New Doomsday Analysis Says Humans are Doing Better than ExpectedAnd now this, from the BBC:
Hi, me again, your little ray of sunshine.
DEEP CIVILISATION
This article is part of a new BBC Future series about the long view of humanity, which aims to stand back from the daily news cycle and widen the lens of our current place in time. Modern society is suffering from “temporal exhaustion”, the sociologist Elise Boulding once said. “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future,” she wrote.
That’s why the Deep Civilisation season will explore what really matters in the broader arc of human history and what it means for us and our descendants.
Deep Civilization
Risk
Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us how much risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.
Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.
So concluded the historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History. It was an exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilisations.
He was right in some respects: civilisations are often responsible for their own decline. However, their self-destruction is usually assisted.
The Roman Empire, for example, was the victim of many ills including overexpansion, climatic change, environmental degradation and poor leadership. But it was also brought to its knees when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455.
Collapse is often quick and greatness provides no immunity. The Roman Empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) in 390. Five years later, it had plummeted to 2 million sq km (770,000 sq miles). By 476, the empire’s reach was zero.
Our deep past is marked by recurring failure. As part of my research at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, I am attempting to find out why collapse occurs through a historical autopsy. What can the rise and fall of historic civilisations tell us about our own? What are the forces that precipitate or delay a collapse? And do we see similar patterns today?
The first way to look at past civilisations is to compare their longevity. This can be difficult, because there is no strict definition of civilisation, nor an overarching database of their births and deaths.
In the graphic below, I have compared the lifespan of various civilisations, which I define as a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure. Given this definition, all empires are civilisations, but not all civilisations are empires. The data is drawn from two studies on the growth and decline of empires (for 3000-600BC and 600BC-600), and an informal, crowd-sourced survey of ancient civilisations (which I have amended).
Click/pinch to enlarge. Here's the full list of the civilisations displayed above. (Credit: Nigel Hawtin)
Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Public services crumble and disorder ensues as government loses control of its monopoly on violence.The Beeb then makes one of the funnier further reading suggestions that you are likely to see today:
Virtually all past civilisations have faced this fate. Some recovered or transformed, such as the Chinese and Egyptian. Other collapses were permanent, as was the case of Easter Island. Sometimes the cities at the epicentre of collapse are revived, as was the case with Rome. In other cases, such as the Mayan ruins, they are left abandoned as a mausoleum for future tourists.
What can this tell us about the future of global modern civilisation? Are the lessons of agrarian empires applicable to our post-18th Century period of industrial capitalism?...
...MUCH MORE
You might also like:And our own further reading links:
NYT “How to Survive the Apocalypse” Forbes: "How To Doomsday Prep Like An Economist"
The Times piece has some good advice: a hoard of mini-bottles of booze used for either barter or the more traditional apéritif/digestif role can make the apocalypse more tolerable. Ditto for cigarettes.When the Time Comes, Will You Be Ready To Rebuild Civilization?
Personally I think of the Wiemar inflation which highlighted the store-of-value character that the humble bar of soap possesses, especially for folks who don't directly own various means-of-production. And one of the lessons of Houston is how prized toilet paper and/or paper toweling can get.
As always we discourage gold as money, if you are going with shiny stuff, junk silver coins make more sense, both for recognition and divisibility.
After the jump we have a few other handy hints that may not be readily apparent but should probably be in your bag of tricks....
Yes you will !!
Possibly related:
FT: "Twelve ways the world could end"
Listicles, Financial Times style!
