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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Barring apocalyptic natural disaster, the similarities with modern times are seriously overblown. Hordes of Somali pirates are going to topple civilizarion? Really? Even Mexico is a haven of good governance and the rule of law compared to pretty much any nation in the world prior to the industrial revolution. The modern world is fantastically stable compared to any previous era in history. Our modern distributed, globalised just-in-time economy simply wouldn't be possible if it wasn't. Yes the high level of optimisation in the modern economy is a potential source of vulnerability, but I believe we have massive economic and technological resources available to overcome such risks. The waves of migrants from the Middle East and Africa aren't coming to Europe to raze our cities, they're coming looking for jobs.

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While the modern state is indeed stable, environmental change has an impact even if not through apocalyptic natural disaster.

A long term drought contributed to the civil war in Syria[1]. It may be the first of many around the world.

Both Ebola and Zika are exacerbated by global climate change[2][3].

According to the link, Egypt survived as a state for a century longer before it too fell. That was after transforming from a civil society to martial law. With the threat to pregnancy posed by Zika, I'm reminded of the propaganda in "Children of Men": "The World Has Collapsed: Only Britain Soldiers On"

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-...

2. http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/09/04/how-climate-change-i...

3. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/20/10795562/zika-virus-cdc-mosquit...

"A long term drought contributed to the civil war in Syria". Maybe. However, two planned competing and mutually exclusive major oil pipelines, both routing through Syria, each sponsored by a different superpower, are likely to have led to the civil war even if the area had been an environmental paradise.

People weren't protesting in the streets against the regime because they were concerned about oil prices. They were upset because they didn't have jobs or couldn't afford food, and the countries around them were having revolutions first.

A severe disaster could cause total collapse of society and lack of food. Think like the aftermath of a full nuclear war between two large super powers, or an electromagnetic storm hitting earth, or a man made virus that wipes out half the population and has the other half hiding indoors scared to go outside - borders closed and massive quarantines.

None of these things is particularly likely to happen IMO. But if they did happen, you suddenly have a large portion of people not being fed. When people aren't being fed, you get uprisings, wars, and desperate people joining the roving bands of marauders that the article talks about.

But man, the Earth currently produces so much food. It's incredible really how much we can do with so few humans, with modern agriculture. Most of it goes to animals, and in a time of need we could slaughter them and eat the corn directly.

It would be really, really hard to seriously damage the food output of Earth - or at least first world countries. And it's only going to increase with technology like genetic engineering, super efficient robot greenhouses, or microorganisms bred to produce things like sugar 20x cheaper than conventional agriculture.

I think there are some similarities to what happened after the Arab Spring. Elite governments were overthrown, and some cases (Libya, Syria) it ended up in destruction and chaos.

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