Deep Dive: How the Stages Get Set
People keep asking how Jefferson comes up with those numbers. Stage 2.5, 3.4, whatever. I tell them it isn’t math, it’s triage. The kind a medic does when three patients are bleeding at once and the bandages are thin. You don’t calculate— you decide who’s already gone and who might make it if you work fast.
Jefferson calls it “threshold logic.” He’s got his charts, his ratios, his triggers. Opioid deaths per hundred thousand, hospital closures per county, household debt ratios. He’ll show you a neat stack of data and tell you the line’s right here, not there. I listen, but I’ve walked through too many places where the line doesn’t look so neat.
Take Oklahoma. On paper, unemployment’s steady. But when the state quits patching the potholes and folks start buying bigger trucks instead, that’s a threshold. Nobody logged it, nobody charted it— but it’s there. Or Baltimore. Grocery shelves don’t go empty; they just swap out real meat for frozen patties and call it a “new supplier.” The report will say “Stage 2.8.” Out here? People already crossed into something worse.
That’s what Jefferson and I wrestle over. He says “trigger threshold” like collapse clicks on like a light switch. But collapse doesn’t trigger— it seeps. It’s mold creeping through drywall. One day you notice it, but it’s been eating the studs for years.
He likes to argue for clarity. “If we don’t draw a line, nobody understands the stage.” Maybe he’s right. People love numbers; they’re easier than uncertainty. But I keep saying: the numbers are clean, the world’s not.
I’ll give him this much— you need some kind of ruler. Without it, every crack looks like the end of the world, and you’d never tell signal from noise. So Jefferson lays out the ruler: Stage 2 when stress is obvious but survivable, Stage 3 when systems are straining hard, Stage 4 when replacements don’t come and violence fills the gaps. But if you ask me where that moment really hits in the field, I’ll point to the potholes, the freezer-burnt patties, the neighbor who stops boiling water because they’ve given up.
That’s the friction of this work. Jefferson wants lines sharp enough to stand on. I see ground soft enough to sink in. Between us, you get the map. That’s the glimpse. The full Collapse Compass lays out the thresholds city by city—his hard numbers, my street cuts. Subscribe to get the schematics.
That’s the friction of this work. Jefferson wants lines sharp enough to stand on. I see ground soft enough to sink in. Between us, you get the map. Just don’t mistake the map for the ground.
Until next time,
Ray