What We Are Getting Wrong With Collapse Adaptation.
First Published December 22nd 2025
We are underestimating the combination of events we are already experiencing
Severe Heat, combined with Wet Bulb Temperatures, can damage some plants, kill wildlife, and harm humans.
Slow climate-driven failure of agriculture to provide the staples we need to survive: Wheat, barley and rye crop failures.
We are already in a slow collapse
Rice is already becoming toxic: "Rising global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and surface temperatures could negatively affect rice yields and nutritional quality; however, their effects on arsenic accumulation in paddy rice have not been assessed concurrently. We aimed to assess the impact of increases in CO2 and temperature (individually and in combination) on arsenic concentrations in rice, characterise soil properties that might influence arsenic uptake, and model the associated risks of cancer and other health outcomes due to increased arsenic exposure."
She never mentions Wet bulb Global Temperatures
We need to stop the fragmentalised approach to how we think collapse is going to play out.
We can only do that by learning a combination of skills that build resilience and, at the same time, give us the tools to manage grief.
Dr Gail Bradbrook keeps talking about the "Ceremonialists" attending to grief. Those same ceremonialists will probably be the Celtic Shamans who still haven't worked out how to connect to the "web of life", they reject learning survival skills. Probably because they haven't learned them themselves, they don't experience a connection with nature in the same way that people who are regularly in nature honing plant based survival skills. The ceremonialists are the "safe" shamans havent experienced a humbling by nature.
The thing is, these are safe Vision Quests; you can take water with you.
This is photographed from the Accidental Gods Podcast
This is photographed from the Accidental Gods Podcast
Dr Bradbrook talks about empty supermarket shelves, food banks, mutual aid and fascism. But not in detail. Collapsology is not something even mentioned. The Collapse of Civilisations is messy, once again, another person who thinks it's a breeze, let's "Hospice Modernity".
It's inevitable that in discussions like this, conspiracy theories emerge, vaccination scepticism, and elective suicide, and "the depopulation agenda" is mentioned, and we are becoming a community where conspiracy theories that were below the surface are accepted as "personal truths". There's a fine line between wellness fascism, neo-shamanism, the new age, conspiracy theories and fascism. The cross over is the conspiracy theories and some of the ceremonialists. It is becoming increasingly acceptable for neo-shamans to neo-colonially misappropriate ceremonies from indigenous people, even though they have been asked by indigenous people not to. For example:
Sundance is for Native Indigenous Tribal people only.
Sweatlodge is for Native Indigenous Tribal people only.
Vision Quest is for Native Indigenous Tribal people only.
When Dr Gail Bradbrook Talks about culture building, she isn't specific. But she's busy building a culture. But it isn't rooted in nature. She barely mentions nature other than in passing, where she goes to recharge her batteries. Harners Core-Shamanism does not connect us to the web of life, and neither do Ayahuasca, Psilocybin, or Amanita.
The civilisation collapse blind spots that I am seeing play out in this hope-driven ideology have serious risks to us all. Bradbrook, the systems thinker fails to address the immediate risks in any meaningful manner:
Food security crisis, Bradbrook Talks about empty shelves like any prepper, but then talks about Mutual Aid. She has no advice on how to plan now for the future. At no point does she suggest we stockpile dry and unperishable food. She is looking at food banks and mutual aid stepping up. The food banks currently hold the excess food. There will be a point when they are empty as food on supermarket shelves dwindle. We cannot view the scarcity of the future through the lens of today's abundance.
Bradbtook never mentions Wet Bulb Global Temperatures, ignored by climate denying preppers, XReadiness and New Age Shamans. Barely mentioned by the Galcier Trust reports about adaptation.
Climate Grief, Bradbrook seems to think the ceremonialists have the answer to climate grief, yet in all their online output, all we get is the belief that this world collapses and a new one is born, and a mountain of hope lies between the old and the new. All these drum-thumping new-age shamanic ceremonialists lack the one thing that is medically proven to help with climate grief: A deep connection to nature.
And
Understanding the relationship between the brain and nature. That Serotonin produced in the gut has nothing to do with the brain. Nature connects to us when we are in nature. Awakening in deep connection to the web of life happens when we learn nature connected Skills in Nature.
Ceremonies stolen or made up, devoid of nature are meaningless. They openly reject learning survival skills, or any kind of skills which connect us to nature. Bradbrook has been taken in by this Gate-Keeping nexus since the start of Extinction Rebellion:
The Spirit of Activism, a workshop held by Author and self-styled Celtic Shaman Manda Scott. Scott has no actual known history of NVDA. She wasn't on the road protests, and she has been cashing in on the climate crisis along with a few other online nature spirituality wallahs.
Bradbrook may have acknowledged the contribution that the road protests made to XR, We Stand Upon the Shoulders of Giants (YouTube link to Jamie Kinocasts film). I was on the Newbury bypass protests, as well as a few others. What won't come across in Jamie's film is that the camp I lived on kicked the ceremonialists out because they actually thought they ran things and started lording it over camp. They were as parasitic as the drug addicts that turned up at the Wandsworth ecovillage.
Now, Dr Gail Bradbrook enters the conversation about collapse: Is it coming? What are we going to do when supermarket shelves are empty?
Bradbrook Talks about not turning anyone away. Yet has clearly never lived or worked among the homeless or in adult psychiatry. Bradbrooks' naivety and Phoenix Rainbow forgetfulness, that like me, he was also at the TLIO Wandsworth land occupation, which allowed drug addicts in out of compassion and then threw them all out because they were parasitic, dirty and didn't respect anyone. Every single road protest camp I had been on had to deal with robed Druids behaving as though they were in direct communion with the goddess, and it was just a power trip.
We ceased to tolerate them, kicked them out of camps, involved the hierarchy of the Druid order, and we were right to do so. Because within a short while they had used their "ceremonial" weapons to attack an innocent woman driving home from work and found themselves barred from entering Berkshire.
Connection to Nature & Survival Skills
Bradbrook never mentions a connection to nature. Because the ceremonialists only talk about it in a notional way. "Connect to the Web of Life". Jargonisation alienated us. The ceremonialists use these terms because they can excuse their disconnection from nature by complicating the web of life and then simplifying the connection to "sitting under a tree.. and asking what it wants and then doing it in real time" -Manda Scott. This won't build a culture based on anything concrete. Scott's angle is to make money out of teaching Celtic Shamanic Practice based on her own safe shamanism mythology. She rejects learning survival skills because she thinks they are backward, apart from the Shaman who spent 12 years in the Amazon training, who sat in on her Ayahuasca tourism trip.
Bradbrook, XRreadiness & Scott believe that Collapse is going to be a breeze, and it comes across as crass middle-class nonsense with no foundation in reality. Bradbrook is stuck in the division of labour attitude while saying things like everyone is crew. "Go to the Green Gathering, we really need the guys who build stuff." At least she is more inclusive than Scott. But she needs to understand that collapse, and desperate people need discipline and that we can't save everyone.
Nature is ruthlessly compassionate. Survival now during post 1.5°C is a combination of luck, skills, communal cohesion, loyalty, Ingenuity and a drep connection to nature.
The reality is we are going extinct. Let's do it like humans and not sheep.
The Ceremonialists are already dictating how we connect to Nature and they lack the humility to come and talk with those who disagree with them.
Deep nature connection is good for your mental health. Shamanic healing, however, isn't about getting people into nature. It's about shortcuts into psychological therapies with uneducated practitioners of woo.
In 2023 & 2025 I was treated for PTSD. I was actually really unwell and had lost a lot of executive function. I would be extremely cautious about letting anyone who hangs out at the Big Green Gatherings healing area. I have been thinking for some time about making a short film about it.
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