Before Prepping was cool?
"It's so interdependent that if you take one thing away, the whole thing collapses." [He's talking about critical technology in the first instance, and all of civilization in the second]
Well, there's a coinky-dink because while the examples in this 1978 segment are a bit dated, just today I happened to read the scariest article (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/technology/taiwan-china-chips-silicon-valley-tsmc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OlA.H-hS.GkXwlg2GAoH1&smid=url-share) I've come across in a long time.
QuoteThe single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "If that island were blockaded, that capacity were destroyed, it would be an economic apocalypse.
(https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/blt557a389382897d8f/650a0a95cf5e05e53e598ff3/2D5T952.jpg?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=80&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
@majorhavoc that's interesting take on the '78 clip. When I saw it I thought 'naive but the societal breakdown summary was pretty close'.
There was a TV series called Revolution who's storyline was Fifteen years after a permanent global blackout.
A chip shortage effects the economy and new stuff. Less so stuff that's already in existence, but take away the power grid and even old chips and transistors won't work.
Thats the 5B dead in 1 year scenario.
The CONNECTIONS series if you haven't seen it takes all the interconnections over time to get to an invention or advance of some kind in an episode.
Yeah, but what I got out of the article about the Taiwan chip scenario is that not being able to make new electronic products is the least of it. It's that the steady supply of high end chips is so intimately tied with everything in the global economic system that a near total disruption in the supply chain would have cascading effects worldwide. To a degree that will make the 2008 mortgage backed securities crisis seem like a minor market correction.
Tech stocks will collapse and fortunes will be lost practically overnight. The telecommunications architecture will begin to deteriorate. Huge swaths of the economy will grind to a halt, leading to mass layoffs. Which will in turn evicerate consumer spending, causing other market sectors to collapse. Millions in the tech, service and retail sectors suddenly out of work, unable to pay bills or afford rent and food. Banks failing because mortgages will default en mass. Thousands, if not millions of desperate people out on the streets. If they're not out and out looting and stealing, they're engaging in mass protests and riots. Government budgets and welfare systems stressed to the breaking point and beyond. A breakdown of social order and civil society. And the law of unforeseen consequences practically guarantees there'll be cascading effects that we can't even begin to anticipate. If something brings down global systems, it won't be space aliens, evil megalomaniacs or zombies. It'll be something like this.
All I'm saying is that scenario could lead to something very much like what James Burke was warning about 45 years ago. And with the saber rattling going on in the South China sea and Xi Jinping's stated goal of forceably annexing Taiwan by 2030, that possibility seems frightenly real.
Quote from: majorhavoc on February 24, 2026, 07:39:41 PMtech stocks will collapse and fortunes will be lost practically overnight.
Boy I'll feel left out. :greenguy: Since I don't have either.
You know a lot of those chips are used in 'one time use' items, like missiles, drones, etc. So replacements would be immediately affected. I think it would be a slow motion effect though, even if the stocks collapse immediately. And the effect of the war which caused the 'chip effect' would probably kill more people and disrupt more economies than that part of the supply chain in the first few months.
Could that speech/article be a little fear mongering to prompt a move of chip infra structure into more varied locations and have more suppliers for more competition? [I can't read it because its behind a paywall] :smiley_shrug: