More free stuff! One of the ideas that my co-author Oliver had for the book (Future Vision) was to end with a series of strategic shocks. This was actually a book idea I had way back – ‘5 Ideas to Turn the World Upside Down’, but it works quite well in condensed (or is that expanded?) form here I think. Here are 3 of the 10…

The Second American Civil War
Don’t say we weren’t warned! Bruce (The Boss) Springsteen’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ anthem ‘we take care of our own’ and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement hinted at what was coming. The nascent failure of US capitalism to deliver the American Dream has created the great divide. In the blue corner, the tea-party traditionalists and the do-what-is-good-for-me democrats and in the red corner, everyone else who have been persistently marginalized and exploited to pay for the extraordinary US global debt and the failure of ‘small’ government to protect its citizens against ‘natural’ phenomena like hurricanes, flooding, bird ‘flu and the hell-bent erosion of the country’s natural assets leads to what is effectively a ‘Balkanization’ of the US.

Bird ‘flu pandemic kills 500m worldwide
It started innocuously enough. Well, not really as nobody had been inoculated against this strain of bird ‘flu. We learned later that the fatal construct was an illegal cock-fight in the Canary Islands when of all places where local canaries were being pitched against saffron finches from the Amazon. One of the bird owners became contaminated after receiving scratches from both species. And the incubation period; well it was a lightning 48 hours. Of course, all of this needed something else. Unfortunately the owner was a big rock and roll fan and hopped on a plane immediately after the fight to join 100,000 young kids at Shay Stadium where an ageing Lady Gaga was performing on her ‘Really Ga-ga’ tour. The rest, as they say, is history.

The moon becomes a colony of China
This is a reprise of the moon landings of almost 80 years ago. Space Race 2 has been between Russia and China and burst into life when the Russian Space agency, Roskosmos, announced a manned mission to the Moon in 2035. The US had long given away any interest in Moon landings but it was the Chinese through their Agency – the CNSA – who were the challengers. Their Long March programme was more than a wish to lead the world in the science of manned space travel; it was also a push to lead the world in extra-terrestrial colonization.

Peak oil and peak everything makes the search for new sources of raw materials – and indeed new materials – a critical requirement. Get in first and the cosmos is your oyster.
On 1 April 2040 Zai Zigzag in Shenzhou 21 blasted off from Jiuquan Space Launch Center in Inner Mongolia with his crew of 11 and just 7 hours and 24 minutes later, the five yellow stars on the Chinese national flag were fluttering in the moon breeze at the top of Mons Huygens. The earth’s satellite was now a colony of the Chinese.