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The UK and Ireland were among five countries identified by researchers as best placed to maintain civilisation within their own borders
Researchers say a worldwide breakdown could happen "within a few decades" and have identified five countries most likely to withstand future threats.

The UK and Ireland are among five nations most likely to survive a collapse of global civilisation, researchers have said.

A study has suggested a combination of ecological destruction, limited resources and population growth could trigger a worldwide breakdown "within a few decades", with climate change making things worse.


Comment: The picturesque countryside photograph used as the leading image is rather misleading, because town and suburban life are much more common living situations for UK residents:

suburbs uk
© CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES

A "very likely" collapse would be characterised by the disintegration of supply chains, international agreements and global financial structures, according to researchers at the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University.

They said problems could spread quickly because of how connected and economically dependant countries are on one another.


Comment: Contrary to the claim that these predictions may take 'a few decades' to manifest, for anyone paying attention, much of them are already in play; supply chains failed during lockdowns, following Brexit, and, recently, shelves were left bare in some areas simply due to questionable hiring practices that led to a lack of drivers. Global financial structures, particularly in the West, collapsed over a decade ago with the crash of 2008, in turn governments bailed out banks with billions, possibly trillions, of public money, saddling their respective countries with unprecedented debts, and even today billions are still being pumped in to prop up that system.


Five countries were identified as best placed to maintain civilisation within their own borders, with New Zealand topping the list and followed by Iceland, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.


Comment: Judging by Australia's slide into authoritarianism it's hardly an ideal place to bide ones time during a crisis.


All of them are islands or island continents which have fewer extremes in temperatures and varied amounts of rainfall due to their proximity to oceans.


Comment: Even if they remained relatively temperate islands, which seems unlikely considering the direction the climate is taking, there's a running joke (and truism) in the UK that just a dusting of snow on the train tracks causes the country to grind to a halt, reflecting how poorly prepared the countries infrastructure is to deal with even slight variations of weather.

More importantly, climate and its correlation with cyclical catastrophes is poorly understood by mainstream science, and this becomes particularly critical for forecasting scenarios in places like the UK, which relies on the Gulf Stream for it's moderate weather. In recent years, the increasing Earth Changes have led to a stalling Gulf Stream, and, once it shuts down, as it has been known to do, the UK could see temperatures more commonly suffered in the high north: Recap: The changing jet stream and global cooling


Researchers said this makes them most likely to have relatively stable conditions in the future, despite the effects of climate change - which is expected to hit subtropics and tropics the hardest.

New Zealand's ability to produce geothermal and hydroelectric energy, its abundant agricultural land and its low population would allow it to survive relatively unscathed.


Comment: New Zealand's geothermal blessings are in part due in part to high seismic activity, and history shows that during times of climate shifts, the threat posed by earthquakes is magnified: Up to 100,000 landslides and hundreds of tremors after powerful New Zealand earthquake


Although the UK has generally fertile soils and varied agricultural output, it does not have as much agricultural land available because of its population density, raising questions about future self-sufficiency.


Comment: Population density isn't the only consideration, because social cohesion is also crucial to survival, and the UK has seen significant levels of mass migration, particularly with peoples from drastically different cultural backgrounds.


Britain's reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy was considered to be a risk as power sources could be "rendered at least partly inoperable" if global supply chains collapse.


Comment: This is just as true, if not more so, for 'green energy'.


Researchers said this could be mitigated by the nation's manufacturing capabilities.

Meeting the large population's energy demands through renewables alone would require very extensive infrastructure, they said, but the UK could increase its resilience by harnessing more energy from wind and water bodies like lagoons or barrages in the Severn Estuary.

Professor Aled Jones, director of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, said "significant changes are possible in the coming years and decades".

He said: "The impact of climate change, including increased frequency and intensity of drought and flooding, extreme temperatures, and greater population movement, could dictate the severity of these changes."

Researchers identified pandemics as another risk to societal stability, citing the United Nations' warning that future pandemics could be even more severe than COVID-19.


Comment: The establishment's reaction - intentional or not - to the endemic and relatively harmless coronavirus, in particular the experimental vaccines and the harsh lockdown restrictions, has actually laid the ground work for a very real pandemic: US infants struck by winter virus in summer after lockdowns disrupt immunity & transmission


Twenty countries were analysed in the report.