The Big One: A Pivot Point?

The US & Israel Attack Iran

Feb 28, 2026

Intensification Escalates

Many of us woke up to news this morning that the US and Israel attacked Iran overnight. There’s a ton of written news and live-streaming news and analysis about it already. Declarations. Predictions. Yet no one knows what will happen in any war, and especially in war when all the players are playing in very different paradigms and with very different rules. We’ve not yet had a modern conflict that could escalate in so many completely unpredictable ways and with so much capability and capacity.

This Fierce Community site has been quiet lately as we’ve been remodeling behind the scenes, working on how to help people, groups, and communities differently for rising societal / civilizational instability. I write here today because I think this major development may well be a huge a pivot.

I’m no international affairs expert, and I suspect most of us aren’t. Yet I’d bet a lot of us are having a similar reaction today to this news that this war has transpired.

This could be “The Big One,” as far as wars go. Short of nuclear war, maybe, or a US war with Russia. But war in the Middle East is incredibly complicated, possibly destabilizing to the whole region, and likely to catalyze unpredictable cascading effects, system disruptions, supply chain issues, spectacular energy impacts, and possibly rising war/crisis/escalation in other places as well.

I could be wrong. Any of us could be wrong on this thing.

Yet for my entire life since the early 1970s this has been one of the greatest fears of many — this kind of war in the Middle East. The possibility well-known as an untapped reserve of likely chaos.

I say this and write this not to cause fear, but to look at reality head-on. We deal with crises better when we are willing to look at them honestly.

The world order and in fact civilization have already been changing in the past year as the US government has become something different than it has been in the entire era since World War II. The post-war era has ended. We’ve been in something else that has been shifting and redefining.

Now it’s even more different. Now it’s “on,” as people say.

Hard Realities Are Likely

There’s a lot of casual talk sometimes about “collapse.” Not related to today’s news but just in general, I see my connections make pronouncements often on social media that this or that thing are collapsing. The American empire. Civilization. The economic system. And so on. Plus, there are a lot of people who say we should “burn it all down,” and start over.

What I don’t see are real acknowledgments in all the big talk and declarative pronouncements that any kind of major system, societal, governmental, or civilizational collapse, failure, or significant degradation is going to be really, really hard, damaging, harmful, and destructive to thousands or more likely millions of people. That everyday life changes. That everything changes.

Governments, structures, and institutions protect people, overall. The lack of those things leaves populations more vulnerable than when those things exist. It is one of the reasons why Germany intentionally dismantled governments on their eastern front during World War II. Without functional governments and institutions, Germany was much more able to do what it wanted. The effects were deeper and more thorough than on the western front, where countries remained more intact. Decades later, we can see the very long effects on the different regions and how they have evolved since.

Those seeking to seize power, money, and assets have less barriers in their way when there is more chaos and less structure to civilization.

Major war in the Middle East is likely to cause spectacular disruptions, failures, and collapse for many governments there, but possibly elsewhere as well.

The US is vulnerable, too.

Vulnerable

Our national security posture has weakened in recent years, even as the overall risk landscape has intensified and complexified. In this context, risk equals vulnerabilities plus threats plus consequences.

Risk = Vulnerabilities + Threats + Consequences

There are new and fast-evolving threats that this giant bureaucracy of a country has not been nimble enough to adjust to quickly. Congress and any related problem-solving, forward-leaning national security approach they would drive has also been paralyzed for a few decades now, and in the past year has become ineffective at a whole new level. The current administration’s national security approach has made strategy and decisions that run counter to many long-held national security approaches and priorities, which is very much changing our country’s risk profile.

The US is vulnerable in ways most of our society doesn’t see or talk about. We may see those vulnerabilities be exploited in the very near future. Pundits on the news will no doubt focus on energy, but we have incredibly cyber, economic and infrastructure vulnerabilities across our society. Several international players have been working to exploit those vulnerabilities for years. With this kind of big international change, they may see now or soon as the perfect opportunity to make moves.

A weakened and degraded US is desired by many countries and by various alliances because those players have a better chance of gaining or seizing power, places, people, and resources when the US is not upholding the post-war world order. Over the past year, the US has deliberately chosen to step away from that role, which has already been shaking up the world order. If the US is attacked in various ways, its willingness or capacity to maintain that prior world order is likely to further diminish. Also, war tends to weaken all of its nation-state participants. It takes tremendous resources, capabilities, wherewithal, money, and humans.

There are also accusations that some of the country’s current and recent actions are straight-up corrupt; taken to give the administration’s allies big contracts, ownership, or access otherwise to oil and other big assets. Some pundits today are claiming that this whole thing is a distraction to turn attention away from the Epstein disclosures and all that that involves. Realistically, there has been a push for years from certain American religious folks of different faiths to take some actions like what’s happening with this attack.

It’s hard to tell what’s really going on; what’s really motivated this. My guess is that it’s a number of factors, and that no one analysis is going to figure it all out. Maybe someday we’ll know with more certainty.

But whatever’s causing this doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening, and already happened. Whatever pushback Americans try to various pieces of government, like Congress, this thing has already happened.

You can’t un-bomb a city. You can un-assassinate leaders.

You can’t un-do attacking a predominant, highly influential Middle Eastern country with very deep loyalties and alliances worldwide.

The point is that the current US government has intentionally and deliberately picked just about the biggest fight they could pick in the Middle East. Whether it becomes a much larger conflict, full-blown war, world war, or whatever… it has huge potential to be disruptive and to lead to sweeping change. And the whole world is more vulnerable in that situation — not just a few countries. Sweeping change is sweeping change. No one knows what that will bring.

The Horizon of Great Change

Society and civilization on this planet have been on the path to widespread disruptive, transformational change for a while now.

Science from many sources indicates that we have overshot the human carrying capacity for the planet, and that there will be a corresponding “adjustment” to the population. In ecology, this is called “overshoot and collapse.”

Any population of any species from ants to rhinoceroses to humans has a “carrying capacity.” It’s how many of a species can survive given the land, water, and other resources like food (energy) available.

System science indicates that humans have overshot the carrying capacity of earth, and that there is likely to be an adjustment to that population size. In the non-human world, this population decrease often happens through disease, hunger, territorial conflicts, and so on. In the human world, it’s similar — disease, famine, war, other violence, disasters, and so on.

The system science analyses indicate that technological advancements like vastly increased agricultural output and likely tech changes that could help with that still would not be enough to mitigate this situation. Of course not everyone agrees with this conclusion. The point of this post is not to make that case, especially as there are lots of resources out there with this science.

The point is to say that we were headed for big disruption already. There’s increasing competition for food, increasing competition for water, an increasing number of failed nation-states, an increasing world population living increasingly in high-hazard zones, increasingly frequent and intense disasters related to climate change, other spectacular changes due to climate change, an increasing tendency toward othering of people by authoritarian-leaning coalitions to justify resource seizures, rising authoritarianism, artificial intelligence, and so on.

The civilization and society are highly complex, more advanced than ever before in history, more interdependent and interwoven than ever before in history, and totally absolutely completely not sustainable.

So then what?

Then we have big disruption. War, famine, disease, pandemics, competition for resources, shifting alliances, and on and on.

I actually think we can also have big shifts. I think we can find ways through all this, as a species. I think we have big brains, more capabilities and capacity than ever before in history, the knowledge of history, more ways to communicate than ever before (at least for now), and the opportunity to work on ways through now. Like, we could get into this stuff. We could be working on how to deal with big change, big disruption, and big transformation. Nate Hagens is leading work called “The Great Simplification” that may be the most forward-leaning thinking on all this. We’ll talk more about all that here soon.

The point across all of it is that we have options for dealing with big change, big disruption, big transformation, and big simplification.

I think we do it at the most basic level with community engagement.

Which is also — as it turns out — how we will have to deal with the effects of big disruption whether or not we try to think about it / prevent it / influence it / drive it / shape it / etc. before it really sets in.

And that is the reason why we are so fired up here at Fierce Community about community and civic engagement. It is the way. It is the best option. It is the building block and the anchor and the lifeline and the support and the strength and the social fabric and the heart.

So. We’re reorganizing behind the scenes, to better help with community engagement. You can work on community engagement where you are, too. It’s not rocket science. It’s not quadratic equations. It’s spending time with people. It’s doing stuff together with other people in the places we live. It’s building connection. It’s solving problems. It’s exploring possibilities. It’s empowering each other. It’s support. It’s listening. It’s a thousand things.

I write all this today because community engagement is also a way we can deal with war, with possible big changes in the US as a result, and with worldwide related changes that will affect us and our people and our lives.

Community is a strength for us. Even in the midst of great changes, community is the heart of where we are, where we can be, where we live.

If you’re interested in working on the stuff we’re doing behind the scenes at this nonprofit, drop us a note to people@fiercecommunity.com. Otherwise we’ll be out with more public stuff this spring sometime. For now we’re taking the time to rework it as we can.

Take the time to do what you need to do to get ready for all this big change. And spend some time engaging with the community around you to help. We’re all going to need that.

Onward and forward.

-V

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Fierce Community

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