Slate‘s interactive End of America site presents 144 possible ways the U.S. could meet its demise and lets you choose your favorites. We’ve covered quite a few of them on this blog — media piracy, obesity, cars — though in a considerably less apocalyptic context. Apparently this blog is way out of step with the pessimistic mainstream. [%comments]
Pick Your Apocalypse
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Our demise will probably come about when our trading partners realize that the US no longer produces anything of intrinsic value (except for porn and cheeseburgers according to Letterman) so they’ll just go somewhere else for their purchases.
It will be when foreign mining companies get the rights to strip-mine public lands at bargain-basement rates, when foreign companies own our toll roads, when foreign companies own our shipping terminals, when China owns our debt, when OPEC owns our oil companies, when sovereign wealth funds (foreign governments) own our financial institutions, and Americans no longer invest in education.
Wait a minute, we’re already there!!! We’re starting to show all the characteristics of a Third World country.
Our demise will come about if we get public-funding of elections. All that lobbying money that stimulates the economy will disappear.
The day when China surpasses the US in total GDP, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then Americans will slowly get used to the idea of not being #1, and rachet up immigration and the welfare state, and go the way of Europe. The most productive, of course, will seek out the opportunities in Asia.
America is just an idea, the notion that our infrastructure or goverment somehow encapsulates that is misguided. If our ‘nation’ ceases to exist the free thinking ideal will not. It will simply take another form, perhaps in another place.
Corpoate conglomerates controlling all media outlets so the vibrant unfettered free-press is a thing of the past.
A natural disater like a small asteroid, a killer quake in San Francisco, or a big hurricane running along the coast between Miami & Norfolk which will drive all the insurance companies and government into bankruptcy
America will fall when people wake up and understand we are being lied to on a daily basis, and expose the truth. The revolution will be televised! lol seriously, we are already on a fast track to no longer being the #1 country.
At @7 -O
“…seriously, we are already on a fast track to no longer being the #1 country….”
We are the #1 country? Really?