Hey, did you see the article in TheGuardian about how microplastics now constitute more than 0.5% of our brains? Or the recent AMOC study pegging its collapse to happen in 2057 +/- 17 years (within a 95% confidence interval) - the result being nothing short of cataclysmic?
It's going to be much sooner than that. Too many unknown unknowns... Did they factor in the environmental destruction the wars are causing? All that burning oil? All the toxic chemicals? The fires, floods, and droughts that are hindering crops? The water shortages already occurring?
It is absurd that what humans define as developed nations in reality means those nations has destroyed and exploited the most at an early time compared to the others. We confuse irresponsible destruction and consumption with being civilized - just because it happened at a time of plenty.
For capitalism to continue endless growth all it needs to do is to detach itself from reality and move into fiction. - I think we are seeing this and have been seeing this development for some time : All those "derivatives" and other paper monies. The extreme value of purely non-productive companies like meta, bitcoin e.t.c.. Values that can disappear from one second to the next because nothing real is supporting them - but also can rise indefinitely for the same reason.
Yes - perfectly expressed. Frustratingly, Václav Havel as a writer-philosopher was onto this in his writing (in term of the dangers of abstraction and society becoming divorced from material reality) of the 1960s, but became a pretty typical liberal politician when actually in power. Same old, I suppose.
Blame is fun and it gives one a great & heady rush of moral superiority, but it only works if one believes in free will as opposed to the notion that the humans are no different than all other creatures, simply following their biological programming.
If humans have free will and are in control then that means the 75% of Americans who are overweight or obese could drop those pounds if they wanted to. Going by the multi billion dollar diet industry, and all the diet drugs (Ozempic) it looks like they want to lose weight but can't. All it takes is to exercise their free will and eat less...right? Wrong. Their biological programming wants them to pack away as much fat as possible. Their biological programming tell them to seek out and consume - fat, sugar & salt and the parasites who make and sell the pseudo-foods know this better than anyone and have teams of scientists who's only job is to make the food as addictive as possible via their understanding of human evolution.
Food is just energy and energy is all. The universe and everything in it is dead without energy.
The article below will help explain why I do not attribute blame, in spite of the fact I despise most climate change deniers, politicians, the managerial class and corporate scum. Intellectually I do not believe in free will, but try as I might I cannot live more than 5 minutes at a time thinking like that. That is the illusion of free will. It looks and feels like I am in control and thus others must be in control..and are choosing to be bad-wrong-evil and need to listen to my commands and follow them and all will be well.
It's you. It's me. It's the MPP.
**The purpose of life is to disperse energy**
""The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.
If we look at the numbers for energy extraction and consumption, clearly millions are talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
**2023 Set Records in Global Fossil Fuel Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions**
"In 2023, the world consumed more oil, coal and natural gas than any time in history, according to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy.”
Pretty much the same every year for decades with tiny downturns in 2008 (GFC) and for 1, possibly 2, Covid years.
Statistically speaking these numbers indicate that no one has cut back or the few that have cut back are statistically insignificant. If most of the people who claim climate change is a serious threat cut back their energy use and thus their consumption of goods, by a modest 20%, it would show up in the emissions, energy and economic stats. Nothing of the sort shows up. All the numbers indicate the same thing - more every year and almost no one has changed their behaviour. Is that because they won't or can't? Humans are no different than leopards. Only collapse and die-back or die-off will stop humans from using fossil fuels for consuming & defiling their life support system.
The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.
In terms of free will, I don't see understand how a believer can get past the argument "How do you //will// will?" Believing in free will takes just as much of a leap of faith as believing in the Christian God (traditionally understood) or a soul.
It's good to see Thomas Ligotti treated seriously here as he too rarely is. It may seem perverse that he is my regular bedtime listening, but I find it deeply comforting to listen to someone with views very similar to my own that I have often been made to feel weird, wrong-headed and ridiculous for believing. I don't even feel like I'm that doomy a person (I tend towards anxious much more than depression - I find life rarely less than interesting) but I try to recognise what it is we're working with. There's clearly no God in any anthropocentric sense of the word so any higher "meaning" if it did exist would be illegible to humans and thus somewhat besides the point - there's 'stuff' interconnected with other 'stuff' ("potato masher like" to use Ligotti's phrase), which is a lot to be getting on with already! I've never seen any convincing argument for free will that isn't a theological leap of faith (akin to the existence of 'the soul') so while I understand anger at the 1% and corrupt oil companies and propagandists, I'm not convinced that it could have been elsewise... once certain environmental factors led some groups of humans to shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of agriculture and settlement everything ran like clockwork...
Perhaps if all human societies had remained as hunter-gatherer societies ecological overshoot could have been avoided, but I don't think that the humans who did become agriculturalists did so due to some special moral failing or germ of evil, but rather than their environment (whether it was drier or more fertile or something else; still unknown and debated) induced them to do so.
Every two or three years I re-read Thomas Ligotti‘s “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.” I recently finished the book for the third time. At 74 years old, three more times should just about do it for me. He nailed it, as did you.
“The end of the Anthropocene.” I like that a lot - a self-terminating geological epoch. Who could have ever predicted that a bipedal primate with a ridiculously oversized brain would prove to be a flash in the evolutionary (and petrochemical) pan? I was actually rather disappointed when, earlier this year, the International Commission on Stratigraphy decided not to include the Anthropocene in the official Geologic Time Scale. I had hoped that 1950, the year of my birth, would be selected. Wow, talk about perverse pride! The reason for their decision was an imprecise or indeterminate boundary. This is actually appropriate since industrial civilization seemingly knows no boundaries. Of course, that will end someday. Fuck around and find out. Should the matter ever be taken up again in the future, there probably won’t be anyone around who gives a damn.
Climate change has certainly changed a lot in just the span of my lifetime. I took a geology course during my first year of college. We learned that we were living in an interglacial period and so I finished the class wondering when the next Ice Age would begin. When hell freezes over, I now know. It is hard to believe but the theory of plate tectonics was still too new to be included in the textbook. I even remember that we were given a reprint of a recent article on the subject by the great Canadian geologist John Tuzo Wilson. It was from Scientific American and comparing that publication then with what it is today tells you all you need to know about how dumbed down popular science writing has become. Even the advertisements then were for scientific or industrial equipment and products. How quaint!
The more I read Ligotti the more I think he's a pretty bloody singular genius. In terms of his fiction, once he "clicks" with you, very few other horror authors come close.
Greed, stupidity, and cruelty is how humans are engineered. Instead of, "we blew it" perhaps we're just following our design. Altruistic thinking can have some real hubris in thinking that we're smarter than whatever has engineered the universe and how it works. It's like humans can't accept that we're a bacteria to help decompose the ecosystem. I wonder if maggots and vultures experience a similar existential crisis.
You know, life lives life. I kinda think that is our way through, if there is a way. Turning to the Earth and helping her do what she’s done for millions of years, balance that temperature, keep the place cool, just might do it. Not only that, but making the Earth cool, brings life back, creates climate, brings back biodiversity, and starts to rebalance all that overshoot. Yes there is a way - HER way! Learn more at https://soilsmart-soilwise.org
Really excellent post, and great shout out to great Zappfe update in Ligotti’s classic.
Of course, this being doomerism, any off-note will get the whammies. “Push for systemic change”? Oh, that little thing? “Push” with what? “Push” how? Yes, nothing short of systemic change buys humanity the slightest amount of time, but, there is no mechanism, no policy, or speech short of the equally horrific mass death and destruction of collapse that stops the supersystem’s descent into overshot hell.
Really excellent post, and great shout out to great Zappfe update in Ligotti’s classic.
Of course, this being doomerism, any off-note will get the whammies. “Push for systemic change”? Oh, that little thing? “Push” with what? “Push” how? Yes, nothing short of systemic change buys humanity the slightest amount of time, but, there is no mechanism, no policy, or speech short of the equally horrific mass death and destruction of collapse that stops the supersystem’s descent into overshot hell.
Hey, did you see the article in TheGuardian about how microplastics now constitute more than 0.5% of our brains? Or the recent AMOC study pegging its collapse to happen in 2057 +/- 17 years (within a 95% confidence interval) - the result being nothing short of cataclysmic?
What a time to be alive.
It's going to be much sooner than that. Too many unknown unknowns... Did they factor in the environmental destruction the wars are causing? All that burning oil? All the toxic chemicals? The fires, floods, and droughts that are hindering crops? The water shortages already occurring?
When I’m having a bad day your cynical writing always helps 😂 Glad to see you writing again.
Cheers Layne 😂
It is absurd that what humans define as developed nations in reality means those nations has destroyed and exploited the most at an early time compared to the others. We confuse irresponsible destruction and consumption with being civilized - just because it happened at a time of plenty.
For capitalism to continue endless growth all it needs to do is to detach itself from reality and move into fiction. - I think we are seeing this and have been seeing this development for some time : All those "derivatives" and other paper monies. The extreme value of purely non-productive companies like meta, bitcoin e.t.c.. Values that can disappear from one second to the next because nothing real is supporting them - but also can rise indefinitely for the same reason.
Yes - perfectly expressed. Frustratingly, Václav Havel as a writer-philosopher was onto this in his writing (in term of the dangers of abstraction and society becoming divorced from material reality) of the 1960s, but became a pretty typical liberal politician when actually in power. Same old, I suppose.
Blame is fun and it gives one a great & heady rush of moral superiority, but it only works if one believes in free will as opposed to the notion that the humans are no different than all other creatures, simply following their biological programming.
If humans have free will and are in control then that means the 75% of Americans who are overweight or obese could drop those pounds if they wanted to. Going by the multi billion dollar diet industry, and all the diet drugs (Ozempic) it looks like they want to lose weight but can't. All it takes is to exercise their free will and eat less...right? Wrong. Their biological programming wants them to pack away as much fat as possible. Their biological programming tell them to seek out and consume - fat, sugar & salt and the parasites who make and sell the pseudo-foods know this better than anyone and have teams of scientists who's only job is to make the food as addictive as possible via their understanding of human evolution.
Food is just energy and energy is all. The universe and everything in it is dead without energy.
The article below will help explain why I do not attribute blame, in spite of the fact I despise most climate change deniers, politicians, the managerial class and corporate scum. Intellectually I do not believe in free will, but try as I might I cannot live more than 5 minutes at a time thinking like that. That is the illusion of free will. It looks and feels like I am in control and thus others must be in control..and are choosing to be bad-wrong-evil and need to listen to my commands and follow them and all will be well.
It's you. It's me. It's the MPP.
**The purpose of life is to disperse energy**
""The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.
MORE..
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10674
~~~~~~~~
If we look at the numbers for energy extraction and consumption, clearly millions are talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
**2023 Set Records in Global Fossil Fuel Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions**
"In 2023, the world consumed more oil, coal and natural gas than any time in history, according to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy.”
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/international-issues/2023-set-records-in-global-fossil-fuel-use-and-carbon-dioxide-emissions/
Pretty much the same every year for decades with tiny downturns in 2008 (GFC) and for 1, possibly 2, Covid years.
Statistically speaking these numbers indicate that no one has cut back or the few that have cut back are statistically insignificant. If most of the people who claim climate change is a serious threat cut back their energy use and thus their consumption of goods, by a modest 20%, it would show up in the emissions, energy and economic stats. Nothing of the sort shows up. All the numbers indicate the same thing - more every year and almost no one has changed their behaviour. Is that because they won't or can't? Humans are no different than leopards. Only collapse and die-back or die-off will stop humans from using fossil fuels for consuming & defiling their life support system.
Editing issues - sorry
**The purpose of life is to disperse energy**
The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10674
In terms of free will, I don't see understand how a believer can get past the argument "How do you //will// will?" Believing in free will takes just as much of a leap of faith as believing in the Christian God (traditionally understood) or a soul.
It's good to see Thomas Ligotti treated seriously here as he too rarely is. It may seem perverse that he is my regular bedtime listening, but I find it deeply comforting to listen to someone with views very similar to my own that I have often been made to feel weird, wrong-headed and ridiculous for believing. I don't even feel like I'm that doomy a person (I tend towards anxious much more than depression - I find life rarely less than interesting) but I try to recognise what it is we're working with. There's clearly no God in any anthropocentric sense of the word so any higher "meaning" if it did exist would be illegible to humans and thus somewhat besides the point - there's 'stuff' interconnected with other 'stuff' ("potato masher like" to use Ligotti's phrase), which is a lot to be getting on with already! I've never seen any convincing argument for free will that isn't a theological leap of faith (akin to the existence of 'the soul') so while I understand anger at the 1% and corrupt oil companies and propagandists, I'm not convinced that it could have been elsewise... once certain environmental factors led some groups of humans to shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of agriculture and settlement everything ran like clockwork...
Perhaps if all human societies had remained as hunter-gatherer societies ecological overshoot could have been avoided, but I don't think that the humans who did become agriculturalists did so due to some special moral failing or germ of evil, but rather than their environment (whether it was drier or more fertile or something else; still unknown and debated) induced them to do so.
Every two or three years I re-read Thomas Ligotti‘s “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.” I recently finished the book for the third time. At 74 years old, three more times should just about do it for me. He nailed it, as did you.
“The end of the Anthropocene.” I like that a lot - a self-terminating geological epoch. Who could have ever predicted that a bipedal primate with a ridiculously oversized brain would prove to be a flash in the evolutionary (and petrochemical) pan? I was actually rather disappointed when, earlier this year, the International Commission on Stratigraphy decided not to include the Anthropocene in the official Geologic Time Scale. I had hoped that 1950, the year of my birth, would be selected. Wow, talk about perverse pride! The reason for their decision was an imprecise or indeterminate boundary. This is actually appropriate since industrial civilization seemingly knows no boundaries. Of course, that will end someday. Fuck around and find out. Should the matter ever be taken up again in the future, there probably won’t be anyone around who gives a damn.
Climate change has certainly changed a lot in just the span of my lifetime. I took a geology course during my first year of college. We learned that we were living in an interglacial period and so I finished the class wondering when the next Ice Age would begin. When hell freezes over, I now know. It is hard to believe but the theory of plate tectonics was still too new to be included in the textbook. I even remember that we were given a reprint of a recent article on the subject by the great Canadian geologist John Tuzo Wilson. It was from Scientific American and comparing that publication then with what it is today tells you all you need to know about how dumbed down popular science writing has become. Even the advertisements then were for scientific or industrial equipment and products. How quaint!
The more I read Ligotti the more I think he's a pretty bloody singular genius. In terms of his fiction, once he "clicks" with you, very few other horror authors come close.
UBI is also no kind of answer. the blood of capitalism is money. money is the process of externalizing the ecological cost of production.
if the capitalists' won't pay you a living wage to do the work, what makes you think you will convince him to pay you to not do the work?
Greed, stupidity, and cruelty is how humans are engineered. Instead of, "we blew it" perhaps we're just following our design. Altruistic thinking can have some real hubris in thinking that we're smarter than whatever has engineered the universe and how it works. It's like humans can't accept that we're a bacteria to help decompose the ecosystem. I wonder if maggots and vultures experience a similar existential crisis.
Sadly True.
https://christophermeestoerato.substack.com/p/greed-sickness-is-real-and-literally?r=12utpl
You know, life lives life. I kinda think that is our way through, if there is a way. Turning to the Earth and helping her do what she’s done for millions of years, balance that temperature, keep the place cool, just might do it. Not only that, but making the Earth cool, brings life back, creates climate, brings back biodiversity, and starts to rebalance all that overshoot. Yes there is a way - HER way! Learn more at https://soilsmart-soilwise.org
Really excellent post, and great shout out to great Zappfe update in Ligotti’s classic.
Of course, this being doomerism, any off-note will get the whammies. “Push for systemic change”? Oh, that little thing? “Push” with what? “Push” how? Yes, nothing short of systemic change buys humanity the slightest amount of time, but, there is no mechanism, no policy, or speech short of the equally horrific mass death and destruction of collapse that stops the supersystem’s descent into overshot hell.
Really excellent post, and great shout out to great Zappfe update in Ligotti’s classic.
Of course, this being doomerism, any off-note will get the whammies. “Push for systemic change”? Oh, that little thing? “Push” with what? “Push” how? Yes, nothing short of systemic change buys humanity the slightest amount of time, but, there is no mechanism, no policy, or speech short of the equally horrific mass death and destruction of collapse that stops the supersystem’s descent into overshot hell.