Hurricanes and political violence push chance of ‘collapse’ to 57%

The possibility of a crisis triggered by hurricane looting or election violence has pushed the chances of a national "collapse" to a record high of 57%, according to disaster preparedness experts.

Citing the recent string of hurricanes , the heated election , warnings of another COVID -style pandemic, an unprotected electric grid, and an unprepared government, the experts warned that if a collapse occurs, it will kill millions through violence or bad survival skills.

“Law and order can quickly vanish,” said Drew Miller, a former Air Force officer who now promotes survivability.

“The threat of any one disaster event may be low, but with so many means of triggering a collapse disaster, it is not surprising that the cumulative probability of a collapse is high. With increasing overpopulation and increasing complexity and fragility of our economy and people who are increasingly urban, dependent on long-distance food and water, and a highly politically divided society today, the result is a much higher likelihood of a deadly collapse,” he said in presenting his latest “collapse model.”

Miller, who founded a network of survival facilities and produced the Collapse Survivor app with his fellow preparedness experts, has warned for months about the possibility of a civil war being sparked by this year’s presidential election.

But new concerns about weather-related events in the wake of Hurricane Helene and this week’s Hurricane Milton are adding to the surge of triggering incidents that can lead to wider disasters.

“The key point is not 16% or 57% likelihood. The key point is that the likelihood of a collapse is high, not low,” he said.

The Biden-Harris administration’s response to the collapse of rural areas where Helene hit is a warning that people shouldn’t rely on the government alone to bail them out of a disaster.

“We are so unprepared, both people and government FEMA resources, that a small-scale collapse can develop,” he told Secrets on Tuesday. “Rural North Carolina is a fairly safe area because overwhelmingly good people there. Now imagine a real pandemic, grid down, New Madrid or Cascadian earthquake, Yellowstone eruption, etc. — people will be without police, guard help for months. They will die long before that kind of help can arrive, and it may never come.”

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And he said the chaos caused in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 shows that the government can’t stop bad things from happening.

“A disaster in a big city — and politicians won’t say this, too afraid of losing votes — but a big city has lots of gang members and criminals, and they will take advantage of it,” he said. “We’ve entered the age of collapse.”