I've thought about that, too. How very rural people way back when may not have known or cared what empire they belonged to. I read years ago about a region France that routinely got double taxed because no one was really sure if they were French or German, and it was just easier to pay your taxes to both collectors than fight it. A society like that, yeah, they may not care so much about the empires collapse. But us? Even in the most rural areas of any 'western' country, the difference would likely be huge. No sanitation department, no internet, no electricity. And because, especially in the US, we have never developed a sense of personal responsibility to our communities or any kind of solidarity, we are unlikely to weather that particularly well. There'll be no spontaneous eruption of communal gatherings and a sense of building a better community. They'll be bastards hoarding shit and people shooting each other because there's no one to stop it. :(

There's no getting our act together. We've already passed the point of no return. Now we can only try to mitigate how bad it could get.

I don't think we will take any serious steps toward that, either... I'm worried we'll pull the Clathrate trigger in my lifetime