Meltdowns and Buffers

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan is shaping up to be one of those events that no one knows the true extent of until it's well in the rear view mirror.  Going from a death toll of a hundred or so, into the tens of thousands now, with no one really sure of what the real toll is, confusion over the actual state of nuclear plants in Japan, if they've melted down or not, store shelves emptying, etc. 

The Middle East is still in turmoil, although the disaster in Japan and short attention spans have pushed it off the front pages for the moment.  However, tensions are still high in many places there and it doesn't seem like it would take much for things to get out of hand quickly again, especially now that the reformers in Egypt are not satisfied with the choices they're being given and want to move to a more civilianized government.  The lid is still on Saudi unrest, but once people have the idea of self-determination in their minds, it's hard to get rid of.
In the United States (and in Europe), there is the question of where the economy is going.  In spite of some items of good news.  Rising oil prices have a good chance of crippling whatever recovery is currently going on and leaving a large portion of the American population ever less certain of their future.

 In chemistry, a "buffer" is any substance which tries to keep a system at a certain state, such as a pH buffer which will prevent acidity in a solution from rising or falling below a certain value.  However, at some point, the buffer can't adjust for what's being put into the solution and the nature of the solution will dramatically change almost immediately (going from neutral to very acidic, for example). With nuclear reactors, the various control mechanisms which keep the reaction from running out of control serve the same function.

What we seem to be seeing now is a test of our modern industrial civilization's ability to "buffer" events.  We have various reserves and institutions which are designed to provide precisely this function, but they can only work so long and go so far.  Japanese society, for example, was able to cope with an economic crisis in the early 90s, but can it deal with the physical, economic and social damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami?  The Middle East has long been kept in a statis by Cold War legacy politics and a conservative religion and mindset, yet those controls are no longer able to keep events in check -- which way will things go once that buffer is gone?  And, in America, we've been able to deal with the economic events so far, including spikes in oil prices, but at what point are we going to see the systems we've built to handle these shocks give way?  Already, some politicians are calling for the strategic oil reserve (a fool's errand) to help control oil prices.  What's going to be next on the horizon as we sink into the next dip of the recession?

Ultimately, what this points to, from a perspective of collapse, is that we really have no way of knowing how long what we've built can hold out against unforeseen events.  We can maintain things for so long, but like the buoyancy of a boat that is suddenly overwhelmed  from flooding, we're not going to know it until it's too late, even though we've seen it coming from a long way off.  We need to make sure we're prepared and able to cope with events as they occur, and when they overwhelm our civilization's ability to deal with them effectively.