Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with collapse

Nowhere to go but up?

serazin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:37:06 -0800

How did you come back from miserable failure? My life was humming along more or less well until a couple weeks ago when disaster struck. I have, temporarily at least, failed out of school, which, beyond the obvious, has enormous financial and personal implications. I'm 35 and a single parent, so starting over, while possibly necessary, feels extra daunting. As often happens, this one disaster is causing me to see everything else in my life as a failure. In an effort to avoid spiraling into depression, I'm trying hard to keep my brain together by exercising, talking to friends, and seeking inspiration from other people who have had their lives fall apart and recovered. In short, I am seeking metafilter-flavored chicken soup for the soul. Can you tell me how you came back from totally fucking things up?

Which guns should I get?

ZaneJ. — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:54:54 -0800

What, or where could I find out, are the most common guns and ergo the most common types of ammunition in the United States? If I were to procure firearms I'd be curious to know which ones would I have the easiest time finding ammunition for say, in the instance of infrastructure collapse. Or, interchangeably, which guns have ammunition that the price isn't prohibitively expensive. I'd be talking about shotguns, rifles, and handguns.

Can hydrogen peroxide collapse your lung? (Spontaneous Pneumothorax)

MrBCID — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:47:53 -0800

I use hydrogen peroxide to clean out ear wax; could this have caused a bleb in my lung eventually causing my lung to collapse (spontaneous pneumothorax)? I'm 24 and I recently had a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The culprit was a bleb on the top side of the right lung. Apparently this happens alot to tall skinny people (that's me)... BUT I wonder if there is more to it...

Once in a while (maybe 25-30 times total in my lifetime) I take a cotton ball, soak it in hydrogen peroxide and let about 10-15 drops go into my ear canal to clean out my ear wax (it's supposed to be safer than Q-tips)... I probably leave it in there longer than I should (usually 15 min) then just turn my head and do the other ear...

1 or 2 years ago I left hydrogen peroxide in my ear and fell asleep, when I woke up I had a very sore throat and almost completely lost my voice for 2 days... Obviously the hydrogen peroxide made its way down my throat...

Here is my theory; I was on my side, fell asleep, then the hydrogen peroxide seeped out of my ear canal down my esophagus AND since I was on my side it seeped through my esophagus onto the top side of my right lung and caused a bleb that eventually opened and caused my lung to collapse.

In other words can hydrogen peroxide make it's way onto my lung from my ear canal anywhere between my ear and my esophagus and can that in turn cause a bleb?

Help me find hard-hitting facts on the recent financial collapse please

willie11 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:47:33 -0800

Please help me find facts about the banking/economic crisis and the impact of the financial meltdown for a demonstration against the no-strings-attached billions for banks while Americans suffer. Your help will be rewarded with a just and fair financial system that works for all Americans and not just Wall Street. Thanks so much! I'm helping organize one of the April 11th rallies for A New Way Forward, previously discussed on Metafilter here. These rallies are being staged across the country by grassroots activists and concerned citizens to demand a restructuring of the failed financial institutions and an end to the no-strings-attached bailout billions that have failed to help anyone but the insolvent banks and financial institutions that put us in this economic crisis in the first place.

Part of our demonstration in Raleigh, NC will potentially involve a "nest-egg" hunt to play off the Easter holiday weekend where participants will search for their now-emaciated financial nest eggs. We're trying to fill these eggs with hard-hitting facts about the impact of America's oligarchical financial system that has amassed unprecedented wealth at the top and left the rest of America on the brink of financial ruin. We're hoping to find 25 - 40 hard-hitting facts along the lines of:

Bank of America has collected $45 billion in federal bailout funds - your taxpayer money - yet they plan to lay off over 30,000 workers while handing out $5.2 million in corporate bonuses.

I'm really hoping for more personal facts about foreclosure & bankruptcy rates to contrast with the lavish spending and counter-productive investments these groups are using our bailout funds for. I'm sure there's a list of these somewhere and I hate to ask others do my work for me, but this demonstration is truly a grassroots movement and, as such, we're all doing four people's jobs at once. Your help with this will be so appreciated. Thanks!

--- Willie

What happens if a candidate goes off the rails a quarter-mile before getting to the station?

Camofrog — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:59:21 -0800

What would happen if a presidential candidate had a career-ending nervous breakdown a month out from the general election? Say somebody actually snaps under the stress. Would the party reconvene an emergency convention to select a new candidate? Is there a protocol or precedent for this?

What useful trade can I learn to survive a collapsed economy?

sportbucket — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:05:03 -0800

What's a trade I can learn now, as a hobby, that will be useful if/when the economy collapses? Carpentry? Beer/wine making? Animal husbandry? This isn't totally reactionary fear-mongering, I was thinking about this before everyone started talking about the economic apocalypse, but now it seems a little more timely. Is there a useful trade I can learn in a year or so and practice as a hobby, maybe make some side money, that would be useful to be in a collapsed economy?

Nevermind for a minute that economic collapse isn't exactly an imminent threat -- I just want to learn some practical and marketable skills, if only to gain peace of mind knowing that if I lost my job I'd have something to offer the world.

Keep my rolls puffy and pretty!

NoraCharles — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:40:56 -0800

Why do my crescent rolls always seem to go flat? I'm a big fan of Pillsbury crescent rolls and use them to make a wide variety of stuffed treats. (I'm currently enjoying bacon and cheese wraps.)

When I take the crescent rolls out of the oven (stuffed with ingredients or made plain), they're light and puffy looking, BUT then after they sit out for a few minutes they fall flat and seem to collapse making them look kind of "tired."

What can I do to stop this from happening and keep them fluffy and pretty?

novelfilter

spacefire — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:48:23 -0800

New Year resolution: write a novel this year. Need some resources -motivation. I have a full-time job, how can I make sure I write at least a page/day on average?
-information: the novel will be about the decline of civilization due to global warming and its effects, described through the main character's diary. As a long-time fan and reader of post-apocalyptic literature, I am pretty familiar with the topic of total collapse, but via catastrophic, quick events. I plan to describe a prolonged, agonizing collapse of basic services and disintegration of the social fabric under the threat of nature - the novel should span about two-three years.
-characterization: I want to make my character believable, I want him to evolve, and I want to flesh out the other characters in the novel with quick, striking descriptions that allow the reader to 'know' them without long expositions - remember, this is going to be an epistolar novel.

How do you deal with the anxiety around the economic and global clusterfcuk?

onanon — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:07:00 -0800

How do you deal with the anxiety around the economic and global clusterfcuk? It's been keeping me awake for years, and increasingly so. I recycle, I write my representatives. I eat local, organic, take public transport.. I just can't not feel trapped and sometimes just completely terrified. I have a history of panic attacks in my immediate family, was diagnosed with the ubiquitous Depression at 16 and fought it really hard until I learned some basic meditation techniques and got some good cognitive therapy. Now I still fight a light current of anxiety, but I can usually still fight it until somebody spooks me with something apocalyptic... Then it's all over.

Collapse fiction

rolypolyman — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:27:39 -0800

What are some good fiction or SF books that plunge the reader within a severe economic collapse or Malthusian catastrophe in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world? I'm finding this to be an interesting genre, but the problems I've found are:

Problem #1: It's too centered on narrative with little background about the collapse; lots of stereotyped gangs and hordes. Example: Mad Max

Problem #2: It exists largely outside the collapse amongst the fortunate, elite, or influential. Example: Soylent Green... the cop is so much better off than the citizens.

Problem #3: It's set in what's essentially a fantasy world or universe. Example: Asimov's Nightfall -- it's another planet.

It seems there's a lot of fertile ground here... the struggle for survival, the adaptation of the criminal element, unforeseen actions by what little government is left, average Joes trying to pull things together, the new Dark Age or new Renaissance, etc. Surely someone must have written these stories.

Good examples:

- Perhaps the best sample I've read is shelved not in SF but in fiction: Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Poor economic policies cause the country to descend into anarchy, and the life of a girl in Manhattan gets progressively more difficult.

- Wolf and Iron. This overlaps survivalist fiction a bit, but the background fabric is economic collapse and it follows one man around in his escape from the Rust Belt.

- Lucifer's Hammer - This is a meteor story that is essentially pure disaster, with no real story of how people adapted or how society changed. But after the dust has settled it's actually passable for my criteria.

Bad examples:

- Earth Abides -- damn good book, but this deals with a huge absence of population. The struggle is of a far different kind. King's The Stand has a similar theme.

Anyhow I hope you can see where I'm coming from. The past several years I've been reading mostly historical nonfiction, so maybe I'm missing out on something in this genre.

My partner had a weird seizure type thing!

Anonymous — Mon, 08 May 2006 03:01:09 -0800

My partner suffered a collapse yesterday, perhaps someone can enlighten us as to what she experienced. Firstly, my partner is a 30 year old woman with multiple sclerosis (although fortunately it doesn't affect her a great deal).

This has happened twice now, though this time was more worrying. She called me up, angry, and argued strongly with me over something very trivial. This is very unlike her, as she normally only gets mad when it's justifiable, and never gets that angry.

Call me an asshole but I hung up - it was a really trivial matter, and I thought she was being silly about it. Talking to her didn't help over the phone, and I didn't want to get riled up (I also dislike arguing). I figured she would work it out, and I would talk to her when I got home a couple of hour later and smooth it out in person.

Soon after I got an SMS saying `I'm not OK . help' I called and just got incoherent sobbing. I dropped what I was doing and raced home, to find her on the floor next to the phone. She was kind of crying, not breathing too well.

She later described it as losing control over her muscles. I managed to get her sitting up, talked to her, got her to breath more calmly. She could respond but not clearly.

She didn't want an ambulance, and within 20 minutes I had her on the couch where she regained the ability to talk properly, use of limbs etc. An hour later she was okay, but feeling `hollow', lacking energy.

This happened once before where she became angry out of proportion to what was going on, and far more than she normally would. She then lay on the couch for about half an hour before I realised she was in a weird state, and I talked to her and sat her up.

That time, as with this time, she was not really aware of the passage of time.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? We don't know if the outburst of anger is the cause or a symptom. Could it be related to the MS? Could it be a pseudoseizure or `hysterical fit'? Any answers appreciated.

Since I won't be replying, I'll just say that we plan on checking this out with a doctor.