[jrussino]

> There will almost certainly be a collapse of the modern world

I hope your certainty is misplaced; this is just about the most horrifying prediction I can imagine.

As far as I can tell, we're at a particularly precarious transition point with regard to how much energy we consume. If society "collapses" before hitting some technological checkpoint we don't get to try again - at least, not for a looong time - because we've nearly used up all of the low-hanging fruit in the planet's energy resources (fossil fuels).