The Great Heist of 2025: Endgame

A strategic guide to economic collapse

Who's Sorry Now?

GAME OVERVIEW

In this strategic simulation, players take on the role of a shadowy cabal working to orchestrate the greatest wealth transfer in human history. Your objective: collapse the world’s strongest economy while positioning yourself to acquire maximum assets during the resulting chaos.

Difficulty: Nightmare Mode

Estimated Completion Time: 12–18 months

Players: Global Oligarch Coalition

TUTORIAL: THE LONG CON

Before starting gameplay, understand that this operation has been decades in development. Your coalition has already:

• Infiltrated major media organizations

• Established offshore financial networks

• Compromised key political figures across party lines

• Created shell companies in strategic sectors

• Your preparation phase is complete. Now begins the active gameplay.

LEVEL 1: INFORMATION WARFARE

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Control the narrative completely

Available Actions:

• Deploy coordinated disinformation campaigns across all platforms

• Activate sleeper accounts to amplify divisive content

• Launch targeted character assassination against independent journalists

• Release manipulated deep-fake evidence to discredit opposition

• Sue the lawyers who are litigating the illegal government activity

Success Metrics:

• 60% of population consuming only approved news sources

• Complete erosion of trust in traditional fact-checking institutions

• Establishment of parallel “truth” ecosystems where facts no longer matter

Achievement Unlocked: “Ministry of Truth”

When two people look at the same event and see completely different realities, you’ve mastered the art of perception management.

LEVEL 2: POLITICAL CAPTURE

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Install compliant officials at all levels of government

Available Actions:

• Activate kompromat files on resistant officials

• Threaten family members of holdouts with “accidents”

• Fund extremist primary challengers to moderate politicians

• Deploy selective prosecution against reformers

• Implement illegal massive layoffs of government workers with false claims of incompetence; targeting oversight officials, security agencies and department heads

Boss Battle: The Constitution

This antiquated document with its separation of powers presents challenges. Use judicial appointments to reinterpret it into irrelevance.

Success Metrics:

• Supreme Court packed with loyalists

• Key oversight committees headed by compromised officials

• Independent agencies led by industry insiders

• 75% of career civil servants replaced with partisan operatives

• Regulatory agencies hollowed out through targeted purges of experienced personnel

Achievement Unlocked: “Shadow Government”

When laws no longer apply to you but can be weaponized against opponents, you’ve mastered governance.

LEVEL 3: DIPLOMATIC ISOLATION

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Destroy international alliances and trading partnerships

Available Actions:

• Initiate trade wars with closest allies

• Withdraw from international agreements and organizations

• Publicly insult democratic leaders while praising autocrats

• Cancel security agreements without warning or consultation

• Threaten invasion and assimilation of other nations

Diplomatic Mini-Game:

For each democratic ally, choose between abandonment or active sabotage. Bonus points for pushing them toward your communist partners.

Success Metrics:

• NATO functionally disbanded

• EU fragmented into competing blocs

• Pacific allies seeking protection from rival superpowers

• International organizations rendered ineffective

• Resource extraction commences in assimilated nations

Achievement Unlocked: “Splendid Isolation”

When a superpower stands alone, it becomes surprisingly vulnerable to coordinated economic attacks.

LEVEL 4: MANUFACTURED CRISIS

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Create overlapping emergencies that overwhelm response systems

Available Actions:

• Trigger supply chain breakdowns in critical sectors

• Engineer energy shortages during extreme weather events

• Initiate banking liquidity crises

• Amplify public health scares while undermining response capacity

• Incite domestic unrest in strategic locations

• Exploit natural disasters or engineer environmental crises for profit

• Create media distraction cycles with celebrity scandals and manufactured culture wars

• Implement extreme cuts to social service agencies domestically and abroad to create widespread chaos and despair

Environmental Exploitation Mini-Game:

When natural disasters strike, delay federal aid while your private contractors secure exclusive rebuilding contracts. Bonus points for dismantling environmental protections during emergency response.

Crisis Management Mini-Game:

Each time authorities address one crisis, launch two more. Keep them perpetually reactive.

Success Metrics:

• Emergency resources depleted on multiple fronts

• Public trust in institutions below 20%

• Critical infrastructure operating at less than 60% capacity

• Security resources stretched beyond operational limits

• Humanitarian crises erupting both domestically and in allied nations

• Social safety nets collapsed, maximizing population vulnerability

Achievement Unlocked: “Chaos Theory”

When systems designed to handle single-point failures encounter cascading crises, collapse becomes inevitable.

LEVEL 5: ECONOMIC FREEFALL

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Trigger controlled demolition of the economy

Available Actions:

• Short the market while publicly projecting confidence

• Trigger massive sell-offs through coordinated AI trading algorithms

• Call in loans to overleveraged corporations simultaneously

• Manipulate commodity prices to bankrupt domestic producers

• Install unvetted hackers at critical levels to steal information for targeting and sale to new friends

Market Manipulation Mini-Game:

Time your economic attacks to maximize damage while positioning your shell companies to acquire assets at maximum discount.

Success Metrics:

• Stock market crash exceeding 70% from peak

• Unemployment above 30%

• Property values declined by at least 65%

• Corporate bankruptcies at historic highs

Achievement Unlocked: “Black Thursday”

When generations of wealth evaporate overnight, vulture capitalism reaches its ultimate form.

LEVEL 6: ASSET ACQUISITION

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Convert crisis into ownership

Available Actions:

• Deploy shell companies to purchase distressed assets

• Acquire public lands through emergency privatization measures

• Buy out failed banks to gain mortgage portfolios

• Purchase water rights and critical infrastructure at pennies on the dollar

• Seize control of agricultural land and food distribution networks

• Dismantle public education through budget cuts and privatization

• Acquire healthcare systems and convert to maximum-profit models

Resource Management Mini-Game:

Prioritize acquisitions based on essential human needs — whoever controls water, food, shelter, and energy controls the population.

Strategic Acquisitions Checklist:

• ☑ National Parks and Resource-Rich Public Lands

• ☑ Water Treatment and Distribution Systems

• ☑ Agricultural Land and Seed Banks

• ☑ Healthcare Facilities and Supply Chains

• ☑ Energy Production and Distribution Networks

• ☑ Educational Institutions and Student Loan Portfolios

• ☑ Food Production and Distribution Systems

• ☑ Media and Information Distribution Channels

Achievement Unlocked: “Neo-Feudalism”

When citizens become tenants on land their taxes once owned, you’ve mastered modern enclosure.

Population Control Mini-Game:

Balance keeping the population desperate enough to accept any working conditions but educated just enough to perform required labor. Maintain healthcare costs high enough to ensure debt servitude but low enough to maintain minimum workforce productivity.

LEVEL 7: DIGITAL CURRENCY TRAP

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Complete the ultimate wealth transfer

Available Actions:

• Pass emergency legislation requiring conversion to government digital currency

• Establish “trusted” blockchain technologies controlled by your entities

• Force conversion of physical assets to digital tokens through arbitrary valuation formulas

• Install backdoors in distributed ledger technologies

Timing Mini-Game:

Execute the executive order at precisely the moment when resistance is minimized by multiple overlapping crises.

Success Metrics:

• 90% of national wealth converted to digital format

• Physical gold reserves “digitized” and relocated

• Currency controls preventing capital flight by ordinary citizens

• “Technical difficulties” preventing withdrawal or conversion

Achievement Unlocked: “Digital Alchemy”

When you can convert real assets into digital tokens and then make those tokens disappear, you’ve mastered modern theft.

BONUS LEVEL: BLAME DEFLECTION

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Escape accountability

Available Actions:

• Stage cyber attack from foreign adversary

• Release evidence of “corruption” by scapegoated officials

• Activate civil unrest to destroy records and evidence

• Deploy controlled opposition to channel public anger away from true perpetrators

Narrative Control Mini-Game:

Create at least three competing conspiracy theories to explain the collapse, ensuring none point to your coalition. Bonus points for scapegoating the undocumented workforce for economic problems your policies created.

Success Metrics:

• Public focused on blaming each other rather than the oligarch class

• International community accepting fabricated narrative

• Historical record sufficiently muddied to prevent clear understanding

• Coalition members safely relocated to secured compounds with assets intact

Achievement Unlocked: “Perfect Crime”

When a country is robbed blind and thanks you for the experience, you’ve mastered the art of the heist.

ENDGAME: RESELLING NECESSITY

With essential resources now under your control, implement dynamic pricing based on desperation. Water rates increase during droughts. Food prices surge during shortages. Energy costs multiply during extreme weather.

What were once public goods are now premium services available to those who can afford your markup. Democracy has been replaced by shareholdership — only those who own equity have rights.

When the digital treasury finally “disappears” in the “North Korean hack,” the last pretense of social obligation vanishes. The country that once led the free world now serves as a cautionary tale and resource extraction zone.

FINAL ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: “HISTORY’S GREATEST HEIST”

You didn’t just rob a nation; you convinced half of them to hand you the keys while blaming the other half for the theft.

GAME OVER

New Game+ available: Choose your next target country

---

Image ©2025 Gael MacLean