Did anyone here predict this time last year that the US would be in its current state? Because I sure didn't. Everything seems to be going downhill really fast. The decay seems exponential rather than linear. So with that being said, do you think the collapse could come soon? 2 years? next year? Maybe even before the end of this year? It would honestly be shocking if the US went from business as usual to civil war in the space of a few years.
Another fun thing to think about is that a balkanized US could actually massively increase the instability of the world funnyly enough. The SU dissolved in peace times essentialy by the parliamentary decree. Russia did a deal with like every SR to give the soviet nukes to Russia and Russia said they will guarantee their sovereignity and there were probably trade deals, payments and crap stuffed there too. But after the soviet block collapsed there was only one country left with the nukes, submarines with ICBMs and other fun toys to play around with- Russia.
Now if the balkanization and collapse happens during a civil war, you suddenly have essentialy new countries with carriers, nukes and submarines, and at this point the civil war could still be ongoing, so these new countries could even use these weapons to resolve the conflict. Even after the conflict one of the new countries could be more eager to go to the war with Russia or China then the current USA.
Civil war in a country like US in the 21st century is basically uncharted territory and could easily escalate into nuclear war.
deleted by creator
I think a lot of that complex equipment would fairly quickly remove itself from the equation.
The US Military-Industrial Complex is spread out across the country so that each major project is pork for a large number of senators. That's why something like the F-35 might have the airframe built in one state, the radar in another, and the avionics in another still.
Depending on how the states break up, manufacturing facilities could end up in different jurisdictions, which makes obtaining parts extremely difficult. Without adequate parts, planes start falling out of the sky (well, more so than the F-35 already does).
And the last fun thing to ponder: how secure are the nukes in the world actually? Could any guy you take from the street actually launch one? Now in the movies you see passwords, security protocols and other crap, but I would hazard a guess it's all massive lies. You just need to think about the reality of MAD. You have your radar operator in Russia, US or China and he sees a mass of ICBMs flying at you. Now your own nuclear arsenal is basically enemy's priority numero uno. If they can destroy that crap, they basically won the nuclear war without triggering MAD (now of course there are submarines with nukes and other countermeasures, but as far as I know majority of the arsenal is in silos). So what you need to do at this point is to launch that shit as soon as possible. This is basically the last moment you want to fumble with passwords and keys and other crap, you need those rockets in the air and flying. You basically need any guy you take from the street to be able to launch that stuff as quickly as possible.
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/468806/34-icbm-launch-officers-implicated-in-cheating-probe/
Found the Posadist
So do you think they have to actually prove the Riemann hypothesis in the couple minutes before the silo gets nuked to launch? What do you think the procedure is?