Quote from: Cave Bear;1011756Epidemics, ecological collapse, and declining birth rate can do the job too.

Epidemics like the Black Death (with 50% death rate in Europe) seem to be recovered from very quickly - infrastructure remains in place, there are just fewer people using it. Ecological collapses have been significant historically, though not so much recently. I could imagine something like the recent issue with pesticides killing off all the honey bees (& other insects), or monoculture disease as with the Irish potato famine, as potentially leading to some sort of crisis. But there seems to be a lot of global excess capacity for food production currently (albeit concentrated in the USA & Canada) so I suspect this would be localised.

I remember a decade or so ago when they were converting corn to ethanol because of a supposed coming fuel shortage - it resulted in an actual global food shortage because most of the planet now apparently lives off subsidised US food exports, sometimes disguised as 'aid'. I could imagine a disease, dust bowl or other event (Yellowstone eruption?) in North America reducing food yields dramatically, resulting in global starvation - mostly outside North America, since remaining food would be eaten there first.

Declining birth rates - likely did contribute to the collapse of the western Roman empire (& decline of the eastern RE). As seen there though, only a major issue if the declining population is replaced by dominant immigrants/conquerors who are unable/unwilling to maintain the more complex society of the declining population, resulting in a step-change collapse. Sans immigration, a society like Japan with declining birth rate & population but no change in ethny will not decline radically.

Also, looking at WRE case, initially there was only a total civilisational collapse in Britain, which had not been fully culturally Romanised. Once the Legions left, the native Britons were struggling to maintain Roman civilisation even before the Anglo-Saxon conquests. This resembles the situation in some areas undergoing European de-colonisation in the 20th century after WW2; the colonising civilisation had not truly taken root. Civilisational collapse in the Mediterranean region of the former WRE was only completed 300 years later with the Arab-Muslim conquests, which caused an ecological collapse in North Africa (goats ate the olive trees) and raiders/pirates destroyed sea trade and forced abandonment of coastal territories in southern Europe. See The Fall of Rome by Ward-Perkins for lots of data on this. The north African pottery records are fascinating!

I think part of the problem with this discussion is that I take "post-apocalyptic" to broadly mean "after an apocalypse" where apocalypse in this context refers to a large-scale disaster resulting in the rapid decline in the human population and/or cataclysmic discontinuity of existing cultures. I don't take "post-apocalyptic" to mean "immediately after an apocalypse" or "in an apocalyptic state"; I understand the concept of an apocalypse as an event that causes culture to transition from one state to another, rather than a state in itself.
You can't stop being post-apocalyptic by my reckoning.

If I'm way off base, then please correct me.

Quote from: S'mon;1011788I don't think there's any evidence of that. If anything, step-change collapses seem to have become less common as societies have grown larger and more complex. The collapse of the USSR resulted in a limited step-change collapse in its territories but the collapse of relatively primitive modern State societies into Stateless (eg Somalia) seems like a bigger change to me. Easter Island type collapses seem to have once been fairly common. It's an open question whether something like the fall of the Western Roman Empire resulting in a civilisational collapse could happen now.

Well, you're right.  There is not much historical evidence for it.  I am basing my argument on complexity theory, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and David Christian's Maps of Time ...but it could all be wrong. Historical example is more concrete.

Edit

Actually, I did think of a historical example.  Eric Cline makes this exact argument in 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed  When Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Minoan, Hittite - basically the entire bronze age civilization collapsed at the same time, he concludes that interdependence and specialization (complexity) contributed to the susceptibility and totality of the collapse.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1011800I think part of the problem with this discussion is that I take "post-apocalyptic" to broadly mean "after an apocalypse" where apocalypse in this context refers to a large-scale disaster resulting in the rapid decline in the human population and/or cataclysmic discontinuity of existing cultures. I don't take "post-apocalyptic" to mean "immediately after an apocalypse" or "in an apocalyptic state"; I understand the concept of an apocalypse as an event that causes culture to transition from one state to another, rather than a state in itself.
You can't stop being post-apocalyptic by my reckoning.

If I'm way off base, then please correct me.

Yeah, that's a funny thing about words.  Our basic definitions of the subject matter weren't in sinc.  Wars have been started over less.  Our society is technically post-apocalyptic, though most people would not think of it that way.  No worries though, it was a worthy conversation that kept my interest for a while.  That's the thing about using the past to look into the future, the landscape is covered in mists.  I suppose we can't really know how deep our collapse will be, and if, when or how we will recover.  We can only take what evidence we have and make guesses.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1011734Why? Rome declined, and it seemed like the end of the world.

One reason is a poverty of basic resources. If our entire civilization collapsed now, worldwide, it would be almost impossible to build back up to a level anywhere close to 21st century levels, because the prima materia required for that is gone. Fossil Fuel, rare metals, all kinds of other resources could no longer be easily accessed by early-industrial-level technology.

If we fail now, for reasons of pure resources if nothing else, there's no coming back. Our descendants would be stuck, at best, at an advanced but at most early-industrial society for the rest of our species existence, which would probably end when some cosmic event hits the earth and we failed to put humans anywhere else.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1010630Spinning off from another thread.


We tend to assume that survivors of our civilization's collapse will be more primitive than ourselves. We assume that they will devolve into marauding, tribalistic cargo-cultists sustained only by what they can salvage from our ruins. We assume that as a given.

What if we are wrong?

What if the tribal peoples of the post-apocalyptic future are smarter than us? What if the survival pressures of their environment drive innovation and creativity such that their own scientific and technological progress surpasses us?




Let's imagine post-apocalyptic civilizations that put our own civilization to shame.

I could see something like the three factions in Anno 2070 emerging, but only if they have the organization, resources, security, manpower for it.

The Eden Initiative (referred to as the "Ecos"), Global Trust (referred to as the "Tycoons"), and the S.A.A.T. (referred to as the "Techs").

Especially the Eco tech/mentality route, with additional floating cities/bases.
[video=youtube;XCQ3CyLuwn0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCQ3CyLuwn0[/youtube]

[video=youtube;rQOLVyTDoZo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQOLVyTDoZo[/youtube]

The big problem would be that nature is unlikely to be saved once an apocalypse scenario played out, or such a high-tech society would have to focus fully on restoring whatever remains. This could easily mean that the society itself is dictatorical with harsh rules, might mean dead human bodies are recycled or eaten, and resources/renewables would be bigger priority than healthcare and human rights.

In ancient times a fall of civilizations was possible without the ruin of the planet, but today? I don't think so, but who knows, there might be unaffected or less affected 'safe zones'.