This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. Reflecting about the end of our modern civilization requires counterfactual thinking, because fortunately it hasn’t happened yet. But this is not the only way counterfactuals help us understand collapse better. We can also create counterfactuals to reflect about past events.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. Electricity is essential for the functioning of our modern society, as nearly everything we do depends on the electrical grid in some way. While this reliance provides significant comfort and convenience, it also makes us vulnerable if the grid fails. But what happens when the grid stops working?

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. While we generally aim to avoid a collapse, it is crucial to understand the potential recovery time if one occurs. Assessing this is challenging, as it depends on the starting level of complexity, the extent of the loss, and the desired recovery level.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. Many articles highlight famine as a major issue for societal collapse, emphasizing the overall vulnerability of food production and trade. The speed at which such events affect us depends on our food reserves.

This post is part of a living literature review on societal collapse. You can find an indexed archive here. Democracies have a stronger incentive to keep their general population content compared to authoritarian regimes, as the political elite’s survival is more directly linked to the general population through elections.

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.