If we don’t change the world now, we will find ourselves in a world that changes us, forever
The Whisper of the Fall
The world awoke on January 1, 2025, to the sound of silence. It was not the silence of peace, nor the quiet of a world sleeping off the festivities of the night before. It was the silence of something having gone terribly, irreparably wrong. The markets, which had closed on December 31st in their usual state of bloated optimism, did not open. The screens that once flashed with numbers and symbols – confident sirens of the global economy – blank. The only indication of life was a single message that appeared across all financial platforms: “System Error: Contact Your Administrator.”
But there was no administrator to contact. By the time the error had been acknowledged, the complex web of international finance had already begun to unravel. The digital nature of modern currency, once heralded as the dawn of a new age of prosperity, now became the noose around humanity’s neck. The banks, those great monoliths of power and stability, found themselves empty husks – hollowed out by years of frenzied techno-growth, unregulated speculation, and algorithmic trading that no human truly understood.
Governments, equally blind to the mechanisms that had truly sustained their economies, were powerless to act. The leaders of the world gathered in emergency meetings, their faces ashen as they stared at screens displaying nothing but voids where their nations’ wealth had once been. There were no assets left to liquidate, no reserves to draw upon. The gold reserves were no longer relevant in an age where wealth had been reduced to mere code – code that had now been corrupted beyond repair.
The Descent into Chaos
By mid-January, the realization of the gravity of the situation set in among the peoples of the world. The usual routines – work, shopping, travel – became meaningless as digital money was now lost. The currencies of the world, once the lifeblood of daily existence, were now just long-lost numbers on the screens of history, devoid of substance or meaning. People still tried to withdraw their savings, but the ATMs and banks remained inoperative. The digital vaults were locked tight, but there was nothing inside them to access anyway.
The first signs of collapse appeared in the major cities. Without the means to purchase goods, people resorted to bartering or using what little cash remained in circulation, but the sheer scale of the crisis rendered such exchanges nearly futile and very dangerous. Even if you could get one apple today, there was no guarantee that there would be food tomorrow? Supermarkets were looted within days, their shelves stripped bare by panicked crowds. The police, overwhelmed and unpaid, did little to intervene. In many cases, they joined the looters, trading their authority for whatever tangible goods they could find.
Electricity and water became the next casualties. Without money to pay workers or maintain infrastructure, the grids began to fail. Rolling blackouts turned into permanent darkness. Water purification plants shut down, and soon the taps ran dry. In the darkness, humanity reverted to its most primal instincts. Fear and survival replaced law and order as the driving forces of society.
As February dawned, the world had already begun to tear itself apart. In the absence of a functioning economy, nations fractured along pre-existing fault lines – political, ethnic, religious. The internet, once a tool of global connection, became a platform for the dissemination of propaganda and lies. Leaders of authoritarian regimes seized the moment to consolidate power, while democracies crumbled under the weight of their own inefficacy.
The Age of Isolation
By March, the global collapse was complete. The once-interconnected world had splintered into isolated, self-sufficient enclaves. Communication between nations, and even between cities within nations, became sporadic and unreliable. The internet, now little more than a collection of echo chambers, reflected the chaos and confusion of a world adrift.
In the cities, the wealthy who had once controlled the levers of power found themselves reduced to the same level as everyone else. Their mansions were no more secure than the slums; their former wealth no longer provided them any security. The great divide between rich and poor had vanished, not through social reform, but through the equalizing force of universal poverty.
In the countryside, survival became the sole focus. Those with the knowledge and resources to grow their own food fared better than those who had relied on the convenience of the modern supply chain. But even in rural areas, the lack of access to fuel and medicine took its toll. The sick died untreated, and the elderly perished in the cold of a winter without heat.
New social structures emerged out of necessity. Small communities banded together for mutual protection and resource sharing. These enclaves, often no larger than a few dozen people, became the new “nations” of the world. Bartering systems developed, but without a common currency, trade remained limited and precarious. The concept of wealth had been reduced to the most basic necessities – food, water, shelter, and security.
The world’s great cities, once vibrant hubs of culture and commerce, became ghost towns. Skyscrapers stood as monuments to a bygone era, their windows shattered, their interiors looted. The streets, once filled with the noise of human activity, were now haunted by the desperate and the lost.
The New Order
As the year dragged on, the world settled into a grim new normal. The collapse had not just destroyed the economy; it had shattered the very idea of progress. The optimism of the 21st century, with its promises of technological advancement and global prosperity, had been revealed as a fragile illusion. In its place was a world that could only look backward, longing for a past that could never be reclaimed.
In the absence of global governance, power became localized and tribal. The strongest, or the most ruthless, rose to positions of leadership, enforcing order through fear and violence. In some regions, warlords emerged, their private armies enforcing their will on the terrified population. In others, religious leaders filled the power vacuum, offering salvation in exchange for absolute obedience. Democracy, with its need for a stable economy and informed citizenry, had no place in this new world.
The global collapse of 2025 became known as “The Great Unraveling.” Historians, if there were ever to be any, would later argue over the causes – whether it was the reckless greed of the financial sector, the complacency of governments, overreliance on technology, or the inherent instability of a fiat system built on intangible wealth. But for the people living through it, the reasons did not matter. All that mattered was survival.
By the end of the year, the population of the world had plummeted. Disease, starvation, and violence had claimed billions. The global population, once projected to reach 9 billion, now hovered around 4 billion, with the numbers continuing to decline. The world, once crowded and interconnected, had become vast and empty, with large swathes of land abandoned and untended.
In this new world, the idea of rebuilding seemed as alien as the idea of space travel. There was no economy to restart, no institutions to reform. The social contract that had once bound humanity together had been irreparably broken. The nations of the world, now mere memories, had dissolved into a patchwork of isolated communities, each struggling to survive in a new world that had lost all sense of order and purpose.
The Flicker of Hope
But even in the darkest of times, there were flickers of hope. In some of the more stable enclaves, people began to talk of rebuilding – not the world as it had been, but something new, something better. They spoke of lessons learned, of the need for a society that valued sustainability over growth, cooperation over competition, community over individualism.
These ideas, radical in their simplicity, began to take root. Small groups of thinkers, scientists, and philosophers gathered in secret, sharing knowledge and ideas. They worked to preserve what little remained of the world’s intellectual heritage, hiding books and data in makeshift libraries, teaching the next generation to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors.
The remnants of the internet, though fragmented and unreliable, became a tool for these new thinkers. They used it to communicate across the great distances that now separated them, sharing seeds, plans for renewable energy, and methods for sustainable living. They knew that the road ahead would be long and difficult, that there was no quick fix for the devastation that had been wrought. But they believed, perhaps naively, that humanity could rise from the ashes of its own folly.
In the ruins of the old world, these communities began to plant the seeds of a new civilization. They had no grand visions of empire or conquest, no desire to recreate the world that had been lost. Instead, they focused on the small, the local, the immediate. They rebuilt slowly, carefully, with an eye toward the future, rather than the past.
As the years passed, these enclaves grew in number and strength. The old cities, once symbols of human achievement, became the foundations of new communities. The skyscrapers, now overgrown with vegetation, provided shelter for those who dared to return. The streets, once choked with traffic, became pathways for pedestrians and cyclists.
The new society that emerged from the Great Unraveling was one of necessity, not of choice. It was a society that understood the fragility of the systems that had once governed the world, and the need to build something more resilient
But it was also a society haunted by the ghosts of the past. The memories of the old world, of the wealth and power that had once defined human existence, lingered like a shadow over the new order. The people knew that they could not forget the lessons of the collapse, that they could not allow themselves to fall into the same traps that had destroyed their ancestors.
And so, they moved forward, cautiously, step by step, into an uncertain future, guided by the hope of something better. For in the end, hope was all they had left. Hope that humanity could learn from its mistakes, hope that a better world could be built from the ruins of the old, hope that the collapse of 2025 would not be the end but rather, a new beginning.
And so, in the shadow of the skyscrapers, beneath the flickering lights of this young new civilization, the people of the world continued to rebuild, to dream, and to hope for a future that was worth living for, worth fighting for. In the end, would it have been easier to just change directions before everything got to a point of no return? They would never know…but we still can.
Join us in building a better world – a world where people care about and for one another, a world where greed is replaced by charity and selfishness by selflessness. If we don’t change the world now, we will find ourselves in a world that changes us, forever. If not now, then when…if not you, then who.