This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. Historical evidence shows that human civilizations repeatedly engaged in self-destructive behaviors in the past, especially in terms of resource overuse (1). Today, we could point to climate change, as a clear example of self-destructive behavior.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. Most things you use and particularly the food we consume rely on an intact global supply chain. Without trade, essential resources such as fertilizers would become inaccessible, making food production much harder.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. One question that often comes up when discussing global catastrophes and societal collapse is: What is the best place to stay in such a case? This simple question is surprisingly hard to answer, as it depends on a lot of factors.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. The tricky thing with collapse is that all the possible proximate causes can interact with and cause each other.

Understanding famine and its consequences Existential Crunch is a living literature review about societal collapse. When I read new things, which update my views, I’ll also update my posts. This post highlights updates I made to four posts. In addition to those updates, I am also happy to announce that I was invited to the “Prioritäten Podcast” to talk about my work.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. One explanation for collapse is just bad luck.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. This post primarily centers around a comprehensive 2022 case study conducted by Markus Stoffel and colleagues (Stoffel et al., 2022). This information dense paper is notable for its integration of a literature review and the combination of data from diverse sources and historical records.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. The first post of this living literature review gave a summary of the field of collapse studies. One thing that post makes clear is that we need better models of societal dynamics.

Existential Crunch is a living literature review about societal collapse. When I read new things, which update my views, I’ll also update my posts (1). This post highlights updates I made to three posts. However, before we dive into the changes, I have a little announcement: It’s been six months already since I started this project for real. Since then I have published five posts for the living literature review and two posts about other topics.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. If you read about collapse in past societies, one thing that comes up almost always is famine. Why is famine so closely connected with societal collapse?