As any biologist would predict, this success led to an increase in human numbers—slow at first, then rapid, tracing Gause’s S-shaped curve. We began rising up the steepest part of the slope in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. If we follow Gause’s pattern, growth will continue at delirious speed until the second inflection point, when we have exhausted the global petri dish. After that, human life will be, briefly, a Hobbesian nightmare, the living overwhelmed by the dead. When the king falls, so do his minions; it is possible that in our desperation we might consume most of the world’s
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