The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

by Dan Carlin

One of the modern theories on societal collapse argues that because of the entire planet’s connected nature in the twenty-first century, individual or localized “dark ages” of the sort that formerly occurred are nowadays absorbed by the rest of the global body and civilization as a whole.

Our ideas of what was good for the inhabitants of an earlier time might be different from their own.

It’s hard to know what you’re missing after it’s been gone for a couple of lifetimes.

Of course we would want the things of the past that seemed like improvements, but would we want the rest of the package that came along with it? If, for example, a Native American from five centuries ago had a bad tooth, she might really want our modern dentistry to deal with it. But if in order to get the modern medicine she had to become modern in all the other aspects of her existence, she might not consider the deal worth it.

in some regions the Roman Empire taxed its citizens so highly, and provided so few services in return, that some of those people welcomed the “conquering barbarians” as liberators.

if things become too complicated to work well, or too centralized to be in touch with ground-level problems, is reverting to a greater level of simplicity and local control moving in a negative or a positive direction?*

time has a way of sanitizing even a mass killing.

the greatest urban center of the ancient world—Nineveh, the heart of the Assyrian Empire in northern Mesopotamia.

They died as their city was dying.

In the scope of human history, there are two kinds of cultures that have had a large geopolitical impact on the historical stage. The first are the societies and cultures that can trace their lineage back to much earlier versions of themselves, like the Chinese and Egyptian civilizations.

The second are societies that seem to have had a glory-filled golden era, then fell into obscurity.

Before its fall, the Mesopotamian culture that Assyria was a part of was akin to Civilization 1.0. Babylon and Assyria represented the apex of that civilization’s version, with a growth in power, sophistication, and development

The oldest work in European literature is often credited to Homer and dated between 800 and 1000 BCE—compare that with The Epic of Gilgamesh, from Mesopotamia, which was put into writing in about 2100 BCE and had been an oral story earlier than that.

It’s difficult to understand just how urban this culture was,

As with the citizens of most powerful states throughout the ages, though, it is highly unlikely that the citizens of ancient Nineveh ever thought their culture would be wiped off the map.

the Assyrians were often cast, especially by their neighbors, as the equivalent of the Nazis in the biblical era.* These were people who appeared to be proud of the terrible things they did.

The trade routes, the stability, the protection from outside barbarian attacks—all are traditionally cited positives in the classic trade-offs-of-empire argument.

subsequent societies—ones that followed only a couple of generations later—seemed ignorant of its former greatness.

Western Asia has always been home to some of the best cavalry in the world, but its infantry historically was often much less formidable than, say, Europe’s.

So much of war is about nerve and morale and avoiding panic,

By the time the Persian Empire that succeeded the Assyrians stepped in, it’s possible that the Persians may not have had to have been as brutal, because Assyria had already cowed many of the tribes, peoples, and states who otherwise would have posed a threat.* It’s even been suggested that the reason Alexander the Great’s invasion of Persia three centuries later seemed easier than perhaps anyone thought it would be was because the region had already been broken to the yoke of empire after centuries of wars with Assyria.

It was a classic trap of empire: military overextension.

The ghost city, however, remained in mute testament to the greatness and majesty of its builders, whomever they might have been.

We assume such a fate won’t be ours. But once upon a time, so did they.

our minds are hardwired to think in terms of continuous improvement and modernization, an unspoken assumption that capabilities will always be advancing and the pace at which technological discoveries and innovations occur will only speed up.

It’s understandable that over time we would forget that things could ever move in the opposite direction.

To look at a map of the formerly Roman world circa 600 CE is to see what an empire looks like when it’s fragmented.

Only contemporary Han dynasty China could be considered to have been on par with Rome.

The fact that Rome was also one of the most warlike states in human history is not a coincidence. None of this empire building would have been possible if Rome hadn’t possessed one of the finest armies in world history.

How far into the future could the best military today be transported and still compete successfully?

We live in an age when all the world has been mapped and satellite imagery has turned the entire surface of the planet into a known commodity.

while we moderns wouldn’t be particularly frightened of any newly found society if it were discovered to be far below our technological, economic, or complexity levels, some of the most frightening peoples in history were the ones who fit these criteria, the ones we’ve come to know as “barbarians.”

It rests on an assumption that conquest and the smashing of dangerous foes was often done to pacify the unstable frontier, but the frontier never seemed to stay pacified. There seemed always to be new enemies (usually ever tougher and fiercer) beyond the ones recently defeated.

The most famous of these regions sometimes referred to as “wombs of nations” or “factories of tribes” was in the general area of the Altay Mountains in Mongolia.

The troops whom Caesar describes as intimidated by this unnerving foe were themselves an army of intimidators.

“A German is not so easily prevailed upon to plough the land and wait patiently for harvest as to challenge a foe and earn wounds for his reward. He thinks it tame and spiritless to accumulate slowly by the sweat of his brow what could be got quickly by the loss of a little blood.”

created zones where they had forcibly depopulated the land around their home area to form a defensive perimeter. The greater the tribe, the wider the dead zone.

furor teutonicus,

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (Teutoburger Wald)

it may have been the peaceful interaction between the two peoples that eventually changed the actual balance of power.

A crisis can also be an opportunity,

the Gothic War (376–382 CE).

like other Germanic tribes who moved into non-Germanic regions, they picked up adventurers, freed slaves, Huns, Slavs, Alan warriors, and even disaffected Roman citizens along their route. That’s the sort of heterogeneous “Gothic” force that lined up against the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378 CE.

Romans were plagued with a multitude of huge problems, chief of which may have been the power struggles among would-be emperors for control of the western empire. They also had social problems, tax base problems, military recruitment problems, and a host of other issues. All of this might have been survivable in less perilous times.

“discontents and fortune-seekers.”

Without realizing it, the Roman decision makers were parceling out the empire to the people who would eventually run these regions when the central authority fell apart—in effect creating their own successor states. As the historian Roger Collins writes: “What is genuinely striking . . . is the haphazard, almost accidental nature of the process. From 410 onwards, successive Western imperial regimes just gave way or lost practical authority over more and more of the territory of the former Empire. The Western Empire delegated itself out of existence.”

Elements of the Catholic Church (monasteries for example), local groups, and warlords or petty kings tried to manage a soft landing from modernity as best they could, but it wouldn’t be long before some of the places that had once done their business in coinage—coinage that had a Roman emperor’s image on it—reverted to a barter economy.

to call these changes a decline, he says, is to adopt a conservative Roman attitude toward change.

Life went on in place. . . . It was just different.”

Clovis seems to have been an even mix of Viking warlord, Mafia don, and outlaw motorcycle gang leader.