# Could our civilization fall? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 16, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144 "2009-02-16T19:30:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/41 "2009-02-17T14:45:06Z")
Give me an official timeline for world events in the _Mad Max_ universe. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/42 "2009-02-17T14:56:06Z")
In Mad Max, society was in decline, presumably due to energy shortages. We are given a glimpse of a world where gangs and criminals are taking over because government no longer has the resources to support it’s infrastructure. In the prologue to Road Warrior, it is said that “two great tribes went to war”. Presumabably the war eventually went nuclear as the superpowers fought for the last remaining resources. And of course, it is confirmed in Thunderdome that there was a nuclear war. The city at the end is Syndey, Austrilia. It could have been blowed up or it could just be from 15 years of neglect or some combination of both. IMHO, there doesn’t have to be a consistant explanation. All we need to know is they ran out of energy and the world tore itself apart. I also like to point out that in a world where you have to stop your car in the middle of a chase to mop up any spilled gasoline, perhaps a supercharged V-8 Ford Falcon isn’t the best choice of vehicles. What do people mean by “fall”? Regress into a Mad Max style barbarism? Unlikely without some sort of massive disaster that completely disrupts our infrastructure. Do they mean a radical political restructuring? This happens all the time. Fortunately, we have set up various mechanisms here in the West to facilitate those changes non-violently. One of the advantages of Western style democratic / capitalist society is that it is very flexible and adaptable to change. Markets tend to adapt to scarcity, encouraging people to find substitutes. When you put a lot of fixed government institutions in place, they tend to be self-perpetuating exist outside of market forces. Because of this, once they are no longer sustainable, they tend to collapse suddenly and violently instead of change themselves gradually. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/43 "2009-02-17T15:02:06Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Give me an official timeline for world events in the _Mad Max_ universe. There isn’t one. The first film is set “a few years from now”, according to Wikipedia and IMDB, although I could swear the UK-market version said 1995. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/44 "2009-02-17T15:05:45Z")
This sounds to me like “making it up as you go along” with no attempt at a consistent explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/45 "2009-02-17T16:45:00Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > First, define “fall”. The Roman Empire didn’t completely fall until 1453, when the Turks stormed Constantinople. The British Empire fell, but the British people didn’t suffer a decline in living standards as a result. I think this is an important point. Barring a huge natural calamity, in which case all bets are off, I think it quite likely that the current superpowers will fall in much the same way as the British Empire - still a perfectly fine place to live but real power is concentrated somewhere else for a while, or in fact shared more equally. As other countries grow in economic strength it is inevitable that the relative power of the old guard will slip. I think this is an inevitable consequence of the modernization of many of the developing countries, and do not think it a bad thing at all. ---
**Author:** ![davekhps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/46 "2009-02-17T17:11:46Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I’m surprised this was ignored so far. . . > It has happened many times in many places in human history and pre-history. But never in a society that _has no_ local technologies. That’s the trouble with the Earth today-- we _are_ a global village. Any one thread of our economy or knowledge base is fragile, but in totality, it’s an extraordinarily complex and dynamic weave. Thus, in order to achieve a regression that simulates what the OP has in mind, you have to destroy that weave. It’s a case of network attack: networks are resilient in nearly all cases. Lose a few nodes, or even many nodes, and they will reconstitute themselves in new patterns. In the modern world? U.S. declines, someone else steps up (or, more likely/accurately, U.S. keeps going well, but other nations get better too). Other nations decline, maybe “nations” get replaced by something else-- fundamentalist medieval faiths, globe-spanning corporations, what have you. The way to take that down network is to take it down at many nodes simultaneously. You have to essentially destroy global communications and atomize the network-- and more importantly, eliminate any ability/desire on the part of the zillion constituent components (U.S., China, the E.U., Microsoft, the Catholic Church, Al Qaeda, AAA auto club, etc.) to reconstitute that network. And you have do it FAST. Scenarios? As said above-- nuclear war, comet/asteroid strike, or supervolcano(s) are about all that could do that. Disease isn’t going to do that-- even the perfect bioweapons won’t be 100% efficient, let alone quick enough. Global warming? Whatever, that’ll be easy to deal with in comparison to the biggies up there. EMP could come close to doing it, if you set off enough orbital nukes-- but even then, we’d just be set back, and enough folks would want to move forward quickly to overcome it (the world would look different, but we’d largely still have the capacity to return to something that looked more-or-less normal. . . not fast, not easily, but it would be done). One caveat to all of this, however: no sufficiently advanced interconnected civilization has ever “fallen” due to external forces-- they instead invariably do it to themselves. Personally, I think the most likely doomsday scenario of the next hundred years is that what we think of the West _chooses_ to die off. Europe and Japan have already stopped having babies, and the U.S. does well because we still import them. I wonder what the world will think of the ancient nations of Europe when most of them are majority Muslim (and Muslims will be the last “believers” on the Continent). Opinions of that desirability aside, the world WILL look different. As for China vs. India, we’ll discover what does them in. Either we run out of cheap & easy energy and the “early adopters” suffer the most, China implodes under an unsustainable corrupt kleptocracy, or a democratic India just can’t get _everyone_ as wealthy as it wants, and social unrest results. Fun times ahead. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/47 "2009-02-17T17:18:19Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > One caveat to all of this, however: no sufficiently advanced interconnected civilization has ever “fallen” due to external forces-- they instead invariably do it to themselves. Which advanced interconnected civilization has fallen due to self-destruction? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/48 "2009-02-17T17:22:25Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > One caveat to all of this, however: no sufficiently advanced interconnected civilization has ever “fallen” due to external forces-- they instead invariably do it to themselves. The Inca would disagree with you. If they were still around, that is. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/49 "2009-02-17T17:23:59Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > This sounds to me like “making it up as you go along” with no attempt at a consistent explanation. They weren’t written as a trilogy. The first screenplay was written, produced, and was successful, so they decided to make two more. > [@davekhps](#): > > …or a democratic India just can’t get _everyone_ as wealthy as it wants, and social unrest results. India has been a democracy for its entire existence as a nation, and has had massive income inequality for all of that time. I don’t see the social unrest bit happening. ---
**Author:** ![davekhps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/50 "2009-02-17T20:04:31Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Which advanced interconnected civilization has fallen due to self-destruction? None, actually. But modern “nations” have certainly _declined_ (post-imperial Britain, post-Soviet Russia, etc.). > [@Q.E.D](#): > > The Inca would disagree with you. If they were still around, that is. Alas, they weren’t advanced or interconnected. Which is why they’re not still around. ---
**Author:** ![davekhps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/51 "2009-02-17T20:10:08Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > India has been a democracy for its entire existence as a nation, and has had massive income inequality for all of that time. I don’t see the social unrest bit happening. Except for when, you know, that it does. Or has India not had more than its fair share of civil wars, religious strife, and other nasty bits in the past century? Income inequality isn’t a bad thing by itself, and the social stability in much of India isn’t amenable to such strife _now_. But a rising power tends not to shoot itself in the foot-- what happens if/when India “hits a wall” and discovers that it can only give 200, or 300 million Indians Western-style wealth, but a billion Indians who get a vote have to stand on the sidelines and watch the better sixth live it up on Bollywood screens? People are happiest when they think they have the opportunity to have a better life than they do now. If they lose that belief, trouble tends to follow. Personally, I’d bet on India doing pretty well. China, on the other hand. . . I’m far more pessimistic there. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/52 "2009-02-17T22:26:00Z")
> [@Q.E.D](#): > > I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a modern chem text that describes in sufficient detail the process of extracting saltpeter from manure. There simply isn’t, at least in developed nations, the need for such information, except as a passing curiosity. We can just go to a chem supply house and buy 99.9% pure technical grade sodium nitrate and go to work. Besides which, your own cite says the processes took months; during this time, I would not expect everyone to sit idly by until your putative band of survivalist world rebuilders gets its act together. No, if they have resources that others need, they’ll be attacked for them. Good luck getting your chemistry experiment to run while your village is being pillaged and plundered. Why would you need a modern text though? I bet there’s plenty of middle ages texts, copies of which survive. Middle English can be rough to read for a modern but it’s not exactly a foreign langauge. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/53 "2009-02-18T00:48:35Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > …Personally, I’d bet on India doing pretty well. China, on the other hand. . . I’m far more pessimistic there. I’ve thought the same for a long time. I hope the U.S. can be friends with both, but between the two, my money’s on India. Sooner or later I suspect the Communist aristocracy in China will take a fall, and the aftermath could be ugly before (if ever) democracy can be established. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144/54 "2009-02-18T01:21:40Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > Except for when, you know, that it does. Or has India not had more than its fair share of civil wars, religious strife, and other nasty bits in the past century? > > Income inequality isn’t a bad thing by itself, and the social stability in much of India isn’t amenable to such strife _now_. But a rising power tends not to shoot itself in the foot-- what happens if/when India “hits a wall” and discovers that it can only give 200, or 300 million Indians Western-style wealth, but a billion Indians who get a vote have to stand on the sidelines and watch the better sixth live it up on Bollywood screens? Sure it has… but none of it has had anything to do with income inequality. It’s all been religious strife and border wars with China and Pakistan. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-our-civilization-fall/486144.md?page=2)