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    Societal Collapse


    A Living Literature Review
    • Anthropocene traps

      How humanity works towards its downfall

      Posted on 2024/06/20

      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. In a recent paper, Søgaard Jørgensen et al. (2023) coined the term “anthropocene traps” for... [Read More]
      Tags:
      • Influence Factors
      • Coordination Problems
    • Trade collapse

      Cascading risks in our global supply chains

      Posted on 2024/04/25

      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 aims to provide an overview of the current trade system, highlighting its potential vulnerabilities and exploring... [Read More]
      Tags:
      • Influence Factors
      • Coordination Problems
    • What factors allow societies to survive a crisis?

      Understanding history with big datasets

      Posted on 2024/04/09

      From time to time you come across a paper that blows you away with the amount of work it must have needed to create it and the fascinating insights that can be gleaned from it. For me the preprint “All Crises are Unhappy in their Own Way: The role of... [Read More]
      Tags:
      • Overview Post
      • Summaries
    • The best places to weather global catastrophes

      Probably not where you are right now

      Posted on 2024/03/04

      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 meant to give an overview of... [Read More]
      Tags:
      • Resilience
      • Food
    • Climate anomalies and societal collapse

      Is climate the fundamental cause that topples civilizations?

      Posted on 2024/02/08

      The tricky thing with collapse is that all the possible proximate causes can interact with and cause each other. In an earlier post we discussed a literature review by Joseph Tainter (Tainter, 2023). Tainter lists three main kinds of events that have been identified as a cause for collapse: 1)... [Read More]
      Tags:
      • Influence Factors
      • Climate
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    Florian Ulrich Jehn  •  2025

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