I am speaking of the larger application. In my eyes there is no use in "being an island" as they say in a world that is collapsing.

Well perhaps you're attitude will change once that collapse gets much closer to home? It's true the entire global empire, which you can plausibly view it as since we all work together on many levels, not the least of which is financial, it's true it's collapsing but that is not anything that hasn't happened before. When the collapse comes it will simply be another in long long list of collapses of complex civilizations, beginning with ancient Egypt all the way up to the collapse of the Maya the Aztec civilizations that were destroyed by the Spanish. We trace our civilized roots back to the Portuguese and Spanish by the way, they were the first of what you could call the western christian empires, a group of empires, one after the other, that are all of the same basic civilization. That is why the Spanish are with us today, and why their nation and customs are basically the same as those in America or Canada.

It's important to make a distinction between Civilizations and Empires. There can be many short lived empires throughout the course of a Civilization's rein, Spain, Britain and America for example. We are rapidly approaching the end of the American empire and that is why you see all the madness. The transition from Empire to Empire is nearly always accompanied by violent upheavals and all out wars. When the civilization as a whole collapses that's another matter all together, it will be total Mad Max, IE: No civilization. There are no fixed to this progression down either, we just have to live through the consequences like the Roman's did, like the Mayan's did.