Orlov - Reinventing Collapse: the Soviet Experience and American Prospects

Praise for
Reinventing Collapse

Orlov has a brilliant mind. This is a lucid thought experiment of what could happen to the United States in the event of collapse, whether caused by dependence on oil, debt, other deficits, or, simply, the complexity and fragility of the system. A must-read for all those who study fragility and risk management.

NASSIM N. TALEB, Distinguished Professor of
Risk Engineering, NYU-Poly, author The Black Swan

Dmitry Orlov brings a penetrating intelligence to a subject few dare to face squarely: the impending tragic implosion of the American Dream. He writes with assurance, clarity and wit from a singular point-of-view someone who has witnessed the prior Soviet crack-up. This book is indispensable for anyone who seeks to understand the economic storm that is about to make landfall on our shores.

JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER,
author The Long Emergency

Dmitry Orlov is a genius. Reinventing Collapse in its original version has more than stood the test of time and events as a prophetic vision of the challenges that are being so clearly defined for us as a civilization today. The new and revised edition is priceless because it incorporates current events and emerging trends and views them through the eyes of this terrific writer and thinker. And Orlovs sense of humor always plants a minefield full of laugh bombs in the right places. Nobody sees it like Orlov and nobody says it like Orlov.

MICHAEL C. RUPPERT,
author Crossing the Rubicon

Be prepared to have your window shoved open and feel the fresh air shake you up. But dont worry, reading Dmitry Orlov usually just means gaining special insights with a strange, humorous twist. Dmitry is unique, contributing mightily to the vital but suppressed discussion of collapse and rebirth.

JAN LUNDBERG, Culture Change

Unlike many commentators, Orlov has seen collapse first hand, in the Former Soviet Union there arent too many books about the impending collapse of civilization that make you laugh out loud, but Reinventing Collapse is one of them.

BART ANDERSON, energybulletin.net

Heretical, hysterically funny, always on point, deeply perceptive Dmitry Orlov has been through a societal collapse and come out the other side. On that other side is a fascinating view of contemporary American society, a good deal of wisdom and a surprising amount of hope not that some magical transformation will fix everything for us, but that even the collapse of empire is not the end of the world.

SHARON ASTYK, author Depletion & Abundance: Life on the
New Home Front and blogger, www.sharonastyk.com

Orlovs Russian perspective on the American collapse is valuable not just for its predictions, but for its attitude: economic collapse is not an unthinkable horror, but a routine and fascinating part of history, and if you find yourself in one, you should look around.

RAN PRIEUR, ranprieur.com

Dmitry Orlov has set out to write a gloomy comparison of what happened to Russia at the end of the Soviet Empire and how ill-prepared the American Empire is for the same fate, and ended up writing something wickedly funny, profoundly hopeful and filled with good advice. His advice is not to avoid collapse, that would be futile, but to prosper and thrive in the midst of it.

ALBERT BATES, attorney, inventor, and author
The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook

Reinventing Collapse

The Soviet Experience
and American Prospects

Revised and Updated

Dmitry Orlov

Copyright2011 by Dmitry Orlov.
All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Illustration: copyright Hyun Jung Lee

Printed in Canada. First printing March 2011.

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-86571-685-8
eISBN: 978-1-55092-475-6

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Reinventing Collapse should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.

To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada
(250) 247-9737

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Orlov, Dmitry
Reinventing collapse : the Soviet exerience and American prospects / Dmitry Orlov. -- Rev. and updated.

ISBN 978-0-86571-685-8

1. Economic forecasting--United States. 2. United States--Economic condtions--2009-. 3. United States--Economic conditions--2001-2009. 4. United States--Politics and government--2001-2009. 5. Soviet Union--History--1985-1991. I. Title.

HC106.83.O75 2011 330.973093 C2011-900658-8

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T HE BOOK YOU SEE BEFORE YOU WAS WRITTEN between 2005 and 2007 and first published in the spring of 2008. The study and observations that went into writing it spanned a longer period: from 1989 to 2006. In this book I had made a number of predictions, many of which have since started to come true. Now, in 2010, the idea of the US going the way of the USSR is no longer quite so controversial: Dont worry about using the term collapse thats the term they are using at the White House a senior Washington insider told me recently. In many ways, collapse is already here; it just hasnt been widely distributed yet.

While updating the text for the second edition, I have been careful not to add any new predictions, but I did take a few out because, as I now realize, energy and financial trends are too volatile to call over as short a term as the publication cycle of a book. Global oil production appears to have peaked for good, but is yet to start seriously declining, and this has produced a slow-motion crash rather than an outright collapse. Financially, the high volume of debts going bad has so far outpaced the governments printing presses, keeping inflation out of the picture, while creative accounting at the Federal Reserve has so far prevented a run on the US dollar, though how long this can continue is anyones guess. We are in uncharted territory; all we know is that there is a cliff up ahead.