[FuriouslyAdrift]

We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan.

Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population.

So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.

[guyzero]

Japan, a country famous for no one knowing what its culture is.

[dyauspitr]

Reading about it in books and watching anime won’t prevent them from going functionally extinct in less than 200 years.

[guyzero]

No one cares. Japanese culture today is nothing like it was 200 years ago.

[dyauspitr]

I care. I don’t want the country of Japan to be a bunch of starving geriatrics a few decades from now.

[functionmouse]

I care

[kordlessagain]

doubtful

[N_Lens]

Ever heard of Malthus?

[goodpoint]

Yes, a deeply flawed theory.

[trumpdong]

Right. No species has ever overpopulated itself to extinction. Certainly no human sect. Why are there statue heads on an unpopulated island anyway?

[N_Lens]

The point is Malthus was very popular in his day and his predictions appeared iron clad, just like predictions about population collapse seem to be today. Many countries enacted population control programs due to his influence.

Reality often has a funny way of evading predictions.

[triceratops]

I don't believe that will happen.

[dyauspitr]

It will if nothing changes. That’s a certainty. But yes something might change.

[Qem]

> Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population.

And this was in a developed country well resourced to take the hit.

[throwyawayyyy]

I mean, if Japan is the world's future, isn't that kind of... good? It's not the first place I think of when I think of a failing country.

[guyzero]

Japan is not without problems related to a shrinking population i.e. https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/05/21/japans-immigration-poli...

but it's a problem easily solved by just letting in more immigrants.

[Hendrikto]

> but it's a problem easily solved by just letting in more immigrants

This has been tried extensively e.g. in Germany, France, Sweden, Canada, …. It did not work out great.

[guyzero]

Canada has always accepted immigrants. Rapidly increasing the number of foreign students to goose the slumping post-secondary education sector did not work out great. Even with the reductions, there are always immigrants coming into Canada.

[mystreamlincar]

Except the fertility rate is declining worldwide

[bamboozled]

It's causing massive issues in Japan, unless you read those Instagram posts that tell you everything is perfect.

[everdrive]

Ah yes, the hellscape that is Japan. The Japanese are currently fleeing to South Sudan and Darfur in hopes of a better life.

[belval]

The 42.7M tourists that went there in 2025 just enjoyed seeing the incredible decay of a dying country, a morbid fascination or sorts. /s (obviously)

[m4rtink]

You can actually see it if you know where to look - edges of big cities but it is most visible in the countryside and smaller towns.

And if you want to see how real Armageddon looks like, go visit Yubari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABbari,_Hokkaido

The collapse was due to local coal mining no longer being viable, but it still demonstrates how it looks like when a city goes from 107000 people in 1960 to 5600 in 2025.

Large empty areas where homes and factories used to be, old billboards for stuff that no longer exists, whole school buildings and gymnasiums out of use and overgrown. Most shops closed or hardly open & few remaining occupied buildings in the middle of it.

Was a really special experience & the local coal mining museum was super interesting - just wondering for how long it can continue going...

[bombcar]

Seems somewhat better than Detroit.

The question really is - how does an abandoned town hurt us? Sure, there may be some sympathy and loss for "what once was" (same as the pictures of the abandoned classrooms in Prypiat).

The US has had similar things happen but the spread out population has given it some resiliency (many towns that "collapsed" when the mill/factory/whatever shut down continue in a strange afterlife as a suburb of a nearby city).

[m4rtink]

One general side effect is harder access to affected regions - with less people to serve public transport gets reduced or even abandoned entirely (affect rail lines the most, due to the necessary maintenance needed for safe operation). IIRC there are numerous rural lines scheduled to be closed in the near future in Hokkaido for example (and of course a bunch of them got abolished in the Yubari area).

Is this a problem ? I guess not really & it might actually help the nature regenerate in those areas.

Where it can be a bigger problem is various small islands - where the islands being inhabited makes a big difference in territorial claims & is a very important thing in regards to what China has been doing (building artificial islands, etc.). For that reason I suspect the Japanese government subsidizes island communities quite heavily to keep them going & keeping suverenity over those islands and the surrounding sea.

[pibaker]

Cancun has one of the highest murder rates in the world. But I guess we shouldn't care about it because thousands of Americans fly there for vacation every day.

[matchbok3]

Tourism != real life.

Or are you joking? I hope so, because it takes a certain kind of stupid to not understand the very very bad things that a shrinking population would cause.

[Unit327]

The impacts haven't really been seen yet because Japan is still on the flat apex of the population curve, but the rollercoaster is about to start diving.

https://www.ipss.go.jp/pp-zenkoku/e/zenkoku_e2023/pp_zenkoku...