Last Week in Collapse: May 10-16, 2026
River deoxygenation, drone warfare in Sudan, concurrent drought/flood events, inflation, internal displacement, and a really big data center in Utah.
Last Week in Collapse: May 10-16, 2026
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, soul-crushing, ironic, amazing, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 229th weekly newsletter. The May 3-9, 2026 edition is available here if you missed it last week. These newsletters are also available (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox by signing up to the Substack version.
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Marine Heat Wave: “temperatures spike above what’s typical 90% of the time historically, holding for at least five consecutive days before breaking.” Scientists say that some marine heat waves may become “near-permanent” in the not-too-distant future, if the study from April is as accurate as they fear. The 19 enclosed marginal seas examined “have already entered an unprecedented warming phase following the reversal of aerosol cooling effect in the late 20th century. Under unmitigated future scenarios, many seas would experience climate warming rates three to four times higher than previously observed, with 15 seas at risk of entering near-permanent heatwave states.” The scientists believe that most of these 19 seas will enter this state by 2050, and 15 will experience near-permanent heat waves by 2100. The water in the Gulf of Mexico/America’s Loop Current is also warming faster than average, which intensifies hurricanes and will be aggravated by the AMOC Collapse later this century.
A study published on Friday examines the connection between coal combustion and solar energy, and arrived at an unsurprising conclusion: “aerosols reduced global PV {photovoltaic/solar} generation by 5.8% in 2023. From 2017 to 2023, annual aerosol-induced PV energy losses from existing systems were, on average, equivalent to one-third of the energy added by new PV installations….This coal resurgence not only sustains emissions but also impairs solar performance by degrading air quality as the atmospheric emissions from coal-fired power generation directly reduce surface irradiance. When these coal plants are brought online as backup during periods of low solar output, their emissions can further intensify pollution and prolong dimming episodes.” Coal combustion in China was estimated to reduce solar power generation by 7.7% in 2023.
Research published on Friday in Science Advances says that rivers are suffering from disproportionate “sustained deoxygenation” and that dissolved oxygen (DO) “concentrations {will} decline by 1.1% ± 1.6% under SSP1–2.6 and 4.7% ± 2.7% under SSP5–8.5 throughout the 21st century.” About 79% of the 21,400+ rivers examined for the study were experiencing deoxygenation. “Short-term heat extremes caused both fluvial DO decline and deoxygenation acceleration.”
The world is running out of sand, says the United Nations in a 107-page report from a few weeks ago. Sand, gravel, and other such products are the most used solids on earth, used in construction, manufacturing, water filtration, and technological products.
>“...what is hardest to measure is often what sustains both nature and human societies over the long term. Over-reliance on short-term economic metrics risks obscuring the geological and ecological processes that take centuries to form and may never be restored once critical thresholds are crossed….Extraction is increasingly concentrated in ecologically sensitive riverine, coastal, and marine systems. Mismanagement can result in cascading consequences: deltas sink, coastlines erode, aquifers become salinised, and habitats fragment….Despite its central role in sustaining modern life and economic activity, sand still receive {sic} little strategic attention from national governments, leaving its long-term sustainable management uncertain….Sand is an integral element of many ecosystems in our mountains, drylands, rivers, coasts, deltas, and lakes, both on land and underwater. Where sand flows and accumulates, land is formed and ecosystems are created, biodiversity flourishes, water is purified, and livelihoods are sustained….” -selections from the report
A paywalled PNAS study concluded that “El Niño is known to heighten conflict risk….Because of their impacts on droughts, famines, and floods….conflict risk rises primarily through El Niño’s dry, rather than wet, teleconnections.” The impact is most strongly felt in the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia. Projected anomalies for El Niño continue growing more extreme at the top end of predictions. The average temperature of the top two meters of seawater made a new daily high on Wednesday. And the overall surface temperature of earth continues rising.
Yet another study on Antarctic melting warns about basal “melt-driven feedback” loops: “warming creates a feedback loop: as the high-salinity shelf water becomes lighter, it lets warmer ocean water flow underneath the ice shelf, which then increases ice-shelf melting.” Another study examined the impact of insect dieoff (globally we lose about 1% of insect biomass each year) and found that the dieoff will “exacerbate rates of poverty and micronutrient deficiency in vulnerable communities” like the ones studied in Nepal.
A pre-publication study found microplastics in Amazon tadpoles for the first time ever; what took you so long? A geoengineering startup wants to scatter “amorphous silica” particles in the air (0.5 microns in size = 0.0005 millimeter) to reflect sunlight back into space, and they say they’ve raised $75M to do it. Research from One Earth pushes for a holistic, integrative approach to social sciences, climate research, politics, etc.
The United States continues its worst Drought in decades: 20%+ is in extreme Drought, and over 60% overall. The Drought on the Great Plains is expected to cause the smallest American wheat harvest since 1972, a drop of almost 25% when compared to last year. The Sahel saw all-time highs for mid-May last week; Mozambique too. Parts of India baked under temperatures above 45 °C (113 °F); and part of Uttar Pradesh (pop: 245M) saw 90 killed in flooding.
A study found that “more concentrated precipitation decreases land water availability across all climates globally, a drying effect as strong in magnitude as the wetting effect of increased total precipitation,” meaning that as rainfall is becoming more concentrated, and the land is getting drier…even if more precipitation falls. One of the scientists involved said, “Consolidation of rainfall under global warming will lead to a drier land surface.”
A study predicts that Indonesia will lose its remaining Papua glaciers by 2030. All but two have already vanished in the last decade. When Death Valley in California hit 46.7 °C (116 °F) last week, it was the earliest time of the year it had experienced such high temps. Some places in the Philippines felt record hot nights, as did placed in Indonesia and Malaysia. Record May temps across Mexico ranged from 41 to 45 °C.
Greece’s tourism-heavy economy is suffering as Droughts and heat waves threaten its busiest holiday season; shrinking aquifers, aging water infrastructure, and agricultural demands compound the problem. Somalia is meanwhile struggling with crisis-level Droughts that have forced the deaths of livestock and wilted crops. A quasi-paywalled Nature study is warning about “compound events—such as concurrent hot–wet and drought–heat extremes” becoming progressively common as the world warms. They write that “historically frequent compound events increase almost linearly with increasing cumulative CO2 emissions, whereas rarer and more severe events escalate disproportionately.”
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The northeastern part of the DRC has recorded a large Ebola outbreak that has killed at least 80 people so far. Hundreds more cases are suspected, and other cases are confirmed but are not yet fatal. The CFR/death rate for Ebola ranges widely based on various circumstances, but kills about 50% of those it infects. At least one case has been found in Uganda. There is a vaccine for some strains of Ebola—but not this one. Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever that spreads by contact with bodily fluids. Its symptoms include tiredness, fever, headache, confusion, and bleeding—among other things.
The WHO is warning about future cases of hantavirus, even as they predict that the cruise chip outbreak will not spread much further. And there is a suspected hantavirus case at a New York high school, reportedly unconnected to the cruise ship outbreak. The incubation period for hantavirus ranges from about 2-6 weeks, so some new cases will not become clear until perhaps early July. Some epidemiologists reportedly feared at first that the cruise ship outbreak might be a human-human transmissible variant of bird flu, and were relieved when it was “just” hantavirus…
Tick season has begun in Canada, and scientists are warning of a possibly devastating tick season. A dark bioethics paper from last year, whose ideas were pushed to a few million readers last week argues that “tickborne AGS {alpha‐gal syndrome, which gives people allergy to eating red meat} is a moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat” because it would decrease beef/pork production across the world. The authors suggest that spreading AGS is a moral good for the environment; are they sinister actors or unconventional environmentalists?
Some scientists are looking for Vibrio species in Florida’s coastlines; Vibrio is a collection of 70+ flesh-eating bacteria that will be more common when ocean temperatures rise to a more habitable range for the bacteria. Today there are only about 100 deaths per year, but the habitat of Vibrio is moving as far north as Maine during the summers. The disease generally enters humans through shellfish consumption (generally oysters).
Another increasingly common strain of bird flu is more transmissible among chickens, though still not transmissible between humans. Poland and France saw new bird flu outbreaks earlier in May. And, confirmed for the first time, we saw a case of bird flu transmitted from a cat to a human; a study confirms it happened around December 2024.
Inflation in the U.S. hit a 3-year high at about 3.8% for the last 12 months. Gasoline prices also hit an average $4.50 nationwide, the highest price in almost 4 years. Prices are higher in most of the world. A colossal data center is being planned for Utah that is expected to need more than twice the energy consumption of the entire state (pop: 3.5M). The enormous complex is projected to increase local daytime temperatures by 5 °F and nighttime temperatures by as much as 28 °F. It will be constructed near Utah’s Great Salt Lake, within a watershed ecosystem already on the edge of Collapse. Also, a new natural gas power plant must be built on the site, which will sit on a 40,000-acre plot, equivalent to about half the size of Malta. Trillions more will be invested in AI and data processing over the coming years, one of the few “safe” investments in a tumultuous & exploitative world.
The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and officials say a few more weeks of blockage will result in tens of millions of people pushed into starvation and famine far away from the resource chokepoint. Worldwide oil reserves continue being depleted, but some countries are benefitting from the oil shortage—or at least their oil corporations—namely the United States, Russia, Norway, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan.
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Hundreds of people in central Mexico were displaced by gang fighting against the community-established police forces. The Philippines is again impeaching their VP, who stands opposed to the President and warned in 2024 that hired assassins would kill the President if she were ever seriously threatened. A train hit a bus in Thailand, killing eight and wounding 32 others.
Taliban terrorist attacks continue against Pakistani security forces. U.S. and Nigerian forces killed an ISIS affiliate leader in Nigeria on Friday night. Gang warfare in the capital of Haiti killed 78 people in the last week, with 66+ others wounded. 5,300+ people were displaced by the attacks.
The EU is leaning more towards third-country hubs for people deported from the bloc. The Pentagon closed its program investigating and responding to civilian deaths in wartime. Meanwhile, a rare US-China summit in Beijing seemed to agree on little, except a few business deals; President Putin comes to Beijing in a few days for his own summit with President Xi Jinping.
Nine people across Ukraine were slain in a wide-ranging drone attack on Wednesday. The following day, Russia struck and destroyed an apartment building in Kyiv, killing at least 24. Meanwhile, the frontline city Izyum is covering its thoroughfares with nets overhead to protect residents from enemy drones. Battlefront soldiers from both sides have grown increasingly gaunt as rations are difficult to deliver to soldiers long-stationed in hidden positions. Germany is preparing to deliver some 500 ground drones to Ukraine, for use in transporting people from, and supplies to, the frontline. Robots are taking over positions relating to logistics and killing, further removing the human element from battlefield operations.
Israel and Lebanon are extending their ceasefire by 45 more days, but the meaning of “ceasefire” has lost its meaning over the past few years. Israel struck Tyre while the talks were being finalized. Other strikes occurred hours later. And 22 were slain two days earlier in strikes on Wednesday. IDF forces also reportedly eliminated one of the Hamas architects of the October 7 massacre.
The U.S. House of Representatives allowed President Trump to continue waging war in Iran, by the narrowest of margins. Mutual mistrust is preventing meaningful negotiations, despite being the only way out of a War that has jeopardized global oil prices and food security.
The 2026 Global Report on Internal Displacement was released last week. The 51-page document, which includes data up to the end of 2025, indicates a 60% rise in the number of those displaced due to armed conflict, when compared to 2024 data. The total number of displaced fell by about 700,000 from its all-time high in 2024, to 82.2M in 2025. The report includes regional overviews and some stories from individual countries affected by disasters and conflict. About 4M people across Afghanistan remain internally displaced; 7.2M in Colombia.
>“Internal displacement refers to the forced movement of people within the country in which they live….More than 82.2 million people were living in internal displacement across 104 countries and territories at the end of 2025. More than 68.6 million were displaced by conflict and violence, and almost 13.6 million by disasters. This is the first decrease in a decade….Conflict and violence triggered 32.3 million new or repeated movements across 48 countries and territories in 2025. This was a 60 per cent increase compared with 2024….Storms triggered 17.9 million movements, about 60 per cent of the total and the second highest annual figure on record for this hazard….Sudan recorded more than 1.7 million displacements, a significant decrease compared with the previous two years….The number of displacements triggered by conflict and violence in West Africa continued to decline from its 2023 peak….Conflict and violence triggered around 2.8 million displacements in Palestine in 2025….Floods triggered 3.6 million displacements across South Asia, a significant drop from the six million recorded in 2024….Wildfires triggered nearly 456,000 displacements in the Americas in 2025….Displacement in Haiti increased for the fifth consecutive year, reaching nearly 977,000 displacements….Around 7.2 million people were living in displacement {in Colombia} as of the end of the year, the second-highest figure in the world…” -excerpts from the report
Mali’s Russia-backed government launched an offensive against rebel Islamists who tried a coup in Mali a few weeks ago. Mali’s government claims to have killed hundreds of insurgents, but casualty counts are unofficial and unconfirmed at this time. In Sudan, where almost 20M people are facing acute hunger, UN officials say drones killed 880+ people from January-April 2026, mostly civilians. The distant and robotic nature of drone warfare also makes accountability difficult, complicating efforts at transitional justice and creating long lasting problems of accountability.
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Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-We are receiving conflicting messages about hantavirus, and this not-quite megathread from the subreddit includes a range of opinions, articles, pessimism, and dark humor. It has 450+ comments as of now, and may be worth your time.
-War enters the pores of humanity, its unconscious—and begins to transform everything. So says this well-composed piece from India.
-First they came for the garbage collection, then they came for the wastewater management… This thread tries to guess what services & systems will fail first in a slow-Collapse, when society rusts away in the background—as it is doing now. What will fail first? Hospitals, banks, schools, roads?
-Our method of “fishing” in the sea is not sustainable. This seldom-seen post from the bizarro–Collapse-meme/low-effort subreddit r/Collapze shows one reason why.
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