Thursday 18th June 2026. (What are the Fafocene Diaries? See here).
Last night I listened to my somewhat brilliant wife give a talk she has (mostly) given before. During the bits I’d heard before I bashed out seven quatrains (iambic tetrameter, aabb rhyme) about, well, the Fafocene. These will be the prompts for future diary entries. Bet you can’t wait.
Meanwhile, I just want to continue on yesterday’s theme of analogs for the Fafocene. During the Cold War, peace activism was possible. The main slur used against the activists is that they were fifth columnists, Soviet stooges and dupes. These days it is ‘Luddite’, ‘anti-progress’. The dynamics of it all are pretty similar.
Then though, there was rational hope that a war could be averted – “put down that weapon, or we’ll all be gone” – because, as per yesterday’s post, what was required for a war to happen was a change – the status quo would keep us safe. Now, the status quo has us wrecking all (over) the world.
In that context, I need to read more of EP Thompson’s essays at the time, stuff about exterminism etc. The root – contempt for other life, hubris, Messianic certainty – seems pretty much the same. Dr Strangelove is now some AI-booster, and the Wizards of Armageddon are now techbroligarchs from the Valley – “RAND up the usual suspects…”
Anyway, as opposed to the Fafocene, at least a global thermo-nuclear war would have had (will have?) the virtue of being quick.
I suspect that we will end not with a truly enormous bang but a series of whimpers, as we fall out of the “civilisation” tree (1) and hit every branch on the way down.
This is to say, one of the standard critiques of the doomers is accurate – they (okay, we!) are guilty of too often and too easily seeing collapse as this One Big Moment – a flood, a zapping. But it’s quite likely, unless Skynet does its thing, that “collapse” will be a relatively prolonged process, not an event (see also next post where some of the right now implications of that, and how we respond, are unpacked.)
Finally, what looks like a collapse to those who have enjoyed the Imperial Way of Living will presumably look like relief from torture to others, on the pointy end. There won’t be many tears in the abattoirs and the favelas when the Rich (and if you’re reading this, you’re almost certainly among the rich, globally speaking) start to get what they’ve been dishing out (or rather, been paying others to dish out on the q-t). If only the Germans had a word for schadenfreude…
So could it all be averted? With a laboratory leak of, say, smallpox? I don’t think that would help in the long-term, because of all the Easter Eggs we’ve laid – the chemical weapons, nuclear weapons dumps etc.
Nope, our best hope is some ‘benevolent’ aliens – see Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke, or the TV show Pluribus. Whether they would think much is worth salvaging is another question. They might just decide it easier/kinder to kill all the Hairless Murder Apes and start afresh.
Footnotes
- Given that “civilisation” seems largely to be dependent on deforestation, the metaphor is ironic/mixed.
Update
18 June 2026 – Someone on Bsky said this
Various authors have had a go at imagining a slow decline
JH Kunstler: long emergency
JM Greer: long descent
W Catton: Bottleneck
R Heinberg: Party’s over / power down
N Hagens: Great Simplification
… but they tend not to be based on climate. Often based on peak oil and not foreseeing fracking
Was this useful? If so, why? If not, why not?
What did you agree with? What did you disagree with? What have I got right, and, more importantly, what have I got wrong, misconstrued, overlooked.
What should I be reading/watching?
What do you think of ‘Fafocene’ as a term? Does it work for you? What does it miss, beyond the fact that not everyone Fucked Around the same amount?
What other topics would you like the Fafocene Diaries to cover?
marchudson.net 
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