Here's one of the many videos on YouTube looking at a handful of the abandoned places across the U.S.. There are literally MILLIONS of vacant houses in this country, and tens of thousands of abandoned commercial buildings, dilapidated factories, vacant stores, dead malls, recently vacant office buildings, and post-apocalyptic looking places in the United States. There are many more around the world.
Simulpocalypse-(SIGH-mole-pock-a-lips) is a word I coined to describe how the United States has a growing number of vacant and abandoned buildings, and post-apocalyptic looking locations, while normal, everyday society goes on simultaneously, as if it isn't happening.
Kids from the 1960's and 1970's, late Baby Boomers and Gen X kids like myself, grew up being told that a worldwide nuclear apocalypse could wipe out civilization at any time. That's a thought that can put a damper on your vision of the future. We saw a growing number of post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies as we grew up, ranging from the original Planet of the Apes movie from 1968, to the early Mad Max movies, and films like Damnation Alley, which featured the coolest RV ever. As kids then, we regularly had drills where we had to get under our school desks, which is what we were supposed to do if a nuclear missile was about to destroy our town. Really. Yes, we realized the school desk wouldn't really help, we would all be blown to smithereens, but no one seemed to care.
Now it's the year 2025, us Gen Xers are middle aged, about 50 years into "the future" of our childhood selves. Guess what, we have never had a full scale, worldwide nuclear apocalypse. That's a good thing. Yet... somehow... we have thousands of places in the U.S. alone that are abandoned, or now look post-apocalyptic. Places like this, and this, and even this. How the hell did that happen?
Why do we have so many post-apocalyptic looking places if we've never had a nuclear apocalypse? Or any apocalypse? Most of these individual locations are now abandoned for financial reasons, and some are abandoned because of environmental events, or a combination of both. Most people don't realize just how many of these places there are. There are over 12 million vacant houses in the U.S. at any given time. That number includes vacation homes, second homes, and houses that are for sale or are short term rentals currently empty. But there are lots of completely abandoned houses as well.
Detroit has over 70,000 abandoned buildings according to Google search results. Flint, Michigan has 24,000 according to Google. Gary, Indiana has over 10,000 abandoned buildings, and Youngstown, Ohio has 740. Gary only has a population of 69,000 people these days, and Youngstown has 60,000 people. These are four cities, all in the Midwest, that were hit exceptionally hard by the factory closings of the late 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's. But not all the abandoned places in the United States are in old, rundown industrial towns and cities in the Midwest and The South. I live in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles. This is high priced real estate in Southern California. There's a recently closed Guitar Center store a couple of blocks from me right now, and an abandoned small office building next to it. That office building has been vacant for a couple of years, or more. There's a dead mall, almost entirely abandoned, a few miles from here. This is really expensive commercial real estate. Even here, in dramatically high priced SoCal, there are plenty of vacant and abandoned buildings. Obviously, the huge areas devastated by the recent Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena fires in this region have added 12,000 more burned buildings to the list.
When I write about the Simulpocalypse, I'm not talking about these recent tragedies, most of which will ultimately be rebuilt. I'm talking about the thousands of other vacant and abandoned factories, dead malls, empty houses, vacant office buildings, and other dilapidated buildings all over our country. There are so many of these places, that Millennials and Gen Z people started exploring and documenting them, a hobby and movement called Urban Exploring or UrbEx.
On my Substack site, where I write in more depth about a variety of subjects, I've started a series of posts about the Simulpocalypse. I'm looking into the different aspects of this phenomenon, coming at the subject from many different angles. Why are these places abandoned? Why is this happening now? What kinds of places have been abandoned? What forces led to all these empty spaces? Are any of these places being re-imagined and rebuilt? If this sounds interesting to you, take a look. The first three posts are up now, and you can check them out at the links below.
This is a parody video made by a trio of entertainment industry guys long before YouTube came along, back in 1998, I think. The Star Wars prequel series was behind schedule, and the movie Titanic just blew box office records out of the water. I know this because Chad Leeper, who did the voices for this parody, worked at a lighting company with me, and gave me one of the first few VHS copies of this video right after they made it. I still love the part where the lifeboat guy's head gets blown off. Great little parody video.
Imagine for a second you got catapulted through some sci-fi movie scenario, like a wormhole or a stargate, and suddenly found yourself on the ship Titanic, in port, hours before leaving on its maiden voyage. Since you're from its future, you know the ship will get most of the way across the cold, north Atlantic, and then hit an iceberg and sink. What do you do? You get your ass off the ship, that's what you do. Economically, many of us are on the Titanic right now. It's time to run back down the gangplank and get off that ship. A serious recession will
What am I talking about? If you read this blog very often, you know that taking a futurist look at the global economic picture is a passion of mind. I think of it like a long term weather report when there's a hurricane brewing off the coast of Africa. By standing back and looking at the big picture, the satellite images of the mid-Atlantic storms, we get an idea of how big a fledgling hurricane may be, and a general idea of where it's headed. I try to do the same thing to the economy. I look at the big forces building up, and the big picture that they tell about where things are headed. When I, or someone else, does this, big issues that will eventually happen, become apparent.
Here's some of the main things we know about our mid and long-term economic picture, the "storm clouds," so to speak.
-Our whole civilization is in a long, drawn out, transition between the old Industrial Age of factories, and the new "information age," or "knowledge-based society," as futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler called it. This completely changes how society functions on most every level. It also means that much of what we all believe about "the way things work," is no longer true in our rapidly changing world. The bad part of this issue is that MOST traditional businesses these days are working based on knowledge and assumptions that are probably no longer true, because technology, communication, and society are changing so quickly. This goes from the largest industrial age corporations to small mom and pop businesses. Knowledge-based society and "obsolete knowledge"
-The United States has a recession or depression every 4 to 10 years, on average, in the last 50 years. We're in year 10 since the last one. We're due. Recessions on wikipedia.
-The loss of good paying factory jobs from the 1970's to the 2000's, combined with the clustering of high tech companies, and The Great Recession of 2008, devastated much of rural and small town America. Huge swaths of this country have never really recovered from the Great Recession of 2008. In effect, there's a "Geographic Recession," vast areas of this country left behind and slowly dying that are basically in a "permanent" recession. "Rural America is the New Inner City"
- Since the Great Recession of 2008, student loans have been bought, repackaged as Student Loan Asset Backed Securities (SLABS), and sold to investors almost exactly like subprime mortgages were in the late 1990's and early 2000's, which was the bubble that burst and drove us into that recession. Student Loans/SLABS
- There's over $1.5 TRILLION of student debt owed in the United States, that's $200 billion more than the $1.3 Trillion in subprime loans that collapsed the world economy in 2008. $1.5 trillion student loan debt
-Total public (government) debt in the U.S. is nearly $21.3 trillion. Debt clock
-Total personal debt (that's all of the bills owed by us regular humans) has hit $13.2 trillion, more than $500 billion more than the peak before the 2008 recession. A huge chunk of that is mortgage debt, but student loan debt and auto loan debt have grown a lot in the last ten years, and those hit hard when your hours get cut, you get laid off, and those types of things that happen in recessions to a lot of hard working people.
-Total corporate debt in the U.S. is $6.3 trillion as of June 2018. CNBC/corporate debt
-I realize that "a trillion dollars" is impossible to really imagine. Here's the actual number, one trillion: $1,000,000,000,000. Compare that to your paycheck. A trillion is 1,000 billions. I know, it's still hard to imagine. So try this one, a trillion dollars could buy one of these Lamborghini Gallardos (about $200,000 each)
for EVERY SINGLE PERSON in Chicago and in Houston, and still have enough left over to buy one for every person in Huntington Beach, California, where I used to live. That's how to think about a trillion dollars. Five million Lamborghinis, that's a trillion bucks. What color Lambo do you want? You can always trade it in to buy a house if you get too many speeding tickets.
- Basically, the U.S. government, U.S. businesses, and average people have been getting a lot of loans that they can barely afford now, and many won't be able to afford in an economic downturn. When interest rates go up (which the Federal Reserve plans to do this year), EVERYBODY pays more interest, and payments go up. That's the problem that set us up for the Great Recession, and we've gone past that level this time.
- The major central banks of the world have kept up policies like artificially low interest rates and creating money out of nothing and investing it in the economy, called Quantitative Easing. These policies were initially started as "emergency measures," to help the world economic system survive The Great Recession, but nearly a decade later, they're still doing these "emergency measures," and Wall Street and world financiers are now hooked on this cheap money like a crack ho is hooked on the rock. This has set our economy up for another HUGE collapse. Central bank "Collusion"
-The U.S. stock markets have been on an upward track, with some small, minor corrections, since about March of 2009. What goes up must eventually come down. The old school, traditional stock index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (The Dow), peaked in January of this year, and has been bouncing up and down a ways below that peak since . DIJA chart- click "max" for long term chart
-The NASDAQ stock index, which contains mostly high tech stocks, continued going up, but Facebook and some others took big hits last week (July 25th, 2018), and it seems the NASDAQ may have just peaked, or is real close to peaking. Historical NASDAQ chartNASDAQ 1 year chart
So what does this mean for you as an employee? What does this mean for you as a small (or large) business person. There WILL, without a shred of doubt, be a serious recession in the next year or so. This next recession WILL be as intense as the Great Recession of 2008, and it will likely be worse. That's what all the facts above, the "storm clouds," are pointing to. It will affect every single one of us at some level. So what do you do when a really big storm is coming? You get prepared... if you're smart, anyhow.
So it's time to get prepared. I don't know exactly when this next recession will hit, but I do know we're overdue. It should have started about a year ago, but the policies the Federal Reserve and other Central banks have in place have postponed the start of it. The huge tax cuts put the start of the recession off for a few months, maybe more. But these things have also let the debt and underlying problems keep growing, so the actual recession will be worse when it does happen. It's a little like paying off your credit cards... with another credit card, and then using the cards you just paid off. It buys you time, but the bills later on are a lot bigger.
I also don't know what will trigger the real start of this next recession. The trade war with China could do it. The investigations into President Trump and Paul Manafort and all the related issues could do it, if enough investors see that as scary for the markets. Heck, today a crisis in with Turkey's currency sent the Dow down over 200 points. I don't pay attention to Turkey, it's not on my radar, I look at more long term things happening. But the stock markets are down about 1% today because of a surprise from the other side of the world. The stage is set, and any one of dozens of obscure things could be the trigger to really get things headed downhill. Which I see as all the more reason to prepare in whatever way makes sense for you.
Who will be hit the hardest in this next recession? Here are some of the groups that will have it tougher than most. Rural America, to a large extent, is already in a near-recession situation. Things will get worse for most rural areas and small towns.
Because college debt is so much higher and has been encouraged like the subprime loans 15 years ago, college students, colleges and universities themselves, college towns and cities, and college sports will be harder hit than in the 2008 recession. That's one small reason I just left a region where the three main cities are all heavily dependent on the colleges there.
In any big recession, and any big downturn in the stock markets, retirement savings, mutual funds, 401K's and other investments owned by millions of average Americans will take a big hit, just like in the Great Recession. Precious metals like actual physical gold and silver, generally speaking, hold their value better in tough times. In today's world, a lot of younger people may put money in crypto currencies, and I have no idea how that will work out.
You've probably already heard of the "Retail Apocalypse." That's the name given to the fact that thousands of old school, traditional retail stores have closed in the last two or three years. This will keep happening. This is a huge example of the shift from the Industrial Age economy (big stores, shopping centers, huge malls, chain restaurants), to the Information Age or "knowledge based economy." People like shopping online and having stuff delivered, and that's going to get a LOT worse in the next recession. Right now, as many as 10,000 retail stores are expected to close in 2018, thousands have shuttered already. That's happening when we're NOT in a recession. In addition, 400 entire shopping malls (of about 1,100 total)are expected to close by about 2021. Again, that's happening without a recession. That's just the shift from the old school, shopping mall mentality to the Amazon/online shopping mentality. It will happen faster when the recession hits. So if you're working in retail, it's a good time to think of other options.
Real estate has soared in the big, tech hub cities since 2008-10, but not as much in most small and mid-sized cities. So that's a hard one to judge this time around. Real estate doesn't move up and down as a national trend like it once did, it's more of a regional thing.
There are a ton of variables. If, for example, you're in a mid-sized town where a second-tier college provides a lot of the economy, and you're an IT worker, it might be time to look for work in a major city.
I know this is a really depressing blog post. Is there any upside? Yes... New ideas, new businesses, and new industries tend to explode on the scene during recessions, especially big ones. There will be enormous opportunities for new ideas and new businesses in the next few years. One of the biggest opportunities coming is to completely re-invent both our K-12 and our college and trade education systems. We desperately need ways to teach today's children the ACTUAL SKILLS they will need in today's world. Check out Kahn Academy, as one example. It started as one smart guy making tutorial videos for his kids, nieces, and nephews, I think. Now it's considered revolutionary. That's just one example of where things are headed. Education will be HUGE in the next decade.
In this CNBC story, we hear of a former Macy's Store that has become a homeless shelter. Homeless shelters aren't really what most homeless people need, they need, cheap, safe, semi-permanent housing. But it's better than nothing.
In this just out CNBC article, the department store that clothed me in Toughskins as a kid, Sears, is shutting down another 72 stores. That's after 1,000 Sears/Kmart locations that have already closed. According to the article, many industry people think that Sears is close to filing for bankruptcy. Here's a map of those stores closing down. The closest to here seems to be either Charlotte or Spartenburg, SC area (hover isn't working right now).
That could hit home here in this area. The local mall here in Winston-Salem, Hanes Mall, is one of the "average American malls" that's still doing really well. In the struggling shopping mall world, the high end, luxury malls are mostly doing well. The malls in really small cities are often the ones in the "dead mall" world. There's no official designation for what constitutes a dead mall, but one with 70% or less of the shops filled (or 30%+ empty), is the sort of accepted threshold.
The Hanes Mall here is in the middle, which is why I refer to it as an"average American mall." Some of these across the country are really struggling, some are doing just fine. Hanes is one that's doing well. But three of its anchor stores are Sears, J.C. Penney's, and Macy's. J.C. Penney's has been struggling for years, and many people think its days are really numbered. Now Sears has industry people thinking it might be close to bankruptcy. Macy's has closed a lot of stores in its downsizing, but is definitely in better shape than those two. If Sears and Penney's bite the dust, malls that are now doing well, like Hanes Mall here, will find themselves quickly in a tough spot. What would you do with an empty store in a mall? Or a whole Dead Mall? The retail world is looking for really good ideas. Your idea might be one. My best ideas look something like this. Yes, that's a store in a mall, The Block of Orange in Orange, California. But that's just MY idea. Throw your ideas in my comments on Facebook. They may be much better than mine. Here's a little contest that takes place in this same mall "store" every year.
This still of the thrashed escalator area at Rolling Acres Mall is iconic to many now. This 2014 clip was an early look at what's now called the Retail Apocalypse. A quick online search will show a consensus of articles and videos listing thousands of stores that have closed and people expecting about 400 entire shopping malls to close within the next five years. That's if we DON'T have a recession anytime soon. On a timeline basis alone, we're due for a recession any time now.
While thousands of new stores have opened, more than 6,700 retail chain stores have closed in 2017 alone. There were thousands more in the past few years. There are a bunch of different reasons for this. This Bloomberg News article (Nov. 2017) adds crazy amounts of debt to the picture of retail stores losing ground to online sales, and the millennials' penchant for seeking experiences over piles of material goods. Any way we look at it, there are tens of millions of square feet under roof becoming empty. That's in addition to all the old factories and warehouses from decades of manufacturing decline. It looks like that this year's closing stores are just the beginning.
I happened to be born just a few miles from Rolling Acres Mall, the one in the clip above, in Akron, Ohio. I followed my parents around that mall, and many others, as a kid. This mall has been demolished. But hundreds more are still standing, and the term "dead mall" is part of our vernacular now. There's a dead mall, completely empty, fifteen miles from me right now. I'm sitting in the McDonald's in the parking lot of another mall that's packed right now with Christmas shoppers. But it's definitely not packed the rest of the year. The mall behind me is doing better than most. But two of its anchor department stores are Sears and J.C. Penney's, which are both struggling. For now, though, it's still alive and kicking.
My point here is that we have a HUGE amount of buildings of all kinds standing empty in this country. We have a lot more buildings that will become empty in the coming years. So... What are we going to do with all that space?
