I am not a US-flag burning lowlife, but I am worried the US may burn itself out, It's time to take stock and go back to the basics. Thing that made your country a great place to live.

-- steel pulse (Symmetry_space@yahoo.com), February 09, 2005

Answers

there is no future with any superpower...but certainly not with the us

-- sdqa (sdqa@sdqa.com), February 09, 2005.

Yes, there is a bright future with the US in charge. Nobody else has the courage and ability to lead the world into the 21st century.

-- KOBE SBM (kobesbm@kobehq.com), February 09, 2005.

lead the world to the brink of appocalypse more like. what a gullible fool you are.

-- (fgh@sdfh.dfh), February 09, 2005.

lead the world to the brink of appocalypse more like. what a gullible fool you are.

You dont know SHIT about world politics. Have you serverd your country in the military? Perhaps in a political capacity? Maybe you contribute by working a job?

No, I can see you. You are just another kid posting here, probably between the ages of 16-22, your viewpoint falling smack dab in the center of the statistical studies for that age range. Tell me, how close did I get?

Between the ages of 16-22 Still in school or have dropped out Living at home with parents Are not employed at a job Do not pay property taxes

and the big one: YOU CANT VOTE

I know, I know...."how did he guess that?"

-- KOBE SBM (kobesbm@kobehq.com), February 09, 2005.

I think that if they ever get their act togather, China will be the next Dominant Super Power. They will surpass even the things that the US has and continues to do.

-- Dick Tator (inneedofliberty@yahoo.com), February 11, 2005.

Anything can happen that knocks #1 back to #2 or #215... either natural disaster like a mile wide asteroid or something man-made like biological warfare or a nuclear strike.

For example. Say China wants Taiwan so badly that it is willing to launch a pre-emptive strike on the USA (with the idea being, with us gone, the EU and rest of the world will continue to trade and everything will be cool).

Now they have only a couple dozen ICBMs but it only takes 3 exploded at high altitude to ruin your day by frying every electronic device in the country (including the internet and your gameboy). No immediate deaths but instant loss of electricity and ALL that relies on electricity (namely, almost EVERYTHING).

Would we launch a tit-for-tat High altitude strike against them? If we did, the world would lose two major players for two decades, resulting in massive economic depression for the EU and everyone else.

So yes, it's possible for the USA to be instantly reduced to a 3rd world country.

But I don't think this will happen. I think we'll suffer more domestic turmoil in 2006 and 2008...more internal rot ethically and politically. But unless there is a war we are going to be either #1 or #2 for the next couple of decades.

-- anon (anonymous@yahoo.com), February 11, 2005.

I think the future is very bleak, nuclear weapons kind of level the playing field, the future is pre-emptive strikes and good intel

-- alien mist (symmetry_space@yahoo.com), February 11, 2005.

Now suppose something like that EMP strike happened? No one would die immediately...but without electricity for lights and pumps most of the USA would run out of potable water and then gasoline within a week or so...

For sometime now ready.gov has been encouraging everyone to stockpile at least 3 days (*while suggesting more, like 2 weeks) worth of food and water at home, as well as reading up on all the things a family and neighborhood would need to help pull together in such a disaster with NO or MINIMAL outside help.

Having either water or water filters, various types of lights (battery or better, kerosene lanters), food stuffs and gardening supplies would help keep you and your family well fed, hydrated, and illumined (and warmed) for the long haul.

Solar panels are good ideas too... as are bikes and gardens..

Anarchy is what you'd get - big time...and that means seriously nasty problems for people who don't know or get along with others. The more "robust" Americans are as individual families and small communities (both with respect to tools, food, supplies AND harmonious relationships), the less chance we have of being blown back into the stone age by nature or man-made disasters.

I know you guys come here to vent and sound off. That's fine. But chances are good that you will experience a disaster in your lifetime and the only way to pull through it is to prepare now and forge good friendships with your neighbors, family, and friends.

Many "anarchists" don't like the government but what happens if the government ceases to exist? You will still need food, water, medicine, jobs, etc. it won't be a party.

If you spent just a buck a day on basic preparations you'd assure yourself of at least a month's worth of food, water, and survival skills/tools to last all but the worst calamity.

-- anon (anonymous@yahoo.com), February 11, 2005.

Anybody here ever read Alas, Babylon?

-- Anti-Bush (comrade_bleh@hotmail.com), February 11, 2005.

When you start listening to music often, things either start filtering out or increasing itself in volume. The thump of a bass drum transfers over to a shrill voice that tells you to clean the cat's litter box. The wail of a guitar or high-pitched whine of an electronically altered violin becomes the never ending, never relenting television that nobody watches. Voices transmute from feedback. A cry from a dozen beats of sixteenth notes. My observation is that the world has not learned when to shut the fuck up. There has been a significant loss in the belief of silence. Everybody waits their turn to shout or speak up or mention the most inane things imaginable. I do not care if you bought a game for the sole purpose of killing the sprites and NPCs inside its data. I don't want to know that you stole cookies off of somebody's lunch tray. Away with your ramblings of how much you fucked your girlfriend. Lord knows she probably doesn't care how hard you gave it to her, you overzealous prick. People want to talk, and I respect that; we are a race built upon oral emissions and auditory receptions. But it has come to my attention how much people abuse this ability to cause vibrations to hum through the air and the person immediately in front of you to pick it out of thousands of other such vibrations and actually pay attention to you. I'm sure each one of you has had the unfortunate chance to meet a person who would not shut their mouth. On the bus, while taking a piss, during sex, whatever. Politely, on the outside, you look interested, but inside, deep inside your mind, past the eyeballs and past the neurological mind-fuck matter, past the synapses and past your medulla oblongata, you know, desperately, that you want to be away from the pile of shit that obscures your view. I know, for a fact, that you have thought of being rude, pushing away from them, telling them to shut up about their kittens and dead grandmothers, about when the child support is going to come in, when it's being taken out of their paycheck, about the sex they want and the sex they constantly have. What is the fascination with sharing your life with a complete stranger? What is it that drives a meatbag thing called human to stick their life down your throat and veritably scream, "HERE I AM, YOU FUCKER!!" at the top of the conversation of sofas and beer? And when you do act rude towards them, they are affronted, belligerent, pissed off like they didn't invite some sort of rebuke and rampage upon themselves! You like to tease cats? Fine, fuck off! You want to drink until you pass out? By all means! Just stop pouring your unwanted stories into my head! Wrap your head around this: if the statement of "In one ear and out the other" is true, then every memory that you want to keep and hold onto, good or shitty, is being lost when some moron rambles. Every time somebody speaks pointless shit into your ear, you lose more and more storage space for important shit. You will forget things the more and more the rambler rambles on, I fucking guarantee it. There is a point to this. Instead of loosening your jaw every chance you get to speak, hold it in. Stay quiet, and if you can't, make the effort to shorten whatever you're trying to say. Get the point across in so many words. Contrary to what you might believe, people are not as interested in what you have to say than you think they are, unless they actually start making some effort to converse back with stuff that actually relates to the topic, instead of replying in mono-syllable words. Otherwise, keep it to yourself.

-- CenterArtist (youth511@hotmail.com), February 12, 2005.

Yeah, CenterArtist, I can't tell if that's sarcastic or just asinine. =(

-- asgromo (asgromo@hotmail.com), February 20, 2005.