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Keith's avatar

Thank you very much for this double-barrelled post. I appreciated your Titanic analogy. Not many analogies survive extension; yours certainly did and got more powerful as it developed.

My only disagreement with you is in your assessment of your ability as a commentator.

I have not come across any one else who has assessed the coming tumultuous change with the seriousness it merits and how the advanced societies will be ruptured permanently as immensely as they were by the Great War. Almost 40 year ago I read William Catton's "Overshoot" and Joseph Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies" and their dispassionate analyses have shaped my worldview ever since. Jay Hanson's 1990s internet forum gave participants total freedom to discuss these issues. Today Nate Hagens (on YouTube) comes closest to predicting accurately the coming shock as he certainly understands the physics. But even he appears to factor in a deus ex machina to enable the recovery he can't bring himself to shake off.

There have been many novels written about societal collapse in the US and in the UK, but the most realistic is still John Seymour's "Retrieved from the Future" (1996). Jim Kunstler's four-volume "World Made by Hand" series (2008-16) is a useful window into the future, but not as gritty as Seymour's story.

Best wishes for your new ventures as author and educator. I see your book is available in a hard cover edition in the US. Do you expect a hard cover to become available here?

For reasons we both understand I'd like to place an order within the next few days and if there will be only a paperback edition in Ausrlia, that's the way I'll go.

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