How Worlds Collapse

Miguel A. Centeno is Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and Executive Vice Dean of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He is founder and co-director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) Global Systemic Risk research community.Peter W. Callahan is a graduate of Princeton University who earned his MS in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of New Mexico. He is a researcher at Princeton’s PIIRS Global Systemic Risk research community where his scholarly interests include the study of socio-ecological systems, historical systemic risks, sustainable development, and renewable energy policy and technology.Paul A. Larcey is co-director of the PIIRS Global Systemic Risk research community at Princeton University. Larcey’s work with the UK’s innovation agency focuses on key emerging technologies including life sciences, quantum technologies, and AI. He has worked in corporate research, venture capital, and global industrial sectors at board and senior levels and studied engineering, materials science, and finance at London, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities.Thayer S. Patterson is coordinator and a founding member of the PIIRS Global Systemic Risk research community at Princeton University. Following his studies in economics and mechanical engineering at Yale, and finance at Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance, his research has focused on the causes and consequences of catastrophic systemic risk.

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• IntroductionSection 1: Theory and Insights of Historical Collapse1. Globalization and Fragility: A Systems Approach to CollapseMiguel A. Centeno, Peter W. Callahan, Paul A. Larcey, and Thayer S. Patterson2. How Scholars Explain CollapseJoseph A. Tainter3. Diminishing Returns on Extraction: How Inequality and Extractive Hierarchy Create FragilityLuke Kemp4. Collapse, Recovery, and Existential RiskHaydn BelfieldSection 2: Historical and Archaeological Investigations of Collapse5. "Mind the Gap": The 1177 BCE Late Bronze Age Collapse and Some Preliminary Thoughts on Its Immediate AftermathEric H. Cline6. The End of "Peak Empire": The Collapse of the Roman, Han, and Jin EmpiresWalter Scheidel7. Collapse and Non-collapse: The Case of Byzantium ca. 650-800 CEJohn Haldon8. Fluctuat Nec Mergitur: Seven Centuries of Pueblo Crisis and ResilienceTimothy A. Kohler, R. Kyle Bocinsky, and Darcy Bird9. Episodes of the Feathered Serpent: Aztec Imperialism and CollapseDeborah L. Nichols and Ryan H. Collins10. The Black Death: Collapse, Resilience, and TransformationSamuel K. Cohn, Jr11. The Cases of Novgorod and Muscovy: Using Systems Thinking to Understand Historical Civilizational Response to Exogenous ThreatsMiriam Pollock, Benjamin D. Trump, and Igor Linkov12. Resilience of the Simple? Lessons from the Blockade of LeningradJeffrey K. HassSection 3: Systemic Collapse Insights from Ecology, Climate, and the Environment 13. Climate Change and Tipping Points in Historical CollapseTimothy M. Lenton14. Conservation of Fragility and the Collapse of Social OrdersJohn M. Anderies and Simon A. Levin15. Resilience and Collapse in Bee Societies and CommunitiesChristina M. Grozinger and Harland M. PatchSection 4: Future Systemic Collapse and Quantitative Modeling 16. Producing Collapse: Nuclear Weapons as Preparation to End CivilizationZia Mian and Benoît Pelopidas17. From Wild West to Mad Max: Transition in CivilizationsRichard Bookstaber18. Phase Transitions and the Theory of Early Warning Indicators for Critical TransitionsGeorge I. Hagstrom and Simon A. Levin19. The Lifespan of Civilizations: Do Societies "Age," or Is Collapse Just Bad Luck?Anders Sandberg20. Multipath Forecasting: The Aftermath of the 2020 American CrisisPeter Turchin