If the US were to collapse, what would be the consequences?

[screembloodymurder]

Would our collapse mimic the Soviet collapse? Could we see a breakup of the states into blue versus red, North versus South, rich versus poor?

[RadicalTexan]

1. Don't tempt me.

Of course that means I'd have to leave Texas. Even though we could probably hold our own as an independent country - again - if we had to. Lots of oil, lots of guns. But the majority would legislate a theocracy immediately and the brain drain to the coasts would be swift and devastating.

[glowing]

2. yep, and I'd be hightailing it to the blue areas.

[JDPriestly]

3. We might have a fiscal collapse, but we would not break up

into sections or states. Americans have moved from state to state over the course of our history. We just always have really been one country, one national identity, one dominant language. The Civil War was about slavery and trade.

In America, only very few people can trace their family history back hundreds of years to people who lived in the same house and on the same lot.

Russian broke up into states because countries like the Ukraine and Georgia had historically developed separate national identities. They were separate countries that had been incorporated into Russia.

The only places I know of that have active separatist movements are Alaska and Puerto Rico. There may be small or crackpot movements in other states, but they aren't credible. Alaska is unlikely to separate itself because it would so easily be gobbled up by neighboring countries. It would be more likely that Alaska would join somehow with Canada, but even that is not likely.

[screembloodymurder]

5. Normally I'd agree with you, but lately I've been avoiding old friends and family.

I don't want to see them. There's no use in debate. This time, the lines have been drawn in concrete and I no longer wish to associate with these people. I just can't see living under Republican rule any longer and I think a significant portion of the population feels the same way. With each side blaming the other, an economic collapse will exasperate an already explosive situation. Division is a definite possibility.

[Orrex]

4. Blue vs red? North vs. South? Rich vs. poor? How would that be different from today?

Okay, that first distinction is somewhat recent, but it meshes pretty well with the second one.

[Kip Humphrey]

6. Alaska might susceed.

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. Not much. China would become next superpower. Hypercapitalism was bound to collapse after USSR

You can use hyper-capitalism to out-spend and bankrupt the Russians by isolating themselves and appropriating all non-Russian areas as a free-trade zone centered on the US -- Athens did it to defeat Sparta, and Britain did it to defeat France and Germany -- but systems built on exponential growth and sucking up 75% of the world's resources and paying people in overseas (unacknowledged) plantation colonies to make them are doomed to fail.

If America fails, it will not fail like the USSR, which suffered a crisis of confidence brought on by having to import transistor technology from the US. Now WE have to import ALL our high tech stuff from Japan. Nevertheless, unlike Russians, Americans are not prone to crises of confidence or self doubt. No, America will have a fascist revolution or Roman-style legislative coup and go on as a Republic in name only for years, fighting constant wasting internal civil struggles against a dwindling minority of non-debt slaves.