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131-631: Dr. Jeremiah Morley is concerned about an imminent nuclear war. He organizes an expedition of scientists and has them use a large atomic-powered tank-like boring machine, called the Cyclotram, capable of drilling down deep through the Earth's surface in order to find an underground environment where humanity could escape and survive a future nuclear holocaust . The expedition (Andy Ostergaard, Dr. Lindsey, Dr. Bauer, Dr. Paxton, and Dr. Coleman) begins after government funding has fallen through, and they are bailed out at

262-504: A 1979 report for the U.S. Senate, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated casualties under different scenarios. For a full-scale countervalue / counterforce nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, they predicted U.S. deaths from 35 to 77 percent (70 million to 160 million dead at the time), and Soviet deaths from 20 to 40 percent of the population. Although this report

393-692: A cascade of events. Attila rose to power as leader of the Huns and initiated a campaign of invasions and looting and went as far as Gaul (modern-day France). Attila's Huns were clashing with the Roman Empire, which had already been divided into two-halves for ease of administration: the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire . Despite managing to stop Attila at the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD,

524-454: A causal connection between climate change and large-scale human crises in pre-industrial times. Short-term crises may be caused by social problems, but climate change was the ultimate cause of major crises, starting with economic depressions. Moreover, since agriculture is highly dependent on climate, any changes to the regional climate from the optimum can induce crop failures. After around 1130, North America had significant climatic change in

655-434: A civilization in its "winter" would see a disinclination for abstract thinking. The psychologists David Rand and Jonathan Cohen theorized that people switch between two broad modes of thinking. The first is fast and automatic but rigid, and the second is slow and analytical but more flexible. Rand and Cohen believe that explains why people continue with self-destructive behaviors when logical reasoning would have alerted them of

786-487: A clear differentiation between total or partial decline and "possibilities of regeneration" is crucial for the preventive purpose of the study of societal collapse. This frame of reference often rejects the term collapse and critiques the notion that cultures simply vanish when the political structures that organize labor for large archaeologically prominent projects do. For example, while the Ancient Maya are often touted as

917-514: A combination of overcrowding, poor hygiene, and unhealthy diets. They quickly became epicenters. Soon, the disease reached as far as Gaul and mauled Roman defenses along the Rhine. The ranks of the previously formidable Roman army had to be filled with freed slaves, German mercenaries, criminals, and gladiators. That ultimately failed to prevent the Germanic tribes from crossing the Rhine. On the civilian side,

1048-467: A consequence from a smaller-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan. In the event of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States, 99% of the people in the United States, Russia, Europe, and China would die. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. Nuclear explosions create a pulse of electromagnetic radiation called a nuclear EMP or NEMP. Such EMP interference

1179-833: A continuous political structure," from 3000 BC to 600 AD and calculated that the average life span of a civilization is close to 340 years. Of them, the most durable were the Kushite Kingdom in Northeast Africa (1,150 years), the Aksumite Empire in East Africa (1,100 years), and the Vedic civilization in South Asia and the Olmecs in Mesoamerica (both 1,000 years), and the shortest-lived were

1310-751: A culture is not inevitable, and in some cases, the new societies that arise from the ashes of the old one are evidently its offspring, despite a dramatic reduction in sophistication. Moreover, the influence of a collapsed society, such as the Western Roman Empire, may linger on long after its death. The study of societal collapse, collapsology , is a topic for specialists of history , anthropology , sociology , and political science . More recently, they are joined by experts in cliodynamics and study of complex systems . Joseph Tainter frames societal collapse in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988),

1441-455: A decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia caused the collapse. Evidence for earthquakes has also been discovered. Sea level changes are also found at two possible seaport sites along the Makran coast which are now inland. Earthquakes may have contributed to decline of several sites by direct shaking damage or by changes in sea level or in water supply. Volcanic eruptions can abruptly influence

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1572-434: A deliberate doomsday device could be constructed by surrounding powerful hydrogen bombs with a massive amount of cobalt. Cobalt has a half-life of five years, and its global fallout might, some physicists have posited, be able to clear out all human life via lethal radiation intensity. The main motivation for building a cobalt bomb in this scenario is its reduced expense compared with the arsenals possessed by superpowers; such

1703-433: A doomsday device does not need to be launched before detonation and thus does not require expensive missile delivery systems, and the hydrogen bombs do not need to be miniaturized for delivery via missile. The system for triggering it might have to be completely automated, in order for the deterrent to be effective. A modern twist might be to also lace the bombs with aerosols designed to exacerbate nuclear winter. A major caveat

1834-866: A fate, regardless of their size or complexity. Most never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Maya civilization , and the Easter Island civilization . However, some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, Greece, and Egypt. Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have proposed a variety of explanations for the collapse of civilizations involving causative factors such as environmental degradation, depletion of resources, costs of rising complexity, invasion, disease, decay of social cohesion, growing inequality , extractive institutions , long-term decline of cognitive abilities , loss of creativity , and misfortune. However, complete extinction of

1965-461: A full-scale nuclear war would result, through the nuclear winter effect, in the extinction of the human species , though not all analysts agree on the assumptions put into these nuclear winter models. Societal collapse Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse or systems collapse ) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an adaptive system ,

2096-581: A lack of medical knowledge, superstitions, and sometimes a combination of disasters exacerbated the problem. The journalist Michael Rosenwald wrote that "history shows that past pandemics have reshaped societies in profound ways. Hundreds of millions of people have died. Empires have fallen. Governments have cracked. Generations have been annihilated." From the description of symptoms by the Greek physician Galen , which included coughing, fever, (blackish) diarrhea, swollen throat, and thirst, modern experts identified

2227-720: A massive expansion throughout Eurasia, which is considered to be associated with the dispersal of the Indo-European languages by most contemporary linguists, archaeologists, and geneticists. The expansion of WSHs resulted in the virtual disappearance of the Y-DNA of Early European Farmers (EEFs) from the European gene pool, significantly altering the cultural and genetic landscape of Europe. EEF mtDNA however remained frequent, suggesting admixture between WSH males and EEF females. A mysterious loose confederation of fierce maritime marauders known as

2358-399: A myriad of consumer goods rose. Society became wealthier and could afford to fund the arts and the sciences. Encounters between European explorers and Native Americans exposed the latter to a variety of diseases of extraordinary virulence. Having migrated from Northeastern Asia 15,000 years ago, Native Americans had not been introduced to the plethora of contagious diseases that emerged after

2489-402: A near-global ozone hole , triggering human health problems and impacting agriculture for at least a decade. This effect on the ozone would result from heat absorption by soot in the upper stratosphere, which would modify wind currents and draw in ozone-destroying nitrogen oxides. These high temperatures and nitrogen oxides would reduce ozone to the same dangerous levels that are experienced below

2620-552: A nomadic one. In China, for example, a combination of war, famine, and pestilence during the Mongol conquests halved the population, a decline of around 55 million people. The Mongols also displaced large numbers of people and created power vacuums. The Khmer Empire went into decline and was replaced by the Thais, who were pushed southward by the Mongols. The Vietnamese, who succeeded in defeating

2751-694: A period of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Medieval Warm Period was giving way to the Little Ice Age, which caused ecological stress. In Europe, the cooling climate did not directly facilitate the Black Death , but it caused wars, mass migration, and famine, which helped diseases spread. A more recent example is the General Crisis of

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2882-563: A prime example of collapse, in reality this reorganization was simply the result of the removal of the political system of Divine Kingship largely in the eastern lowlands as many cities in the western highlands of Mesoamerica maintained this system of divine kingship into the 16th century. The Maya continue to maintain cultural and linguistic continuity into the present day. The social scientist Luke Kemp analyzed dozens of civilizations, which he defined as "a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and

3013-590: A result of a built-up youth bulge. As those trends intensified, they jeopardized the social fabric, which facilitated the decline. Historical theories have evolved from being purely social and ethical, to ideological and ethnocentric, and finally to multidisciplinary studies. They have become much more sophisticated. The anthropologist Joseph Tainter theorized that collapsed societies essentially exhausted their own designs and were unable to adapt to natural diminishing returns for what they knew as their method of survival. The philosopher Oswald Spengler argued that

3144-460: A scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of nuclear warfare , potentially causing the collapse of civilization , the extinction of humanity , and/or the termination of most biological life on Earth . Besides the immediate destruction of cities by nuclear blasts, the potential aftermath of a nuclear war could involve firestorms , a nuclear winter , widespread radiation sickness from fallout , and/or

3275-433: A seminal and founding work of the academic discipline on societal collapse. He elaborates that 'collapse' is a "broad term," but in the sense of societal collapse, he views it as "a political process." He further narrows societal collapse as a rapid process (within "few decades") of "substantial loss of sociopolitical structure," giving the fall of the Western Roman Empire as "the most widely known instance of collapse" in

3406-541: A significant part. Similar events took place in Oceania and Madagascar. Smallpox was externally brought to Australia. The first recorded outbreak, in 1789, devastated the Aboriginal population. The extent of the outbreak is disputed, but some sources claim that it killed about 50% of coastal Aboriginal populations on the east coast. There is an ongoing historical debate concerning two rival and irreconcilable theories about how

3537-462: A societal collapse following nuclear war that can make humanity much more vulnerable to other existential threats. A related area of inquiry is: if a future nuclear arms race someday leads to larger stockpiles or more dangerous nuclear weapons than existed at the height of the Cold War, at what point could war with such weapons result in human extinction? Physicist Leo Szilard warned in the 1950s that

3668-540: A third of the world's population, would be at risk of starvation in the event of a regional nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, or by the use of even a small proportion of nuclear arms held by America and Russia. Several independent studies show corroborated conclusions that agricultural outputs would be significantly reduced for years by climatic changes driven by nuclear wars. Reduction of food supply would be further exacerbated by rising food prices , affecting hundreds of millions of vulnerable people, especially in

3799-645: A war of succession to the Bohemian throne. Animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire (in modern-day Germany) added fuel to the fire. Soon, it escalated to a huge conflict that involved all major European powers and devastated much of Germany. When the war had ended, some regions of the empire had seen their populations drop by as much as 70%. However, not all societies faced crises during this period. Tropical countries with high carrying capacities and trading economies did not suffer much because

3930-450: Is a highly dangerous kind of radioactive contamination . The main radiation hazard from fallout is due to short-lived radionuclides external to the body. While most of the particles carried by nuclear fallout decay rapidly, some radioactive particles will have half-lives of seconds to a few months. Some radioactive isotopes, like strontium-90 and caesium-137 , are very long-lived and will create radioactive hot spots for up to 5 years after

4061-404: Is actually more the sign of hidden weakness because of a society's dependence on it and its potential to undermine its own basis for success by not being self limiting , as demonstrated in Western culture's ideal of perpetual growth. As a population grows and technology makes it easier to exploit depleting resources, the environment's diminishing returns are hidden from view. Societal complexity

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4192-800: Is difficult to say for certain whether Egypt would have become a Roman province if Okmok volcano (in modern-day Alaska) had not erupted, the eruption likely hastened the process. More generally, recent research pointed to climate change as a key player in the decline and fall of historical societies in China, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. In fact, paleoclimatogical temperature reconstruction suggests that historical periods of social unrest, societal collapse, and population crash and significant climate change often occurred simultaneously. A team of researchers from Mainland China and Hong Kong were able to establish

4323-562: Is extinguished. However, the premise that all of humanity would die following a nuclear war and only the "cockroaches would survive" is critically dealt with in the 1988 book Would the Insects Inherit the Earth and Other Subjects of Concern to Those Who Worry About Nuclear War , by nuclear weapons expert Philip J. Dolan . Based upon studies on the effects of the massive hydrogen bombs at the Bikini Atoll and Eniwetok Atoll , Dolan refutes

4454-463: Is known to be generally disruptive or damaging to electronic equipment. By disabling electronics and their functioning, an EMP would disable hospitals, water treatment facilities, food storage facilities, and all electronic forms of communication, and thereby threaten key aspects of the modern human condition. Certain EMP attacks could lead to a large loss of power for months or years. Currently, failures of

4585-605: Is that nuclear fallout transfer between the northern and southern hemispheres is expected to be small; unless a bomb detonates in each hemisphere, the effect of a bomb detonated in one hemisphere on the other is diminished. Historically, it has been difficult to estimate the total number of deaths resulting from a global nuclear exchange because scientists are continually discovering new effects of nuclear weapons, and also revising existing models. Early reports considered direct effects from nuclear blast and radiation and indirect effects from economic, social, and political disruption. In

4716-416: Is then potentially threatened if it develops beyond what is actually sustainable, and a disorderly reorganization were to follow. The scissors model of Malthusian collapse, in which the population grows without limit but not resources, is the idea of great opposing environmental forces cutting into each other. The complete breakdown of economic, cultural, and social institutions with ecological relationships

4847-542: Is worldwide fallout, such global fallout has happened as a result of past nuclear weapons testing , numbering in the thousands, with many being atmospheric. A fast increase of global background radiation , peaking in 1963 (the Bomb pulse ) urged, among other things states to sign bans on nuclear weapons testing . The global fallout has caused deaths, for example through increased cancer rates, of about 2.4 million people globally according to 2020 estimates, while older placed them in

4978-549: The Greek term "holokaustos" meaning "completely burnt", refers to great destruction and loss of life, especially by fire. One early use of the word "holocaust" to describe an imagined nuclear destruction appears in Reginald Glossop's 1926 novel The Orphan of Space : "Moscow ... beneath them ... a crash like a crack of Doom! The echoes of this Holocaust rumbled and rolled ... a distinct smell of sulphur ... atomic destruction." In

5109-534: The Indus script has yet to be deciphered, the causes of its de-urbanization remain a mystery, but there is some evidence pointing to natural disasters. Signs of a gradual decline began to emerge in 1900 BC, and two centuries later, most of the cities had been abandoned. Archeological evidence suggests an increase in interpersonal violence and in infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis . Historians and archeologists believe that severe and long-lasting drought and

5240-936: The Nanda Empire in India (24) and the Qin dynasty in China (14). A statistical analysis of empires by complex systems specialist Samuel Arbesman suggests that collapse is generally a random event and does not depend on age. That is analogous to what evolutionary biologists call the Red Queen hypothesis , which asserts that for a species in a harsh ecology, extinction is a persistent possibility. Contemporary discussions about societal collapse are seeking resilience by suggesting societal transformation. Because human societies are complex systems, common factors may contribute to their decline that are economical, environmental, demographic, social and cultural, and they may cascade into another and build up to

5371-952: The Sea Peoples was identified as one of the main causes of the Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is possible that the Sea Peoples were themselves victims of the environmental changes that led to widespread famine and precipitated the Collapse. In the third century BC, a Eurasian nomadic people, the Xiongnu , began threatening China's frontiers, but by the first century BC, they had been completely expelled. They then turned their attention westward and displaced various other tribes in Eastern and Central Europe, which led to

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5502-714: The Visigoths in 410 and was plundered by the Vandals in 455 . A combination of internal strife, economic weakness, and relentless invasions by the Germanic peoples pushed the Western Roman Empire into terminal decline . The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus , was dethroned in 476 by the German Odoacer , who declared himself King of Italy . In the eleventh century AD, North Africa 's populous and flourishing civilization collapsed after it had exhausted its resources in internal fighting and suffering devastation from

5633-426: The anti-nuclear movement and the development of popular perception of nuclear weapons . It features in the security concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and is a common scenario in survivalism . Nuclear holocaust is a common feature in literature and film , especially in speculative genres such as science fiction , dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction . The English word "holocaust", derived from

5764-431: The " year without a summer " due to the levels of global dimming sulfate aerosols and ash expelled. The larger Mount Toba eruption , which occurred approximately 74,000 years ago, produced an estimated 2,800 km (670 cu mi) of tephra and 6,000 million tonnes (6.6 × 10 short tons) of sulfur dioxide, with a possible explosion force of 20,000,000 megatons (Mt) of TNT, forming Lake Toba and reducing

5895-568: The 1340s, Black Death killed 200 million people. The widening trade routes in the Late Middle Ages helped the plague spread rapidly. It took the European population more than two centuries to return to its level before the pandemic. Consequently, it destabilized most of society and likely undermined feudalism and the authority of the Church. With labor in short supply, workers' bargaining power increased dramatically. Various inventions that reduced

6026-721: The 1520s and killed 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, which aided the European conquerors. A combination of Spanish military attacks and evolutionarily novel diseases finished off the Aztec Empire in the sixteenth century. It is commonly believed that the death of as much as 90% or 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases, though new research suggests tuberculosis from seals and sea lions played

6157-465: The Antonine Plague created drastic shortages of businessmen, which disrupted trade, and farmers, which led to a food crisis. An economic depression followed and government revenue fell. Some accused Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Co-Emperor Lucius Verus , both of whom victims of the disease, of affronting the gods , but others blamed Christians. However, the Antonine Plague strengthened the position of

6288-593: The Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada deduced that a volcanic eruption occurred in 43 BC, a year after the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March (15 March) in 44 BC, which left a power vacuum and led to bloody civil wars. According to historical accounts, it was also a period of poor weather, crop failure, widespread famine, and disease. Analyses of tree rings and cave stalagmites from different parts of

6419-574: The Eastern Mediterranean disrupted established trade routes and caused widespread economic depression. Government workers became underpaid, which resulted in the first labor strike in recorded history and undermined royal authority. There was also political infighting between different factions of government. Bad harvest from the reduced flooding at the Nile led to a major famine. Food prices rose to eight times their normal values and occasionally even reached twenty-four times. Runaway inflation followed. Attacks by

6550-715: The Great to concentrate on recapturing territories belonging to the Western Empire. His generals, Belisarius and Narses , achieved a number of important victories against the Ostrogoths and the Vandals. However, their hope of keeping the Western Empire was dashed by the arrival of what became known as the Plague of Justinian (541-542). According to the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea ,

6681-718: The Justinian Plague, the Mediterranean world had been commercially and culturally stable. After the Plague, it fractured into a trio of civilizations battling for power: the Islamic Civilization, the Byzantine Empire, and what later became known as Medieval Europe. With so many people dead, the supply of workers, many of whom were slaves, was critically short. Landowners had no choice but to lend pieces of land to serfs to work

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6812-745: The Libyans and Nubians made things even worse. Throughout the Twentieth Dynasty (~1187–1064 BC), Egypt devolved from a major power in the Mediterranean to a deeply divided and weakened state, which later came to be ruled by the Libyans and the Nubians. Between 481 BC and 221 BC, the Period of the Warring States in China ended by King Zheng of the Qin dynasty succeeding in defeating six competing factions and thus becoming

6943-565: The Mongols, also turned their attention to the south and by 1471 began to subjugate the Chams . When Vietnam's Later Lê dynasty went into decline in the late 1700s, a bloody civil war erupted between the Trịnh family in the north and the Nguyễn family in the south. More Cham provinces were seized by the Nguyễn warlords. Finally, Nguyễn Ánh emerged victorious and declared himself Emperor of Vietnam (changing

7074-457: The Roman, medieval, and early modern eras, of Egypt during Greco-Roman and Ottoman rule, and of various dynasties in China all showed similar patterns of political instability and violence becoming considerably more common after times of relative peace, prosperity, and sustained population growth. Quantitatively, periods of unrest included many times more events of instability per decade and occurred when

7205-510: The Romans began to devalue the currency and produce more coinage. Eventually, this overwhelmed the Roman Empire and partially contributed to its collapse. Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics. For example, the native population of Cusco, Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was stressed by an imbalanced sex ratio . There is strong evidence that humans also display population cycles . Societies as diverse as those of England and France during

7336-450: The Romans were unable to prevent Attila from attacking Roman Italy the next year. Northern Italian cities like Milan were ravaged. The Huns never again posed a threat to the Romans after Attila's death, but the rise of the Huns also forced the Germanic peoples out of their territories and made those groups press their way into parts of France, Spain, Italy, and even as far south as North Africa. The city of Rome itself came under attack by

7467-528: The Secretary-General , it was estimated that there were a total of about 40,000 nuclear warheads in existence at that time, with a potential combined explosive yield of approximately 13,000 megatons . By comparison – in the timeline of volcanism on Earth – the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora exploded with a force of roughly 30,000 megatons, and ejected 160 km (38 cu mi) of mostly rock and tephra , which included 120 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide as an upper estimate , turning 1816 into

7598-444: The Seventeenth Century in Europe, which was a period of inclement weather, crop failure, economic hardship, extreme intergroup violence, and high mortality because of the Little Ice Age . The Maunder Minimum involved sunspots being exceedingly rare. Episodes of social instability track the cooling with a time lap of up to 15 years, and many developed into armed conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which started as

7729-467: The Western world. Others, particularly in response to the popular Collapse (2005) by Jared Diamond and more recently, have argued that societies discussed as cases of collapse are better understood through resilience and societal transformation , or "reorganization", especially if collapse is understood as a "complete end" of political systems, which according to Shmuel Eisenstadt has not taken place at any point. Eisenstadt also points out that

7860-504: The advent of antibiotics, starting with penicillin in 1928, has resulted in the saving of the lives of hundreds of millions of people suffering from bacterial infections. However, there is no guarantee that would continue because bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics , and doctors and public health experts such as former Chief Medical Officer for England Sally Davies have even warned of an incoming "antibiotic apocalypse." The World Health Organization warned in 2019 that

7991-413: The assumptions made in this book have been thoroughly analyzed and determined to be "quite dubious". The impetus for Schell's work, according to physicist Brian Martin, was: The implicit premise [...] that if people are not taking action on the issue, they must not perceive it as threatening enough. Perhaps if the thought of 500 million people dying in a nuclear war is not enough to stimulate action, then

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8122-418: The brutal pillaging that followed Mongol invasions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the invaders decimated the populations of China, Russia, the Middle East, and Islamic Central Asia . Later Mongol leaders, such as Timur , destroyed many cities, slaughtered thousands of people, and irreparably damaged the ancient irrigation systems of Mesopotamia . The invasions transformed a settled society to

8253-447: The case of the Western Roman Empire, some argued that it did not collapse but merely transformed . Archeologists have identified signs of a megadrought which lasted for a millennium between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago in Africa and Asia. The drying of the Green Sahara not only turned it into a desert but also disrupted the monsoon seasons in South and Southeast Asia and caused flooding in East Asia, which prevented successful harvests and

8384-547: The century, the probability of 1 billion dead at 10% and the probability of 1 million dead at 30%. These results reflect the median opinions of a group of experts, rather than a probabilistic model; the actual values may be much lower or higher. Scientists have argued that even a small-scale nuclear war between two countries, such as India and Pakistan, could have devastating global consequences and such local conflicts are more likely than full-scale nuclear war. In his book Reasons and Persons , philosopher Derek Parfit posed

8515-434: The changing climate did not induce an economic depression in those places. Between ca. 4000 and 3000 BCE, neolithic populations in western Eurasia declined , probably due to the plague and other viral hemorrhagic fevers. This decline was followed by the Indo-European migrations . Around 3,000 BC, people of the pastoralist Yamnaya culture from the Pontic–Caspian steppe , who had high levels of WSH ancestry, embarked on

8646-469: The climate. During a large eruption, sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) is expelled into the stratosphere , where it could stay for years and gradually get oxidized into sulfate aerosols. Being highly reflective, sulfate aerosols reduce the incident sunlight and cool the Earth's surface. By drilling into glaciers and ice sheets, scientists can access the archives of the history of atmospheric composition. A team of multidisciplinary researchers led by Joseph McConnell of

8777-508: The collapse alone. Significant inequity and exposed corruption may combine with lack of loyalty to established political institutions and result in an oppressed lower class rising up and seizing power from a smaller wealthy elite in a revolution . The diversity of forms that societies evolve corresponds to diversity in their failures. Jared Diamond suggests that societies have also collapsed through deforestation , loss of soil fertility, restrictions of trade and/or rising endemic violence. In

8908-407: The cost of labor, saved time, and raised productivity, such as the three-field crop rotation system, the iron plow, the use of manure to fertilize the soil, and the water pumps, were widely adopted. Many former serfs, now free from feudal obligations, relocated to the cities and changed profession to crafts and trades. The more successful ones became the new middle class. Trade flourished as demands for

9039-441: The country. The problem of protecting civilian infrastructure from electromagnetic pulse has also been intensively studied throughout the European Union, and in particular by the United Kingdom. While precautions have been taken, James Woolsey and the EMP Commission suggested that an EMP is the most significant threat to the U.S. The risk of an EMP, either through solar or atmospheric activity or enemy attack, while not dismissed,

9170-450: The dangers ahead. People switch from the second to the first mode of thinking after the introduction of an invention that dramatically increases the standards of living. Rand and Cohen pointed to the recent examples of the antibiotic overuse leading to resistant bacteria and failure to save for retirement. Tainter noted that according to behavioral economics, the human decision-making process tends to be more irrational than rational and that as

9301-432: The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. It was followed by the Plague of Cyprian (249–262 AD) and the Plague of Justinian (541-542). Together, they cracked the foundations of the Roman Empire. In the sixth century AD, while the Western Roman Empire had already succumbed to attacks by the Germanic tribes, the Eastern Roman Empire stood its ground. In fact, a peace treaty with the Persians allowed Emperor Justinian

9432-580: The development of complex culture. It coincided with and may have caused the decline and the fall of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. The dramatic shift in climate is known as the 4.2-kiloyear event . The highly advanced Indus Valley Civilization took root around 3000 BC in what is now northwestern India and Pakistan and collapsed around 1700 BC. Since

9563-547: The disease first entered the continent (see History of smallpox ). Smallpox continued to be a deadly disease and killed an estimated 300 million people in the twentieth century alone, but a vaccine, the first of any kind, had been available since 1796. As humans spread around the globe, human societies flourish and become more dependent on trade, and because urbanization means that people leave sparsely-populated rural areas for densely-populated neighborhoods, infectious diseases spread much more easily. Outbreaks are frequent, even in

9694-467: The downfall of government , and the rise of violence . Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war , pestilence , famine , economic collapse , population decline or overshoot , mass migration , incompetent leaders, and sabotage by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear. Virtually all civilizations have suffered such

9825-833: The early fourteenth century AD, Britain suffered repeated rounds of crop failures from unusually heavy rainfall and flooding. Much livestock either starved or drowned. Food prices skyrocketed, and King Edward II attempted to rectify the situation by imposing price controls, but vendors simply refused to sell at such low prices. In any case, the act was abolished by the Lincoln Parliament in 1316. Soon, people from commoners to nobles were finding themselves short of food. Many resorted to begging, crime, and eating animals they otherwise would not eat. People in northern England had to deal with raids from Scotland. There were even reports of cannibalism . In Continental Europe, things were at least just as bad. The Great Famine of 1315–1317 coincided with

9956-668: The elite than the society could realistically support ( elite overproduction ), which led to social strife, and chronic inflation, which caused incomes to fall and threatened the fiscal health of the state. In particular, an excess in especially young adult male population predictably led to social unrest and violence, as the third and higher-order parity sons had trouble realizing their economic desires and became more open to extreme ideas and actions. Adults in their 20s are especially prone to radicalization. Most historical periods of social unrest lacking in external triggers, such as natural calamities, and most genocides can be readily explained as

10087-621: The end of the Medieval Warm Period and the start of the Little Ice Age. Some historians suspect that the change in climate was due to Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupting in 1314. The Great Famine was, however, only one of the calamities striking Europe that century, as the Hundred Years' War and Black Death would soon follow. (Also see the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages .) Recent analysis of tree rings complement historical records and show that

10218-535: The epidemic originated in China and Northeastern India and reached the Eastern Roman Empire via trade routes terminating in the Mediterranean. Modern scholarship has deduced that the epidemic was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis , the same one that would later bring the Black Death, the single deadliest pandemic in human history, but how many actually died from it remains uncertain. Current estimates put

10349-419: The existence of all future generations. And given the magnitude of the calamity were the human race to become extinct, Nick Bostrom argues that there is an overwhelming moral imperative to reduce even small risks of human extinction . Many scholars have posited that a global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to human extinction. This position

10480-749: The figure between thirty and fifty million people, a significant portion of the human population at that time. The Plague arguably cemented the fate of Rome. The epidemic also devastated the Sasanian Empire in Persia. Caliph Abu Bakr seized the opportunity to launch military campaigns that overran the Sassanians and captured Roman-held territories in the Caucasus, the Levant, Egypt, and elsewhere in North Africa. Before

10611-517: The film's three producers. The B-Movie Review site Million Monkey Theater observed that the "production crew try hard, and it really seems like they have an important message to tell, but the execution and polish are lacking". The film is referenced in Season 3, episode 4 of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why , in which the film is being played at the local movie theater (even though the show takes place in

10742-644: The first Chinese emperor, titled Qin Shi Huang . A ruthless but efficient ruler, he raised a disciplined and professional army and introduced a significant number of reforms, such as unifying the language and creating a single currency and system of measurement. In addition, he funded dam constructions and began building the first segment of what was to become the Great Wall of China to defend his realm against northern nomads. Nevertheless, internal feuds and rebellions made his empire fall apart after his death in 210 B.C. In

10873-644: The first and only war between Vietnam and the jihadists, until it was crushed. Around 1210 BC, the New Kingdom of Egypt shipped large amounts of grain to the disintegrating Hittite Empire. Thus, there had been a food shortage in Anatolia but not the Nile Valley. However, that soon changed. Although Egypt managed to deliver a decisive and final defeat to the Sea Peoples at the Battle of Xois , Egypt itself went into steep decline. The collapse of all other societies in

11004-469: The following question: Compare three outcomes: (2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences? He continues that "Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very much greater." Thus, he argues, even if it would be bad if massive numbers of humans died, human extinction would itself be much worse because it prevents

11135-575: The form of a 300-year period of aridity called the Great Drought . The Mississippian culture collapsed during this period. The Ancestral Puebloans left their established homes in the 12th and 13th centuries. Current scholarly consensus is that Ancestral Puebloans responded to pressure from Numic -speaking peoples moving onto the Colorado Plateau, as well as climate change that resulted in agricultural failures. The Mongol conquests corresponded to

11266-432: The global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario where two opposing nations in the subtropics would each use 50 Hiroshima -sized nuclear weapons (about 15 kilotons each) on major populated centres, the researchers estimated as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia , including most of

11397-402: The globally scattered location of these potential nuclear detonations all being in contrast to the singular and subterranean nature of a supervolcanic eruption. Moreover, assuming the entire world stockpile of weapons were grouped together, it would be difficult due to the nuclear fratricide effect to ensure the individual weapons would detonate all at once. Nonetheless, many people believe that

11528-582: The globe provided complementary data. The Northern Hemisphere got drier, but the Southern Hemisphere became wetter. Indeed, the Greek historian Appian recorded that there was a lack of flooding in Egypt, which also faced famine and pestilence. Rome's interest in Egypt as a source of food intensified, and the aforementioned problems and civil unrest weakened Egypt's ability to resist. Egypt came under Roman rule after Cleopatra committed suicide in 30 BC. While it

11659-436: The grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years, and according to the research, could be "catastrophic". Additionally, the analysis showed a 10% drop in average global precipitation, with the largest losses in the low latitudes due to failure of the monsoons. Regional nuclear conflicts could also inflict significant damage to the ozone layer . A 2008 study found that a regional nuclear weapons exchange could create

11790-411: The high levels of poverty, the Roman government implemented a form of welfare called the dole , providing citizens free money and free grain. Paying for the dole required high levels of government spending, exacerbating the Roman debt and also producing inflation. With slavery replacing most labor, tax revenues also plummeted, further exacerbating the government's debt. To pay off the enormous debt,

11921-475: The human population to mere tens of thousands. The Chicxulub impact , connected with the extinction of the dinosaurs , corresponds to at least 70,000,000 Mt of energy, which is roughly 7000 times the combined maximum arsenal of the US and Soviet Union. Comparisons with supervolcanos are more misleading than helpful due to the different aerosols released, the likely air burst fuzing height of nuclear weapons and

12052-605: The hundreds of thousands. Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive dust and ash propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear explosion. Fallout is usually limited to the immediate area, and can only spread for hundreds of kilometers from the explosion site if the explosion is high enough in the atmosphere. Fallout may get entrained with the products of a pyrocumulus cloud and fall as black rain (rain darkened by soot and other particulates). This radioactive dust, usually consisting of fission products mixed with bystanding atoms that are neutron activated by exposure ,

12183-455: The immediate effects of nuclear blasts and radiation following a global thermonuclear war. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War believe that nuclear war could indirectly contribute to human extinction via secondary effects, including environmental consequences, societal breakdown , and economic collapse. The threat of a nuclear holocaust plays an important role in

12314-440: The initial explosion. Fallout and black rain may contaminate waterways, agriculture, and soil. Contact with radioactive materials can lead to radiation poisoning through external exposure or accidental consumption. In acute doses over a short amount of time radiation will lead to prodromal syndrome, bone marrow death, central nervous system death and gastrointestinal death. Over longer periods of exposure to radiation, cancer becomes

12445-477: The invasion of the Bedouin tribes of Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal . Ibn Khaldun noted that all of the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become arid desert. In 1206, a warlord achieved dominance over all Mongols with the title Genghis Khan and began his campaign of territorial expansion. The Mongols' highly flexible and mobile cavalry enabled them to conquer their enemies with efficiency and swiftness. In

12576-409: The jobs of skilled craftsman. Since slaves do not pay taxes and were replacing most jobs from citizens, this reduced the revenue the state could accrue from their citizens. This high level of unemployment also led to high levels of poverty, which reduced demand for businesses relying on slave labor. As taxes fell, so did government revenue. To compensate for this economic slowdown and mitigate

12707-425: The lab rabbits brought with them give birth to dead offspring. Through autopsies, it is discovered that this strange underground world has somehow rendered the rabbits, and hence any other life form, sterile. Dr. Morley is deeply depressed by this news. When an underground volcano suddenly erupts, he fails to enter the safety of the Cyclotram and quickly perishes. The Cyclotram, carrying the remaining survivors, enters

12838-403: The land in exchange for military protection and other privileges. That sowed the seeds of feudalism . There is evidence that the Mongol expeditions may have spread the bubonic plague across much of Eurasia, which helped to spark the Black Death of the early fourteenth century. The Italian historian Gabriele de’ Mussi wrote that the Mongols catapulted the corpses of those who contracted

12969-470: The last minute by private funding from newspaper heir Wright Thompson, who insists on going with them as a lark. Romantic rivalry soon develops between Ostergaard and Thompson for Lindsey, and during the dangerous underground expedition two lives are lost to the perils of their adventure. In the end the scientists accomplish their goal and find an enormous underground expanse with a plentiful air supply, its own large ocean, and phosphorescent light. However, all

13100-451: The main health risk. Long-term radiation exposure can also lead to in utero effects on human development and transgenerational genetic damage. As a result of the extensive nuclear fallout of the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear detonation, author Nevil Shute wrote the popular novel On the Beach , released in 1957. In this novel, so much fallout is generated in a nuclear war that all human life

13231-428: The modern day) and is discussed briefly by the characters. The original theatrical poster for the film is also seen on the wall. Nuclear holocaust A nuclear holocaust , also known as a nuclear apocalypse , nuclear annihilation , nuclear armageddon , or atomic holocaust , is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes widespread destruction and radioactive fallout. Such

13362-404: The modern era, but medical advances have been able to alleviate their impacts. In fact, the human population grew tremendously in the twentieth century, as did the population of farm animals, from which diseases could jump to humans , but in the developed world and increasingly also in the developing world, people are less likely to fall victim to infectious diseases than ever before. For instance,

13493-426: The monotheistic religion of Christianity in the formerly-polytheistic society, as Christians won public admiration for their good works. Ultimately the Roman army, the Roman cities, the size of the empire and its trade routes, which were required for Roman power and influence to exist, facilitated the spread of the disease. The Antonine Plague is considered by some historians as a useful starting point for understanding

13624-440: The name from Annam) with the title Gia Long and established the Nguyễn dynasty. The last remaining principality of Champa, Panduranga (modern-day Phan Rang , Vietnam), survived until 1832, when Emperor Minh Mạng (Nguyễn Phúc Đảm) conquered it after centuries of Cham–Vietnamese wars . Vietnam's policy of assimilation involved the forcefeeding of pork to Muslims and beef to Hindus, which fueled resentment. An uprising followed ,

13755-483: The necessary amount of fallout to begin to have the potential of causing human extinction is regarded by physicist and disarmament activist Joseph Rotblat to be 10 to 100 times the megatonnage in nuclear arsenals as they stood in 1976; however, with the world megatonnage decreasing since the Cold War ended this possibility remains hypothetical. According to the 1980 United Nations report General and Complete Disarmament: Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons: Report of

13886-672: The novel, an atomic weapon is planted in the office of the Soviet dictator, who, with German help and Chinese mercenaries, is preparing the takeover of Western Europe. As of 2021, humanity has about 13,410 nuclear weapons, thousands of which are on hair-trigger alert . While stockpiles have been on the decline following the end of the Cold War, every nuclear country is currently undergoing modernization of its nuclear arsenal. The Bulletin advanced their symbolic Doomsday Clock in 2015, citing among other factors "a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals". In January 2020, it

14017-491: The origin of this belief was from "crude linear extrapolations" of the bombing of Hiroshima. He said that if the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had been 1,000 times as powerful, it could not have killed 1,000 times as many people. Similarly, it is common to see stated that the combined explosive energy released in the entirety of World War II was about 3 megatons, while a nuclear war with warhead stockpiles at Cold War highs would release 6000 WWII's of explosive energy. An estimate for

14148-544: The ozone hole above Antarctica every spring. It is difficult to estimate the number of casualties that would result from nuclear winter, but it is likely that the primary effect would be global famine (known as nuclear famine), wherein mass starvation occurs due to disrupted agricultural production and distribution. In 2013 and 2022 reports, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) voiced concerns that more than two billion people, about

14279-452: The past on this topic is further complicated by politics and the passage of time. It is difficult to distinguish between natural epidemics and biological warfare, both of which are common throughout human history. Biological weapons are economical because they turn an enemy casualty into a delivery system and so were favored in armed conflicts of the past. Furthermore, more soldiers died of disease than in combat until recently. In any case, by

14410-423: The people on the planet would run out of food and starve to death by then" and commented that their own results show that, "This period of no food production needs to be extended by many years, making the impacts of nuclear winter even worse than previously thought." In contrast to the above investigations of global nuclear conflicts, studies have shown that even small-scale, regional nuclear conflicts could disrupt

14541-497: The plague into Caffa (now Feodossia , Crimea) during the siege of that city and that soldiers who were transported from there brought the plague to Mediterranean ports. However, that account of the origin of the Black Death in Europe remains controversial, though plausible, because of the complex epidemiology of the plague. Modern epidemiologists do not believe that the Black Death had a single source of spreading into Europe. Research into

14672-538: The point that could overwhelm any mechanisms that would otherwise maintain stability. Unexpected and abrupt changes, which experts call nonlinearities , are some of the warning signs. In some cases, a natural disaster (such as a tsunami, earthquake, pandemic , massive fire or climate change) may precipitate a collapse. Other factors such as a Malthusian catastrophe , overpopulation , or resource depletion might be contributory factors of collapse, but studies of past societies seem to suggest that those factors did not cause

14803-454: The poorest nations of the world. According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature Food in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia might kill 360 million people directly and more than 5 billion people might die as a consequence from starvation due to soot created by firestorms after nuclear bombing. More than 2 billion people were projected to die as

14934-401: The population was declining, rather than increasing. Pre-industrial agrarian societies typically faced instability after one or two centuries of stability. However, a population approaching its carrying capacity alone is not enough to trigger general decline if the people remained united and the ruling class strong. Other factors had to be involved, such as having more aspirants for positions of

15065-472: The power grid are dealt with using support from the outside. In the event of an EMP attack, such support would not exist and all damaged components, devices, and electronics would need to be completely replaced. In 2013, the US House of Representatives considered the "Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act" that would provide surge protection for some 300 large transformers around

15196-649: The probable culprits of the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD) to have been smallpox or measles . The disease likely started in China and spread to the West via the Silk Road . Roman troops first contracted the disease in the East before they returned home. Striking a virgin population, the Antonine Plague had dreadful mortality rates; between one third to half of the population, 60 to 70 million people, perished. Roman cities suffered from

15327-418: The rate of innovation declines, as measured by the number of inventions relative to the amount of money spent on research and development , it becomes progressively harder for there to be a technological solution to the problem of societal collapse. What produces modern sedentary life, unlike nomadic hunter-gatherers , is extraordinary modern economic productivity. Tainter argues that exceptional productivity

15458-722: The rise of agriculture in the Old World. As such, they had immune systems that were ill-equipped to handle the diseases to which their counterparts in Eurasia had become resistant. When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, in short order, the indigenous populations of the Americas found themselves facing smallpox, measles , whooping cough , and the bubonic plague, among others. In tropical areas, malaria, yellow fever , dengue fever , river blindness , and others appeared. Most of these tropical diseases were traced to Africa. Smallpox ravaged Mexico in

15589-499: The spread of vaccine scepticism has been accompanied by the resurrection of long-conquered diseases like measles. This lead the WHO to name the antivaccination movement one of the world's top 10 public-health threats. During the Roman Empire, citizen employment was vastly being replaced by slave labor. Slaves were replacing many of the jobs citizens were doing. Slaves were receiving apprenticeships and education and were even learning to replace

15720-441: The summers of 1314–1316 were some of the wettest on record over a period of 700 years. Historically, the dawn of agriculture led to the rise of contagious diseases. Compared to their hunting-gathering counterparts, agrarian societies tended to be sedentary, have higher population densities, be in frequent contact with livestock, and be more exposed to contaminated water supplies and higher concentrations of garbage. Poor sanitation,

15851-527: The temporary (if not permanent) loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses . Some scientists, such as Alan Robock , have speculated that a thermonuclear war could result in the end of modern civilization on Earth , in part due to a long-lasting nuclear winter. In one model, the average temperature of Earth following a full thermonuclear war falls for several years by 7 – 8 °C (13 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit) on average. Early Cold War -era studies suggested that billions of humans would survive

15982-450: The theory that some small plant specimenes and bacteria would be the only lifeforms to survive an all-out nuclear war. All the mentioned tests witnessed full recovery of the local ecosystem . In 1982, nuclear disarmament activist Jonathan Schell published The Fate of the Earth , which is regarded by many to be the first carefully argued presentation that concluded that extinction is a significant possibility from nuclear war. However,

16113-522: The thought of extinction will. Indeed, Schell explicitly advocates use of the fear of extinction as the basis for inspiring the "complete rearrangement of world politics" (p. 221) The belief in "overkill" is also commonly encountered, with an example being the following statement made by nuclear disarmament activist Philip Noel-Baker in 1971: "Both the US and the Soviet Union now possess nuclear stockpiles large enough to exterminate mankind three or four – some say ten – times over". Brian Martin suggested that

16244-544: The underground ocean to avoid the eruption. They soon find themselves rising toward the surface of the upper world, having been caught up in a strong, upward-moving ocean current. They eventually break the surface near an unknown tropical island. Portions of Unknown World were filmed in Carlsbad Caverns , Bronson Caves , Nichols Canyon , and at Pismo Beach . Unknown World was put together by two Hollywood special effects men, Jack Rabin and Irving Block, who are two of

16375-426: The upper stratosphere, where precipitation does not occur, and therefore clearance was on the order of 10 years. In addition, they found that global cooling caused a weakening of the global hydrological cycle, reducing global precipitation by about 45%. The authors did not discuss the implications for agriculture in depth, but noted that a 1986 study which assumed no food production for a year projected that "most of

16506-521: Was available for the 1980s studies. A 2007 study examined the consequences of a global nuclear war involving moderate to large portions of the current global arsenal. The study found cooling by about 12–20 °C in much of the core farming regions of the US, Europe, Russia and China and as much as 35 °C in parts of Russia for the first two summer growing seasons. The changes they found were also much longer-lasting than previously thought, because their new model better represented entry of soot aerosols in

16637-431: Was bolstered when nuclear winter was first conceptualized and modelled in 1983. However, models from the past decade consider total extinction very unlikely, and suggest parts of the world would remain habitable. Technically the risk may not be zero, as the climatic effects of nuclear war are uncertain and could theoretically be larger, but also smaller, than current models suggest. There could also be indirect risks, such as

16768-512: Was made when nuclear stockpiles were at much higher levels than they are today, it also was made before the risk of nuclear winter was first theorized in the early 1980s. Additionally, it did not consider other secondary effects, such as electromagnetic pulses (EMP), and the ramifications they would have on modern technology and industry. In the early 1980s, scientists began to consider the effects of smoke and soot arising from burning wood, plastics, and petroleum fuels in nuclear-devastated cities. It

16899-698: Was moved forward to 100 seconds before midnight. In 2023, it was moved forward to 90 seconds before midnight. John F. Kennedy estimated the probability of the Cuban Missile Crisis escalating to nuclear conflict as between 33% and 50%. In a poll of experts at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference in Oxford (17–20 July 2008), the Future of Humanity Institute estimated the probability of complete human extinction by nuclear weapons at 1% within

17030-502: Was speculated that the intense heat would carry these particulates to extremely high altitudes where they could drift for weeks and block out all but a fraction of the sun's light. A landmark 1983 study by the so-called TTAPS team ( Richard P. Turco , Owen Toon , Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan ) was the first to model these effects and coined the term "nuclear winter." More recent studies make use of modern global circulation models and far greater computer power than

17161-493: Was suggested to be overblown by the news media in a commentary in Physics Today . Instead, the weapons from rogue states were still too small and uncoordinated to cause a massive EMP, underground infrastructure is sufficiently protected, and there will be enough warning time from continuous solar observatories like SOHO to protect surface transformers should a devastating solar storm be detected. One part of nuclear holocaust

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