🌍 When the Lights Begin to Flicker

When the Lights Begin to Flicker

In a world unraveling, one man chooses clarity over comfort.

Jeremy sat alone at his desk, bathed in the dim blue light of his laptop screen. Outside, Portland’s skies were tinted orange—not from a sunset, but from a distant wildfire’s haze drifting in with the evening breeze. The summer heat had lingered unnaturally long, clinging to the pavement even after sundown.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he refreshed the page on r/collapse. He wasn’t sure when it had become a habit—perhaps during the pandemic, maybe after the third record-breaking summer in a row. But now, each night, he sat down not to escape the world, but to face it.

Tonight, the top post read: “Phytoplankton Levels in the North Atlantic Drop 40% Since 1950s”.

Jeremy clicked, heart sinking before he even reached the article. Phytoplankton—tiny oceanic organisms, invisible to the naked eye, responsible for producing over half the Earth’s oxygen—were dying. They fed the fish, cooled the planet, and supported everything above them in the marine chain. Losing them meant starving the oceans. It meant choking the skies.

Scrolling through the comments, he read messages from marine biologists, data analysts, and regular citizens trying to make sense of it all. One comment stuck with him:
"This is like watching the oxygen drain out of your own lungs in slow motion."

He leaned back in his chair, remembering his childhood summers on the Oregon coast—wet sand between his toes, crabs scuttling under driftwood, flocks of gulls fighting over scraps. He used to love watching the tide roll in, believing the sea was eternal. Now he wondered what remained of that ocean magic.

The room was quiet except for the faint hum of the fan. Jeremy’s cat, Ash, curled beside his feet, as if offering silent solidarity. He closed the post and opened another. This one detailed the unrelenting heatwave battering the Midwest and Southern Europe. Entire communities had lost power. Roads buckled. Crops wilted in their fields. And the forecast showed no mercy.

He clicked on yet another: "Thousands of Reindeer Starve in Siberia After Ice Prevents Grazing."

Each post was another stone added to the weight already pressing on his chest.

But r/collapse wasn’t just doom. Jeremy had learned that. The subreddit’s ethos was raw, yes—but not hopeless. Its moderators insisted it was about awareness, not panic. People posted actionable advice: growing your own food, forming neighborhood co-ops, building water filtration systems. There were support threads too, like r/CollapseSupport—a space where people admitted to crying after reading about deforestation or melting glaciers. Where people reminded each other: You’re not alone in feeling this.

One user had written:
"We don’t look away because we’re strong. We look because we love this world too much not to."

Jeremy stared at that comment for a long time.

He knew his friends avoided these topics. “Too depressing,” they’d say. Or worse, they’d joke about it. “We’re all gonna die, might as well enjoy the ride.” But Jeremy couldn’t switch it off. Not anymore. The signs were everywhere. Dying coral reefs. Vanishing species. Political instability. Resource wars. And behind all of it, a strange silence—like the world holding its breath.

He got up and opened the window. The smell of smoke drifted in, faint but real. Even here, far from the wildfire’s core, the air carried traces of the crisis. He looked up. Stars dotted the sky, some faint, some burning bright. For a moment, the universe felt impossibly large. And yet, his little planet, spinning quietly in this vast cosmos, felt so fragile.

Returning to his desk, he opened a notebook. On the first blank page, he wrote:

“What can I still do?”

It was a question that had haunted him. Was it too late? Was individual action just a drop in the flood? But he remembered something he’d read earlier that week—a post about a village in India that reforested its land with native trees, restoring groundwater and cooling the region. One small community. A massive ripple.

He jotted down ideas.

Volunteer for the community garden.

Attend the next city council meeting.

Start a local climate resilience club.

Reduce meat.

Solar panel research.

Learn basic first aid and emergency planning.

Educate—not lecture—family and friends.

Document local environmental changes.


It wasn’t about saving the world overnight. It was about not being a passive observer.

The word collapse didn’t mean sudden death. It meant decline. Strain. Change. The world wasn’t ending tomorrow, but it was unraveling in ways too subtle for most to see—until it was too late. Jeremy didn’t want to be among the blind.

Later that night, he posted in r/collapse:
"Tonight I planted three drought-resistant bushes in my front yard. Small act, maybe. But it felt like rebellion. Like saying: I’m still here. I still care."

Replies came in within minutes.

“You’re doing more than most.”

“Every garden is a protest.”

“Hope isn’t naive. It’s fuel.”


Jeremy smiled for the first time that evening. Not because things were okay. But because he wasn’t alone in wanting them to be.

He turned off the light, climbed into bed, and whispered to the quiet night, “We’re not done yet.”

Outside, the smoke drifted. But so did the wind.