It is the time of monsters and in late summer we work with our

“The old world is dying, the new is not yet born: it is the time of monsters”, Gramsci wrote in his prison notebooks to analyse the cultural and political hegemony in times of upheaval. He describes a transitional period full of uncertainty, in which the old order no longer works and the new has not yet been born. To this day, or more so today than ever before, the sentence is used to describe crises such as ecological, social or political transformation processes in which old certainties no longer apply.

I think that today we can no longer talk about crises, but about collapse, diverse and brutal. It is undisputed that old certainties no longer apply and that we are under pressure to make a decision and to act, if we are to be honest. This text will be about the as-yet-unnamed Collapse-LARP-scenario-training-exercise-camp, which Tadzio Müller and I are organising this year together with a few other people. In Gramsci’s understanding, we as a collapse movement with different directions and approaches are also part of this monster, just as we are with our idea for another camp. The unfinished in the interim periods, which must be worked on, which must be experimented with in order to become something finished or to contribute to transformation processes. In the original idea, this text should have been much more about our nameless project than it will be now. Don’t worry, you’ll get all the information you need, but while I’m sitting at home, listening to REM’s “Monster” on the turntable and (not for the first time) getting overrun and feeling just as overwhelmed by what the unfiltered and uninterrupted news feeds in social media and the news from friends and comrades deliver to my doorstep, I realise that this text will look a bit different from what I had originally planned. That it has to look different – also because our idea has emerged from exactly what is happening in a real high-speed hellish cycle and because every headline shows how relevant this idea is.

So what is it about?

We are organising an intensive one-week course on solidarity collapse and disaster preparation. It will be about practice and probably also about radical personal history in the evenings, told by those who have experienced it, to remind us of the diverse practice that we do not have to reinvent.

Between 21st and 27th of September, four-day training sessions will take place in probably four thematic areas: supply and logistics, communication, trauma response and first aid, and self-defence and protection. After a day of rest to get to know each other better, to let things sink in, to rest, to chat... on the weekend, we will focus on the joint practical implementation of what we have learned in scenarios, LARP- elements and role-playing games. We will probably see what is still not working in the interaction or is particularly difficult, and that is precisely one of the desired reflection and learning effects of the whole thing, in addition to skills in the individual areas.

Even if the name is not yet clear, the why is and for us it is the only logical next step.

The Collapse Camp 2025 was a huge success. For us, it was also a risk at the beginning, almost a political bet, that in August, more than 800 people would want to participate, even though at the beginning of the previous autumn, when we started organising the whole thing, there was not much to suggest that this would happen. The bet was won and the Collapse Camp has ensured that collapse is on the agenda, has brought people closer to the topic and has opened the space that can now be filled. There will also be a Collapse Camp in 2026 to continue what we have started, which is very exciting for us.

However, what some of us already noticed during the 2025 camp, is that despite all the success, there is a but: to really get closer to our goal of being practically capable of acting in the event of a catastrophe, other formats that go deeper are needed. People who approach the topic of collapse, who understand that it is necessary to do something and who want to do something cannot make decisive progress by only sniffing around the topic every year and gaining initial insights. Our event is an attempt to focus and an experiment to not only open a new topic, but to learn a new form of activism. One who knows that the collapse will bring more risks, that it will require more preparation and training than, for example, a classic action of civil disobedience. We are once again starting a political bet.

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Preparation and participants

We are moving away from a camp just for a weekend, as well as from the idea of an open camp, with this bet. We are also changing the preparation. We are developing the structure and content of the four-day training and the weekend with those who have the knowledge that needs to be conveyed, and not through the usual calls for content. We are starting from scratch and giving responsibility to those who have the knowledge and the ability to convey it. The selection of participants is also an important part of the organisational process in this attempt, as we want to ask and involve people and structures that might benefit from the relevant knowledge as early as possible, and for whom the knowledge will hopefully be relevant and useful, beyond the benefit for the individual person. We have a huge amount of work ahead of us and we have not yet won the bet. But we are looking forward to it, because it feels good and right to not only think in this direction, but to go in this direction, also because it is not intended as a one-off event if it works. We want to offer people two further options in addition to the collapse camp: the opportunity to become part of structures that are capable of taking action and actually provide structures in the medium term that can help when collapse scenarios occur. Either way, we have to build them, and fortunately, we see many similar ideas and offers from a wide range of directions that are working on this, and that is important in view of the need and necessity.

A few more thoughts on the collapse movement

Our approach will also be criticised this time – too long, too practical, too much of this, too little of that. That’s okay, because this camp cannot and should not be for “everyone”, and it cannot be done any other way. Our idea also once again challenges and brings to light fault lines that we believe exist and should exist. Fault lines along certain questions and along one’s own = very personal situation that kind of turns into an either-or situation, but which can simply coexist as facts under the umbrella of the collapse movement (and alongside the climate movement 😉), because there are options in the movement for both the either and the or. These fault lines can and need to be endured, because different directions, approaches and changes in one’s own positions are actually logical and expected, simply because we do not have a predefined narrow definition of collapse and because collapse can look different for everyone and can occur at different times.

Personally, I have noticed in the last few days – in the course of discussions about ICE terror and murders and the reactions to it, while waiting in agony and anxiously looking at the news from Budapest to Maja, at a very shocking reaction of a supposedly collapse-aware person to the news about the cancellation of subsidies for HIV medication, at what the calls to DEFEND Rojava and to head there mean to me – that there is a difference between feeling affected and being affected, and that this difference is often decisive for which side of the fault line one positions oneself. I AM affected by ICE terror, even though I am not a BIPoC person and do not live in Minneapolis, because I know that we are not safe from such conditions here and because people (including myself), with whom I still block open-pit mines and occupy forests today, could also get hit by a bullet. I AM affected by what is happening in Rojava, because Rojava stands for something bigger. I AM affected by the trial against Maja because I know the family, because I am in contact with Maja, because I am non-binary and ANTIFA. I AM affected when medicines are no longer available to everyone, even if I do not need them, because friends are terrified to get into this situation. I AM affected because I am assigned to groups that are already exposed to real attacks beyond marginalisation and its consequences. I AM affected because I too am attacked and because friends, family and comrades are attacked. I do not feel affected while my privileges, group assignments and abilities to (also mentally and emotionally) distance myself still give me the option of not being affected. I AM affected, which is why I am entering into our political wager, which is why I want to become capable of acting in certain areas and create structures that are in other areas. This is also why I am pushing certain fault lines. In an emergency, these help to know who needs which help and who can provide it. It is completely understandable and okay that not everyone shares this affectedness. Those who are not queer see attacks on queer people as something terrible, but not as attacks on themselves, and this also logically results in different reactions and positions.

Our camp this year is the camp for people who are affected. It is not a matter of devaluing and excluding others, but rather an attempt to empower ourselves out of our own situation, and I am looking forward to seeing how we will approach and use this week together, how it feels to do something for ourselves and our own community in order to change our situation ourselves. I think that one of the essential points when it comes to creating something together with allies is the need to first gain clarity about where and for what allies with what knowledge and skills are needed, where we ourselves reach our limits at which supporters can take over. This is how functioning networks can be built. The Collapse-LARP-scenario-training- exercise-camp is our offer to you who are affected.

For all your questions, suggestions for names 😉 and if you or your group are interested in participating, please contact us at scully@systemausfall.org (Opens in a new window). We are now in working mode and in the next few weeks and months there will be more texts about the LARP-scenario-training-exercise-camp, and at some point the thing will also have a name, I promise.