Sincerely, do not read this if your mental stability is tenuous. Basically details the numerous factors, environmental and otherwise, that are all pointing to societal collapse by the 2040s. I could barely get through it without feeling nauseous. There's some minor liberalism regarding China but it's more of a footnote than major focus.
Somehow the worst scene of that movie wasn't the nuke incinerating hundreds of people, the woman with a thousand yard stare cradling a dead baby, or even the end where
spoiler
Ruth's daughter miscarries because of radiation
For me the most bleak moment of the film was the part where the children, completely emotionless, sat in the abandoned auditorium watching the old VHS tape, clearly without taking in any of the information. More specifically, when the woman mouths the lines being spoken on the tape. You can tell she's seen this before - they've all seen it before - but there's nothing else to watch. All the animals whose skulls the video shows are probably extinct now, so the information is worthless. And just by looking at the childrens' faces, you can tell they've never experienced joy in their lives; their natural state is emotionless apathy. Most of them are illiterate and mentally challenged. There's no point in even learning new things, because within two or so generations human society will either regress to an animal level or die out completely. There's no second industrial revolution, no new species to rise from the dust, and no unaffected nations left to carry on the torch - all that's left to do is sit in a ruined building and watch Words and Pictures until you die.
Amazing movie though.
Yeah that scene is definitely the one that has stuck with me. The other thing that movie does so well is that in the beginning, as people go about their normal lives, you can hear in the background on radios and TVs reports of tensions beginning to rise and no one is paying attention. No one notices whats actually happening until the shooting starts. Kinda feels like the same thing but at a slower pace with climate change, like it's some vague, hypothetical far future that most people aren't paying attention to.