The Stages of Civilizational Collapse 
Jean-Michel’s Ten Years in Paris. Meet Jean-Michel. Fifty-eight, Paris, 11th arrondissement. Thirty years at the prefecture. An apartment nearly paid off, savings in an assurance-vie, a vote for the left. The state has always taken care of him. Here are his next ten years. 2027 – Small decay. The metro breaks down twice a week. His doctor's next appointment is in four months. His favourite brasserie closes – rent, rules, taxes, and the owner had enough when the windows got broken one more time. It reopens as a kebab shop. His daughter, an engineer, leaves for Montreal. In Marseille, the drug gangs settle their accounts with Kalashnikovs – but Marseille is far away. Everyone shrugs. 2028 – Disorder becomes normal. On New Year's Eve his neighbor's car burns, along with hundreds of others. His wife's bag is snatched on the metro, and she stops taking it after nine. In the summer riots, police in Lyon come under fire from weapons of war. The news calls it "a feeling of insecurity." 2029 – The bill. The government falls again. The rating agencies downgrade France again. One week, the lenders stop pretending, and interest on the debt becomes the biggest line in the budget. One Monday morning, a notification: withdrawals from his assurance-vie are "temporarily suspended" – under a 2016 law nobody read. That night, a police patrol in the 18th arrondissement is met by a teenager with a Scorpion submachine gun. 2030 – Austerity. His salary frozen. His pension de-indexed. An "exceptional solidarity contribution" on savings. Property tax doubled. The garbage collectors strike for six weeks, and rats run through the courtyard. His wife's bag is stolen for the third time. The neighbor from the fourth floor is beaten up coming out of the metro at Place de la République. 2031 – The exodus. The doctors, the engineers and the entrepreneurs leave – quietly, one family at a time. Transfers abroad are capped, "temporarily." The good restaurant where he took his wife for their anniversaries is boarded up. His son, thirty, still lives at home. The apartment is worth a third less, and nobody is buying. 2032 – Paralysis. Governments last weeks. Every reform triggers a general strike. One night, someone fires fireworks through the window of the apartment downstairs. The family puts out the fire in time. Now the first-floor windows are boarded up. A police station in the suburbs is overrun and burned; the officers escape through the back. Jean-Michel stops watching the news. 2033 – Services break. Blackouts in winter. Schools closed one day a week "for lack of staff." The police no longer come for a burglary – you file it online. Two streets from home, Jean-Michel is stopped at gunpoint for his phone. He hands it over and says nothing. Neither does anyone else. His building installs a steel door. 2034 – Fragmentation. Whole neighborhoods are now openly run by armed gangs, and the city negotiates with them to get the trash collected. Militias from both political extremes fight in the streets. After a football match, the riots reach the Louvre. One wing burns. Luckily, not the one with the Mona Lisa. 2035 – Street guerrilla. Shootings in broad daylight. A bombing at a train station. A politician assassinated outside his home. Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides is looted. Armored vehicles at Place de la République, curfew at nine. Jean-Michel's son joins a militia "for protection." Jean-Michel doesn't ask which one. 2036 – The failed state. Paris can't pay its civil servants. Whole districts are held by armed groups. The euro is "under review." An international administration arrives, with conditions. The state still exists, on paper. Jean-Michel, sixty-eight, packs two suitcases and applies for a visa – to Poland. Science fiction? French police have already faced rioters and gangs armed with Kalashnikovs and Scorpion submachine guns – in Paris, Marseille and Lyon. The first stages are not a prediction. They are the news. It won't come as a revolution. It will come one notification, one closed shop, one burned car at a time. And every step will be explained away – until the last one. 🎯 Collapse bingo. How many of these will happen in France over the next ten years?