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I see absolutely no evidence to support any of this. Indeed, all I ever see people hold forth as possibilities are "plans" based on pure wishful thinking and optimism bias (and sometimes religious faith), none of which, at least to my perception, can possibly work.
And you were right to, and you shouldn't have let people dissuade you from it.
I don't think my "plan" of "prep to survive nuclear war so that you can clean up the mess afterward" counts as "optimism bias", except from a highly-mindkilled perspective. I mean, I've tried my best to get civil defence considered in policy despite it not being in my CW interest to do so.
Well, first, I'd note that the fall of (the western half of) the Roman Empire was a centuries-long process, not a sudden "Mad Max" collapse, and there's a lot of ruin in a nation. So, first, expecting a sudden end to the current system — like nuclear war — and for said sudden end to come in our own lifetimes are both rather optimistic. As is having enough left intact to make "cleaning up the mess" feasible. More likely is at least another century or two continuing the current trend of slow, grinding defeat, combined with slow decay increasingly held at bay by the consumption of the civilizational "seed-corn" that would be essential to rebuilding.
My point is that to think nuclear war is good because it mostly kills the Blue Tribe is Pol Pot logic; thus, to someone not highly-mindkilled, this is, if unrealistic at all, "pessimism bias".
The reason I think nuclear war is fairly likely has little to do with the CW except insofar as the CW is weakening the USA at a time when its hegemony is being tested (in particular Taiwan looks like a potential spark for WWIII).
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The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed. A good analogy to watch is South Africa, which got a late start on multicultural technocracy but then speedran tribal spoils and the competency crisis well ahead of us. The analogy isn't perfect (and leans more heavily into ethnic conflict than I think a fair assessment of our predicament would), but by SA's timeline the USA and Europe aren't even close to a breaking point. But this does assume a closed system.
If you want to be more optimistic, you can imagine the situation is more like 1848, where the geopolitical order everywhere is being propped up by a few Metternichs, and if they lose power, all the creaky structures in the periphery will collapse all at once. Once the hegemony of one ideology falls, we enter a Warring States-like period and some pragmatic, ruthless Qin(s) (or Prussia if we hold to the analogy) will sweep up all the statelets running insane inefficient systems.
Of course, this Qin/Prussia probably won't be running a system you like. Just not our current one.
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If you want to get involved in something where you have a decent chance of scoring a win, I'd recommend the trans issue. There are actual structures there within which people can work to push things forward.
If you want a global all-encompassing win, like the progressives have, than you're going to be pretty unhappy for a long time.
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