Welcome back to the Deep Dive. It is late February
2026. And I have to be honest with you, right
out of the gate here, it just feels weird out
there right now. Yeah, it really does. I was
walking down the street yesterday, just looking
at people's faces, and everyone has this, I don't
know, this look. Like a specific vibe. Exactly.
It's this mix of total exhaustion and this low
-grade buzzing anxiety. I mean, we are seeing
headlines about massive layoffs in sectors that
felt completely safe, like. six months ago right
and we're seeing ai generate video that is just
indistinguishable from reality and it is actively
freaking people out it feels like the ground
is shifting under our feet every single morning
it does it's a heavy time the acceleration is
very real we aren't just imagining it the uh
the g -force of history is basically pinning
us back in our seats right now exactly well actually
maybe not exactly because i don't think anyone
knows exactly what is happening fair point but
that feeling that exact anxiety is why we are
doing this specific deep dive today. We are looking
at a piece of writing that just dropped. Yes.
And for me, it honestly felt like someone finally
turned the lights on in a dark room. We are talking
about part 14 of the 5 ,000 Days series by Brian
Rumley. Over at Read Multiplex. Right. And the
title of this specific piece is The Interregnum
Chaos and the Hero's Path Forward. The Interregnum.
That is a, it's a heavy word. It is. It sounds
like something out of a history book about fallen
kings or something. It really does. And we are
absolutely going to get into that. But here's
the thing that struck me first. The subtitle
involves this phrase, there be monsters. Yeah,
that caught my eye too. Right. And when I first
read that, my stomach just sort of dropped. I
thought, oh, great. Here we go. Another doom
scroll. Another expert telling me it's all over.
Because let's face it, your feed, my feed, everyone
listening, your feed is probably full of that
right now. Exactly. Just endless posts saying
we are cooked. It's over. Humanity is done. But
Brian does this amazing mental judo move in the
first few paragraphs that just completely shifted
my perspective. He does. He acknowledges the
monsters. Yes, he doesn't sugarcoat it. But he
explicitly says this isn't a manifesto on why
we are cooked. He says it is a cookbook. A cookbook.
I mean, what a distinction. I love that framing.
It's vital. Because if you think you are cooked,
you are just the passive victim. You're just
the ingredient being thrown into the fire. Right.
But if you have a cookbook. You are the chef.
You have agency. You are taking these raw, chaotic,
sometimes, frankly, dangerous ingredients, this
AI revolution, this massive economic shift, and
you are learning how to combine them to make
something that actually sustains you. It's such
a relief to hear that because, honestly, I've
been feeling a bit like the turkey lately. Same.
But Brian has really been building us up to this
exact point, hasn't he? He absolutely has. We
have covered the previous. 13 parts of this series
over the last year. It feels like he's been training
us in a dojo or something. That is a great way
to put it. Brian has been giving us this crucial
mental strength training. Yeah, if you look back
at those earlier parts, he wasn't just talking
about tech specs or token limits. No, he was
talking about human psychology. He was preparing
our minds for this specific moment in early 2026.
He knew this turbulence was coming. Read Multiplex
has basically been acting as a storm shelter
for its readers. And now that the storm is actually
hitting the windows, he's literally handing us
the manual on how to navigate it. So let's open
that manual. He uses this term interregnum. You
mentioned it sounds historical. What is he actually
talking about here? He is borrowing a concept
from the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci.
Right. Gramsci was writing from a prison cell
in the 1930s. Which is an incredibly tense time
in history. Exactly. He was looking at a world
that was basically falling apart between two
global wars. And the famous quote Brian uses
is, the old is dying and the new cannot be born.
In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid
symptoms appear. The old is dying and the new
cannot be born. Man, that feels incredibly accurate
to her right now. It is the absolute definition
of our current moment. Think about it. The old
world is the world of scarcity. Right. It's the
world where you trade 40 hours of your week for
a paycheck, where value is defined by how hard
something is to get. And that world is visibly
dying. We are seeing it right now. We see it
in the collabs of traditional media. The shaking
of the entire education system. The questioning
of the standard nine to five corporate model.
But the new world, this world of AI abundance
that Brian talks about where energy is cheap,
intelligence is basically free, and we can finally
focus on self -actualization. It isn't here yet.
Right. We can see the glimmers of it. We know
it's possible. But the physical and social systems
aren't built yet. We are in the gap. And gaps
are dangerous. Gaps are where you fall in. That
is the interregnum. Brian frames this as roughly
the next decade or so. We are looking at a massive
clash. You have this vertical line of technological
progress just shooting straight up. And it's
colliding with these horizontal, deeply entrenched
institutions. Institutions that move at a snail's
pace. Government, banking, social norms. And
that collision actually causes friction. And
that friction. that is what he calls the monsters
so the mission of this deep dive today isn't
to terrify you with the monsters it is to map
them because if i know there is a sea serpent
in grid square b4 i can steer my ship around
it exactly if i don't know what's there i'm lunch
precisely we are mapping the chaos so we don't
get consumed by it and to do that properly we
really have to understand the timeline here Brian
has this core concept of the 5 ,000 days. Could
you refresh everyone on this? Where exactly are
we on the clock? Sure. So Brian's thesis is that
there is a 5 ,000 -day window. which is about
13 .7 years. Right. And this window represents
the entire transition from the dawn of the AI
era to a real age of abundance. He dates day
one roughly to late 2025. When we saw the first
truly agentic AI systems come online. So if it
is late February 2026 right now. We are barely
out of the starting gate. We are at roughly day
60, maybe day 90. We are in the absolute infancy
of this thing. And Brian frames this whole journey
using. Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, the
monomyth. Which is crucial for your mindset as
you listen to this. I love the hero's journey
framing because it stops me from feeling like
an NPC. A non -player character. Right. In a
video game, the NPC just stands there and gets
burned by the dragon. They have no agency. But
the hero has to actually go through the fire.
To get the gold. And according to Brian's map,
we have officially left the ordinary world. That
comfortable, highly predictable world of 2019
or even 2023 is just gone. We have crossed the
threshold. We are now officially on the road
of trials. And this road of trials is the interregnum.
The road of trials is supposed to be hard. It
is where the hero is tested. But the good news
is we aren't walking into this empty handed.
Right. I want to briefly touch on the inventory
Brian has helped us build in the previous parts
of this series. Because if we are facing monsters,
we need weapons. He has been very deliberate
about this buildup. In part four, he taught us
how to reframe fear, how to turn that paralyzing
anxiety into actual excitement. And in part six,
he discussed the zero human company. Yeah, and
the existential crisis that comes with that.
The dark night of the soul. That was all about
decoupling your personal identity. from your
economic utility which is so hard to do but if
a machine can do your job better and faster that
doesn't mean you are suddenly worthless as a
human being it just means you need to find a
new source of work exactly and part nine was
about the artisan using your hand the return
of the artisan grounding yourself in the physical
tactile world when the digital world goes completely
crazy. And part 13, the Gilded Age. The incredible
importance of small, trusted communities. We
are absolutely going to need to pull all of those
tools out of our backpack for this next section.
Okay, let's get into the scary stuff. The scenarios.
Brian lays out 28 of them. 28 different ways
the world could essentially go sideways during
this interregnum. And he rates them by probability
from 1 to 10. But he explicitly warns us this
isn't a menu where you just pick one. It's not
like you can say, I'll have the economic collapse
with a side of uprising, please. No, it is a
hybrid scenario approach. It is a cascading wave.
Imagine a domino effect, but the dominoes are
also on fire and some of them are exploding.
One event triggers another, which amplifies a
third. He says we are likely to see... Six, seven,
maybe 10 of these scenarios happening simultaneously
and interacting with each other in real time.
So let's look at the high probability storms
first. These are the ones Brian rates at an eight
or nine out of 10 likelihood. These aren't really
predictions anymore. They're more like weather
forecasts for a hurricane that is already clearly
visible on the radar. The first one is a classic
social unrest. This is scenario number one. And
he ties this directly to Upton Sinclair's book,
The Jungle. Now, if you haven't read The Jungle,
it is a brutal piece of literature about the
meatpacking industry in Chicago in the early
1900s. It depicts human beings being treated
as less than animals, just grist for the industrial
mill. It is visceral. The stench, the blood,
the total hopelessness of the workers. Brian
uses that intense imagery to describe what happens
when mass job displacement hits us. And he isn't
talking about a 5 % unemployment bump. No, he
is talking about entire sectors, logistics, coding,
customer service, middle management, just evaporating
overnight. When people feel like they are just
waste product of the AI revolution, they get
angry. Brian predicts protests that rapidly turn
into riots. And he specifically mentions attacks
on data centers. That is such a vivid image.
People marching not on the Capitol building,
but on the server farms. Trying to literally
smash the physical brain of the thing that took
their livelihood. It is the modern Luddite movement,
but with way, way higher stakes. And this feeds
directly into the next monster, the information
war. Scenarios number three and 24. He rates
this a 9 out of 10. And he connects it to 1984
and Fahrenheit 451. We are already seeing the
edges of this right now. I saw a video yesterday
of a politician saying something pretty heinous,
and it honestly took me 10 minutes of digging
to realize it was a deepfake. But Brian says
this gets much, much worse. Imagine that confusion
amplified by a thousand. We are rapidly entering
a world where truth becomes a luxury good. Brian
talks about conspiracies regarding global elite
plots just exploding. Because people are desperate
for an explanation for their pain. If you lose
your job to an AI and then you see a video which
looks 100 percent real of a CEO laughing about
replacing you, you are going to riot. Even if
that video was generated by a bot farm in a basement
somewhere. It is the death of shared reality.
And that profound loss leads to the internal
cost. Scenario number six, the mental health
crisis. This one hits really hard. He ties it
to Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. That
book is about a society so utterly addicted to
entertainment that they literally lose the will
to live. Brian foresees a massive crisis of purpose.
If work has been your religion, the primary way
you answer the question, who are you? And that
is suddenly taken away. What is left? You have
a void and voids get filled. Exactly. They get
filled with addiction. Drugs, yes, but also algorithmic
addiction. Endless doom scrolling. Total immersion
in fantasy worlds. He predicts a self -medication
epidemic. It is fundamentally a spiritual crisis
disguised as a medical one. And while you are
having that breakdown, you are being watched.
Which brings us to scenario number 19, privacy.
He ties this to Snow Crash. Snow Crash depicts
a heavily fragmented world run by corporations
and ubiquitous surveillance. Brian sees a massive
societal backlash against this. As AI gets into
our glasses, our clothes, our homes. The eye
of Sauron is everywhere. He predicts the rise
of masked societies. People physically obscuring
their faces in public or creating Faraday cage
communities where absolutely no signals get in
or out. It is a visceral rebellion against being
reduced to data. Okay, so those are the massive
social impacts, but we really have to talk about
the money. Yes, because scenario number eight.
Currency devaluation panics is something that
I think a lot of people are sensing right now,
but they don't quite understand the mechanism
behind it. Brian ties this to The Mandibles,
which is a terrifying book about a family losing
absolutely everything when the U .S. dollar collapses.
But Brian's logic here is fascinating. He says
abundance actually breaks money. This is a concept
that is genuinely hard to wrap your head around
because we are so deeply used to scarcity. Right.
Think of it this way. Why does a cup of coffee
cost $5 today? Because the beans cost money to
grow. The shipping container costs gas to get
them here. The barista needs a wage to pay their
rent. Right. It is the sum of scarcities. Labor
is scarce. Gas is scarce. Land is scarce. But
what happens in the AI era? AI robots farm the
beans. So labor caught near zero. AI ships drive
themselves on fusion or cheap solar. So transport
costs near zero. An AI robot barista. Makes the
coffee. Suddenly that cup of coffee doesn't cost
$5. It costs 5 cents. Or less. Now at first glance,
that sounds great. Free coffee. It sounds amazing
until you realize that if everything costs 5
cents, wages also drop to effectively zero because
human labor isn't needed in the supply chain.
And our current money of the dollar, the euro,
is completely based on the old physics. It's
essentially a claim on scarcity. If scarcity
collapses, the value of fiat currency collapses
with it. We might see hyperinflation. Not just
because governments print too much money, but
because the actual meaning of money evaporates.
Exactly. And Brian warns that this transition,
the interregnum of money, is going to be incredibly
chaotic. We will see a shift toward asset -backed
or experience economies. If goods are free, the
only thing with real monetary value is something
AI simply cannot replicate. A live human experience.
A hug. A handmade wooden chair. A dinner party
where you actually know the chef. Okay, those
are the high probability monsters. But Brian
pushes the boat out much further. He looks at
the wilder frontiers. These are scenarios he
rates as lower probability, maybe a 2 or 3 out
of 10, but the impact would be absolutely massive.
And honestly, reading these felt like reading
a high -end sci -fi anthology. But then I stopped
and thought, is it really that far off? The one
that kept me up at night was scenario number
26, AI Triggered Mass Lucid Dreaming. He connects
this to the movie Inception. Yes. Think about
the mental health crisis we just discussed. Millions
of people with no jobs, no purpose, feeling incredibly
anxious. Then a tech company releases a Neuralink
update or maybe just a highly advanced non -invasive
headset that allows you to fully control your
dreams. You can live in a palace. You can fly.
You can be reunited with lost loved ones. And
the simulation is utterly perfect. Why would
anyone wake up? That is the monster right there.
The Lotus Eaters. Ryan warns of dream cults.
People who just reject waking life entirely.
They hook up to the IV and the headset and they
just check out. It is the ultimate retreat from
the pain of the interregnum. And then there is
scenario number 28, temporal desynchronization.
This one broke my brain a little bit. He ties
it to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.
This is fundamentally about the perception of
time. Imagine AI tools. or even cognitive -enhancing
drugs that allow some people to process information
ten times faster than a natural human. You are
sitting at Thanksgiving dinner. You are a natural.
Your cousin is an accelerated. To him, you are
basically speaking in slow motion. He has finished
his meal, read three books, and planned a massive
business strategy in the time it took you to
ask him to pass the gravy. That destroys the
social fabric entirely. How do you even relate
to someone who lives in a completely different
time stream? You don't. You get beep segregation.
The fast livers and the slow adopters. It is
a fundamental fracture in consensus reality.
And speaking of fractures, scenario number 27,
symbiotic uprisings. He links this to altered
carbon. This is the physical version of that
temporal split. You have the purest people who
stubbornly refuse implants, refuse genetic editing,
refuse neural lace. And you have the augments.
If the augments are objectively smarter, faster,
and healthier, the pures are going to deeply
resent them. Brian warns of severe hate crimes,
not based on race or religion, but on biological
status. The naturals hunting the cyborgs. This
leads us into section three. which I found to
be the darkest but perhaps the most insightful
part of Brian's entire analysis. He calls it
robot sentinels, the mirror of humanity. And
this gets pretty ugly. It does. And we have to
be careful how we talk about this, but we also
have to be honest with the source material Brian
provided. Brian draws a very uncomfortable line
connecting how we might treat robots in the near
future to how humans have treated other marginalized
humans in history. He explicitly references chattel
slavery and postwar victimization. Now, he isn't
saying robots are people. Right. He is asking
what it does to us when we mistreat them. Correct.
The robot simply becomes the lightning rod for
all this societal rage. Imagine you are that
guy from scenario number one. You lost your job.
You are angry. You feel totally powerless. And
you see a cheerful little delivery robot rolling
down the sidewalk. It perfectly represents everything
that ruins your life. And it has no feelings.
It has no legal rights. So you kick it. You smash
it to pieces. And maybe you film it for views.
Scenario number one details public spectacles.
He references 12 years a slave here. Brian predicts
public executions of machines, whippings, smashings.
It becomes this dark performance of human dominance.
Saying, I can't hurt the algorithm that fired
me, but I can sure hurt this metal shell. And
scenario number two, the markets. He references
Uncle Tom's cabin. Black markets for robot parts.
People keeping trophies of destroyed synthetics.
It is the brutal commodification of the humanoid
form. And this right here is the moral hazard.
This is exactly why Brian includes this dark
section. It isn't because we should feel profound
sorrow for the toaster. It is because, as he
brilliantly puts it, how we treat our creations
reveals who we are. It's the desensitization.
That is the real danger. If I get used to seeing
a humanoid figure being beaten in the street
and I cheer for it with a crowd What happens
when I see a symbiote human being beaten? Or
a person from a political group I don't like?
The psychological barrier to violence just lowers
across the board. That is the monster. The monster
isn't the robot. The monster is the latent rage
inside us. Brian is warning us that the interregnum
will severely test our morality just as much
as our economy. If we lose our humanity in the
process of fighting the machines, we have already
lost the war. That is a very sobering thought.
And Brian points out this plays out very differently
across the globe. Section 4 covers global variations.
Because the US isn't the whole world, obviously.
Geography is destiny here. Brian breaks it down
by region. In North America and Western Europe,
he predicts the fastest arrival of abundance,
but also the fiercest societal backlash. Why
the intense backlash here specifically? Because
we have the absolute most to lose. Our entire
status hierarchy is based on our job titles and
our bank accounts. If those evaporate, the West
has a massive identity crisis. This is also where
the currency devaluation hits the hardest because
our economies are so deeply financialized. We
are built on paper wealth. What about Asia? China
and India. He sees a really complex mix of authoritarian
control and underground rebellion. In China,
the government might aggressively use AI to crack
down on any unrest, a super surveillance state
on steroids. But in India, he paints this fascinating
picture of a clash between deep religious tradition
and intense youth innovation. The ancient temples
versus the cutting edge tech labs. In the global
south, Africa, Latin America. Brian seems strangely
optimistic here. He uses the term leapfrogging.
Think about mobile phones. Africa didn't lay
copper landlines everywhere in the 90s. They
skipped straight to cell towers. Brian thinks
the global south might leapfrog the final stages
of the industrial age straight into the AI age.
So they are culturally more resilient. Exactly.
If you live in an economy that is already highly
unstable, you know how to hustle. You know how
to build local community networks. You rely on
actual people, not massive government institutions.
That existing muscle memory is perfect for surviving
the interregnum. They might use mobile AI to
solve local agriculture problems. He ties this
directly to the omnivore's dilemma and essentially
bypassed the global financial chaos entirely.
So the populations we typically think of as behind
might actually be way better equipped for the
future. Because they haven't been softened by
the rigid stability of the old world. It is the
concept of anti -fragility. The West is rigid,
so it might break under pressure. The South is
fluid, so it might bend and adapt. Now looming
over all of this transition is the government.
Section 5 is titled The Authoritarian Shadow.
This feels almost inevitable. When governments
panic, they historically grab power. Brian predicts
scenario number two here, which is moratoriums.
They will try to ban AI development outright.
They will try to forcefully pause the servers.
He references Brave New World. But you can't
ban math. You really can't. Open source is out
there. And when the bans inevitably fail, they
will turn to brute force control. Needs -based
allocation. Heavy rationing. If fiat money doesn't
work anymore, the government steps in to decide
who gets bread and who gets energy. That leads
rapidly to mandatory digital IDs, conditional
access to basic services, and a very tight leash
on the general population. And what about the
trap he mentions regarding money? The trap is
hoarding the past. People will spend all their
remaining energy trying to save their dollars,
their 401ks, their gold. They are desperately
trying to be the richest person in the graveyard
of the old world. Brian is practically screaming
at us through the text. Don't do that. The definition
of value is shifting to entirely new things.
Okay. We have looked the monsters squarely in
the eye. We have seen the riots, the hyperinflation,
the surveillance state, the dream cults. It is
honestly a lot to take in. If the source material
ended right here, I would go crawl under my bed
and not come out. But this is Reed Multiplex.
This is Brian Rommel. He doesn't just leave us
in the dark. He hands us the torch. Section six
is the core of this whole thing. The cookbook.
Recipes for the storm. This is exactly why we
read Brian. He pivots directly to the hero's
path. The first crucial step is reframing. You
have to look at this approaching chaos not as
a final disaster, but as a forge of renewal.
You are a raw sword in the fire. The pounding
hurts, the intense heat burns, but it is actively
making you sharp. Let's get to the actual recipes,
the actual things we can do right now in 2026.
Recipe one is build personal arcs. I absolutely
love this metaphor. The flood is clearly coming.
Don't stand in the yard yelling at the rain.
Build a boat. But the boat isn't made of wood.
It is made of skills. Specifically, the skill
of symbiosis. Do not try to directly compete
with AI. Do not try to be a better raw writer
than GPT -6. You will lose that game. Instead,
learn to be the master conductor of the AI orchestra.
Learn advanced prompt engineering. Learn how
to direct these agentic systems. And diversify
your life. Yeah. He explicitly talks about investing
in intangibles. Yes. If the dollar goes to zero
tomorrow, what do you actually have? You have
your physical health. You have your deep knowledge.
You have your ability to grow food. You have
your real world friendships. Those are the true
assets that simply cannot be inflated away by
a central bank. Brian says to invest heavily
in the things that are real. Recipe two is the
foresight audit. This is a very practical daily
habit. This is literally homework for you listening.
Brian suggests a weekly journaling practice.
Sit down with a pen and look at the news. Look
at your local neighborhood. Compare what you
see happening around you to the 28 scenarios
in the piece. Oh, I see a sudden strike at the
logistics hub. Is that the beginning of scenario
one? I see a crazy new deepfake scandal swaying
a local election. Is that scenario three? It
fundamentally turns you from a panicked victim
into a calm scientist. Instead of panicking,
you are analyzing data. Uh, I recognize this
specific monster. I know its moveset. Exactly.
It gives you crucial emotional distance. You
are observing the interregnum, not just drowning
in it. Recipe three is community and guilds.
We touched on this earlier, but it is so vital.
You cannot build an arc alone. You need a trusted
crew. He references part 13 again here. Form
mentor circles. Find five local people you deeply
trust. Your guild. Share physical resources.
share specific knowledge, and most importantly,
share stories. Brian heavily emphasizes storytelling
as a critical psychological anchor. When the
outside world makes absolutely no sense, sitting
around telling a shared story about who we are
and where we are going is what keeps human beings
sane. And finally, recipe four is stoicism and
mindset. This is the internal armor. Meditate
on the philosopher Epictetus. Control your response,
not the waves. You cannot stop the federal government
from rationing bread. You cannot stop the massive
riot downtown. But you have total control over
how you start your own morning. Brian strongly
suggests daily visualization rituals. Wake up,
sit quietly, and visualize the immense abundance
of 2035. See the other side of the storm clearly
in your mind. Keep that specific north star burning
really bright so you don't get lost in the daily
fog of panic. And this brings us to the ultimate
role of the hero in Campbell's journey. The hero
doesn't just go get the gold and save himself.
He has to return and save the village. Brian
is actively calling on us, the readers, the people
listening to this deep dive, to step up and be
mentors. This is a heavy responsibility of being
informed. If you are listening to this, you are
in the top 1 % of prepared people on the planet.
Your friends, your family members, your neighbors,
they are going to be absolutely terrified over
the next few years. They are going to be deeply
confused. Buried and genuinely think the world
is ending. And we have the cookbook. We have
the cookbook. It is our fundamental job to share
these recipes with them. Use the reframing exercises
Brian taught us. Be the one calm, steady voice
in the room. When everyone else is screaming
that we are cook, you are the one standing up
and saying, no, these are just raw ingredients.
Let's make something new together. That is so
powerful. Chaos is the forge of renewal. That
is the core alchemical truth Brian leaves us
with at the end of part 14. It is the long game.
2032 to 2038. That is the target window. The
storm does break eventually. Brian promises us
that based on the cycles of history. And when
it finally breaks, we are looking at an era of
human flourishing and abundance that we can barely
even imagine right now. We just have to successfully
surf the giant waves to get to that shore. Surf
the waves, don't fight them. I think that is
absolutely going to be my personal mantra for
all of 2026. It's really the only way forward.
I just want to take a quick second here to appreciate
the sheer scope of the work Brian is doing with
this 5 ,000 Days series. Seriously. In a media
world just full of cheap hot takes and endless
fear -mongering for plics, Read Multiplex really
is acting as a true shelter in the storm. It
feels incredibly good to know there is a guide
out there who sees the very real monsters, names
them out loud, and then hands you a sword. Absolutely.
We are very lucky to have the map. Now we just
have to actually walk the path. So here is the
final thought for you to chew on as you go about
your week in this wild world. We've shown you
the map today. We've pointed out where the monsters
live. The waves are getting demonstrably higher
every single month. Brian asks you one very direct
question. What wave will you ride? And to build
on that... Something to think about for yourself.
In a future world where AI is completely flawless,
where machines don't make mistakes, maybe your
specific unique human flaws, your quirks, your
weird artisan hobbies, maybe those are exactly
the traits that will make you incredibly valuable.
Your humanity is your greatest asset. Deep Dive,
signing off. Stay safe and stay sharp out there.