Californians have dealt with all that and more in these first, whirlwind days of 2018. Pretty much every day so far, the state has made headlines for one calamity or the other. The rainy season had a horrendous start in Southern California, where heavy rains this week triggered deadly mudslides that killed at least 17 people. Raging rivers of mud and debris rushed down hillsides in Santa Barbara County, wiping out or burying homes down below.

Rescuers are digging through mud, downed trees and power lines, wrecked cars and even boulders searching for survivors. Some were plucked off their rooftop by helicopters while mud surged through their home. At least eight people remain missing. Mudslides aren't anything new in California, but they were made much worse when the rains that spawned them dislodged vegetation in areas charred by wildfires.

Protective brush on hillsides, which would usually be able to soak up floodwater, was consumed by fire, leaving little to no vegetation to prevent mudslides and debris flow.

Wildfires were an absolute menace in California last year. Blazes took 39 lives and torched 199,000 acres in the wine country fires in Northern California in October. The Thomas Fire - the 282,000-acre monster blaze that burned an area the size of Dallas and Miami combined - is still burning, listed at 92% contained by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It's the largest fire in state history.

The flu season has slammed California so far. There have been 27 flu-related deaths of patients younger than 65, more than normally seen during this point of the season. "Usually, at this time of year, we have reported in the neighborhood of three or four deaths in people under age 65," said Dr James Watt, chief of the Division of Communicable Disease Control at the state Department of Public Health. California is one of 26 states that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified as having "high" flu activity.

Quakes and California go hand in hand, and the state's first big temblor came four days into the new year. A magnitude 4.4 quake jolted the Bay Area in the early morning hours a week ago near Berkeley. It woke people up from Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz. It didn't seem to do much damage beyond some broken dishes and windows, but it forced delays on area commuter trains so that inspectors could check the tracks.

Thankfully there weren't any deaths or major damage, but it drove home another fact of life for Californians: The threat of the "next big one" may be right around the corner.

While accurately forecasting earthquakes is impossible, a backward look through the seismic record allows geologists to detect some distinct patterns. In the new study — which was presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, in Seattle, and published in Geophysical Research Letters — geologists Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana, tracked the incidence of magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes worldwide since 1900.

While in most years there is an average of just 15 such major shake-ups — already more than enough — there have been evenly spaced intervals in the past 117 years in which the annual total jumped to between 25 and 30.

Not only does the new study suggest when there could be an uptick in quakes, it also points to where: near the equator, within a latitude of 30º north or south. It makes sense that this would be the danger zone because any given point along the equator — the planet’s widest point — rotates up to 1,000 mph (1,600 k/h) faster than a point closer to the poles, so a slowdown in the overall spin would be more powerful along that midline.

Meanwhile, earthquakes continue to shake the globe with alarming regularity.  Just last week, Ecuador was hit by a magnitude 6.7 earthquake and a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in rapid succession.  Overall, there have been more than 3,000 earthquakes of magnitude 1.5 or greater within the past month globally.  So yes, I write constantly about the rapidly accelerating deterioration of our financial system, but the coming “collapse” is not just about money. 

I am convinced that we are entering a “perfect storm” in which a confluence of factors will absolutely cripple society and bring about changes that most of us would not even dare to imagine right now.

Politicians in Germany generally keep quiet on the domestic politics of other states. But as Trump’s run for public office became ever more serious, senior politicians in Berlin couldn’t stop themselves expressing their distaste. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then Foreign Minister now President, described the brash billionaire as a “hate preacher”. His SPD colleague Sigmar Gabriel, meanwhile, labelled him a “threat to peace”.

Top of the list of German concerns about a Trump administration were his insinuations that the US would no longer automatically come to the defence of Europe in the event of an attack on a NATO member. And the fact that he repeatedly barracked Germany for its trade surplus with the US in his first few weeks in office did nothing to slow pulses on the Spree.

A year after Trump took office, the dust has settled somewhat. But, with the US still not having an ambassador in Berlin, confusion remains over how exactly he wants to deal with Germany. “In Europe there is a realization that we cannot rely on our US partner anymore. One beneficial effect has been that this has urged Europeans to get their act together.”

Dr Michael Wohlgemuth, a foreign policy expert at Open Europe Berlin, points to a renewed impetus in EU common defence plans which have taken place over the past 12 months, with Germany as one of the main driving forces.

All other refugees in the world, a heartbreaking 65.6 million in 2016, are handled by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The funding that could go to the UNHCR to help the Rohingya or the millions made homeless in the civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen or throughout Africa, is instead being spent on the great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees of ’48.

I can’t help wonder whether the preferential treatment of the Palestinians over millions of their Muslim brethren is because they point a judgmental finger at Jews as the source of their sorrows.

UNRWA has cultivated a feeling of entitlement and need. Instead of helping the Palestinians become self-sufficient members of the societies where they live, the UN body has created a welfare culture and dependency.

Iran has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world, indeed, the fast-aging population of any country in history. It has the highest rate of venereal disease infection and the highest rate of infertility of any country in the world. It has a youth unemployment rate of 35% (adjusted for warehousing young people in state-run diploma mills). 

And worst of all, it has run out of water.

We might be observing the birth of Iranian democracy in the protests of the past few weeks, but it is more likely that we are watching the slow-motion train wreck of a once-great nation in all its gory detail. As I noted in an Asia Times analysis this morning, the most violent protests, eg the burning of a police station near Isfahan, happened in the boondocks where water has run out.

The river that runs through Isfahan, a legendary city of gardens in the desert, literally has run dry. Some Iranian officials warn that tens of millions of Iranians will have to leave their homes for lack of water. The country has used up 70% of its groundwater and it's literally drying up major rivers to maintain consumption. It's the worst ecological disaster in modern history.

Add up the costs of dealing with the water emergency, the bank crisis and the pension crisis, and Iran is close to broke. And that's just the beginning: The average working-age Iranian today comes from a family of seven children, but has fewer than two children. That means that when the older generation retires, there will be fewer than two new entrants into the workforce to pay for the pensions of seven retirees.

The demographic crisis hasn't hit yet, and when it does, it will be the financial equivalent of an asteroid hitting Iran. In other words, Iran's exhaustion of physical as well as human capital may have pushed it past the point of no return.