The collapse of modern human civilisation is inevitable. Anyone who doesn’t accept that knows no history.

On this planet it has happened at least 90 times so far, to past civilisations and 400 societies. The crucial question today is when will the epochal world event take place?

Beyond that, we can be sure that modern society will be completely unprepared – despite numerous warnings from scientists and  historians who have studied the evidence closely over the past century.

Collapse will almost certainly come as a dreadful shock to most people, engendering global panic, mass migration, societal failure, wars, plagues and probably, far worse. “Wealth” will vanish in the blink of an eye, as will food.

Different scholars hold varying views about the chief drivers of this impending self-inflicted collapse – climate catastrophe, global food failure, extinction, overpopulation, overconsumption, nuclear war, universal toxic pollution, AI, a global economic crash and energy shortfall are among the popular precipitators. Each, however, depicts only a single facet of what is, plainly, a multi-faceted catastrophic emergency.

Another thing is certain: no government, anywhere, has a plan for dealing with collapse, whatever its causes or outcomes. Most, in their dysfunction, do not even recognise its imminence. And while a few individuals may have built “doomsday shelters” to retreat into, those offer no guarantees of survival, beyond a few weeks.

In the past, civilisations mainly fell as a result of food failure, structural failure, institutional failure, disease and climate change. The popular image of hordes of invading barbarians tends to be a consequence, not a cause, of civilisational collapse.

The British historian Arnold Toynbee, in his  epic 12-volume survey of 23 civilisations, concluded the major cause of collapse was a failure of the creative impulse which had built them. In his view, nascent civilisations encounter external and internal challenges that prompt creative, adaptive responses, which lead to their expansion. After this comes an inevitable cycle of oligarchy (concentration of power in few, selfish, hands), followed by moral and physical decline and systemic collapse.

Toynbee is best known for his aphorism that “ Civilisations die from suicide, not by murder” which distils his view that decline and fall are usually self-inflicted, and self-chosen and rarely the result of outside forces.

So it may be with modern global civilisation which, despite its strong technological, economic and communication ties, lacks the cultural, moral, linguistic and ideological binding that underpinned previous imperia. In other words, our modern world is more fragile, even, than any preceding civilisation. The things that connect it will ensure it all goes down together.

A historical parallel is the Late Bronze Age Collapse, about 3200 years ago, in which seven major civilisations located around the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey and North Africa all fell at the same time. Closely connected by trade, intermarriage and war, there may have been multiple causes of their fall, climatic change high among them.

Over the past decade, I have written several books and  countless articles describing the main drivers of contemporary collapse, as the world’s leading scientific minds understand them, so that society may prepare for the worst and minimise the damage to our children and grandchildren. All, so far, to no avail. This work, articulated by  the Council for the Human Future, identifies 10 catastrophic risks or megathreats:

· Resource scarcity, especially of fresh water, soil, forests, fish and certain minerals

· Decline of the Earth’s life support systems

· Nuclear war

· Hothouse Earth

· Food insecurity

· Global poisoning

· Overpopulation

· Pandemic disease

· Uncontrolled technologies

· Misinformation and delusion.

All these threats are interconnected and cannot be separated, meaning they cannot be solved one at a time. Collectively, they present the gravest emergency in all human history, affecting every society on Earth. Consequently, global collapse and human survival must be addressed as a single challenge – and its various solutions must work in ways that make none of the component threats worse.

But this appears too large a problem for the limited understanding of the typical nation state or government, unable to see beyond its own borders and narrow self-interest to the greater good of humanity.

Collapse theory, doomerism, collapsitarianism — call it what you will — is on the rise worldwide as more and more individuals come to the realisation, in the face of overwhelming scientific proofs, that the resources that underpin modern civilisation cannot be sustained in the face of the human lust for “growth”. But collapse awareness is restricted to a very small, educated and scientifically-literate segment of the world populace. The bulk of humanity remains unaware or indifferent, content to accept its fate and to sacrifice its children.

As many scientists have pointed out — including the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich, Martin Rees, Johan Schellnhuber, Johan Rockstrom, Naomi Oreskes, William Catton, Matthias Wackernagel and many more — the Earth’s finite resources can probably support about two billion people living at today’s consumption levels, long-term – and we have eight billion, soon to be 10 or 11. There are many cases in nature and  history where overpopulation has led to collapse. Humans are not unique, but our current population explosion has used technology — chiefly fossil fuels, agriculture and money — to try to achieve the impossible: perpetual growth on a finite world. At some point, the Earth system invariably self-corrects.

Of the various causes of collapse, the one most overlooked, and potentially the most harmful, is delusion – the capacity of humans to believe whatever they wish, regardless of the facts. A species that does not believe it is in danger is very unlikely to avoid it.

The primary causes of collapse are therefore the four main human delusions: money, politics, religion and the false narratives we tell ourselves (eg. that we are “wise”). These delusions all fail when they come up against the hard facts of the physical world – though, often, not without a struggle, as people generally cling to their empty beliefs as long as they can.

Many people, for example, cannot comprehend the vast increases in population and material consumption that have occurred in the past 50 years. To them, the world today is much the same as the one they knew when they were growing up. So, they have no idea of the scale of the impending disaster driven by overpopulation and overconsumption – and this, more than any other factor, magnifies its likelihood.

The problem that science faces, in sounding its many warnings about the danger of catastrophe, is that religion got there first. Without any factual basis, countless prophets and theologies have foretold human doom – and every one has proven to be wrong, for the excellent reason that they had no basis in reality. So, ordinary people often have trouble in telling the difference between another false prophecy (usually designed to attract followers or money to a sect) and a genuine forecast based on substantive, validated evidence. This is how false beliefs can kill society.

Another is by the  narcissistic and psychopathic qualities of leaders – like Trump, Putin and bin Salman. All are pursuing policies that will cause the collapse not only of their own countries, but of global civilisation generally.

And then there is money, or economics, a delusion preached by the rich and their servants, that the Earth is inexhaustible. That growth can  go on forever, all physical evidence to the contrary, no matter whom or what it destroys.

Because society is inured to false prophets, may unthinking citizens demand that a firm date be set on collapse. Due to the complex interaction of the 10 megathreats, this is simply not possible. However, the process is well under way – and the slide towards it steepens dramatically when:

– Global food supplies become more insecure;

– Countries start to run out of water;

– Some idiot releases an atomic bomb;

– New coal, gas or oil resources are tapped;

– Chemical damage to the human brain attains pandemic levels;

– Key climate tipping points are passed;

– AI takes over most jobs and spies on everyone;

– Mass delusion takes over and starts to collapse countries (eg. the US);

– Some idiot creates a super plague virus; or

– The world population continues to expand.

All of these factors are man-made. They bear out Toynbee’s hypothesis that our civilisation will die by its own hand – and sooner, rather than later. All of them consist of realities that humans collectively, and governments especially, prefer not to face.

It may not yet be too late to save a large part of modern civilisation. But in another few years it probably will be.

“Died of a delusion” seems a fitting epitaph for our civilisation’s tombstone.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.