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THEGUARDIAN.COM 2026-08-14

Romania shuts its last nuclear reactor as drought-hit Danube river drops to record low

Drought and record-low water levels have deepened fears of an energy crisis across Europe, which is facing a new summer heatwave.  The drought-hit Danube, whose waters cool the Romanian plant in Cernavoda, already forced Nucelarelectrica to shut down ⁠one reactor ​in late July.

Guess sinking barges and blowing up rocks wasn't enough.

On the upside, they don't have to worry about Drones knocking out their power as the war picks up steam.  Power will already be out.

Gonna be tough charging up their clean energy EVs pretty soon.

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[TDoS]

I've mentioned it before, your perspective has been around for a millennium.

My perspective has been around for millenia.....

Sure. As I have mentioned, Apocalypticism has been popular for a long time.

....the conditions of population size, resource depletion, climate change and environmental degradation are relatively recent.  I was fortunate enough to be born at the right time for my perspective to play out. 😀

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The conditions of population size, resource depletion and climate change and environmental degradation have been discussed, talked about, hell going back to PLato. Malthus covers the first, Plato was writing about the 2nd in 360BC, Fourier proposed the greenhouse effect pre 1850, 1856 Eunice Foote demonstrated that carbon dioxide absorbs heat, 1896 Savante Arrhenius calculated burning fossil fuels was going to cause global warming.

There are very few things new in this universe, if one only looks. I'm not a history buff, but DAMN did people know shit farther back in time than most suspect. 

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[TDoS]

When the logic and facts are immutable....DO MEMES!!!!!  I never denied collapse. After all, our Sun is losing mass at the rate of 4 or 5 million tons per second. We are most certainly DOOMED!

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When the logic and facts are immutable....DO MEMES!!!!!  I never denied collapse. After all, our Sun is losing mass at the rate of 4 or 5 million tons per second. We are most certainly DOOMED!

The meme doesn't specify that you deny collapse.  Nor has the mass of the Sun ever been any part of the discussion and is just a strawman argument.

In any event, you recycle tired and inapplicable historical analogies which we have deconstructed more times than I can count, so I recycle DD Memes which are a convenient shorthand so I don't have to waste time and energy repeating debates I have long since tired of.  You may still find them entertaining, I do not.  Anyone interested can search the archives.

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[K-Dog]

To deny collapse means denying human agency.  It is a slave mentality to think you have no control over events to come.  The totally brainwashed think everything happens according to gods will.  In such a mindset there is no collapse.  All is as it should be. 

But collapse that humans cannot control, random acts of god, have never been an interest of the Diner.  Adults know acts of god are real enough.  You do not even have to believe in a god like the brainwashed do to know that, so move on. 

Collapse in the Diner is always intimately connected to human stupidity.  Collapse which could have, and should have, and would have been avoided if adults were in charge is the only collapse that is interesting.  Acts of god are boring random and tragic.  But if they could have been avoided by human action, then the same acts become interesting.  Human drama makes it so. 

Things won't get interesting enough for TDOS until there is mass death.  But that is like only reading the end of a story.

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Things won't get interesting enough for TDOS until there is mass death.  But that is like only reading the end of a story.

Indeed.TDoS sets the bar for what he accepts as evidence for collapse so high that when it's reached supply chains will have failed completely, shelves will be bare everywhere, nobody will have reliable electricity, gas pumps will be dry and the only thing Dollars useful for is wiping your ass.

While this level of collapse has reached countries like Cuba and Somalia, it's still a ways off in the FSoA, though Europe seems to be getting there pretty quickly.  Thing is, by the time it does make it here, the process of getting there will be over, it will be history not futurism.  Everyone will acknowledge the reality then.  For those of us who analyze collapse, we'll move on from reporting on collapse in progress to predicting how society will reformulate.  Except of course there won't be any internet and most of us will be dead anyhow.

Anyhow, by the time there's evidence enough for TDoS of Collapse, the show will basically be over.  My interest is in how we get to that point, and what transpires along the way down.

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[TDoS]

To deny collapse means denying human agency.

To deny collapse when it doesn't meet the definition is normal, expected, and called for.

You can no more call it something else and be taken seriously than if you multiply volts times amps and get Pi.

Collapse in the Diner is always intimately connected to human stupidity.

The Diner, and people in general, can make up its own definition, obviously. Just like I can say that Pi=2.
Applying relative definitions to things though makes stuff messy.

Collapse which could have, and should have, and would have been avoided if adults were in charge is the only collapse that is interesting.

I can agree with that. Species collapse on purpose and possible BECAUSE of the species themselves. Global thermonuclear war comes to mind. Climate change as well. But neither of those have triggered one yet, but they could most assuredly cause the required population reduction.

Acts of god are boring random and tragic.

And expected. But how can human induced collapse NOT be tragic as well? We don't own any secrets to the Universe that say us clever monkeys are immune for being stupid, tragic, ignorant, self centered and self destructive in  general. I would venture that humans are so flipping stupid they fall for nonsense, science denying hogwash that sounds good more often than they do scientific fact. Religion being a GREAT example, and peak oil being a smaller and more recent version.

Things won't get interesting enough for TDOS until there is mass death.  But that is like only reading the end of a story.

Collapse isn't collapse without poulation decline. Sorry. But all KINDS of horrible things can happen without population decline/collapse. No one is going to call the Holodomor a good thing, or Pol Pot's stunts, or Mao's Great Chinese famine, etc etc.

Collapse is certainly collapse. It just hasn't happened yet. But there is always hope in the corner of the internet waiting with baited breath. The peak oilers have moved on, currently climate change has my vote for highest probability, with a more thorough cleansing GRB waiting in the wings, but timing unknown. 

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APNEWS.COM 2026-08-17

Belgian wildfire approaches Germany as Greece probes deadly blaze

A forest ranger from the region told The Associated Press that the blaze could continue for months underground because of the peaty soil.  “What we see here is that the grassland has burned and the fire has gone into the soil to a certain depth, into the peat, and it is still burning,” said Yves Pieper. “It can go down very, very low in the peat layer.”

Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Belgium... basically the whole continent is burning up.  For the Deniers who say "we've always had forest fires", I can categorically state that in the 7 decades I have been around, there has never been a summer where the entire European continent had wildfires burning.

Similarly, since the Hoover Dam was built during thee Great Depression, Lake Mead never went so low it was within 150 feet of Dead Pool level.  If it doesn't drop below this season, next year it's basically guaranteed.  What isn't mentioned is that besides Hoover, there are many other smaller dams and hydro plants that are in similar state.  Some of the lost power may be replaced by increased thermal generation, but that just means still more CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere.  The water for agriculture also can't be replaced.

It's not Collapse though, right? 🙄  Maybe by 2032.



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[RE]

 

Slow Cooking.

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[TDoS]

It's not Collapse though, right? 🙄  Maybe by 2032.

Certainly with events like this kicking in sooner rather than later, and coming in waves instead of one here or there, 6 years is at least a possibility. But probably a low one.

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We'll get there. Tic Toc.

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[K-Dog]

Intensifies global weather patterns, causing heavier storms, floods, and droughts.

Seems to me a worldwide famine could be in the works.

[TDoS]

We'll get there. Tic Toc.

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We've been "getting there" since you discovered the topic. Sometime in the last century it became of interest right? Been gretting there....a LONG time now...and.....well...next.....<week-month-year-decade-centennial> maybe?

I would venture that after decades now, numberous website involvements (which themselves "got there" WAY before much of anything else cool) that it must be irritating to still be waiting. So the substitution of just political type stuff would make sense because at least it is "happening" as it were. Plus slow motion CO2 changes and stuff.

[TDoS]

Intensifies global weather patterns, causing heavier storms, floods, and droughts.

Seems to me a worldwide famine could be in the works.

You never know! Even since the Mayan Calendar thing fizzled out though I haven't been holding my breath.