Jessica, you've been my favorite, go-to writer for a long time now, and this post is why. (I suspect that's poor English, but I'm too lazy to take the trouble to fix it.) The only upside to the fix we're in is that prepping is kind of fun, even though there's no amount of prepping that has any chance at all of saving us. My only consolation is that I'm pretty sure there'll be a core of humans who manage to survive, who'll keep the species alive, to restart the human race. We're an interesting creature, however flawed we are, and I would prefer to think that some of us will insure that we survive the coming near brush with extinction. Thanks for all that you do.
Thanks for being a good reader. :) Yeah, prepping and problem solving can be fun, or at least engaging. I agree humans might survive in a drastically reduced population where food can still grow, returning to caves for shelter. If they can subsist like that for a few hundred years, maybe there's a chance. What a future...
Has anyone else ever wondered if this is why they allow bird flu to continue to mutate? They know we are beyond the tipping point, but if we lose 40-50 percent of the population to a virus while they are in their bunkers, then they buy more years for them and never have to change their behavior. It would also be their ultimate eugenics program and with a greatly reduced population the earth may regenerate.I have no evidence of this, but it is something I think about in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep. Perhaps I should write a dystopian novel?
Writing helps me. As for bird flu, yep, many of us have speculated. It fits exactly with their eugenics attitude and aligns with history. Woodrow Wilson was president during the 1918 flu. He was a card-carrying eugenicist and believed it would only kill the weak. He was wrong, but he never admitted it. With Covid, Trump and the Barrington Declaration crew were completely open about the fact that they wanted a bailout for stocks, but they wanted to keep everything open and just let the virus run its course. Trump only backed down because he thought it would hurt his election campaign to come out as a complete Nazi. He's not worried about that this time. So yes, you're right.
I think this often. I used to work at Google and they had a company value that said, "don't be evil." That they removed when I worked there. They've been systematically disenfranchising people since they started and hiding it until now. The other big tech companies are even more fascist and money hungry.
Wow. Don’t be evil should be a pretty low bar, but I guess not. So sad where we are in this late stage capitalist world. Profits are valued over people . So many people worship the ultra wealthy who built their wealth by exploiting others.
The most ironic thing is that with all their preparations and boltholes, they'll still go with us. Just a little later. Musk and his imaginary Mars base is a joke. We have no idea how to build one without massive supply runs from Earth.
I could write a thousand lines on the reasons for that, I don't think it's worth the work anymore.
All the money in the world is useless on a dead planet.
I had heard rumors this week that the mid-term election sin 2026 may already be decided and the democrats may be an extinct party by 2028. As for the rest, the morbidly wealthy probably ought to keep their wills updated on a regular basis these days. When enough people get hungry enough, bad things happen. Does anyone remember the French revolution of 1779? We saw a taste of what angry Americans are capable of back on Jan. 6, 2021.
If the Americans did revolt, the first ones to hang will be the morbidly rich that they can catch. Zuck's bunker won't keep them out for long. Bezos will have to leave the country on one of his fancy yachts and never come back. Musk, well, we already know that he will run to the first country that will take him in. For those who can manage to escape, they would be banished for good by whatever government forms up in place of this one. Those who don't manage to escape, well, they will end up dead most likely or put on the first transport out. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917, they executed the ruling class and any of the rich elites they could find. Picture that happening in the United States if Trump pulls some kind of fascist takeover and imitates Orban and Putin. Fun times ahead. I hope people are prepping for when basic services go down and towns are taken over by armed militias. I know I am working towards that end.
Of all the things coming down the pipe, local militias taking over the town is high on my list. Do you think moving to the edges of town would work, an hour a way, or even further?
No because the more isolated you are from a community, the more likely you are to become prey to predators looking for people they can cut out from the herd. Unless you want to turn your home into a forward operating base, I wouldn't move out past the suburbs when things finally break down. If your nearest neighbor is more than a stones throw away, you had better spend money in fortifying your property in such a manner that the laziest predators will move on to easier prey. But the word will go out and then some not so bright individual(s) will ask, 'Why do these people need so much fortification and armament? They must have something worth defending and I have to have it." Then the bunker busters will show up and lay siege to your house in the country until they kill everyone to take what they think is there.
This is the extreme apocalyptic version of what may happen to anyone living in a grand house in the country but even a severely muted version of this spells out death for a lot of people when the militias start roving the countryside.
This answers a key question I've been wrestling with. I was thinking exactly what you just wrote but wondered if I was over-analyzing it. Too far in, you get got. Too far out, you're too far away from help and isolated. Makes sense that militias would start roaming the countryside first.
Militia’s typically behave like criminals. They are lazy as a rule like most bullies. They will intimidate anyone that will let them and only pick on those they think they can dominate by force. For those of us who gather together to defend ourselves, they will leave us alone until they think they have enough overwhelming force to defeat us. This goes back to what you said about community. Only a community can fight off the predators.
Re: 2026, I agree. The SAVE Act will make it impossible for women who took their husbands' names to vote because their name won't match the one on their birth certificate. Legally changing one's name takes time, and by the time many women realize what this law will do, it will be too late for them to vote in 2026. Now, I wondered, given that more conservative than liberal women take their husbands' names when they marry, and given that at least the people around Trump realize how slim his margin really was in 2024, why would they risk losing elections just to put women in their place? After all, if they lose the elections, the winners may make it harder for them to put women in their place. This is why I suspect that there is already a plan to rig the 2026 elections so that they function like those in Russia, Turkey, and Hungary. Trump and Musk are already taking a hatchet to the Federal Election Commission.
It seems likely we’re crossing or have crossed 1.5C right now.
And that warming has gone non linear.
Scientists estimate 2C is 7-10 years away.
2C is basically game over type of stuff.
Collapse of agriculture, near constant storms, fires, AMOC collapse etc.
The main things we could be doing right now are going all in with development of at scale carbon removal tech/research and geo-engineering testing/rapid research.
Yet almost no leaders even mention these paths forward.
I agree. We could still take Margaret Klein Salamon's approach and declare a true climate emergency and put all efforts into mitigations and preparations, knowing full well that would need an infrastructure designed for a 2C or 3C world. But nope, that's not happening and anyone who makes too much trouble gets thrown in jail.
My heart is broken because I know you’re right. I want to have hope that we can find a way to turn it around. But it doesn’t feel possible anymore. Thank you for speaking the truth to us and not giving us false hope.
"And by the way, when latte liberals laugh at Trump’s media companies or crypto schemes, I wonder how many of them stop to recognize that these are essentially money laundering fronts."
Yup. Also - when 47 and Musk come for Social Security, I'd lay money they'll tell their base that they're awfully sorry that the Democrats broke that system so badly that it's insolvent and they won't get their money (which Musk is getting ready to hoover up now that he has our social security numbers and bank information). But they, the great Donald and Elon, will offer them, in exchange for that lost safety net, cryptocurrency shares! In their own crypto, of course. And the MAGAts will hail their genius.
Jessica, I have such a love/hate relationship with your writing. I guess as the kids say... YOLO and just F shit up from here on out? It is so hard not to spiral when it feels like there's no way forward that doesn't involve mass suffering. Sigh...
You can love it or hate it all you want. It's backed by sources and an accurate description of what's happening. Reality doesn't care what you think about it. The more we avoid it, the worse off we are both physically and emotionally.
Ope - sorry, that wasn't meant to be a dig at you or question sources/accuracy of your writing. My bad. It was more to say I love your writing, but sometimes so hard to face the reality that you write aka the hate part. This was one of those articles where that dichotomy hit hard.
Thanks. Some days, I still get hit with a lot of fearmongering accusations--and some of them are pretty passive-aggressive. Thanks for clarifying. Talking about it and preparing for it keep me sane. Otherwise I would be a mess of repression and sleep disorders, like I suspect many people are.
Jessica, your article The Super Rich Know We’re Doomed presents a brutal and lucid assessment of the state of the world. You highlight the abandonment of ecological commitments, the hypocrisy of the elites, and the resignation of those who have the power to act but choose instead to retreat into their own interests. Through your words, I feel not only a legitimate anger but also a deep weariness after decades of broken promises, political stalling, and blatant lies about the possibility of a sustainable future. And you are right about one essential point: if we continue on this trajectory, nothing will change. The wealthy will continue to enjoy their impunity, large corporations will abandon any pretense of an energy transition the moment their profits are at stake, and the rest of the world will watch the collapse unfold in silence.
But where your article stops at an uncompromising assessment, I want to go further and answer this essential question: if we know the system is collapsing, what do we do to escape it?
I believe the solution is not to wait for a moral awakening among the elites or to cling to the idea that politicians will eventually act responsibly. We have tried that path, and it has failed. What is needed is an economic system that reduces the dominance of speculation and greed as the only prevailing logic. This is where the Andromeda System comes in—a new economic architecture based on a simple but fundamental rule: money should not accumulate unproductively; it must continuously circulate toward projects that enrich the world, not just a handful of individuals.
In this model, every transaction triggers an automatic reallocation of part of its financial value toward foundational projects that benefit humanity and the planet. The Andromeda System does not seek to constrain or prohibit wealth accumulation, as it does not operate through opposition but through proposition and incentive. It creates a framework where those who choose to participate benefit from a more balanced and regenerative economic dynamic. The economic elites will never be forced to adopt this model, but if a growing number of actors see its benefits, the sterile logic of speculation will gradually lose its appeal in favor of a system that generates real, concrete, and lasting impact. The goal is not to prevent the wealthy from continuing to accumulate riches, but to make a model more attractive in which wealth, instead of stagnating, circulates and creates real value for all.
You strongly denounce the reversal of major energy corporations, their massive return to fossil fuels, and the complicity of banks and investment funds in perpetuating a suicidal extractivist model. But these companies are merely following the logic of a system where immediate profitability is the only guiding principle. As long as the economic model is structured to reward short-term exploitation rather than long-term investment, nothing will change. This is precisely what the Andromeda System challenges: it introduces an economic flow where a small fraction of value is continuously redirected into beneficial projects, rendering obsolete the strategies of hoarding and resource extraction.
You also express deep skepticism about the role of technology and AI in the ecological transition, and I share your concerns. Artificial intelligence will not save the world if it is developed within a system that seeks only to maximize consumption and short-term profitability. But if it is integrated into a regenerative economy, where it constantly analyzes and optimizes resource allocation toward the most impactful initiatives, then it can become a lever for transformation. The problem is not technology itself, but how it is used within a flawed framework.
Where your text suggests that we have passed the point of no return, I believe we are precisely at a critical moment where restructuring is still possible. Not through superficial reforms or empty promises, but through a partial reorganization of how financial value circulates. The Andromeda System proposes a functional economy where every exchange fuels a dynamic of reallocation that directly finances ecological, social, and economic reconstruction projects.
I do not believe in a brutal revolution nor in a sudden awakening of consciousness in the corridors of power or among the population. I believe in structural, methodical change, which does not impose itself through political coercion but through a new economic mechanism that renders the old models obsolete. This is how a collapsing world is replaced by a rebuilding one.
You say that billionaires know everything is over and that they are fleeing into their bunkers. I say that we can create a world where bunkers become useless. A world where the economy no longer rewards escape and predation, but active participation in a regenerative society. The choice is still ours.
Well, thanks for the backhanded compliment. I do not need my own readers wondering out loud if I'm a fearmonger. It's insulting and deeply unappreciative of the work I do and the information I provide, and I addressed that attitude with one of my very first posts on Cassandras/sentinel intelligence. Everything I write is backed by an abundance of sources. As you yourself admitted in this comment, everything has gone more or less according to what I and other writers have predicted. Sorry you're having a tough time, but so are we all.
Unfortunately, when I saw psychology studies confirming that most people regard their own future self as a stranger, it sort of fell into place why billionaires can't even be bothered to think about their own preservation--aside from the bunker building.
It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
Jessica, you've been my favorite, go-to writer for a long time now, and this post is why. (I suspect that's poor English, but I'm too lazy to take the trouble to fix it.) The only upside to the fix we're in is that prepping is kind of fun, even though there's no amount of prepping that has any chance at all of saving us. My only consolation is that I'm pretty sure there'll be a core of humans who manage to survive, who'll keep the species alive, to restart the human race. We're an interesting creature, however flawed we are, and I would prefer to think that some of us will insure that we survive the coming near brush with extinction. Thanks for all that you do.
Thanks for being a good reader. :) Yeah, prepping and problem solving can be fun, or at least engaging. I agree humans might survive in a drastically reduced population where food can still grow, returning to caves for shelter. If they can subsist like that for a few hundred years, maybe there's a chance. What a future...
Has anyone else ever wondered if this is why they allow bird flu to continue to mutate? They know we are beyond the tipping point, but if we lose 40-50 percent of the population to a virus while they are in their bunkers, then they buy more years for them and never have to change their behavior. It would also be their ultimate eugenics program and with a greatly reduced population the earth may regenerate.I have no evidence of this, but it is something I think about in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep. Perhaps I should write a dystopian novel?
Writing helps me. As for bird flu, yep, many of us have speculated. It fits exactly with their eugenics attitude and aligns with history. Woodrow Wilson was president during the 1918 flu. He was a card-carrying eugenicist and believed it would only kill the weak. He was wrong, but he never admitted it. With Covid, Trump and the Barrington Declaration crew were completely open about the fact that they wanted a bailout for stocks, but they wanted to keep everything open and just let the virus run its course. Trump only backed down because he thought it would hurt his election campaign to come out as a complete Nazi. He's not worried about that this time. So yes, you're right.
Jessica, thank you for your writing and for your response. I did not know that about Woodrow Wilson.
I think this often. I used to work at Google and they had a company value that said, "don't be evil." That they removed when I worked there. They've been systematically disenfranchising people since they started and hiding it until now. The other big tech companies are even more fascist and money hungry.
Wow. Don’t be evil should be a pretty low bar, but I guess not. So sad where we are in this late stage capitalist world. Profits are valued over people . So many people worship the ultra wealthy who built their wealth by exploiting others.
The most ironic thing is that with all their preparations and boltholes, they'll still go with us. Just a little later. Musk and his imaginary Mars base is a joke. We have no idea how to build one without massive supply runs from Earth.
I could write a thousand lines on the reasons for that, I don't think it's worth the work anymore.
All the money in the world is useless on a dead planet.
I had heard rumors this week that the mid-term election sin 2026 may already be decided and the democrats may be an extinct party by 2028. As for the rest, the morbidly wealthy probably ought to keep their wills updated on a regular basis these days. When enough people get hungry enough, bad things happen. Does anyone remember the French revolution of 1779? We saw a taste of what angry Americans are capable of back on Jan. 6, 2021.
If the Americans did revolt, the first ones to hang will be the morbidly rich that they can catch. Zuck's bunker won't keep them out for long. Bezos will have to leave the country on one of his fancy yachts and never come back. Musk, well, we already know that he will run to the first country that will take him in. For those who can manage to escape, they would be banished for good by whatever government forms up in place of this one. Those who don't manage to escape, well, they will end up dead most likely or put on the first transport out. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917, they executed the ruling class and any of the rich elites they could find. Picture that happening in the United States if Trump pulls some kind of fascist takeover and imitates Orban and Putin. Fun times ahead. I hope people are prepping for when basic services go down and towns are taken over by armed militias. I know I am working towards that end.
Of all the things coming down the pipe, local militias taking over the town is high on my list. Do you think moving to the edges of town would work, an hour a way, or even further?
No because the more isolated you are from a community, the more likely you are to become prey to predators looking for people they can cut out from the herd. Unless you want to turn your home into a forward operating base, I wouldn't move out past the suburbs when things finally break down. If your nearest neighbor is more than a stones throw away, you had better spend money in fortifying your property in such a manner that the laziest predators will move on to easier prey. But the word will go out and then some not so bright individual(s) will ask, 'Why do these people need so much fortification and armament? They must have something worth defending and I have to have it." Then the bunker busters will show up and lay siege to your house in the country until they kill everyone to take what they think is there.
This is the extreme apocalyptic version of what may happen to anyone living in a grand house in the country but even a severely muted version of this spells out death for a lot of people when the militias start roving the countryside.
This answers a key question I've been wrestling with. I was thinking exactly what you just wrote but wondered if I was over-analyzing it. Too far in, you get got. Too far out, you're too far away from help and isolated. Makes sense that militias would start roaming the countryside first.
Militia’s typically behave like criminals. They are lazy as a rule like most bullies. They will intimidate anyone that will let them and only pick on those they think they can dominate by force. For those of us who gather together to defend ourselves, they will leave us alone until they think they have enough overwhelming force to defeat us. This goes back to what you said about community. Only a community can fight off the predators.
Re: 2026, I agree. The SAVE Act will make it impossible for women who took their husbands' names to vote because their name won't match the one on their birth certificate. Legally changing one's name takes time, and by the time many women realize what this law will do, it will be too late for them to vote in 2026. Now, I wondered, given that more conservative than liberal women take their husbands' names when they marry, and given that at least the people around Trump realize how slim his margin really was in 2024, why would they risk losing elections just to put women in their place? After all, if they lose the elections, the winners may make it harder for them to put women in their place. This is why I suspect that there is already a plan to rig the 2026 elections so that they function like those in Russia, Turkey, and Hungary. Trump and Musk are already taking a hatchet to the Federal Election Commission.
It seems likely we’re crossing or have crossed 1.5C right now.
And that warming has gone non linear.
Scientists estimate 2C is 7-10 years away.
2C is basically game over type of stuff.
Collapse of agriculture, near constant storms, fires, AMOC collapse etc.
The main things we could be doing right now are going all in with development of at scale carbon removal tech/research and geo-engineering testing/rapid research.
Yet almost no leaders even mention these paths forward.
I think you’re right.
They know and don’t care.
I agree. We could still take Margaret Klein Salamon's approach and declare a true climate emergency and put all efforts into mitigations and preparations, knowing full well that would need an infrastructure designed for a 2C or 3C world. But nope, that's not happening and anyone who makes too much trouble gets thrown in jail.
All hope lies with China and the Scandinavian countries at this point.
Maybe Brazil too.
My heart is broken because I know you’re right. I want to have hope that we can find a way to turn it around. But it doesn’t feel possible anymore. Thank you for speaking the truth to us and not giving us false hope.
"And by the way, when latte liberals laugh at Trump’s media companies or crypto schemes, I wonder how many of them stop to recognize that these are essentially money laundering fronts."
Yup. Also - when 47 and Musk come for Social Security, I'd lay money they'll tell their base that they're awfully sorry that the Democrats broke that system so badly that it's insolvent and they won't get their money (which Musk is getting ready to hoover up now that he has our social security numbers and bank information). But they, the great Donald and Elon, will offer them, in exchange for that lost safety net, cryptocurrency shares! In their own crypto, of course. And the MAGAts will hail their genius.
Jessica, I have such a love/hate relationship with your writing. I guess as the kids say... YOLO and just F shit up from here on out? It is so hard not to spiral when it feels like there's no way forward that doesn't involve mass suffering. Sigh...
You can love it or hate it all you want. It's backed by sources and an accurate description of what's happening. Reality doesn't care what you think about it. The more we avoid it, the worse off we are both physically and emotionally.
Ope - sorry, that wasn't meant to be a dig at you or question sources/accuracy of your writing. My bad. It was more to say I love your writing, but sometimes so hard to face the reality that you write aka the hate part. This was one of those articles where that dichotomy hit hard.
Thanks. Some days, I still get hit with a lot of fearmongering accusations--and some of them are pretty passive-aggressive. Thanks for clarifying. Talking about it and preparing for it keep me sane. Otherwise I would be a mess of repression and sleep disorders, like I suspect many people are.
Depressingly true!
Jessica, your article The Super Rich Know We’re Doomed presents a brutal and lucid assessment of the state of the world. You highlight the abandonment of ecological commitments, the hypocrisy of the elites, and the resignation of those who have the power to act but choose instead to retreat into their own interests. Through your words, I feel not only a legitimate anger but also a deep weariness after decades of broken promises, political stalling, and blatant lies about the possibility of a sustainable future. And you are right about one essential point: if we continue on this trajectory, nothing will change. The wealthy will continue to enjoy their impunity, large corporations will abandon any pretense of an energy transition the moment their profits are at stake, and the rest of the world will watch the collapse unfold in silence.
But where your article stops at an uncompromising assessment, I want to go further and answer this essential question: if we know the system is collapsing, what do we do to escape it?
I believe the solution is not to wait for a moral awakening among the elites or to cling to the idea that politicians will eventually act responsibly. We have tried that path, and it has failed. What is needed is an economic system that reduces the dominance of speculation and greed as the only prevailing logic. This is where the Andromeda System comes in—a new economic architecture based on a simple but fundamental rule: money should not accumulate unproductively; it must continuously circulate toward projects that enrich the world, not just a handful of individuals.
In this model, every transaction triggers an automatic reallocation of part of its financial value toward foundational projects that benefit humanity and the planet. The Andromeda System does not seek to constrain or prohibit wealth accumulation, as it does not operate through opposition but through proposition and incentive. It creates a framework where those who choose to participate benefit from a more balanced and regenerative economic dynamic. The economic elites will never be forced to adopt this model, but if a growing number of actors see its benefits, the sterile logic of speculation will gradually lose its appeal in favor of a system that generates real, concrete, and lasting impact. The goal is not to prevent the wealthy from continuing to accumulate riches, but to make a model more attractive in which wealth, instead of stagnating, circulates and creates real value for all.
You strongly denounce the reversal of major energy corporations, their massive return to fossil fuels, and the complicity of banks and investment funds in perpetuating a suicidal extractivist model. But these companies are merely following the logic of a system where immediate profitability is the only guiding principle. As long as the economic model is structured to reward short-term exploitation rather than long-term investment, nothing will change. This is precisely what the Andromeda System challenges: it introduces an economic flow where a small fraction of value is continuously redirected into beneficial projects, rendering obsolete the strategies of hoarding and resource extraction.
You also express deep skepticism about the role of technology and AI in the ecological transition, and I share your concerns. Artificial intelligence will not save the world if it is developed within a system that seeks only to maximize consumption and short-term profitability. But if it is integrated into a regenerative economy, where it constantly analyzes and optimizes resource allocation toward the most impactful initiatives, then it can become a lever for transformation. The problem is not technology itself, but how it is used within a flawed framework.
Where your text suggests that we have passed the point of no return, I believe we are precisely at a critical moment where restructuring is still possible. Not through superficial reforms or empty promises, but through a partial reorganization of how financial value circulates. The Andromeda System proposes a functional economy where every exchange fuels a dynamic of reallocation that directly finances ecological, social, and economic reconstruction projects.
I do not believe in a brutal revolution nor in a sudden awakening of consciousness in the corridors of power or among the population. I believe in structural, methodical change, which does not impose itself through political coercion but through a new economic mechanism that renders the old models obsolete. This is how a collapsing world is replaced by a rebuilding one.
You say that billionaires know everything is over and that they are fleeing into their bunkers. I say that we can create a world where bunkers become useless. A world where the economy no longer rewards escape and predation, but active participation in a regenerative society. The choice is still ours.
Well, thanks for the backhanded compliment. I do not need my own readers wondering out loud if I'm a fearmonger. It's insulting and deeply unappreciative of the work I do and the information I provide, and I addressed that attitude with one of my very first posts on Cassandras/sentinel intelligence. Everything I write is backed by an abundance of sources. As you yourself admitted in this comment, everything has gone more or less according to what I and other writers have predicted. Sorry you're having a tough time, but so are we all.
disembodied. That says it all.
Unfortunately, when I saw psychology studies confirming that most people regard their own future self as a stranger, it sort of fell into place why billionaires can't even be bothered to think about their own preservation--aside from the bunker building.