The Final Solution: Collapse

Into Thin Air was Jon Krakauer’s recounting of l997 Everest Disaster. Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, later made into film, is another example of the genre dealing with a series of untoward events occurring at the same time. Then there is Jared Diamond's bestselling survey of fallen civilizations, Collapse. What all these works have in common is a dire forecast based upon a number of co-morbidities. The recent ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut which has displaced upwards of 300,000 people, and whose cause is not terrorism, but simple carelessness, is an example of how one tragedy can beget another. The Lebanese economy, already dangerously out of control. set the stage for an unprecedented ecological disaster in a country already torn apart by a history of religious strife. Once known as the Switzerland of the Middle East, Lebanon was in its heyday a banking center, famed for its cosmopolitan society, where French culture and language were part of the affluent life enjoyed by the elite. Parenthetically Lebanon also enjoyed the reputation of being the Sodom in the otherwise sacred landscape of the Middle East, while also being a stronghold of Hezbollah. The United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world, but its citizens are banned from travel to EU countries partly by virtue of the failure to produce adequate testing facilities (in England test results are rendered in 90 minutes) that would control the continual spiking of outbreaks. The Roman Empire collapsed in 1000 years. Will the US celebrate it’s 300^th anniversary?