Speaker 1: Okay, imagine this. You wake up one day and everything
you just completely take for granted it's gone. Like instant
communication across the globe. Nope, fresh food flown in from
halfway around the world. Gone, Those complex medical procedures saving
lives every single day, not just unavailable but forgotten, right
like ancient secrets nobody can read anyone. It sounds like,
you know, pure science fiction.
Speaker 2: Arry it really does.
Speaker 1: But it's actually a question history keeps asking us, and
that's exactly what we're diving into today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a powerful thought experiment, isn't it, Because
it cuts right to the core the fragility of these
incredibly complex societies we've built exactly fragility. And while it
sounds like fiction, you look back at history, at civilizations,
ancient empires, more recent ones, there's this surprisingly consistent story
about how nothing is really permanent. It really makes you
question our assumptions about, you know, how stable our modern
world actually is.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this a bit. The big question
for a deep dive is how stable is our civilization
now and what really happens when civilizations fall, even the
ones that seem totally invincible. We've got some really fascinating
sources today, and they tackle this head on. They look
at historical patterns, sure, but also the hidden vulnerabilities in
our world today, and this is important. They also give
some surprisingly strong reasons for optimism about humanity's resilience even
when things look incredibly bleak.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and maybe before we jump right in, it's worth
clarifying what we mean by civilization here based on how
the sources frame it good I do. So we're talking
about complex societies, right. You have specialized labor people doing
different jobs beyond just basic survival that leads to social classes.
You have institutions like governments, laws, usually a shared language.
Speaker 1: Culture right with glue holding it together.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And crucially, they figure out how to domesticate plants
and animals to feed large cities, big populations packed together,
and often you know, they leave behind impressive stuff monuments, infrastructure, temples, pyramids, aqueducts,
things that show they were organized precisely. And getting this
definition clear is really important because it helps us understand
the sheer scale of what we could lose if things unravel.
Speaker 1: Or what we might need to protect or rebuild exactly.
Speaker 2: So our mission today is to pull out the key
insights from all this material help you get your head
around not just if collapse could happen, but what it
actually means for people, for society, and what it might
take to come back from it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's dive in. Where should we start? History seems
like the obvious place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's look back first, Section one, the echoes of empires.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's paint a picture of well, the
big one Rome, the Roman Empire at its absolute peak.
That's hard to overstate it, really. They had achievements that
feel incredibly modern even to us.
Speaker 2: Absolutely like what specifically comes to mind.
Speaker 1: Well, things like underfloor central heating in their houses.
Speaker 2: Amazing, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Concrete? That incredibly durable, versatile building material they mastered, double glazed.
Speaker 2: Windows, kept the drafts out.
Speaker 1: Sophisticated banking systems, international trade routes stretching across continents.
Speaker 2: A globalized economy in its way, and even some upward
social mobility which was pretty rare back then. Yeah, not
totally rigid and.
Speaker 1: Rome itself the city, Yeah, first place in history to
hit a million people, a.
Speaker 2: True megacity for its time.
Speaker 1: Just this powerhouse of technology, law, economy. It must have
felt well, permanent, impossible to topple, stable, rich, powerful, It.
Speaker 2: Really must have a genuine marvel. And yet, and yet,
and yet, what's so fascinating and kind of terrifying is
that this seemingly invincible empire, with all those advanced features, it.
Speaker 1: Collapsed, right, But how was it one big thing? An invasion,
a plague.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the interesting part. The sources really emphasize. It
wasn't usually one single event, not like a Hollywood movie disaster.
It was more like a progression, first slowly, then suddenly as.
Speaker 1: A phrase, it comes up slowly, then suddenly I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it suggests centuries of subtle problems building up, things
like runaway inflation, maybe political instability. They went through emperors pretty.
Speaker 1: Fast, sometimes right the revolving door.
Speaker 2: The empire getting too big to manage to defend its
borders effectively. Even environmental stuff like changes impacting farming.
Speaker 1: So lots little cuts kind of.
Speaker 2: And over time, the core institutions, the Senate, the army,
the administration, they just lost their grip, their ability to
organize things, enforce rules, keep order.
Speaker 1: It frayed from the inside exactly.
Speaker 2: And as that happened, a huge amount of knowledge just vanished,
tragically lost, not just forgotten but maybe seen as irrelevant.
What you mean, well, can you believe it? Just a
few centuri after Rome's peak, Europeans actually forgot how to
build indoor plumbing, no way seriously, and even how to
make cement. Roman concrete was amazing central to their infrastructure,
their public health, and the knowledge just disappeared in large
parts of Europe.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's hard to fathom forgetting cement.
Speaker 2: It shows how practical knowledge can be lost when the
systems supporting it breakdown, and the consequences were severe. Living
standards just plummeted across the Old Empire. Violence became more
common as that central control vanished. Populations often dropped sharply, disease, conflict, famine,
downward spiral definitely. So the Roman story really challenges that
comforting idea that once you reach a certain level of
advanced you're somehow safe from decline.
Speaker 1: Right. It shows that complexity itself can be of vulnerability.
Speaker 2: Precisely if the institutions holding it together aren't robust or adaptable.
That complexity can actually make you more fragile when shocks hit,
especially multiple shocks at once.
Speaker 1: That idea complexity breeding fragility. It feels wrong somehow, doesn't it.
You'd think more advance means more secure.
Speaker 2: It does seem counterinterative.
Speaker 1: So what specific parts of Rome's complexity, beyond just the
weak institutions made it vulnerable. Did any of their cool
innovations actually like backfire, maybe create dependencies they couldn't sustain.
Speaker 2: That's a really sharp question, and the sources do touch
on this. Rome's success created new weaknesses how so well,
think about that amazing infrastructure, the aqueducts, the roads, the baths,
incredible engineering.
Speaker 1: Right icons of Rome.
Speaker 2: But they needed immense resources and really specialized know how
just to maintain them.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, constant upkeep exactly.
Speaker 2: So as the Empire started to fragment and central money
and control weakened, finding the local expertise, the manpower, the
materials for those huge systems it became impossible in many places, So.
Speaker 1: The aqueduct a marvel becomes a burden precisely.
Speaker 2: Or think about their complex legal and economics. They allowed
for amazing efficiency and trade, but also led to intense specialization,
like people.
Speaker 1: Only knowing how to do one specific job sort of.
Speaker 2: So when the larger system buckled, local communities might have
suddenly found themselves lacking the broad range of skills needed
to just survive, to be self sufficient.
Speaker 1: Wow, everyone was a specialist, but maybe no one remembered
how to just farm basic stuff or fix things themselves.
Speaker 2: That's the potential downside. Reliance on complex systems is a
great when they work, but it becomes a massive liability
when they start to fail. You lose that basic resilience.
Speaker 1: It really makes you stop and think, doesn't it. How
many of those Roman things, efficient building, comfy homes, global
trade feel totally normal, even basic to.
Speaker 2: Us now they really do part of our baseline expectation.
Speaker 1: So seeing them lost, seeing that knowledge just forgotten, it's shocking.
It really makes you ask how fast could we lose
access to, or even forget the basics that keep our
world running. If it happened to the guys who invented
central heating and concrete, what about us and our iPhones
and internet.
Speaker 2: It's a sobering thought. And here's something even more sobering
from the sources. Rome wasn't an anomaly when you look
across all of human history. Collapse isn't the exception, It's
the rule, the rule. Seriously, that's what the research suggests.
Virtually all civilizations by that definition we discussed eventually end.
Speaker 1: Wow, is there like an average lifespan?
Speaker 2: The number that comes up is around three hundred and
forty years. On average, three.
Speaker 1: Hundred and forty years, that's not very long in the
grand scheme of things.
Speaker 2: It really isn't. And this isn't just some historical quirk.
It's a pattern repeated over and over different places, different cultures.
Speaker 1: Like the Bronze Age collapse, the Maya.
Speaker 2: Easter Islands exactly all those examples each had its own
mix of reasons environment conflict, internal strife, external pressure. But
the end result systemic unraveling. Things fall apart.
Speaker 1: That is genuinely chilling, the rule, not the exception. Yeah,
it makes you think about all those lost worlds.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: So what usually happens to the people living through it?
You said it wasn't nice?
Speaker 2: No, nice is definitely not the word. It's grim, consistently
devastating for the individuals caught up in it. How So,
while civilizations either just disappear, their cities become ruins reclaimed by.
Speaker 1: Nature, swallowed by the jungle or desert, right.
Speaker 2: Or they get absorbed by neighbors who are stronger, often
more aggressive, conquered, or sometimes something new eventually grows from
the ruins. But often it's well technologically simpler, living standards
way lower.
Speaker 1: Than before, a major step backwards.
Speaker 2: A huge step back, and for the people living through
the collapse itself, it's sheer chaos and suffering. Their whole
cultural identity can shatter.
Speaker 1: Everything you know, just dissolves.
Speaker 2: Exactly the institutions you relied on, government, economy, law and order.
They stop working. Knowledge gets lost, living standards plummet, violent
spikes as resources get scarce, and there's no authority. That's terrifying,
and populations often crash because of famine, disease, war. It's
just a prolonged nightmare of disruption, uncertainty, and immense human suffering.
Imagine waking up in the world you understood is just gone.
Speaker 1: That's a truly stark picture. You hear about them forgetting
plumbing and cement, and it just hits home. Could we
actually lose our industrial tech moves, the ability to make smartphones,
or do laser eye surgery, or even just make cheap pizza?
Could it all just evaporate?
Speaker 2: History suggests it's not impossible. We take an incredible amount
for granted.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's shift gears from ancient Rome to well,
right now, our modern global.
Speaker 2: Civilization a different beast Entirely.
Speaker 1: If Rome was impressive, what we've built is frankly mind boggling.
Our cities aren't just big, they sprawl for thousands of
square kilometers megaregions.
Speaker 2: Even unprecedented scale.
Speaker 1: We fly across continents in hours, We talk to anyone anywhere, instantly,
share data, ideas.
Speaker 2: We've mapped the human genome, developed AI, we're reaching space.
Speaker 1: It's a level of complexity the Romans couldn't even have
dreamed of.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and underpinning all of this are some foundational pillars
we barely notice most days. Requ Like industrial agriculture. It's
not just farming, it's this incredibly sophisticated.
Speaker 1: System, right, Not just a guy with a.
Speaker 2: Hope, not at all. We're talking genetically engineered superplants. Modern
corn maze is literally ten times bigger than its wild
ancestor tomatoes used to be, like peas.
Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Combine that with hyper efficient machinery, complex irrigation, and
high potency synthetic fertilizers.
Speaker 1: Stuff made using huge amounts of energy like the Harberblosh process.
Speaker 2: For fertilizers exactly, all working together just to feed billions
of people. It's a technological marvel.
Speaker 1: And then there's modern medicine.
Speaker 2: Another huge one, complex research for pharmaceuticals, advanced surgery giving
us the longest life spans ever, Yeah, wiping out diseases
that used to kill millions.
Speaker 1: And just industrial tech in general delivering comfort, abundance.
Speaker 2: Things are ants could imagine climate control, instant information.
Speaker 1: So while we still have different countries, different cultures competing,
even you're saying, we also form this single, interconnected global civilization.
Speaker 2: That's the key point the sources make. It's unique in history,
one integrated system.
Speaker 1: Really, that's a massive shift from the past. Isn't it
not just separate empires anymore? We're all tangled up together,
deeply interwoven, which changes the whole game when you think
about collapse. Yeah, because it's not just one empire failing anymore.
Speaker 2: Right, The connections are global. Our food systems, energy grids,
digital networks. They all depend on each other across the planet.
Speaker 1: So what are the weak spots in that web, like
the really critical points of failure? We might not even think.
Speaker 2: About, Well, that interconnectedness is the double edged sword. It's
our strength but also potentially our greatest weakness. How So,
think about global shipping. A huge percentage of world trade
goes through just a few bottlenecks like.
Speaker 1: The Suez Canal or the Strait of Malacca.
Speaker 2: Exactly, if something big disrupts one of those conflicts, a
cyber attack, even a natural disaster, it doesn't just affect
one region.
Speaker 1: It ripples outwards everywhere, precisely, shortages of everything from computer
chips to medicine, raw materials, finished goods, the whole global
supply chain grinds to a halt.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, what else? Or consider the energy grid increasingly
reliant on these massive ultra high voltage lines crossing huge distances,
or those undersea internet cables right surprisingly vulnerable to earthquakes,
even sabotage. A break in one place can cause cascading
failures blackouts, sure, but also halting communications, financial systems, critical
infrastructure worldwide.
Speaker 1: So the very things that make our system efficient and
fast are.
Speaker 2: Also the things that make it potentially incredibly fragile. If
there's a major systemic shock, that's the interconnected fragility Okay,
here's where.
Speaker 1: It gets well really interesting, or maybe terrifying is the
better word.
Speaker 2: It is sobering because if we can.
Speaker 1: Connect this to the bigger picture, a collapse of this
industrialized world, this global system, it literally means most people
alive today would die.
Speaker 2: That's the stark reality the sources point to. Our industrial
agriculture system is the only reason we can feed eight
billion people Without it. Without it, the carrying capacity of
the planet drops dramatically. It wouldn't just be a disruption
or dip in living standards. It's a potential mass extinction
event for humans if that system breaks down completely.
Speaker 1: The scale is almost impossible to really grasp and the
speed it could happen.
Speaker 2: It is and there's an even deeper, maybe more profound
risk we need to consider.
Speaker 1: Oh, what's that?
Speaker 2: What if a collapse was so bad, so utterly destructive,
that we couldn't just bounce back. What if we couldn't
reindustrialize ever again?
Speaker 1: You mean stuck in a pre industrial state forever.
Speaker 2: That's the nightmare scenario, an existential catastrophe, not just massive
loss of life now, but ruining our entire future, potential.
Speaker 1: Preventing us from becoming say a multiplanet to very species,
or reaching whatever heights humanity could have reached exactly.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't just be devastating for everyone alive today. It
would extinguish the potential of all future generations, ending the
human story on a cosmic scale in a way.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, imagine that, all the discoveries we might have made,
the art, the music, the sheer joy across billions of
future lives. It's gone.
Speaker 2: Medical cures, solutions to big problems, understanding the universe, all.
Speaker 1: Of it snuffed out. It's not just about losing our
stuff or even our current lives. It's losing potential the
entire human trajectory.
Speaker 2: It really forces you to think about what loss means
on that ultimate scale, makes you realize how precious and
maybe how fragile that potential really.
Speaker 1: Is, and how much responsibility we have right now to
protect it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's heavy, very heavy. Yeah, maybe we need to
shift years again. Is there any good news in all this?
Speaker 2: Yes, thankfully, Yes, Let's pivot to section three. Humanity's resilience,
the unyielding spirit.
Speaker 1: Okay, I need some of that right now.
Speaker 2: Right, Let's start with some good news from history. While
we've established that civilizational collapses happen.
Speaker 1: All the time, the rule, not the exception. Yep, got that.
Speaker 2: The crucial point is that none of them has ever
actually derailed the progress of global civilization.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by global civilization there?
Speaker 2: I mean when the Western Roman Empire was collapsing, other advanced,
powerful civilizations were doing just fine, like the Axemite Empire
in Africa, the city state of tutor Wakan in Meso
America was thriving, And of course the Eastern Roman Empire
Byzantium carried on for another one thousand years.
Speaker 1: Ah. Okay, so one player falls, but the game continues
elsewhere exactly.
Speaker 2: The overall human project, you could say, kept moving forward.
Knowledge was preserved, innovation continued, just maybe in different places.
This pattern suggests our species has this inherent ability to
adapt and keep going.
Speaker 1: That's a really important distinction, global versus local collapse. Okay,
what about just sheer population crashes? Have we survived those?
Speaker 2: We have, and they've been brutal.
Speaker 1: The Black Death springs to mind immediately fourteenth century Europe.
Speaker 2: A truly horrific event. Bubonic plague estimates are it killed
maybe a third of all Europeans.
Speaker 1: A third and maybe a tenth of the entire global
population something like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, if anything was going to cause total civilizational collapse,
you'd think that would be it.
Speaker 1: Society must have just ground to a halt, towns wiped.
Speaker 2: Out, unimaginable suffering and death. And yet what's fascinating is
how the Black Death actually shows our resilience more than
our fragility in the long run.
Speaker 1: How so seems counterintuitive.
Speaker 2: Well, some sources argue that the massive drop in population
led to this huge labor shortage across Europe.
Speaker 1: Uh supply and demand for.
Speaker 2: Workers exactly Suddenly, the surviving peasants and workers had more
bargaining power, they could demand better wages, better conditions, and
it also spurred innovation. Landowners needed ways to produce food
and goods with fewer people, so they invested in new techniques,
new technologies.
Speaker 1: So a tragic catalyst for change in.
Speaker 2: A way, a horrible rebalancing, but it arguably helped lay
some groundwork for later progress throughout the Renaissance. Eventually, the
Industrial Revolution and the population recovered remarkably quickly in historical
terms within about two centuries. And just two centuries after that,
the Industrial Revolution kicks off.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is resilience. Bouncing back from losing maybe one
in ten people globally.
Speaker 2: It's incredible. It shows this capacity not just to endure,
but to adapt innovate even under the most extreme pressure.
Speaker 1: Are there more recent examples?
Speaker 2: Definitely think about Hiroshima World War two. Okay, devastation, utter devastation.
The atomic bomb killed maybe one hundred and forty thousand people.
Ninety percent of the city was just gone, incinerated or.
Speaker 1: Flattened, the literal wasteland.
Speaker 2: Absolutely hard to imagine coming back from that.
Speaker 1: Yep, they did.
Speaker 2: They did. Within a single decade. Horoshima's population had bounced
back significantly a decade. It's astounding, and today it's a thriving,
modern city one point two million people. It stands as
this powerful symbol of the human drive to rebuild, to overcome.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, Now, obviously none of this makes those events
any less horrific for the people who live them.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. The suffering was immense, we can't minimize that.
Speaker 1: But looking at it from the perspective of the species,
the long arc of history, these stories of recovery are
genuinely good news.
Speaker 2: They really are. They show this fundamental toughness, this ability
to solve problems adaptively, maybe even a deep collaborative instinct
that kicks in during crises.
Speaker 1: So putting it all together, yeah, our species has a
proven track record, an incredible ability to recover, even from
things that look like the absolute end.
Speaker 2: That's the reassuring message from history. Individual societies might fall,
but the collective human story seems incredibly persistent.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's comforting, But there's always a butt, isn't there
There is?
Speaker 2: While history offers comfort, we have to be realistic about
our current situation. It's different.
Speaker 1: Howso what's unique now?
Speaker 2: One fundamental difference humanity now possesses unprecedented self directed destructive power.
Speaker 1: Ah right, we can hurt ourselves in ways previous generations.
Speaker 2: Couldn't exactly think about nuclear weapons. Today's arsenals aren't just
about destroying cities anymore, and all out war could trigger
a nuclear winter.
Speaker 1: Explain that quickly. Nuclear winter it's.
Speaker 2: The scenario where massive fires from nuclear explosions throw so
much soot and dust high into the atmosphere that it
blocks sunlight for months, maybe years, causes extreme global cooling.
Crops fail worldwide because there's no photosynthesis and the result
billions of deaths, not just millions like in past disasters,
billions from starvation, cold, societal breakdown.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's different.
Speaker 2: And what else our biological knowledge it's advancing incredibly fast,
which is amazing for medicine, but it also it's becoming
feasible to engineer viruses. Imagine something as contigious as.
Speaker 1: COVID, which we all remember vividly.
Speaker 2: But as deadly as say ebola. The risk of truly
catastrophic global pandemics, maybe deliberately created, is much higher now
than ever before.
Speaker 1: Engineered plagues.
Speaker 2: These aren't natural disasters like the Black Death. These are
potential self inflicted wounds, born from our own cleverness, and
potentially far, far worse than anything nature is thrown at us.
Speaker 1: That really does change the calculation. Yeah, the biggest threats
aren't necessarily out there anymore. They're in here with us.
Speaker 2: It shifts the focus significantly.
Speaker 1: And it brings up that terrifying question again. If we
did inflict something like that on ourselves, say ninety nine
percent of humanity dies nuclear winter, engineered plague, could we
still recover forever? Or would that be it the permanent
end of our potential?
Speaker 2: Could we still retain the ability to not just survive,
but to thrive again. That is the ultimate question, isn't
it Okay?
Speaker 1: Let's go there. Section four, The Path to Recovery, a
blueprint for a reborn world. Is it possible even from
ninety nine percent loss?
Speaker 2: Well, even in that absolute worst case scenario, a staggering
loss leaving maybe eighty million survivors scattered globally, the sources
suggests there are still strong reasons for optimism about recovery. Eventually.
Speaker 1: Eighty million still sounds like a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Actually it is, historically speaking, And let's start with the
absolute basic food right, got to eat. Today, we have
about a billion people working in agriculture worldwide, deeply involved
in growing food. Even if the population crashed to eighty million,
it's almost guaranteed that a good number of survivors would
know the fundamentals of food production, how.
Speaker 1: To plant seeds, look after animals, that kind of thing exactly.
Speaker 2: That basic knowledge is so widespread, so fundamental, it wouldn't
just vanish. How to work the soil, save seeds, manage livestock,
basic preservation like drying or fermenting. That no how would survive.
Speaker 1: And here's where It gets really interesting, right, because we
wouldn't be starting from absolute zero like our caveman ancestors.
Speaker 2: Precisely, we wouldn't have to reinvent farming or redomesticate wild
plants all over again. That took thousands of years the
first time.
Speaker 1: So what would we have.
Speaker 2: The sources point out that our modern super productive crops,
the results of millennia of selective breeding and genetic tinkering,
they'd still exist.
Speaker 1: That corn is ten times bigger those tomatoes that aren't
pea sized anymore.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The genetic material for these amazing plants and the
knowledge of how to grow them would likely survive in
seed banks, sure, but also botanical gardens, university collections, even
just in the memory of farming communities.
Speaker 1: It's like having the advanced cookbook even if the fancy
kitchen is broken.
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. The blueprint for feeding lots of
people efficiently is still there, ready to be used again
when conditions allow. The fundamental knowledge wouldn't be lost.
Speaker 1: Okay, so food may be manageable eventually. What's next? Rebuilding
industry power grids factories.
Speaker 2: That's next massive hurdle rebuilding industrial capacity, power manufacturing transport communication.
Speaker 1: And that seems much harder.
Speaker 2: It presents a huge problem. Our current global economy runs
on insane economies of.
Speaker 1: Scale, meaning you need massive demand to make things viable.
Speaker 2: Exactly and incredibly complex interconnected global supply chains. Think about
making a smartphone materials from dozens of countries, hyper specialized factory.
Speaker 1: Highly specialized tools, rare earth minerals.
Speaker 2: Deeply specialized workers who know how to run those tools.
Even if the factories themselves somehow survived untouched.
Speaker 1: Which seems unlikely, right, even then.
Speaker 2: We couldn't just flip a switch and start making iPhones again.
The human capital, the global logistics, the interconnected systems needed
to run it all at scale, they'd be gone.
Speaker 1: We would take enormous steps backward technologically, huge steps.
Speaker 2: It's not just having the factory building, it's having the
entire ecosystem around it.
Speaker 1: That does sound daunting, a major roadblock it is.
Speaker 2: But again we need to think in longer timeframe.
Speaker 1: Here longview.
Speaker 2: The first industrial revolution didn't happen instantly. It took about
twelve thousand years after the agricultural revolution really got going.
Speaker 1: Twelve thousand years, Yeah, puts things in perspective.
Speaker 2: So if we had to start over after a massive collapse. Reindustrializing,
while incredibly difficult, probably isn't impossible, not on those evolutionary timescale, because.
Speaker 1: The basic knowledge is out there how to make steam engines,
generate electricity, work metal.
Speaker 2: That knowledge is much more widespread now, written down in
countless books and plans. It's not a question of if
we could rebuild the machines, it's more a question of when,
Assuming we have the time, resources and stability.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. But is there a catch?
Speaker 2: There's a potentially critical hitch. As the sources put it.
Speaker 1: Energy, ah, the fuel for the fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The first industrial revolution was powered literally by
easily accessible poll stuff that was near the surface, relatively
simple to mine with basic tools.
Speaker 1: Hanging food of the fossil fuel world.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it provided that dense, cheap energy needed to kickstart everything. Now,
what if we use all of that easy access coal.
Speaker 1: Now, besides the climate change nightmare?
Speaker 2: Besides that, yes, we could actually be screwing over future
generations trying to recover from a collapse. How if that
easy to get energy sources gone, it makes climbing back
up the industrial ladder much much harder. For a post
collapse society. They might only have deep, difficult to reach
coal or oil.
Speaker 1: Left, which requires advanced mining tech.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't have yet exactly. They'd need significant industrial capacity
just to get the energy source needed to build industrial capacity.
It's a catch twenty two.
Speaker 1: So the sources actually suggest we should stop using easy coal.
Keep it in the ground is insurance.
Speaker 2: It's a provocative idea that comes up, like a civilization
insurance policy in case the worst happens.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's a really challenging thought ethically politically.
Speaker 2: It's deeply uncomfortable, isn't it balancing our needs now against
the potential needs of a hypothetical desperate future generation.
Speaker 1: What are the odds of that actually happening voluntarily leaving
valuable resources untouched.
Speaker 2: Practically and politically close to zero in our current world.
You'd have to say it requires unprecedented global agreement, sacrificing
short term gain for long term uncertain benefit. It's a
political non starter.
Speaker 1: Who enforces it? Who benefits? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Huge issues, But the theoretical argument is stark. If the
energy cost to reindustrialize is too high without that easy
starter fuel, maybe we do risk trapping humanity in a
lower tech state. Permanently after a collapse.
Speaker 1: Are there other resources like that things we should maybe ensure.
Speaker 2: Potentially you could make similar arguments for certain rare earth minerals,
vital for electronics, or maybe easily accessible high grade iron ore,
things that are bottlenecks for getting advanced tech going again.
Speaker 1: It's about preserving the starting.
Speaker 2: Blocks exactly, resources that are hard to substitute or make
from scratch without already having advanced tech. It really reframes
our responsibility to the future, doesn't it thinking centuries millennia ahead.
Speaker 1: It really does. Okay? What else helps recovery? We've got
food knowledge, maybe eventually energy. What about just information? Knowing
how things worked?
Speaker 2: That's another huge factor tipping the scales towards recovery. The
sheer volume of recorded information we have.
Speaker 1: Even if the Internet is down, hard drives wiped.
Speaker 2: Yes, even then, we'd undoubtedly lose a ton of crucial
operational knowledge think complex software databases, the specific expertise inside
people's heads. A digital dark age would be real and painful, okay,
But a vast amount of technological, scientific and cultural knowledge
is stored physically in the world's two point six million libraries.
Speaker 1: Books actual paper books.
Speaker 2: The books, journals, blueprints, manuals, encyclopedias. Physical records are surprisingly resilient.
They'd largely survive fires, floods, EMPs that might wipe out
digital data.
Speaker 1: So we still have this massive backup drive made of.
Speaker 2: Paper, exactly, an invaluable reservoir of human achievement, history, science, engineering,
how to guides for civilization.
Speaker 1: So survivors wouldn't have to redrive calculus or figure out thermodynamics.
Speaker 2: Again, Nope, they'd find textbooks explaining it. They wouldn't have
to reinvent the internal combustion engine from scratch. They could
likely find schematics. Millennia of intellectual groundwork would still be accessible.
Speaker 1: What might be lost, though, even with the books.
Speaker 2: What's harder to capture in books is tacit knowledge, the
hands on skill, the intuition.
Speaker 1: Like a master craftsman's touch.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You can read a book about blacksmithing, but it's
not the same as learning from a master who has
the feel for the metal. A schematic for a skyscraper
is one thing. The experienced engineer who knows all the
practical tricks is another. That kind of embodied practice knowledge
is much more vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Right, the how to versus the why. Still having the
why and the basic designs is huge.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely massive because it gives survivors the power of
knowing what's pos possible.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't be starting blind thinking a mudhead is the
best humanity can do.
Speaker 2: Precisely, they know about electricity, computers, airplanes, medicine. They could
find old remnants, a broken smartphone, a rusting car, pictures
in a book, and have a target something to aim for,
to try and reverse engineer.
Speaker 1: It's like having a map, even if parts are torn
and the roads are washed out.
Speaker 2: A perfect analogy that accumulated knowledge, even fragmented acts like
a lighthouse, reminding people of past glories, guiding reconstructions, spurring
them on.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's try and wrap this up. We've covered
a lot of ground, from Roman plumbing to nuclear winter
to seed banks.
Speaker 2: We certainly have what's the.
Speaker 1: Big takeaway here? It feels complex, both scary and hopeful.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. The conclusion is nuanced. On
one hand, the threats are real. Catastrophic collapse, whether natural
or self inflicted, is a possibility we have to take seriously.
But on the other hand, there's this deep, powerful current
of human resilience running through history, the bounce back factor exactly,
and even if the absolute worst happened a near total
collapse of our global civilization, recovery seems likely. Maybe not quick,
maybe not easy, maybe involving immense suffering and.
Speaker 1: Loss, a new dark age perhaps.
Speaker 2: Perhaps, But the fundamental capacity to rebuild, to learn, to innovate,
it seems incredibly strong, woven into who we are.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's the optimistic note.
Speaker 2: But okay, but we absolutely cannot downplay the stakes right now.
While long term recovery might be likely, the immediate threats
are terrifyingly high.
Speaker 1: Nuclear war, engineered pandemics.
Speaker 2: These pose truly existential risks to billions living today and
to the amazing complex, interconnected global civilization we've built. The
systems that give us so much are also incredibly vulnerable,
especially to our own actions.
Speaker 1: It's not just about bouncing back in a thousand years.
It's about the choices we make now.
Speaker 2: Precisely those choices determine the fate of people alive today
and the immediate future of humanity.
Speaker 1: It feels like maybe humanity is like a teenager.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: You know, we've suddenly got this incredibly powerful car our technology,
and we're speeding around blind corners, maybe a bit drunk
on our own success. Definitely not wearing a seat built,
just thrilled by the speed, not thinking enough about the
cliff edge.
Speaker 2: That's a vivid analogy and maybe quite accurate.
Speaker 1: But the good news maybe is that it's still early
days in owning this car. We know where the dangerous
corners are. Now we've actually invented the seat belts, the knowledge,
the potential solutions we have.
Speaker 2: We have the knowledge, the resources, the capacity to prepare
to mitigate these risks. We just need to We just
need to actually do it. Buckle up, slow down before
the really sharp term.
Speaker 1: The knowledge is there, the collective will needs to follow.
Speaker 2: That's the crucial point. Understanding the risks is step one.
Taking action is the safeguard.
Speaker 1: So thinking about the listener, what does all this mean
for you? Maybe consider this, If civilization's resilience partly depends
on keeping resources accessible and knowledge alive, what small things
could you do, What information could you learn or skills
could you practice that might add to that collective backup plan.
It doesn't have to be huge, like what like tending
a garden properly, really understanding how a basic tool or
machine works, learning a practical skill, sewing basic repairs, first aid,
even just actively preserving and sharing useful practical knowledge in
your own community.
Speaker 2: Little acts of resilience building.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: And maybe also what's the value of just understanding this
historical pattern.
Speaker 1: Right not to live in fear, not at all.
Speaker 2: But maybe to truly appreciate what we've built, this incredible, complex,
yet fragile thing we call civilization.
Speaker 1: And what responsibilities does that appreciation put on us right here,
right now as we try to balance our ambitions with well, wisdom, foresight.
Speaker 2: Powerful questions indeed to guide how we navigate this unique, powerful,
and perilous moment in human history.
Speaker 1: Definitely food for thought. Thank you for joining us on
this deep dive into well the edge of everything.