Visitors to the latest exhibition at the Singapore Discovery Centre will be greeted with a vision of what a fictional dystopian Singapore in 2032 could look like.
The display includes an abandoned MRT station, the last specimen of Singapore's national flower Vanda Miss Joaquim, and a brand-new unsold smartphone priced at $100,000 - a sign of a rapid increase in the price of goods due to an economic crisis.
The special exhibition to mark Total Defence Day this year is titled Will You Do You?, which plays on the millennial slang "you do you", meaning "do what you believe in".
The centre's assistant executive director Melvern Ong told reporters at the launch of the exhibition on Tuesday that it seeks to draw attention to geopolitical issues that affect Singapore's future and encourages Singaporeans to put Total Defence into action.
The exhibition is among the activities that the Singapore Discovery Centre has lined up for the Total Defence campaign this year. Total Defence Day is commemorated on Feb 15 every year - the day Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942.
Other activities include film screenings, vehicle displays by the Singapore Police Force and the Singapore Civil Defence Force, and a mixed-media drama show about a national serviceman who discovers his sense of duty to his country.
There is also a military ride show called Operation Lightning Crush, launched last September, that will be free during the Total Defence weekend - Feb 15 and 16. It usually costs $10 a person.
The exhibition, which runs till March 22 and is free for Singaporeans and permanent residents, features three themes - climate change, trade wars and digital threats.
It focuses on three of the six pillars of the Total Defence framework, namely, psychological, digital and economic defence. The other pillars are social, civil and military defence.
Smaller-scale versions of the exhibition, including past years' special Total Defence exhibitions, will be set up at various educational institutions next month.
Mr Ong said: "The exhibition has been several months in the making. This time, we tried to have a gamification approach as we wanted to have content that resonates with the young."
He added: "We also wanted to provoke people into contemplating the dystopian future - what they stand to lose if they do not take adequate action."
