staples and possibly even fuel. Those who do not prepare for supply line disruptions will probably be weeded out of the human gene pool, earning their own place in history as examples of a failed genetic experiment that was ultimately incapable of adapting to a rapidly-changing environment.

In nature, when the climate rapidly changes, the only animals that survive are those with adaptive skills, mobility and backup resources (squirrels store food for a reason). In human society, when the mechanized production climate of readily-available foods, goods and services suddenly disappears -- even for a short while -- you will observe a sudden and shocking shift in the human gene pool towards those who have the foresight to plan and prepare rather than those who live day by day, partying, consuming, copulating and laughing it up.

As usual, I urge NaturalNews to be adaptive and be prepared. When the day comes that you actually need this wisdom, it will be too late to try to prepare. This is a test of survival that must be won in advance.

Why does the U.S. government stockpile food, medical supplies and weapons?

Remember: The U.S. government stockpiles massive quantities of food, weapons, ammunition, communications equipment and medical supplies. These are held in huge underground storage facilities (caves) carved out of pure granite. Watch the video to see for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T24LhB82Gdg

By the way, I have firsthand knowledge of these caves. Being from Kansas City, I used to drive by these caves quite frequently, witnessing 18-wheeler rigs pulling in and out of these cave entrances, right off the highway. This has been going on for decades. They have underground cities for the storage of supplies. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's an admitted historical fact.

Ever wonder why the government bothers to do this? For what purpose does the government feel it needs to be prepared with years of supplies while, at the same time, telling the American citizens they only need enough supplies to last a few days?

That's not a flippant question. If you answer it honestly, you will be ahead of 99% of the rest of the population which now faces a precarious future in a highly complex society that's already starting to tear apart at the seams.