What if?

Back in the 1980s, a big part of pop culture focused on dystopian reality, that is to say, movies and literature that portrayed a post-apocalyptic world. Of course, this is something that has been written about for a long time. Books like 1984 by George Orwell or Aldus Huxley's Brave New World gave thought to what would happen if society as we knew it fell apart.

Now ask yourself the question – what is required for society, as we know it, to exist? What do nations need to continue in the world of today? Food. Fuel. Energy. Transportation. Without any one of these things, one country has to necessarily rely on others for its continued growth and existence. It is that simple.

It is the year 2023. Currently, we are emerging from a worldwide pandemic. We have a war between Russia and Ukraine which threatens to destabilize much of the world. China, for its part, is currently going through its own battle with Covid 19, something which the rest of us dealt with over the space of the last two years. And, of course, there are the challenges that the United States and dealing with as a nation that need mentioning – as the saying goes, when America gets a sniffle, the rest of us catch the flu.

Why mention any of these things? The answer is in the title of this piece. What if? Fast forward a year from now. A decade perhaps. What can we expect?

In terms of Russia, war with Ukraine may actually have been inevitable. Since the two world wars depleted the male population of that country to the point where women outnumber men almost three to one, the demographic has been deteriorating to a point where Russian people, as a group, are literally threatened with extinction. This may seem bizarre, but when you think about it, why not? Just as with many other societies around the world, the Russian population is ageing, and when you throw Vladimir Putin into the mix, a dinosaur relic from the Cold War era who runs the country with an iron fist akin to Stalin, it makes perfect sense. An autocratic leader. An extreme reliance on rail as opposed to road transport. They need their satellites just as much now as they did