As always, you somehow manage to bring in the big bad leftists into totally inappropriate venues. James Burke had nothing on you for putting together gerrymandered and Rube Goldbergian connections (how's that for mixing metaphors?).

I do recall seeing that episode of "Connections", by the way, and by the time our apocalyptoid city dweller finally got his wimpy milch cow harnessed up to an antique plow, I could see he made his point chillingly well, without once mentioning the politico/economic basis of the civilization he described as collapsing. Did I ever tell you I actually met Jim Burke once? We chatted for about 30 seconds at Printer's Inc in Palo Alto, but as they say, that's another story.

After all, the vulnerability of civilization to fugue, or singularity, or just plain collapse is irrelevant to it's type of socioeconomic organization, it has happened to many, if not every, civilization in the past, although usually it is blamed on outside invasion instead of internal systems breakdown. The truth is the outside invasion is just the coup de grace that sends the already fatally-crippled civilization over the edge. The point is, all civilizations are vulnerable to collapse, and eventually do, usually of their own weight. We only make it a point to write books about the long-lived ones that eventually cave in. They seem more unexpected, and more remarkable, somehow.

My thesis, and what I am really interested in hearing your views about, is if the complexity of our global culture and its dependence on many individual "choke points" or bottlenecks and it's incredible speed of change, makes it more or less vulnerable to suddenly cramping up.

It took Rome 400 years to fall apart, and vestiges of its influence remain to this day, but what would a targeted hit on our civilization do to us? I can think of some non-political examples: a nearby supernova EMP frying every integrated circuit on the planet, or a virulent and devastating disease that incapacitates 80% of the world's population for a year or so (it doesn't even need to be fatal). Or how about a new and incurable plant virus that attacks only grasses (like wheat and rice).

Whatever the catastrophe, you don't have to worry about the Reds finding a solution to the probblem first. Remember, there are no more Reds, unless you consider Castro and Chavez a threat to global free enterprise.