When the male half of a society destroys itself in silence.

Picture an industrial town in Siberia or the Urals in winter 1993. The factories that ran full speed under the USSR are shut down. Men — who had a clear role, worker, soldier, father — find themselves without work, status, or future.

You feel the cold crossing the poorly insulated walls of communal apartments. You hear the heavy silence in kitchens, broken only by the sound of a bottle being opened. Women keep the house running. Men sit for hours, blank gaze.

The male suicide rate explodes. Within a few years, Russian men die by suicide at 3 to 4x the rate of women. Male life expectancy falls by 6 years in a decade. Alcohol, loss of role, isolation, despair: everything converges.

An empire that had defeated Hitler, sent a man into space, dissolves not under bombs — but because the male half of its population is destroying itself from within.

Berlin or a small Ruhr industrial town, winter 1930. Factories are shut. Hyperinflation has eaten everything, then the Great Depression strikes. Millions of men — former workers, artisans, WW1 soldiers — find themselves without work, income, or role.

You feel the cold crossing thin coats. You hear silence in kitchens, broken only by a bottle or a crumpled newspaper. Women keep the house running as they can. Men sit for hours, blank gaze, pride broken.

The male suicide rate explodes. German men die by suicide at 3 to 4x the rate of women. The rise is dramatic among 25-45 year olds — particularly those who lost their job or status.

And that is when the poison becomes explosive. These men without prospects, isolated, angry, become cannon fodder for extreme parties. The Nazi SA recruit massively: a uniform, a hierarchy, an enemy, a recovered sense of meaning.

The Nazi Party goes from 2.6% of votes in 1928 to 37% in 1932.

Caracas, 2015. The country was still rich from oil 5 years ago. Then oil prices collapse, corruption explodes, sanctions arrive. The economy crumbles.

In just a few years, the male suicide rate doubles, then triples in many regions. Men — primary providers in a very traditional culture — find themselves without work, income, without dignity.

You see the queues outside public hospitals, mothers carrying their dead babies because the morgue is full, fathers who can no longer bear to come home empty-handed.

Between 2015 and 2019, Venezuela loses more than 300,000 children under 5 and sees male suicide explode in parallel. Millions of families flee the country.