Britain in 2055 Mad Max or Blade Runner?

The choice is not yours, but it seems that one or the other is inevitable. According to a government sponsored website called Foresight

“Foresight, and its associated horizon scanning centre aims to provide challenging visions of the future, to ensure effective strategies now.”

Checking through most of its boring and uninteresting stuff on the site one can get access to the document titled ‘The Scenarios Towards 2055′ (3mb). Also you can see ‚ÄòThe Scenarios Toward, the process.‚Äô.

This is a fascinating read, describing Britain upto 2055. But no matter how crazy the stories may seem, its government sponsored! This is what THEY think is going to happen.

But to save you the hassle of reading it I will provide some comment and analysis here.

Page 10 of the document begins to detail the ‘Perpetual Motion’ Scenario that readers maybe familiar from films such as ‘Bladerunner’ and ‘Minority Report’. As efficient cars zip backwards and forwards and video advertisements adorn the sides of buildings. We all end up with encrypted ID cards and so forth.

But turning to page 46 of the document we see ‘tribal trading’, things change from Phillip K Dick to Mad Max. But not the Mad Max we know and love, but a more British one. The timeline tells us that in 2011 we reach peak Oil and in 2026 the UK banking system collapses. The rest of the tribal trading article describes how we will move out of the cities and into the countryside.

“This is a world that seems to have stabilised, but the change has been traumatic. By 2055, many have died, from illness as much as the endless skirmishes over energy and food, and more have migrated, often unsuccessfully, in search of places with resources where they can settle.”

So the Kalashnikov society could come to Britain, we won’t be able to travel from one end of the country to the other by car or train, but by foot and horse. We will toil in the fields and die younger but live healthier. People will scavenge the landfill sites of the past searching form microchips. But we will, according to the document, still have computers and in one form or another an internet. Will Shiptonblog still be there in 2055 I wonder?

Anyway its nice to know what the government plans for us when the global economy, the environment and everything else goes tits up.

Check it out