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 
I’m distressed that their “Arab-Israeli War” scenario has a Jewish Star rather than an Islamic Crescent.
America is being taken down the road to disaster faster than you can say . . . “we don’t need domestic oil drilling”.
There are enormous amounts of crude oil in ANWR and in the midwestern states of Montana and Wyoming and the Dakotas. Yet we are being prevented from drilling there because the “enviormentalists” have decided that America should not survive as a powerful country anymore.
@#7
Very succinct.
Very true.
All too sadly the reality of a nation, and an ideal, which passed without notice more than a generation ago because the name was not changed.
We will all, collectively, choke on pretzels.
I have to agree with Alexander Demandt, the German historian. There are hundreds of reasons the Roman Empire fell, and (my favorite…) Rome wasn’t even the capital in CE 476 when Constantine moved the seat of power to Constantinople, where it survived another THOUSAND years. Italy is still there, and they still make fast cars, so what the heck? America will remain, but we’ll pay taxes to someone else.
My notion is that America will “fall” with the very gradual dissolution of the nation-state. Countries and borders and flags didn’t always mean what they do now. The main drivers of this change will be travel, the internet, video, music, travel, expat-communities, trade, scientific and cultural exchange, etc. I know this is an optimistic view, but we’ll see enormous strife and warfare along the way.
And along the way we’ll see the terrible results of what Dave Barry says: “”When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.”
I think keeping America “AS-IS”, is a fool’s game. One can’t really stop time and change, nor can one deduce what result an action will have in the long term.
If I haven’t yet gone too far, then let me do so–We have no need to worry about what “WE” will do when the Sun goes out in several billion years. Our decendants will no more be “Human” in several billion years than our ancestors were several billion years ago. And then they were just green slime.
I vote for destruction by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man…
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man)
Far more fun than the rest to the ideas…though many are spot on.
Wow, they came up with 144 possibilites and not one mention of Zombies. Everyone knows America will be destroyed by the coming uprising of zombies.
What was so great about being perceived as great in the first place? Is this bizarre mental construct that everyone has allowed themselves to weave around this particular geographic area really worth all of the difficulties that are born from it?
Space Pirate (#4) has it in one.
“America” is just one more decendant from the great parent of Liberty and Democracy that came before us and as long as the human spirit endures, will be born again somewhere else.
Whatever the future brings, we should be proud that were were able to carry that torch with the idealism it deserved, even for just a little while.