Having started life a long time ago as a European, I still feel an affinity for the place, even after living in Australia for well over 60 years now. As a result, I find the current disintegration of its centuries old cultures very disturbing.

Without a doubt, pre the end of WWII, Europe was awash with blood and guts, and the formation of NATO and eventually the EU definitely kept us out of real war for 8 decades. It was NEVER perfect, what ever is? But all that’s falling apart now, and I blame the US, which isn’t even a part of Europe.

Geographically, is Europe really a continent even? The Americas, Africa, Asia, even Australia, look like distinct continents, whereas I always thought Europe looked more like an extension of Asia. Eurasia actually.

The US took advantage of taking control of Europe post WWII for its own benefit. Turning a disaster into an opportunity to create the most powerful empire that ever existed. The Soviet Union of course tried its hand at this too. Nazi Germany could never have been defeated without US and Russian oil, but Europe became the meat in the sandwich until the USSR collapsed in 1992. That, should have been the end of all the BS we’ve all had to endure since them.

With NATO as good as finished thanks to the Orange Buffoon, I’m of the humble opinion Europe should ditch the USA and make peace with Russia.

Russia has of course a very long history of significant influence in Europe. All the elites and royalty of previous centuries intermingled from Britain to Russia. They ruled and fought wars with monotonous regularity, but deep down, notwithstanding obvious cultural differences, they were all EUROPEAN.

The EU is far from perfect, riddled with flaws, but I have no doubt it’s helped keeping war at bay. With everything rapidly changing everywhere, I think it’s time for a BIG rethink, like inviting Russia to join the EU. Yes I know that east of the Urals, Russia is more Asian than European, but how long can Moscow even keep a nation state that large going in a post collapse scenario?

Of course I’m daydreaming here, even fantasizing, but as I keep saying, EVERYTHING is on the cusp of revolution. What’s needed is egos like Putin to go to their makers and allow a new generation of Europeans to take over…

Nation States are a relatively new concept. Even languages cross borders because generally speaking a lot of European borders aren’t in correct places, so borders should be dropped…. with no borders, Ukraine becomes a non issue. I told you I was daydreaming.

I absolutely understand that a huge amount of negotiations would be required, but ending conflict once and for all would be well worth the effort.

It would also be a fantastic opportunity for a properly managed energy descent. Germany and the UK are already in serious trouble here, closely followed by France Italy and Spain. Supply chains to China will end simply because of fuel shortages. Make no mistake, even Russia isn’t immune to Peak Oil. Or climate change for that matter.

Will any European leaders come to their senses, or will they repeat history and go down the rabbit hole of uncontrollable collapse? Only time will tell, but as the eternal pessimist here, I think it’s our only chance for any kind of realistic future.

And perhaps, it may even have started…

Make no mistake, Operation Epic Fuck-up has changed everything….

If this guy is right and the war lasts a year Australia will totally run out of fuel. Having said that, I think that the new world order – not the one the elites think is coming – will intervene… Europe and Asia will not support their civilisations being destroyed because of the Orange Buffoon acting like an idiot. In fact it’s quite possible Americans won’t put up with it.

The repercussions of this war lasting more than a few more weeks will be global AND utterly devastating.

One tit bit from this that I couldn’t believe is that for every hour an F35 flies on a mission, it takes 60 hours of maintenance to get it flying again…. That being the case, Australia should immediately cancel all its orders for the useless pieces of crap they are.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired Colonel in the US Army and the former Chief of Staff to the US Secretary of State. Colonel Wilkerson discusses why the coming defeat of the US will reshape the great power rivalry.

And then there’s THIS:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theconcernedobserver/p/1018-days-until-australia-runs-dry?utm

Alex Krainer mentions people who survived WWII talking about food, and I can utterly concur. I was born 7 years after the end of the war, and I remember my parents and grandmother incessantly speaking about the shit food that the Germans were forcing them to eat….

I find it incredibly ironic that the main victims of chemical fertiliser shortages are the three unsustainable crops that are killing us all: wheat, soy, and corn…

AND another good article by my mate Erik Michaels…

https://open.substack.com/pub/cmarmitage/p/the-iran-war-could-collapse-the-united?utm

So the powerful bullies start grasping power in places where they don’t have it. Russia did it to Ukraine, now the US is doing it to Iran. Except I’m absolutely convinced, this time they’ve bitten off more than they could chew.

Here’s an interesting take on what the major players in this war want to achieve. Interestingly Jiang Xueqin, whom I mostly like for his historic insights, thinks they all want to destroy the US. Maybe, but his energy blindness is disappointing. The US is fast going away as a superpower, because of SURPLUS ENERGY, may have finally become an easy target….

I think here in Australia, we’re in deeper shit than anyone realises…

For all intents and purposes, Australia ran out of oil, at least anything with viable ERoEI, 6 years ago.

Our politicians, this moron in particular, are totally clueless of the geological dilemma we’ve now been facing for years… strategic reserves are in no way solutions to depletion. Eventually, it all disappears. Even the US is feeling the pinch because Biden used their reserves to “strategically” lower the price of fuel for political benefits. Not what the SPR was created for in the first place. Now there’s a fuel crisis, AND the Orange Buffoon still got in to put the whole world into a right old mess…

Meanwhile, whenever we fill up Little Suzy….

We’re still using 98, now at $2.60/L and it still only cost us $35 for half a tank… 98 may well be the last fuel to run out because everyone else is price conscious rather than supply aware. And then we have all the “buy an EV now” nonsense. We could afford $6 petrol before we could afford an EV (basically NEVER) and by then the economy would have totally shit itself anyway….

As I keep saying ad nauseam, collapse isn’t planning out like I thought it would.

One last video for your day’s collapse porn…

More CACTUS

If recent history is any guide, it will take months, if not years to recover from these levels. For comparison: the COVID induced production cuts (1-2 million barrels per day per country) took 1-2 years to recover from. Now, we are already seeing cuts double the size of that—especially in Iraq with its ageing fields—pushing the 2 months recovery time estimate firmly into highly optimistic territory. According to EIA estimates it will take until November, 2026 to get back to previous production levels. And that presumes shipping returning to normal levels by the end of March, which is highly questionable, to say the least. So, where does that leave us?

The Honest Sorcerer.

The consensus among statistical demographers and Neoliberal economists is that the human population will smoothly plateau at approximately 10 to 11 billion by the end of the century. This projection relies on the Demographic Transition Model (DTM), which assumes that as nations develop, declining fertility rates will naturally and gently stabilise the population without catastrophic mortality.

By modelling the population as a function of socio-economic choices (fertility) rather than thermodynamic constraints (exergy), mainstream demographers commit a fatal error: they treat the Earth’s carrying capacity (K) as a static or infinitely expandable baseline. In biophysical reality, the current global population is in a state of massive ecological overshoot, entirely dependent on an artificial, continuously subsidised carrying capacity that is now structurally failing.

As the thermodynamic bottlenecks identified in the SETE 2.0 framework tighten, the global population will not experience a ‘demographic transition’. It will experience a catabolic collapse.

Mainstream agronomists often theoretically estimate that organic, non-fossil agriculture (incorporating modern crop genetics) could support roughly 4.0 billion people. This is a biophysical fallacy. It ignores the mechanical traction required to farm at scale. Prior to the fossil fuel era, agricultural power was provided by draft animals (horses, oxen), which consumed up to 30% of the land’s yield just for their own biological upkeep.

Today, the global herd of draft animals has been virtually eliminated, replaced by the diesel tractor. In the absence of diesel, humanity cannot instantly revert to animal power; we must revert to hand labour. The metabolic cost of human hand labour drastically lowers the Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) of farming, as the human must consume a massive portion of the caloric yield simply to power the physical work of growing it.

Currently, humanity cultivates approximately 1.5 billion hectares of arable land.
Historically, it required one draft horse (delivering 750 Watts of mechanical power) to plough and maintain 2.5 hectares of land effectively over a season. It is crucial to note that this “traction power” serves as a proxy scaling factor. Draft animals did not just plough; they powered the entire end-to-end logistical system—threshing, milling, pumping water, and short-haul transport to local distribution hubs. Fossil fuels now serve this exact systemic function.

Therefore, the absolute baseline mechanical power required (Preq) just to maintain the current global arable footprint is:

This equates to a required global herd of 600 million draft animals. Even if we could magically conjure this herd tomorrow, we would immediately hit the thermodynamic ‘Fodder Tax’. A draft horse requires massive caloric input to perform heavy labour. Historically, maintaining this biological engine required dedicating 25% to 30% of a farm’s total arable acreage exclusively to growing animal feed (oats, hay, pasture) rather than human food. Restoring the biological traction engine automatically deletes a third of the planetary food supply before a single human takes a bite. The diesel tractor didn’t just give us torque; it freed up hundreds of millions of hectares of land for human caloric expansion.

Even granting this overly generous linear substitution, to calculate the required human labour force (Hreq):

If 6.0 billion adult humans are required purely to provide the mechanical traction to farm the land, we hit an absolute demographic wall. Assuming adults capable of heavy labour make up a maximum of 60% of any population (excluding the young, elderly, and infirm), a labour force of 6.0 billion requires a total population of 10 billion.

This creates a terminal ERoEI trap: If 100% of the able-bodied population is engaged in farming just to feed themselves and their dependents, the societal ERoEI collapses to 1:1. There is zero surplus. There is no energy left for distribution, urban centres, medicine, or maintaining the civilisational grid.

Furthermore, without diesel, surplus calories must be transported by hand. A human porter carrying 30 kg of grain consumes the entire caloric value of their load within a 300 km round trip. Therefore, the urban populations would starve regardless of rural yields.

Adjusting for the absolute absence of draft animals, the biomechanical penalty of human traction, the forced shift to horticulture, and the collapse of logistical transport, the true immediate carrying capacity (Kbase) of the Earth without fossil fuels is at maximum 1.2 to 1.5 billion.

There are more depressing calculations at the link above. But it’s actually worse than what Steven Newbury claims here, because, never forget, 93% of the population is metabolically compromised and largely unable to actually produce a proper day’s work. Add the utter depletion of farmland, and I find it difficult today to not see near extinction is a reality. Already, places like Ghana are so poisoned by gold mining (financed by the Chinese whom everyone praises for being so green) that farming has as good as ended….

In systems dynamics, populations in overshoot do not decline symmetrically. Because the system relies on physical buffers (inventories, strategic reserves, structural capital) and exhibits delayed feedback loops, the population curve follows the Seneca Effect: growth is slow and cumulative, but ruin is rapid and catastrophic.

The mammoth in the room: climate change.

Thus far, our calculations have granted the Neoliberal model a massive, unearned concession: the assumption that the pre-industrial baseline carrying capacity (Kbase) remains a stable 1.5 billion. This assumes that if we are forced back to intensive horticulture, the Earth will still possess the benign, predictable climate of the Holocene.

It’s my educated opinion that farmers like us with fenced in livestock could become literal hunter gatherers, with the advantage of not needing to travel distances for kills…..

Furthermore, the 75 Watts of mechanical power a human can generate for subsistence horticulture is strictly bounded by thermal limits. As wet-bulb temperatures in equatorial and sub-tropical agricultural zones begin to regularly exceed the physiological limits of mammalian thermoregulation, human labour becomes biologically impossible.

The demographic models projecting 10 billion people by 2050 are charting a ghost trajectory. By ignoring the thermodynamic subsidies that created the modern carrying capacity, the mechanics of the Seneca Cliff, the limits of adaptation velocity, the ERoEI trap, and the absolute deficit of draft animal power—and by entirely blinding themselves to the new climate attractor regime—they have mistaken a transient, fossil-fuelled overshoot for a permanent biological triumph. The catabolic correction has already begun, and it will be driven not by the choices of family planners, but by the absolute limits of density-dependent mortality in an energy-starved ecosystem.

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The Iranian War, Rising Gas Prices, and the Single Point Failure

Nate Hagens

Mar 11 2026

Frankly by Nate Hagens

(Recorded March 9th, 2026)

This week’s Frankly is another edition of Nate’s Wide Boundary News series, where he invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. In this installment, Nate addresses the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran and traces the reverberating effects that extend far beyond the conflict itself, starting with what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for a civilization that routes a massive share of its physical economy through a single maritime corridor.

Nate begins with the core misperception that oil registers as roughly 3% of GDP by cost, when in reality it underpins 100% of economic activity. Building off of that, he outlines a series of second- and third-order effects that rarely appear in headline coverage, including hidden dependencies on sulfur, liquefied natural gas, and nitrogen fertilizer that connect the Strait of Hormuz to mining operations, European energy security, and global food systems. He also explains the stock-and-flow imbalance between expensive missile interceptors and cheap drone warfare, and the difficult choices facing aging Middle Eastern oil fields if production is forced to shut in.

Finally, Nate considers the religious narratives on all three sides of the conflict, where Christian, Jewish, and Shia Islamic end-times frameworks each cast the war as prophetic fulfillment, short-circuiting the feedback loops that normally slow escalation. What does the exposure of a single shipping corridor reveal about the deep energy dependencies of modern civilization? How might the second- and third-order effects of this conflict, from fertilizer to metals to food prices, reshape the global economy in ways that outlast the war itself? And when all parties in a conflict believe they are fulfilling divine prophecy, where do the off-ramps for de-escalation appear? Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsi…

Deindustrialization is the outcome of this clusterfuck. Fossil fuels kicked off the industrial revolution, AND they will end it. Already here in Tasmania, we’re seeing rural service stations run out of diesel. To be sure it’s caused by panic buying – though funnily enough Tasmanians seem far more concerned about the price of fuel than its availability – and as I once again drive into Hobart today I will definitely refill Little Suzy’s tank just in case, or when, fuel starts being rationed. One good thing about using 98 premium exclusively, it’s likely to be the last fuel to run out of!

Prof. Xueqin Jiang discusses the wider consequences of the war against Iran: The US empire commits suicide, Israel increasingly becomes a theocracy, Gulf States collapse, Iran rebuilds as a regional power, instability spreads to East Asia, Europe’s relevance continues to collapse as it fails to adjust to the new world, Russia will escalate in a big way, and China will fail to preserve the rules of the old world order that made it so prosperous. Prof. Jiang is the host of the popular educational channel Predictive History:    / @predictivehistory  

Farcebook is the most difficult one, crammed full of absolute crap these days one has to scroll through…. all this talk about doom scrolling, it’s more like advertising scrolling. Maybe it’s the same? At least you can block the worst ones,if you can afford the time….

Re bias, of course we’re all biased. Though I think my biases are well informed! But I’d be biased of course. Barry even mentions metabolic syndrome at one stage, so we have a couple of biases in common…. I wonder exactly what he knows about it.

Julian Cribb has just written an excellent essay on Substack I completely agree with…

Arguably, the most dangerous pandemic ever to strike humanity is the plague of deliberate misinformation, mass delusion and unfounded belief which is engulfing 21st Century society.

Whether generated by governments, the fossil fuels lobby, corrupt media, corporate interests, the anti-science lobby, religious fanatics, extremist politicians and ideologues, well-meaning simpletons or nutcase conspiracists, a global deluge of utter nonsense is rapidly swallowing the human species.

The flood is aided and abetted by social media and augmented by the proliferation of AI fakery that is now drowning the internet.