(Dis)solution

Aussiemandias: Building for Collapse
Enzo Lara-Hamilton

‘Surely collapse leads to a Mad Max hellscape, a version of The Matrix or both…’ we ponder, walking across Melbourne’s sizzling, squishy bitumen. Despite not knowing exactly why, or how, or when, for us the collapse of current Australian society appears extremely likely. Pressing global ecological crises bring us ever closer to rapid destabilisation and decline; biodiversity loss, pollution, anthropogenic climate change to name a few. These crises continue to damage complex resource supply chains and existing urban environments globally, exacerbated by geopolitical and economic instability. We seem to continually ask ourselves, what is going to happen, and what will be important in this radically different world?

Eccentric examples of collapse thinkers can be found documented in National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers, and more recently ABC’s Prepping Australia. There seems to have always been mystics, soothsayers, or fortune-teller equivalents throughout history—preppers might be our current iteration. Their evidence of the coming collapse varies considerably, from the rigorously scientific to the kooky and conspiratorial. In any case, they are actively cultivating resilience to various environmental, social, and economic collapses, whether real or imagined. They prepare and practice, through emergency food and water storage, guns, knives, militarised trucks, bunkers, and bug out spots. Voyeuristically, we watch Trevor dig up a tub of survival gear and rations in undisclosed bush, rehearsing his plan for when shit goes down. It feels almost primal, or perhaps more human, preparing one’s return to a tech-free life without organic solanato™ tomatoes in plastic wrapped cardboard trays .

These examples of preppers neglect something which will be much more important in an actual state of collapse: communities. Most preppers and their fictional counterparts focus on becoming lone survivors, accompanied by their nuclear families – within this mindset is the assumption they will be the main character in a stereotypical doomsday film, and everyone else enemies or antagonistic extras. This neglects the majority of urban dwellers who are more likely to come together in shared suffering than turn against each other. Dystopian dramas like The Last of Us play out this prepper fantasy, with Bill (and Frank) completely prepared, living out a relatively quiet, romantic life after collapse, happy and self-sufficient. Though wholesome for viewers, it is unrealistic for most to live out this fantasy or be lucky enough to have the means to do so. In recent real crises however, many existing local groups grew and collaborated in response to adversity.[1] The primal ‘war of all against all’ that Thomas Hobbes talks of may not be the way things go down. Collapse of society is perhaps just as likely to bring people together as it is to separate.

A growth model of society, reliant upon exploitation of ecosystems and their inhabitants for profit, is unsustainable and destined for collapse. Australia, the nation-state that perpetuates this system, is unlikely to avoid this. With collapse looming globally, surpassing tipping points toward uncontrollable runaway and synchronous failures, we will experience snowballing impacts that require more and more energy to solve.[2] While poorer nations and communities have been and will continue to feel this first, all other nations and people will soon follow.

Perhaps a traveller, may one day stumble upon a sunken outback sign that reads: ‘Look at our mighty Australian infrastructure and despair!’ Yet nothing beside remains.

Collapse Looms

‘The state of the Australian environment is poor and deteriorating’, another recent federal report states solemnly. Climate change, biodiversity loss, invasive species, increased pollution, soil degradation, air and water quality, eutrophication and resource extraction are causing immense stress on Australia’s ecosystems and processes. The biosphere will never be the same again. Your children’s children’s children are expected to experience 3-4°C increase in global average temperature by around 2100.[3]

2019 saw bushfires once again burn Australia—243,000 square kilometres of it. 3 billion native animals were displaced or killed. Toxic air in surrounding urban environments was at times equivalent to smoking 37 cigarettes, incurring 1.95 billion dollars in health cost.[4] With the fires emitting the equivalent of half of Australia’s yearly emissions, and less sequestration of carbon from new growth due to burnt trees and drought, the planet’s climate spirals hotter and hotter meaning more heatwaves, more drought, and inevitably increased energy and emissions expenditure to deal with these impacts.

‘1 in 100-year flooding events’ in Australia could occur several times a year when sea level rise increases to 50 cm sometime in the second half of this century.[5] Some regions will experience decreased rainfall throughout the year, but more intense shorter rainfall causing ecosystem issues and flash flooding. In 2030, 1 in 25 properties will be uninsurable due to high risk of extreme weather events, largely from river overflows.[6] When warming exceeds 2°C, substantial ocean acidification, degradation of mangroves and seagrasses, and the disappearance of 70-90% of the world’s tropical coral reefs will occur; kelp sequestration will be unable to save us.[7]

In Australia’s south, drought-induced canopy dieback has been rapidly occurring over the past 30 years due to hotter, drier conditions with more fires.[8] Widespread drought means water and food security are threatened. Consider the impacts on food production and supply chains.[9] Broadacre crops like wheat and barley have dropped in yield potential by 27%. In 3°C Australia, there are projections of 5-50% reduction in crop yield. Reduced yield of oil seeds are 35%, wheat 18%, fruit and vegetables 14%, and plant fibres 7%.[10] The Queensland floods from December 2010 – January 2011, bushfires of 2019-2020, and more flooding from 2020-2021 all caused massive accessibility issues for food and water supplies, making it logistically and financially challenging to deliver supermarket stock.[11]

The increased magnitude and frequency of extreme weather will drive further ecological crises and urban shocks,[12] amidst the backdrop of countless other threats to Australia. Geopolitical instability, nuclear threats, resource scarcity, as well as cyber hazards, increasingly complex and reactive system controls, interconnected services risk, and focus on cost-benefit analysis over resilient systems design will lead to cascading crises for existing systems.[13]

Other socio-political issues make any effort at dealing with one crisis more complex. Amid the current Russo-Ukrainian war, Bangladesh and Pakistan have experienced widespread blackouts, 12 hours a day, due to increased energy prices that wealthier European countries offer to pay more for. Left without power, temperature-related illnesses increased further straining health systems. Growing production of Liquefied Natural Gas in wealthy nations, to supplement Russia’s cutting exports in response to sanctions, further drives up fossil fuel consumption. Piecing each separately discussed ecological issue together, problem solving starts to look more like handballing problems elsewhere—to those less equipped to deal with them.[14]

Australia’s relative wealth provides only a momentary safety net for crises like these. As internal ecological issues batter emergency services and global supply chains become unmaintainable, the safety net will quickly fray. The 2019-20 Bushfires required the National Defence Force and international support to deal with their effects. As the frequency of such events increase, this strain will have flow on effects across Australia’s industries and infrastructure, in more places than can be handled. Like the shortage of ICU beds in India, Northern Italy and countless other countries during the pandemic, a lack of adequate resources means choosing some lives over others. This ‘who lives and who dies’ dynamic is already playing out in the lives of individuals, communities, and countries.

The Great Australian Unravelling

As ecological crises, resource scarcity, and geopolitical issues impact global supply chains and industries, energy usage to solve Australia’s challenges will increase until it becomes too difficult to maintain. At this point, radical changes will occur, perhaps even a few good ones like paying back the 4.125 years of sleep-debt I’ve racked up.

Existing industries will look very different. Industries like electricity generation, transport, water, waste, healthcare, construction are all geared toward isolated, short-term events and are unprepared for ongoing disruptions. The Australian Department of Defense gathered senior engineers from 11 key industries in 2019 to speculate on a ‘Collapse of Global Governance.’[15] They were asked to predict the impacts of a collapse of global supply chains to Australia, these predictions are valuable and worth relaying here:

In one week, there would be massive job layoffs, social unease and shortages of food, water and essential supplies . More than 90% of medical supplies are imported, and this disruption would be disastrous for anyone reliant on medication for survival and emergency services. Of much less importance would also be the collective gastroesophageal reflux of one seventh of Australia, with no access to Nexium, Losec or Gaviscon. While water systems themselves are radio controlled standalone systems and were expected to last more than 90 days, water treatment systems would begin running out of the chemicals to treat drinking water, meaning more illness and pressure on already strained healthcare systems. Within two weeks, major infrastructure such as telecommunications and healthcare functionality would be severely reduced. Export mining operations would cease, causing diesel and copper shortages, and poor quality goods and service standards would be common, considering labour shortages.

In one-month, liquid fuel shortages would severely impact delivery logistics across industries, and food supplies would begin to run out (estimated at 45 days). Waste collection services would be reduced, operating on rationed fuel and electricity whilst still possible. This would mean frequent power outages, changed heating, cooling and refrigeration methods and confronting the obscene amount of waste households produce.

Australia has 23 days of diesel fuel in reserves, and 27 days of petrol, with the addition of 45 days of crude oil and refinery feed that would be processed. In two months, when liquid fuel is almost exhausted, freight and passenger transport services would cease. The industry is oriented toward importing crude oil, with only 24% coming from Australia. Electricity would continue from the gas-fired electricity generators and was not a concern for electricity supply but would continue to drive carbon emissions up and would not be equipped to supplement Australia’s energy requirements.

In three months, there would be widespread unemployment, no transport capability, and services relying on imported spares such as electricity and telecommunications would be degraded. Telecommunication hardware, firmware and software all come from overseas. There would be social unrest, software security issues, undersea communications cable decay, water supply network challenges and electricity supply and transmission outages frequently. Limited fuel resources and power dependency would have a cascading effect on all sectors, as most transport relies on imported liquid fuels, estimated at around 90% imported.

The Productivity Commission 2021 also suggests that the main supply chain risks lie in the use of vulnerable chemical imports in health (human medicine manufacturing), energy (petrol and coal product refining) and water treatment industries. Unfortunately, there will be no clear cut collapse date—no day zero. Rather, gradual, compounding crises will quickly and radically change society. Expect more gastroesophageal reflux.

Localising Survival

As collapse takes hold of Australian society, considering what and how to prepare seem like the necessary next steps. Australia has networks of communities and spaces that, though they may radically warp in these contexts, will not immediately disappear into the ether. Nor will everyone become main characters of a dystopian film where everyone else is villainous cannon fodder. Hopefully there are no fuel-gulags for movie length authoritarian-led suicide cult car chases (Mad Max IV). The future will be local, one of simplification, with many opportunities for cooperation.

What will be maintained and what will be forgotten is unpredictable. But as resources become scarce for communities, and laws are less enforced – there will be rapid changes to food, water, shelter, and energy sources—driven by local communities out of necessity. Each level of government will react to these new changes in various ways and depending on their resources, will try to retain as much control as possible.

The resilience of existing local communities, neighbourhoods, and groups will be most important during collapse, particularly for maintaining water security, food systems, and environmentally resilient shelter — reconfiguring existing spaces toward basic human necessities. Commons, the collectively used and shared resources, can avoid being governed by a centralised government or privatisation, as Elinor Ostrom extensively documented. Existing groups of people can collectively agree to manage and share limited common resources they use, and avoid the oppressiveness of a nation-state and the inequality of private ownership.[16] Groups that can negotiate and share this way will be able to more easily deal with the stresses and shocks of the radically different worlds to come. This will require forgetting the selfish war of all against all mentalities seen in films like The Rover or The Purge.

Local communities aren’t going away. Despite the constant alienation of technology and precarious economic situations, cultivating sincere connections with people, despite oddness and difference will always be important, even more so as collapse comes to bear. During the intense Covid years, this was clear. Even though food insecurity increased drastically and unevenly across the world, impacting more than 271 million people during the pandemic, it was found that this increase in food scarcity led to increased local collaboration and reconfiguring of food supply chains and increased gardening practices.[17] [18] Radical modifications to food sources, as well as building alterations in response to crises are effective forms of resilience, not requiring imposed solutions from elsewhere. Communities already have the knowledge to organise themselves and the ability to adapt in times of crises; collapse is likely to see a similar response.

Bottom-upgrades

Collapse appears very likely, and its effects mean the radical simplification of governance, social roles, and systems toward local spaces. When changes are imposed by large organising bodies this is commonly known as ‘top-down ‘, conversely,‘bottom-up’ describes decisions and actions coming directly from individuals and communities who will experience them . Be it planned degrowth strategies or haphazard survival choices, essential human requirements will be most important: water, food, and shelter. The following are useful changes, upgrades, downgrades, hacks, cracks, extracts and retrofits that will be useful and possible to achieve with a small community in a collapsing Australia, with an emphasis on low-tech solutions.

Neighbourhoods that can pool resources together and create sharing networks will resist shortages, retain water supplies, and allow for cultivation of local food sources. Effective use of such water supplies will be paramount. Hacking roof drainage systems, rerouted for water collection and urban farming, will be crucial to locally conserve in drought, extreme weather, and resource scarce periods.[19] Loss of chemically treated water will require new forms of filtration and treatment. This means water tanks, IBCs, barrels, water filters, energy to boil, and retrofitted drainage systems will become extremely important. Water sensitive infrastructure will also be important for those who remain in flood prone areas. Storage and community sharing in rural and suburban environments will be necessary for long-term self-sufficiency, along with communication, negotiation, trust, and care in once-was Australia.

Food will become localised, and urban agriculture necessary. This might look like rapid legislative reform,[20] or less imposed local bottom-up strategies. Depending on climate zones, potatoes, corn, and other nutritious, high yield produce may come to dominate suburban diets. Local trade and scaling of existing local food networks will allow for continued sustenance, and radical changes to labour practices. Golf and bowls clubs, Public parks, nature strips, parking spaces and roads may be transformed into plots for productive agriculture and other new spatial forms of subsistence—if they can withstand heatwaves and extreme weather. A proto-form of such rapid transformation could be seen in 1990’s Cuba. Just prior to the Soviet Union’s collapse, Cuba was importing 57% of its food supply (100% of cereals with almost 50% of rice, 90% of beans). It was estimated the average Cuban lost 30 pounds in the three years after the collapse of their main import supply chain. However, out of necessity for food, swift law reform in Havana and other Cuban cities led to the rapid production of farms in vacant lots and underused spaces within the city. Vacant land was radically transformed into farmland. By the early 2000s, it was estimated almost 50% of fruit and vegetables consumed in Havana were produced within the city itself. For Australia, a similar situation may arise requiring collaboration and negotiation for survival.

Shelter is likely to become more and more integrated with other food services and resilience systems. Expect, with much struggle, bio-integration, permaculture, and rewilding to occur with more resilient plant species. Shifting uses of rooms and housing, increasing space dedicated to resource saving, increased security measures, pit cellars for cool storage when energy shortages take hold, zero water sanitation systems, reusing fence materials for shading and drainage systems, green walls and roofs with passionfruit or boston ivy for lowering heat island effect and increasing biodiversity, offgrid conversions of PV systems, sharing of bikes or tools or land or housing, passive internal cooling with solar chimneys, insulation retrofitting to lessen heat fluctuations, façade and threshold modifications for security, mini greenhouse making and sharing, and reusing different types of waste for fertilising or new construction. Through the chaos of collapse will likely come new low energy, locally created construction and infrastructure. Instead of the tendency for demolition, practices will hopefully shift toward deconstruction, retrofitting, repairing, and reusing what already exists.

Such alterations and do-it-ourselves systems will become the norm. Looking to Bangalore and Santiago, or planned remote communities here in Australia, bottom-up solutions already exist, with high amounts of low-tech building modifications and contraptions to deal with social and environmental pressures without requiring complex supply chains or electricity. Densely packed Bangalore dwellings reuse found metal panels and reflective PET bottles for roof retrofits, which if strategically placed lowered temperatures in blistering summer heat waves without energy for air-conditioning.[21] DIY-construction is also a common practice around the world at the domestic-scale—continually modifying and warping an existing structure to adapt to environmental requirements will be necessary. Without the use of construction companies, building practices will still continue, drawing from community knowledge and expertise. Such changes not only speculate on a future during collapse, but can also inform current living practices—both reconfiguring what already exists, and building for what is to come.

Considering access to water, food, and shelter through the lens of collapse is useful for both current and future crises. Most of this could be cultivated now, informally with people who live nearby. In a changed world, the majority of people will not want to slip into destructive selfish frenzy, and will instead band together using what remains in a new way… Whatever looms over Australia, it is worth seriously considering simplification and do-it-ourselves, low-tech upgrades to prepare for what happens next – perhaps bringing forth a re-poch[23]: an epoch of repair, regrowth, regeneration and retrofit practices! Profound thinking about collective sustainable social change already exists, which is much more optimistic than the atomized, fuel-hungry, pillaging Toecutter cannibal gangs or all-you-can-generate boxes of Meta™-sponsored, Uyghur-extracted-polysilicon-solar powered, UberEats serviced and monetized HyperYoutubeVR post-meatspace worlds of work, paywalls and pleasure. An alternative direction is to strengthen community networks, make spaces more resilient and localise resources, all of which require improving what already exist. So perhaps a traveller may one day stumble upon[24] a radically different society, made from the reconfigured materials of an unsustainable one that once was. There has been so much extracted from the earth and it’s inhabitants, the time has come for caring and repairing, reusing and reconfiguring the world throughout this process of collapse.

  1. Zerbian T, Adams M and Wilson N (2022) Social Resilience in Local Food Systems: A Foundation for Food Security during a Crisis. Food Systems Resilience. IntechOpen. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.101998.: ↑
  2. Tainter, Joseph A. 1988, The collapse of complex societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridgeshire ; New York. p 91-123 ↑
  3. United Nations Environment Programme (2022). Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window — Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies. Nairobi. https://www.unep.org/emissions-gap-report-2022 ↑
  4. Johnston, F.H., Borchers-Arriagada, N., Morgan, G.G. et al. Unprecedented health costs of smoke-related PM2.5 from the 2019–20 Australian megafires. Nat Sustain 4, 42–47 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00610-5 ↑
  5. Australian Academy of Science (2021). The risks to Australia of a 3°C warmer world https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/reports-and-plans/2021/risks-australia-three-deg-warmer-world-report.pdf ↑
  6. Climate Council. (2022) Uninsurable Nation: Australia’s most climate-vulnerable places. https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/CC_Report-Uninsurable-Nation_V5-FA_Low_Res_Single.pdf ↑
  7. Bradshaw, C.J.A. et al. (2021) ‘Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future’, Frontiers in Conservation Science, 1. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419. ↑
  8. Pörtner, H. et al., Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 37–118, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.002. ↑
  9. Climate Council. (2018). Deluge and Drought: Australia’s Water Security in a Changing Climate. https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Climate-Council-Water-Security-Report.pdf ↑
  10. Australian Academy of Science (2021). The risks to Australia of a 3°C warmer world ↑
  11. State of Queensland (Queensland Reconstruction Authority). https://www.qra.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-08/2021-22%20Queensland%20Floods%20State%20Recovery%20and%20Resilience%20Plan_2.pdf ↑
  12. Cross Dependency Initiative. (2019). Climate Change Risk to Australia’s Built Environment – A Second Pass National Assessment. ↑
  13. CSIRO and BOM. (2022). State of the Climate. http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/2022/documents/2022-state-of-the-climate-web.pdf ↑
  14. Homer-Dixon, T., B. Walker, R. Biggs, A.-S. Crépin, C. Folke, E. F. Lambin, G. D. Peterson, J. Rockström, M. Scheffer, W. Steffen, and M. Troell. 2015. Synchronous failure: the emerging causal architecture of global crisis. Ecology and Society 20(3): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07681-200306 ↑
  15. Engineers Australia (2019) Industry Responses in a Collapse of Global Governance, Workshop report for attendees. https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2020-05/Industry%20Mobilisation%20-%20Engineers%20Australia%20workshop%20report.pdf ↑
  16. Berge, E. and van Laerhoven, F., 2011. Governing the Commons for two decades: A complex story. International Journal of the Commons, 5(2), pp.160–187. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.325 ↑
  17. Craxì L, Vergano M, Savulescu J, Wilkinson D. Rationing in a Pandemic: Lessons from Italy. Asian Bioeth Rev. 2020 Jun 16;12(3):325-330. doi: 10.1007/s41649-020-00127-1. PMID: 32837554; PMCID: PMC7298692. ↑
  18. Nemes, G. et al. (2021) ‘The impact of COVID-19 on alternative and local food systems and the potential for the sustainability transition: Insights from 13 countries’, Sustainable Production and Consumption, 28, pp. 591–599. ↑
  19. Climate Council. (2018). Deluge and Drought: Australia’s Water Security in a Changing Climate. https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Climate-Council-Water-Security-Report.pdf ↑
  20. Queiroz, C., Norström, A.V., Downing, A. et al. Investment in resilient food systems in the most vulnerable and fragile regions is critical. Nat Food 2, 546–551 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00345-2 ↑
  21. Ashden and CBALANCE. (2022). The Informal Housing Thermal Comfort Project (Pilot). https://cbalance.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/cBalance_Informal-Housing-Thermal-Comfort_Insight-Report.pdf ↑
  22. I’d like to coin this term please, because it’s coming.
  23.  See ‘Ozymandias’ sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818.

Enzo Lara-Hamilton is trained in architecture and seeks spatial justice, resilience and groovy spaces.