How Worlds Collapse

How Worlds Collapse PDF Author: Miguel Centeno
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032363257
Category : Disasters
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As our society confronts climate change, authoritarianism, and epidemics, what can examples from the past tell us about our present and future? This book studies societies that either collapsed or overcame cataclysmic adversity, tracing patterns, strategies, and early warning signs that can inform decision making today.

How Worlds Collapse

How Worlds Collapse PDF Author: Miguel Centeno
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032363257
Category : Disasters
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As our society confronts climate change, authoritarianism, and epidemics, what can examples from the past tell us about our present and future? This book studies societies that either collapsed or overcame cataclysmic adversity, tracing patterns, strategies, and early warning signs that can inform decision making today.

How Worlds Collapse

How Worlds Collapse PDF Author: Miguel Centeno
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000829588
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
As our society confronts the impacts of globalization and global systemic risks—such as financial contagion, climate change, and epidemics—what can studies of the past tell us about our present and future? How Worlds Collapse offers case studies of societies that either collapsed or overcame cataclysmic adversity. The authors in this volume find commonalities between past civilizations and our current society, tracing patterns, strategies, and early warning signs that can inform decision-making today. While today’s world presents unique challenges, many mechanisms, dynamics, and fundamental challenges to the foundations of civilization have been consistent throughout history—highlighting essential lessons for the future.

Collapse

Collapse PDF Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141976969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times

1177 B.C.

1177 B.C. PDF Author: Eric H. Cline
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
A bold reassessment of what caused the Late Bronze Age collapse In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen? In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries. A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age—and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.

Understanding Collapse

Understanding Collapse PDF Author: Guy D. Middleton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110715149X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse

Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse PDF Author: H. Nüzhet Dalfes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642606164
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 733

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Book Description
Around 4000 years ago the advanced urban civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and India suddenly collapsed. What happened? Did a prolonged drought cause the breakdown of social order? Recent discoveries from all over the world strongly support the suspected link of the collapse with climate. The volume presents the findings of more than 40 researchers and provides a review on the relevant information. It appears that a major shift of the precipitation pattern affected many parts of the world at approximately the same time, with disastrous effects on the nomadic populations of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Can a similar climate shift with a serious adverse impact on society happen again? In a world facing global warming, there could be many lessons to be learned from the experiences of ancient societies.

How Everything Can Collapse

How Everything Can Collapse PDF Author: Pablo Servigne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509541403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
What if our civilization were to collapse? Not many centuries into the future, but in our own lifetimes? Most people recognize that we face huge challenges today, from climate change and its potentially catastrophic consequences to a plethora of socio-political problems, but we find it hard to face up to the very real possibility that these crises could produce a collapse of our entire civilization. Yet we now have a great deal of evidence to suggest that we are up against growing systemic instabilities that pose a serious threat to the capacity of human populations to maintain themselves in a sustainable environment. In this important book, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens confront these issues head-on. They examine the scientific evidence and show how its findings, often presented in a detached and abstract way, are connected to people’s ordinary experiences – joining the dots, as it were, between the Anthropocene and our everyday lives. In so doing they provide a valuable guide that will help everyone make sense of the new and potentially catastrophic situation in which we now find ourselves. Today, utopia has changed sides: it is the utopians who believe that everything can continue as before, while realists put their energy into making a transition and building local resilience. Collapse is the horizon of our generation. But collapse is not the end – it’s the beginning of our future. We will reinvent new ways of living in the world and being attentive to ourselves, to other human beings and to all our fellow creatures.

Making Electricity Resilient

Making Electricity Resilient PDF Author: Antti Silvast
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315306093
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
Energy risk and security have become topical matters in Western and international policy discussions; ranging from international climate change mitigation to investment in energy infrastructures to support economic growth and more sustainable energy provisions. As such, ensuring the resilience of more sustainable energy infrastructures against disruptions has become a growing concern for high-level policy makers. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, policy analysis, and survey research, this book unpacks the work of the authorities, electricity companies, and lay persons that keeps energy systems from failing and helps them to recover from disruptions if they occur. The book explores a number of important issues: the historical security policy of energy infrastructures; control rooms where electricity is traded and maintained in real time; and electricity consumers in their homes. Presenting case studies from Finland and Scandinavia, with comparisons to the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union at large, Making Electricity Resilient offers a detailed and innovative analysis of long-term priorities and short-term dynamics in energy risk and resilience. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy policy and security, and science and technology studies.

The Collapse of Complex Societies

The Collapse of Complex Societies PDF Author: Joseph Tainter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521386739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.

Mood Matters

Mood Matters PDF Author: John L. Casti
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642048358
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
"Mood Matters" makes the radical assertion that all social events ranging from fashions in music and art to the rise and fall of civilizations are biased by the attitudes a society holds toward the future. When the "social mood" is positive and people look forward to the future, events of an entirely different character tend to occur than when society is pessimistic. The book presents many examples from every walk of life in support of this argument. In addition, methods are given to actually measure the social mood and to project it into the future in order to forecast what’s likely or not over varying periods of time. Casti's writing is a pleasure to read and its contents an eye-opener. "They [the chapters] tell an engrossing story, and the mystery heightens as it goes. . . . it's chatty and knowing." Greg Benford, Physicist and science-fiction writer, author of "Timescape" and "Deep Time" "I am struck by how thought-provoking it all is. I am sure that your book will draw a lot of attention" Tor Norretranders, Science writer, author of "The Generous Man" and "The User Illusion".