IMO, cannibalism will enter the picture in many "civilized" places, and babies, being defenseless, will be among the first to make their way onto the menu. The horrors of Jerusalem circa 70 AD will be seen all over the world.
You and I are on the same page. I think about that all the time -- cannibalism. As well as people murdering each other to stay alive for one or two more days. I never put it together with Jerusalem 70 AD but that is all too apt.
I once vociferously denied the Great Monarch on this site; now I'm going through an almost ecstatic Great Monarch Is Coming! phase. I will briefly explain why and then I have to hit the sheets. My reasoning, most likely specious, is that mankind has to be MORE evil before God will end the world. There has to be more of an assent of the will to Satan than we get in Vatican II, where many are just confused or undereducated.
Now imagine that there is the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and this great miracle happens whereby the entire world is restored to Christ and His Church. THEN imagine that, just a few generations later, people rebel again and start falling into heresy, totally forgetting the fact that they were saved from the bleakest and darkest time in world history. It would be as if St. Paul, after his miraculous awakening on the Road to Damascus, and after having preached throughout the world and spread the faith, decided to start slicing Christian childrens' throats and drinking their blood.
Then imagine they accept the Antichrist. Well obviously at that point there is nothing left of them and even God's mercy, so much vaster than we can comprehend, will not be able to help them. This is the second fall; and that is worse than the first. The world itself will commit the sin unto death. The dog will return to its own vomit. You see what I'm saying.
Something else -- it makes some sense to me that a great human king would precede the Divine King. This great human king, virtuous and saintly and conformed to God's will with near-perfection, for all his feats, ultimately fails to save the world, and his victories end in apostasy. No human is greater, except the Virgin Mary, yet he STILL fails. That sets the stage for the Divine King, the one and only victor, to destroy Satan once and for all, a mission He has reserved jealously for Himself.
This would also explain why the Great Monarch gets more attention than the Angelic Pastor, who you might assume is more important in the scheme of things. But the Monarch is a sort of foreshadowing of the Second Coming, as well as a vivid example of the vast gap between human and divine power. Even the greatest and most favored of humans is as nothing compared to God.
The lacuna in my scenario is the section between the Great Monarch and the Antichrist. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how Satan will worm his way in so soon after the Church is restored. I almost wish I could live to see it, just to figure out how he accomplishes it. Okay, not really.
Many people think VII is the abomination of desolation but there is no sure way of knowing. If you read the letters of Athanasius he thought the Arian heresy was the abomination. What we do know is once the abomination starts, it continues until the "consummation" or end of the world. So if this is the abomination, why did Mary promise the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart at Fatima? This leaves us with only two choices: ( a ) Fatima is a fake apparition or ( b ) VII is an abomination but not THE abomination.
I once opted for ( a ) but now tend more towards ( b ). Many prophecies speak of a triumph of Mary or Marian Age of Peace granted to Mary by Her Son, and that "rings my true bells" as a friend of mine says. St. Louis de Montfort also said that the end-time saints would have a special devotion to Mary. The consistent theme in Catholic literature and prophecy is that Mary becomes more and more important in the plan of salvation as time goes by, until she is revealed as Queen of Heaven and nearly equal with God. Correct me if I'm going over the top but the Holy Spirit over time only seems to promote Mary, never to demote her. Assumption; Coronation; and the Queen has nearly as much power as the King, though He is the one who grants it to her.
Where is America in all of this? Probably most of it will be underwater.
P.S. This is all idle speculation. I like to toss around various scenarios in my head but I am not a prophet.