Every morning, Johnny Sayles wakes up and scrolls through news about the collapse of human civilization . Formerly a medical assistant at a surgical department in Washington state, Sayles was laid off at the beginning of April, when the pandemic hit. Confined to his home by stay-at-home orders, he began spending more time on the social network Reddit , and came across /r/collapse , a part of the site where users discuss what many see as the inevitable collapse of globalized society. Sayles says /r/collapse has become part of his morning routine. “I just go to that subreddit and I compare what the world was like last week with this week,” he says. “And every week there is something worse. It’s depressing, but collapse is inevitable. It might be tomorrow, it might be in 10 years. But our ecosystem is shot and there’s only so much time left.” In one week in early October, the top posts on /r/collapse told you that ice cover in the Siberian Arctic was at its lowest extent in...