When the political and economic systems of entire nations collapse the consequences are devastating.

Earlier this year pharmacies and hospitals in Greece were unable to provide life saving medicines due to a shortages caused by a freeze in the flow of credit from manufacturers to distributors to patients. A collapse in the country’s economy has forced many Greeks to turn to black market barter economies and has left millions financially devastated, with no hope of finding an income stream for the foreseeable future.

The credit system of the entire country is in shambles. So much so that reports are emerging about food shortages and hunger within the Greek prison system, suggesting that serious problems in the food delivery chain have begun to materialize.

As Nigel Farage warned recently, we are beginning to see the rise of extreme political parties as a consequence of  the total and utter desperation of the populace.

Today the news gets even worse. Greece’s Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE) announced an emergency meeting to deal with what can only be construed as a tell-tale sign that this crisis is very rapidly reaching critical mass and may spiral out of control in the very near future:

Greece’s power regulator RAE told Reuters on Friday it was calling an emergency meeting next week to avert a collapse of the debt-stricken country’s electricity and natural gas system.

“RAE is taking crisis initiatives throughout next week to avert the collapse of the natural gas and electricity system,” the regulator’s chief Nikos Vasilakos told Reuters.

RAE took the decision after receiving a letter from Greece’s natural gas company DEPA, which threatened to cut supplies to electricity producers if they failed to settle their arrears with the company.

Source: Reuters

You may have thought the financial collapse of 2008 was bad.

That was just a warm up. The main event is staring us in the face, and the whole of Europe has front row seats.

We’ve repeatedly warned about what author James Rawles portrays in his fictional yet prescient account of the effects an economic collapse has on a society. In his book Patriots (and his follow up Survivors) Rawles details the loss of confidence in a nation’s currency and credit, a collapse of basic services, the emergence of bartering, the collapse of power grids and supply infrastructure due to lack of money and labor, the rise of political extremes, and even the civil unrest and war that follows.

Do you still think this can only happen in fiction novels?

We are now seeing the first signs of this happening inside of the European Union – the largest economic zone in the world.

If there’s is one thing we can surmise based on the last four years, it’s that the contagion is spreading and it cannot be contained.

Today it’s Greece. Tomorrow it could be your hometown.