The Modern Anthracite Apocalypse

We’ve all heard: “You must harness artificial intelligence, or you’ll be left behind.” "College can and will change your trajectory."

This piece was submitted to ‎ The Times-Tribune, the Citizens' Voice, the Standard-Speaker, and the Republican Herald on June 19th, 2026 and is a continuation of ‎ The American Frame's Local Love Letters Project.

We were told it was all a necessity. So, we signed on the dotted line. We traded four years for a debt we’ll never repay because the job market is now being handed to a machine whose servers will be housed on our pillaged property in Archbald.

This story started long before where we sit today. If you’re a "Zillennial" like me, you can still remember the tail end of an analog world. We had a front-row seat to the transition. First came social media and then came the algorithms. What began as a novel addition to our lives has rapidly metastasized into an addiction. It was promised as a tool to stay "connected,” but instead caused us to cut ties. We’ve seemingly become content with convenience over conversation.

Now, the very algorithms that captured our attention have matured into artificial intelligence. The two go hand in hand. The powerful create a problem and then seemingly solve it; trimming away a bit of our humanity with every iteration. They claim our land as their own, sell us false dreams, and leave us behind.

The “problem” with a generation like mine is that we’re naturally inquisitive and a bit rebellious—we’re American, after all.

Corporations don’t seek to compensate mental competition. They look to replace it with digital "models" that offer automated compliance. The warning signs are consistently blown off by onlookers who claim "we should just work harder." It’s a fallacy perpetuated by the very people we know—at the convenience of those we don’t.

Our land, our jobs, and our future are being systematically extracted from under us. It’s all a culmination of variables pointing toward a systemic collapse—our modern anthracite apocalypse.

It’s all a culmination of variables pointing toward a systemic collapse—our modern anthracite apocalypse.

Joshua K. Burke — The Modern Anthracite Apocalypse