[HN Gopher] Doomsday Scoreboard
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Doomsday Scoreboard
Author : diymaker
Score : 108 points
Date : 2025-10-21 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doomsday.march1studios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (doomsday.march1studios.com)
| iammjm wrote:
| the two active predictions with the time frames of <5 years by
| MIT, and How & Strauss still look scary and not impossible
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Yeah I was fully expecting this site to be making fun of all
| the wacko conspiracies about armageddon, such that it would
| make me feel better. But instead, the "Limit to Growth" summary
| seems entirely plausible.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| It might not even be an apocalypse.
| stego-tech wrote:
| It's also worth noting that Strauss, Howe, _and_ Turchin all
| repeatedly stress in their books that firm dates aren't a
| guarantee, that sometimes the cycle doesn't line up correctly
| (like the Civil War cycle), and that none of their words are
| meant to be taken as literal predications so much as cautious
| warnings that history often rhymes.
|
| Having finished both The Fourth Turning and End Times recently,
| Strauss and Howe's specific guesses as to what might fuel the
| next crisis are laughably off track even if their broad strokes
| still paint a compelling (and at times, frightening) picture,
| while Turchin feels more prescient in his observations.
|
| Ultimately, though, Turchin has the better message: even when a
| crisis destroys an empire, the world continues onward. That
| gave me some bleak hope to hang onto.
| HardCodedBias wrote:
| The Limits to Growth predictions are laughable.
|
| I think that they Simon-Ehrlich wager showed how laughable they
| were but I guess we have to revisit every couple of decades.
| meteor333 wrote:
| I know this is mostly for fun, but it would be great to see how
| we are trending on the predications which has more scientific
| approach to it.
|
| ...remember it only takes one to be right!
| yreg wrote:
| We do have this dashboard
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2
| baal80spam wrote:
| Need a scoreboard for bubbles!
| churchill wrote:
| Basically, the ultimate, "Nothing ever happens" scoreboard [0].
|
| If any of your acquaintances are ever in doubt of anything ever
| happening, this will be a handy guide for them to consult.
|
| [0]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nothing-ever-happens
| acuozzo wrote:
| Plenty happens, but:
|
| 1. Events, including big ones like 9/11, don't unfold like in
| the movies as even direct consequences are often far removed.
|
| 2. Pax Americana + Hypernormalization + Cheap Food + Digital
| Escapism = a drug which convinces its users of neverending
| stability and order.
| churchill wrote:
| That's basically the point the meme is making. It's not
| arguing that nothing literally happens in spacetime; it just
| asserts that we rarely, if ever, see events that
| fundamentally change the world from its slugging baseline.
| languagehacker wrote:
| Very disingenuous to put second-coming style prognostications
| from religious nutsos in the same list as people trying to use
| science, pattern analysis, or surveys of scholarly literature to
| identify when society will gradually break down from writing too
| many checks the environment or the economy can't cash.
|
| I gotta say I didn't know about this Johnny Silverhand post, but
| I hope that if these things don't come to fruition he still finds
| time to stick it to the corpos in the most rockerboy way
| possible.
| catigula wrote:
| Doesn't make much sense given that we wouldn't exist to observe a
| timeline/reality where doomsday has been realized/effectuated.
| acuozzo wrote:
| "The end of the world as we know it" != "Eradication of
| humanity"
| Muromec wrote:
| The world as we know it dies every second creating the new
| new one. What's the cutoff?
| amock wrote:
| The prediction aren't for total extinction events or even
| events where the internet wouldn't be around. Also, it' just a
| silly site provided for our entertainment.
| altcognito wrote:
| Survival bias. I get this is a joke but...
|
| There are many societies which have collapsed. We can't know who
| predicted it because they are dead.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse
|
| And of course, this list will no longer exist after societal
| collapse.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Societal collapse does not necessarily mean the loss of all
| writing or knowledge of that society. The wikipedia article you
| linked to proves this.
| fragmede wrote:
| Out there, somewhere, is a nerd, laser etching Wikipedia onto
| metal plates, and burying them to be dug up later, just to be
| able to say, I knew this would happen!
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Needs to carved in stone if they are serious.....
| fukka42 wrote:
| Then Ruin would be able to influence what is written.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Do they specify exactly what qualifies as a successful
| apocalyptic prediction?
|
| In particular they count a US civil war as an apocalyptic
| event... lots of countries and societies have been completely
| wiped out, though, which must(?) be more apocalyptic.
|
| Maybe the point of the site is just that apocalypses tend to
| happen unexpectedly?
| zwnow wrote:
| Yea im not sure how a civil war in the United States would
| affect me as an European... It certainly would, but I'd
| survive. Isn't the whole point of apocalyptic events to not
| survive them?
| esseph wrote:
| Without US involvement in your Eastern flank, it might get
| tougher.
| agarttha wrote:
| Here's python code to simulate one of the still-active doomsday
| predictions (The Limits to Growth)
|
| https://github.com/TimSchell98/PyWorld3-03
| citizenpaul wrote:
| What qualifies moving from "pending" state to "active". There
| seem to be many predictions at the bottom that are only a few
| years out that are not "active" Some are even end of year.
|
| I could see why the ones with several hundred years deadline are
| "pending"
| kej wrote:
| Pending means we haven't reached the start of the predicted
| time range for that event yet. If I predict a collapse in
| November of 2025, it would be pending for the rest of October,
| then active on November 1st until either the collapse happens
| and it becomes successful or December 1st arrives and it
| becomes failed.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| It can show 0 successful predictions all it wants, but we'd been
| through global lockdowns and forced vaccination, there's an
| ongoing war in Europe with casualties in hundreds of thousands on
| both sides, Gaza is being demolished by Israel, Internet as we
| knew it is about to turn into whitelisted fiberoptic/5G TV,
| surveillance is rampant, and the rise of the global technofascist
| police state as the public is being entertained by the clown
| shitshow of top level politicians is not obvious only to those
| who've been trying to save their sanity by remaining in denial.
| jungturk wrote:
| Don't disagree with any of that, and I don't want to minimize
| the seriousness of the issues you've cited, but that kind of
| reinforces the implication of the scorecard?
|
| People are persistently presented with perils (plagues,
| parasites, pollution, power-hungry politicians, propaganda,
| plutonium-powered projectiles, etc...) and humanity keeps
| finding a way through (though certainly at great personal and
| population-wide cost sometimes).
|
| Some pretty serious chokepoints in the full history (including
| research suggesting that something reduced our ancestors
| numbers by ~99% a little under a million years ago) and yet
| this particular strain remains.
| mcshicks wrote:
| They seemed to have missed peter turchin
|
| "In 2010, Turchin published research using 40 combined social
| indicators to predict that there would be worldwide social unrest
| in the 2020s"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin
| paularmstrong wrote:
| The way Cliodynamics, Turchin's field, is explained feels like
| a very early and remedial version of psychohistory from the
| Foundation universe.
| bironran wrote:
| It's missing the January 19, 2038, the unix epoch end. Only 12
| years and a bit from now. Very much in our time.
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| I've been in the "doomer" camp for over a decade and been
| surprised how many things I thought were far off in the future
| have come to fruition earlier.
|
| But, the one thing I always find interesting, philosophically,
| about believing the world-as-we-know-it is coming to an end is
| that all of the things people are concerned about _will happen no
| matter what_.
|
| Being afraid of the end of the world is ultimately being afraid
| that we will lose the things we have, that our work will be lost
| to time and history, that ultimately we will return to a void and
| all of "this" will have been for nothing.
|
| However, _all of that is true either way_. You will lose
| everything you 've ever loved over time in life, all the work
| you've done will be lost to time, in the end all of your efforts
| will be for nothing and even that won't matter.
|
| The "end of the world" scares people because it _forces_ them to
| discard the normal tools they use combat these many existential
| anxieties, but the world continuing to go on doesn 't actually
| resolve any of those anxieties.
| mfro wrote:
| 'The world continuing to go on' is the status quo and has been
| for millenia at this point. Sure, the argument can be made that
| the world will end eventually, but if we do not have our
| reference timescale, what do we have? People aren't afraid that
| the world will eventually end (because 'eventually' should be
| thousands of years from now), people are afraid the world will
| end NOW, which does nullify your experience and efforts on the
| subjective human timescale. Life as we know it continuing to go
| on without ambiguity on our confidence to prevent world-ending
| events does resolve those anxieties.
| blastro wrote:
| beautifully stated thank you
| shoo wrote:
| I am reminded of Roy Scranton's essay Learning How to Die in
| the Anthropocene [1]
|
| > I found my way forward through an 18th-century Samurai
| manual, Yamamoto Tsunetomo's "Hagakure," which commanded:
| "Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily."
| Instead of fearing my end, I owned it. Every morning, after
| doing maintenance on my Humvee, I'd imagine getting blown up by
| an I.E.D., shot by a sniper, burned to death, run over by a
| tank, torn apart by dogs, captured and beheaded, and succumbing
| to dysentery. Then, before we rolled out through the gate, I'd
| tell myself that I didn't need to worry, because I was already
| dead. The only thing that mattered was that I did my best to
| make sure everyone else came back alive. "If by setting one's
| heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as
| though his body were already dead," wrote Tsunetomo, "he gains
| freedom in the Way."
|
| [1]
| https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's in line with the Stoics too. Memento Mori.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| For me the problem is managing the transition minimizing
| unnecessary suffering.
|
| The world is inevitably going to end, our work isn't going to
| be forever preserved into the future and there will be no "end
| of history" until there are living humans.
|
| The thing is that the world can end in many ways. My world can
| end in many ways. I'd rather pass on with a clear
| consciousness, with my faculties preserved more or less, and
| with a legacy of having at least tried to make the lives of
| other that tiny bit better, so I'm aware if I'm not vigilant I
| can spend my final days suffering from an avoidable disease or
| accident or regretting I wasted my life chasing a better
| tomorrow that never came while neglecting what I already have
| today.
|
| This is virtually the same for all society. It's going to fade
| into oblivion, but it matters a great deal that the process is
| as gentle as possible for everyone involved.
| retrocog wrote:
| Gradually and then suddenly.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| A bit in the doomer camp, and what worries me the most are the
| lifestyle changes needed to not fuck up the climate in the next
| few hundreds years. I believe I heard that we should slash 7/8th
| of our emissions (as individuals living a modern lifestyle) to
| keep the wet bulb temperature in check worldwide by the end of
| the century. This is, in my opinion, a target that we'll surely
| miss and it won't be nice.
|
| Europe is already struggling with few millions people trying to
| enter over several years. I can't imagine what happens when large
| parts of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh become literally deadly during
| the hot season. That would displace ~1B people basically at once
| (if you stay and you don't have Air Conditioning you die). The
| following turmoil will be like nothing we ever saw before as a
| species (IMHO).
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Reminds me of the old gem of the Web 1.0 internet that was Exit
| Mundi
| smith-kyle wrote:
| "Days until next prediction might begin". Cute.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Until we have nuclear disarmament, there's a sword having over
| us.
|
| It's bound to happen eventually
| re5i5tor wrote:
| Where have I heard that name ... oh this little apocalypse
| https://failure.museum/marchfirst/
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I think they've gotta maybe define what counts as an
| "Apocalypse." The active "Fourth Turning" hypothesis expects a
| crisis on the scale of the Civil War. That degree of crisis has
| happened lots of times. Certainly the Civil War itself was
| accurately predicted for decades leading up to it.
| AstroBen wrote:
| [delayed]
| shoo wrote:
| The Limits to Growth book is an interesting read. To quote Box,
| "All models are wrong, but some are useful". I wouldn't take the
| dates-ranges estimated from the modelling that seriously, but the
| modelling assumptions are worth reading about and reflecting on.
| They seem pretty plausible to me.
|
| From memory, the rough argument was that society depends upon
| input flows of energy, resources (metals etc) and food. Society
| needs to allocate resources and energy to extract these inputs.
| Energy sources such as fossil fuel reserves are finite stocks,
| some are cheap to extract (high energy return on energy
| invested). Over time we consume and deplete the high EROEI
| reserves and have to move on to consuming the lower EROEI
| reserves. This means that the fraction of energy society needs to
| allocate for energy extraction increases over time, so there's
| less energy for other uses. Similarly, we deplete the cheap to
| extract stocks of metal required to build and maintain industry,
| leaving stocks that require higher inputs of metal and energy to
| extract. Similarly for agricultural yields, as we mine and
| deplete accumulated stocks of nutrients out of the soil.
|
| The business as usual scenario leading to "overshoot and
| collapse" behaviour is that we have increasing population,
| increasing industrial capital and increasing demands for energy,
| food and resource inputs, while the fraction of energy and
| resources that need to be allocated to energy, resource and food
| production grows over time. The fraction of remaining surplus
| energy and resources that can be allocated to things like
| education, healthcare, research, art decreases over time. At some
| point the growing fraction of energy and resources that needs to
| be allocated to energy and resource extraction becomes so large
| vs the existing population and industrial base that there simply
| isn't enough surplus to maintain healthcare, education, research,
| etc at the same level.
|
| The "Overshoot and collapse" dynamic describes stocks of
| population, industry etc growing to peaks well beyond sustainable
| levels before the above dynamics catch up and cause them to
| rapidly decline.
|
| The researchers did a bunch of modelling of alternative
| scenarios, exploring how to avoid these "Overshoot and collapse"
| dynamics.
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(page generated 2025-10-21 23:00 UTC)