Using Human History as a guide Could Our Present Civilization Fall Into a New Dark Age?

[-K2-]

I can't speak about Rome or the like. What I can speak on is what I've researched regarding my projects. In my fictional example based on research, hi altitude nuclear airbursts could take down power grids temporarily. Things like your computer, cell phones, even cars would likely not be affected...

But, the worst part is, folks will expect a rapid recovery which will NOT happen. So, they don't plan, and if you don't plan, you run out.

With just-in-time supply chains (as we have seen during the pandemic), since items aren't stockpiled they need to be produced. To be produced a phone call at the least needs to be made and received. The phone and computer itself might work, but the infrastructure doesn't. And, you can't get the infrastructure up until that call is made. Once the call is made, the product needs to be produced...that takes power, people able to get to work, etc., which can't be done until the infrastructure is back up...Catch-22...Naturally, no one is going to produce something unless they're getting paid. But again, without the infrastructure financial services are down.

Okay, let's say they fix 'critical' systems (you know that means from the top down). All the while, most of the population's cold stored food is spoiling. Also, due to the way utilities work, and appliances, they can't cook it...or pump water to wash dishes with, use the toilet, let alone drink. Yes, people have generators...but...they can't get fuel for them and even natural gas companies use electricity to get it there.

So, that means canned goods you can eat cold. Okay, except the stores where you buy them are all blacked out. Besides that, they'll only accept cash...and you can't get cash because all the banks are shut down. Plus, you have to get there, but you'll not be able to get fuel for your car until the power is back. So what happens when people are hungry--or more likely panicked--and there is only a large pane glass window between them and food? After they strip the stores, you're right back to having to make up for the lost product which NOW isn't being manufactured...and won't be for a while as their storage is failing and their raw food materials are spoiling.

So, rather quickly the cities will see chaos as the least composed decide to panic and 'play' anarchy--which it really is because the LE can't keep up operations without fuel and communications.

Rural areas will fare better briefly, but it will be hand-to-mouth. Meaning, kill a pig to eat, and due to the loss of knowledge of how to preserve food, and the inability to 'buy' what is needed to do so, most of that pig goes to waste. Crops and garden stuffs can't be eaten until they ripen, and by that time people again unable to preserve the food will eat what they have and that's it. There will come a point where brood and seed stock is eaten--that means no future crop or livestock--besides the fact as the base of the food chain pyramid, the whole pyramid comes down without it.

Blah, blah, blah...

People go crazy after a week without power. Imagine a month without power, news, fresh food, and no water. Since cell phones and computers don't work, the people will consider them dead, even if they're not. A car without gas is junk. Today electricity is the lifeblood of the civilized world. Without it, it becomes uncivilized.

Mankind got through the dark ages because they had the skills to do so, and could avoid other people who embraced the chaos. In 1086 England had a population of roughly 1.5 million (google). Today the U.K. sits at 68 million, most in urban areas.

Anywho...a month or more without power and you'll see how strong civilization is.

K2

 

[Parson]

Their health would suffer and their life expectancy fall. Over 90% of people would be employed in agriculture. Even the Mennonites and Amish trade with the outside. The global nature of our current society and our food production cannot be over emphasised.

Therefore, if there is any collapse of society, then I predict that it will be total and catastrophic, and while such collapses of society have in the past been regional, this would be world wide and on a global scale never before witnessed.

I don't think we disagree at all. Unless you mean that no one survives in mechanized rural areas. There are enough latent skills and knowledge to subsistence farm here, especially where the Mennonites, et. al. are found. But there will be a die off which is a mega superlative of immense. And the first year might mean the end for a lot of rural areas as roving groups of looters come to take what they don't have. But although, those who get past that will have a short and brutish life, they will survive in extremely small numbers.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I think there are 2 distinct issues here. One is technology and the second is law and order. The technology is about making things. If you don't know something exists, it is much harder to make it than if you already know what you are trying to do. Because of preknowledge and the tons of stuff that will be laying around, I think 1800's is totally practical. There won't be any smart phones but there could be computers. We could have had computers in the mid 1800's if things had turned out differently. Everything was there to do it. There would definitely be all kinds of spring loaded weapons and gunpowder powered weapons last a very long time. The secret of gunpowder hasn't been a secret for a long time.

Ships didn't disappear with the end of the Roman Empire. The shipping routes changed, the products being shipped around changed, but there was still plenty of activity in the boating world.

It looks like there were millions of people living in Mexico before the Europeans arrived. These were not nomadic groups wandering around but large groups of people dependent on food production operations that went far beyond single family farms. Leisure time back then was not what it is now, time spent by yourself doing nothing could have been a luxury, unlike today where it can be leveraged into gainful employment.

Getting food off the land isn't easy and if you are in a area where it can't be done, you move to an area where it can be done. No more living wherever the hell you feel like living. On the other hand, animal life is pretty resilient if you give it half a chance. Chernobyl has plenty of wildlife living in the areas abandoned by people. There has even been a noticeable increase in wildlife activity because of the dent put into the economy by covid 19. A shut down of the automated features and big power transports would go a long way towards restoring the wildlife populations. Maybe even fish would make a comeback.

This isn't going to happen with only a minor dent in the global population, there will be huge losses. There will be no medical industry. People who can't get their own food are going to be in for very hard times, and probably won't last. Trees will make a comeback at first, but we were doing a pretty good job of ridding the Earth of trees a couple of hundred years ago.

We might even stop slaughtering horses for dog food. Interesting idea, how long will it take for all the food treasures to get used up, things like canned hams.

Law and order, now that is something that could definitely go back to the stone age.

 

[sknox]

Spain was held by Rome since the time of Scipio. 3rdc BC. Gaul since the 4thc, but "all Gaul" not until Julius Caesar. 1stc BC.

Trade routes aren't really defended, except at specific points, and routes are (or were) extremely flexible. Sea routes even more so, though ports were certainly defended.

 

[sknox]

Collapse , break up and disillusion.

But "collapse" is altogether the wrong word to use. Break up is better because it doesn't imply a time period. The Empire did indeed break up ... over the course of centuries. As for disillusion, that's pretty difficult to demonstrate. Arguments have been made regarding St Augustine, but that can be said about most everything regarding him. Sidonius Apollonarius doesn't sound disillusioned. Procopius? More like cynical than disillusioned. OTOH, Edward Gibbon, most definitely.

 

[Pyan]

Mmm. Gibbon's views were highly influenced by the extreme anti-Catholic views at the time, not to mention his strong dislike of the Jews, and he wasn't much more tolerant of Islam. In his favour, though, he disliked using secondary and tertiary sources, preferring to go to the originals where possible. A reasonable source, but you always have to remember that he wasn't writing in a vacuum, so to speak.

 

[Pyan]

The routes might not be defended, but I have a faint memory that pre-Roman Britain was regularly trading tin for olive oil, wine and nice pottery and the tin trade was one of the things that brought the Romans to Britain - maybe one of you historians will remember that better than me.

Yes, tin was traded well before 55BC - it's an essential part of making bronze. There's evidence that wine, iron, olive oil, salt and north-west European coinage was also circulating in Britain before the Romans arrived. It's also possible that as well as the trade across the Channel, there were also visits from Phoenician trading vessels from Tyre and Sidon, at the far end of the Mediterranean in what is now the Lebanon, and Antioch, in modern Turkey. This is a journey of over 5,000 miles, so they must have valued the trade extremely highly...

 

[Dave]

The point (which I was clumsily trying to make) must be - not only do we have enough people who know how to grow food and care for animals, but do we also have enough people who can navigate a sailing boat without GPS or navigation lights from the Lebanon to Cornwall; do we have enough people who can repair boats, or repair roads, or maintain carts and horses; do we have enough people who know how to find tin and mine it, or iron, or salt; or people who can make wine and olive oil? - because without those skills the fall of a civilisation would be necessarily more rapid and longer lasting.

Someone said "books", but you do realise that libraries are closing and books are being digitised. An iPad will be as much use a bicycle is for a fish.

I do agree that it is easier to discover or make something when you know it is possible and have some little idea of how to achieve it, but that could be lost in a generation or two without the thing.

 

[BAYLOR]

But "collapse" is altogether the wrong word to use. Break up is better because it doesn't imply a time period. The Empire did indeed break up ... over the course of centuries. As for disillusion, that's pretty difficult to demonstrate. Arguments have been made regarding St Augustine, but that can be said about most everything regarding him. Sidonius Apollonarius doesn't sound disillusioned. Procopius? More like cynical than disillusioned. OTOH, Edward Gibbon, most definitely.

I have a bit of soft spot for Rome, always have. I look at Rome and think what might have been. A part me wishes that Rome had survived to the present day. I know in such alt world, I would very likely not exist . But maybe the resulting world ends up a better place then what we have now.

 

[Montero]

I'm currently watching Walking Britain's Roman Roads and there has been all sorts about what a militaristic society and their love of games in which animals and people are killed for entertainment. Yes, they were impressive, but I'm glad they're not still around. There is still killing of animals for entertainment, plus some killing of people for likewise - usually as a whoopsie for example crashes in motor racing - but at least it isn't mainstream in UK culture anymore to turn out in crowds of thousands to watch deliberately caused death.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

There are plenty of fire arms from a hundred years ago that still work. I am not talking about ocean liners, billion dollar sport boats, just ordinary boats, more than likely sailboats made out of wood. All you need is curiosity and you are already half way towards being able to repair things. If you don't have curiosity, a collapsed civilization is probably not easy to navigate. Before they started patenting every idea, new ingenious ways of doing things were freely shared in the original industrial revolution.

 

[sknox]

Most attention is paid to the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe. There are two other angles one might consider.

One is the Brunner Angle, a term I've just invented as a nod to the novel Stand on Zanzibar. There might not be a catastrophe. It might be a slow march into oblivion, with each generation perceptibly worse off, more restricted, less "advanced" than the previous. That hasn't been much explored by SF writers.

The other angle, which is currently nameless, is that there's a catastrophe (within a single generation, say) but what does the world look like a century later? It's usually that everything remains terribly backward, sort of locked where it got left. But a story of how society might put itself back together, and what that society might look like, seems like an interesting avenue for speculation. There's been more done there, especially in short stories. Maybe it should be the Miller Angle, after the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz.

 

[Pyan]

Can't improve on Earth Abides, IMHO. Written in 1949, and one of the rare books that you can call an absolute classic with practically no dissent.

 

[Montero]

So the big differences here are whether your scenario starts with sudden collapse of resources, so population far exceeds the resources, or there is a population collapse, which leads to a resource collapse - but the stockpile of resources will last the much smaller population for a long time.

(Where resource is food, water, medicines etc)

 

[-K2-]

So the big differences here are whether your scenario starts with sudden collapse of resources, so population far exceeds the resources, or there is a population collapse, which leads to a resource collapse - but the stockpile of resources will last the much smaller population for a long time.

(Where resource is food, water, medicines etc)

You're forgetting the greatest resource...

USDA Estimated Energy Daily Sedentary Caloric Intake Requirements:
Age 2-17: Range: F=1,000-1,800, M=1,000-2,400; Mean: F=1,438, M=1,663
Age 18-75: Range: F=1,600-2,000, M=2,000-2,600; Mean: F=1,738, M=2,235
Calc. Mean: <18=1,550, ≥18=1,986; RDCR (*): <18=2,000 ≥18=2,400
Average Caloric Value: 110,000-81,500 calories, calc. avg.: 95,750
Projected Calculated Result: 95,750/2,200 = 43.5
(*) Recommended Daily Caloric Ration should meet or exceed minimum requirements

Brought to you by the
Soylent Corporation
Good people make good food.


K2

 

[sknox]

What interests me is how people adapt. So, yes death and disease and those other two horses as well. But people find ways to lead their lives even in the worst situations. They would still have their stories. They would still build and invent and create. The tools would be different, the goals different, so what they built would be different. That, to me, is much more interesting than how things fall apart in the first place.

Also interesting would be the stories the survivors told each other about the apocalypse itself. I'm thinking of something along the lines of "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet.

 

[Joshua Jones]

Not to ignore all the discussion before, but I think answering this question requires a definition of what sort of civilization is being considered and what sort of catastrophe is envisioned. "Modern" civilization is not sufficient, because, for example, the United States and Great Britain, while at comparable technological levels, are worlds apart regarding easily exploitable natural resources, available space, proliferation of firearms, etc. Every bit of this is factored into the equation and may dramatically alter the outcome.

Also, it may not be common knowledge, but in the States (and I would presume most modern societies), every unit of government is required to submit an updated disaster plan on a regular basis, which for a city (where I'm most familiar with these plans), is often well over 1000 pages. The scenarios considered in this plans are insane in their specificity and scope. And yes, I know of cities with zombie apocalypse response plans. I really can't get into specifics about these plans, but suffice it to say most every situation outlined in at least the last 5-6 pages is dealt with in this plans.

TBH, though, the really tricky scenario is internal unrest caused by factors outside natural disaster and external attack. This isn't so much because plans aren't made for these scenarios, but that they are routinely ignored by well meaning and/or "well meaning" elected officials who think they know better than their staff. It's actually somewhat funny in a way; when it comes to external forces at work against a community, elected officials rarely step outside the disaster plan, but regarding constituent unrest, they almost always think they know best, and are often wrong. Of course, it becomes markedly less funny when lives and livelihoods are destroyed because of it...

Ok, moving away from potential social commentary...

If I were writing a cataclysm, I would go with large asteroid impact or social unrest devolving first to random riots, then organized riots, then open revolution. Those are probably the most difficult scenarios to maintain a functional society, especially if you're in a classically liberal society where the use of force against civilians is done with the greatest of hesitation, and may cause significant defection in the military/police forces. I could see either scenario causing a breakdown of civilization in the States.

 

[Temperance]

Can't improve on Earth Abides, IMHO. Written in 1949, and one of the rare books that you can call an absolute classic with practically no dissent.

There's an awful lot of Nazi apologism and eugenics in the book though.
The only animals smart enough to avoid overpopulation and the inevitable plague is rats, as they kill the unproductive, the disabled, and genetically (within the understanding of the time) impure.
There's some moral hygiene matched by physical hygiene for good measure.

 

[Montero]

Yikes. I was going to add that to my to-read list.

 

[Dave]

Another huge difference with Rome or anytime in the past is that in 2018 it was calculated that 55% of the world's population lived in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. With good infrastructure, cities are an incredibly efficient way to supply people with the food, water, energy, and all the services that they need such as medical help. In a less industrial, more agricultural society then you need the labour spread out, living closer to the land that they work. After some kind of world devastation of the kind we are discussing, where that infrastructure is severely damaged, then such a large proportion of people could not carry on living in cities as they do now. In the news today, after the explosion in Beruit, there are reports of people leaving the city on mass, their apartment blocks devastated, just shells, missing doors and windows. In the post apocalyptic fiction that I've read or watched on TV people often do leave cities for some rural hideaway, but then they also return to pick up tinned food supplies and equipment, or the books of knowledge to repair and renew things. In fiction, outside of nuclear war scenarios, the cities are depicted as largely intact but simply reclaimed by nature. What if the cities were devastated and there was no one to rebuild them? Getting society back on its feet again quickly would then be a very different prospect.