The End of Things
The death of a civilization

So, what if our machines suddenly broke down? Not just your TV set or your car -- but everything? It wouldn’t exactly kill us on the spot, but we can agree on one thing: it would be pretty apocalyptic. Weirdest of all, the Machine Apocalypse could happen for real.

We will have no food. We will have no clothing. We will have no access to the information needed to make that food and that clothing. The ending will be sudden and complete. If air systems are needed, the deaths will come in minutes. If water is needed, deaths will come in agonizing days. If food is needed, death will pay a visit only after several excruciating weeks. People escaping the clutches of the Machine will not be able to cope with an environment that doesn't pamper them anymore. They will die clutching the remotes that used to make the Machine do what they wanted and needed. They will die hungry, thirsty, filthy and cold.

Now isn't that lovely. There you are, in your civilized world. Suddenly, you’re stumbling about in the dark. The only way to go some place, is on foot. Basic stuff like clocks, fridges, boilers, washing machines and lights will never work again. Pretty soon, your tap will stop delivering water, your money will run out, and the shops will be empty. The economy grinds to a halt, throwing you back into the Middle Ages. And no way you’re gonna dial 911 or e-mail your Congressman. Better use a homing-pigeon, from now on.

There are several reasons for our machines to fail. Since all machines, that use electricity anyway, have an Achilles heel which is electricity actually, they are all vulnerable all the time. If a surge of electricity hit the Earth for some reason, let’s say a large solar storm, there would be a large amount of electro-static build up in the atmosphere. This is essentially what causes lightning only what I’m talking about is many, many times more powerful. It will be conducted by power lines, and the machines themselves and cause the circuitry to burn out. This would happen in an instant if such a scenario were to occur one day. One minute you would be happy watching TV with your air conditioning on full, with ample lighting throughout the house; then all of a sudden that would stop. You would wonder what happened, obviously think it was a power outage, or a circuit breaker switched off if someone turned the toaster on. Then you will perhaps figure out that battery operated things didn’t work either. There would be a burning smell emanating from somewhere, like melting plastic. You’ll call the power company, but there will be no answer as the switch boards would have been fried too.

Eventually word will spread that there was some kind of massive event that caused major power surges and that all electrical equipment, connected at the time or not, will never work again. Perhaps then the government would issue martial law, emergency organizations will be formed. Millions will be wondering the streets, which by now would be littered with stranded vehicles, except diesel powered engines, or those that have become trapped in the gridlock caused by the loss of any organisation what so ever. Then the crisis will set in: food will run out, water will stop running. Since the banks have been fried, all of everyone’s money has been erased, and the small amount still left in paper or coin form will be useless as the economy will be all but vanquished. People will panic and chaos will erupt. Looting, arson, burglary of everything and since the police will be working over capacity, and the army or national guards will have little control over the hordes of angry mobs demanding food, and answers. Disease will spread like wild fire, and wild fire won’t be far behind either. Abandoned buildings will burn with no one to put them out. Hospitals will run out of backup energy and fail. Before this they will be of little effect due to the vastly over crowded wards and the lack of staff, some of which might be the patients. Millions will stave, die of infection caused by the hugely overcrowded refugee camps and general unsanitary conditions throughout or be killed for their food and medical supplies.    

So what if all mans machines broke down you say? We can always build more. Not true. If every machine were to fail for some reason or another, then there would be no machines to make the machines. We would be cast into the times before steam power. In fact even further! Since we are so reliant on machines as a society, we won’t be able to cope with the sudden destruction of all that makes us to innovative. No one knows how to make a steam powered factory anymore because it’s useless. No one wants anything to do with it. So when this catastrophic event occurs we will have to invent our way out of the industrial revolution all over again, however, this time without oil or coal. This is a sad prospect of which there is no definite conclusion. We need technology to build technology and high tech clean energy is very high tech indeed. In fact most of it isn’t even off the drawing board yet. Essentially we will be cast into the Stone Age, and not metaphorically either. There are no surface iron mines to be mined up and turned into weapons and tools, because there have already been dug up in the first iron ages. There will be no industrial revolution, because there is no coal. Even worse, since we have cut all the trees down there will be nowhere to live either. We will be stuck living in the festering remains of our civilization, muttering to each other about what went wrong. Those fortunate enough to be self sufficient will enjoy some privileges for a while, although even they need metal tools to work.

In the end the outcome is quite disappointing so say the least. Billions will starve, become infected with simple diseases and viruses, they may or may not have become massively more deadly due to their mutations from antibiotics and other sanitary products. The remaining few will regain their primeval instincts and return to whenst they came. The forests will grow back, engulfing the ruins of our civilization as they do. The survivors will grow with them, steadily regaining their connections with nature that have been lost over the millennia. As the years go by, decades, centuries and the millennia, the old world shall be forgotten, or excluded to myth and legend. Out cities will be forever entombed in the forests that will regain their foot hold on the lands and only decayed ruins will remain, observable to anyone who cares enough to do so where tales shall be told about the people who lived in vast, stone metropolises, who grew out of their hands for them to be replaced by a servant, who betrayed their masters, leaving them in chaos and turmoil. Different stories will evolve over the many years, though I doubt that many will embrace our way of life as anything but one large festering sore, an incurable cancer upon the Earth.  

Economic Collapse

Total global economic collapse, as well as a total social collapse can be an attribute to any number of catastrophic events. For instance the machine failure on a global scale, the oil crisis and so on. The effects however are quite substantial in terms of their general effect on the world. Consider mass starvation, massive epidemics of diseases and viruses such as small pox, rubella, Tuberculosis and influenza will kill in the millions, wars will be fought over everything imaginable. It is a dark prospect but one that could very likely consume us all. It is the most likely scenario I think in terms of an apocalyptic event causing major devastation among human civilization. Its causes too are quite simple when one looks at them, and some of them are already in motion, or have a probability of occurring that is enough to make us think more than once about it.

The oil crisis is one of mans largest issues when it comes to world economy and social order. It is the blood that fuels every part of modern civilization there is. If it were to go away, unless there was some super fantastic remedy all of a sudden, civilization would go with it. Also, the actual consequences of any scenario that could cause any degree of this would have a permanent effect on the way humans live on Earth. For example, again, the oil: if it were to disappear, there would be no way out of the situation, because there is no backup energy producing material. We would never climb out of that depression, at least not for many years. This does have a sliding scale of severity attached to it however. There are worse endings, at least immediate ones. A failure of machines, by a solar storm for instance, could be over come in time, so long as there is still some form of power generation going on somewhere and some way to distribute it, and something to use it. However, if this is not the case, then we are in a really bad situation. If there was no way of creating energy, which in the case of the solar storm could be a real possibility, then that would be the end of it all. No more civilization, that’s it, gone for good. Those who say that we will enter a stone age are right. The thing is that we have already gone through one and can’t really go through another. It takes resources like Iron that is easily extracted to make any progress in a time like that. The thing is there is that there aren’t any more easily extracted resources left.

So we can’t make any more machines. We will be stuck in this perpetual dark age, which will sink into an ever darker age until there is no way to sustain our selves on the remains of civilization what so ever. To get to such a stage, there needs to be mass extinction of the human species. This will be caused by the lack of food, the disease and the wars that will follow a major collapse of the world’s societies. Millions will die from starvation, millions more still from disease and infection. The remainder that is still willing and able to fight will. There more will perish as the last of man scramble for the best possible sources of food and water. These too will dry up as the desperate population cleans out entire cities of its food. Even later on, more will continue to die, from starvation still as well as the lack of shelter. People will eventually be forced out of the cities and into the wilderness where they will have to fend for themselves. However, again, in Europe there isn’t much wilderness left. There will be nowhere to go for the many leaving their towns, villages and cities because they will find just more towns, villages and cities, the occupants of which are in the exact same situation somewhere else.

So there it is. The final, miserable ending to man, the last of us will remain scavenging for scraps where ever we can find them. Some may have been able to cultivate somewhat, some may have escaped into the wilderness. The rest will be, or are dead. This number is massive, vast quantities of human life will have been lost, a number easily reaching the billions, upwards to the 4 or more billion. That’s 2 out of every 3 people in the entire world right about now. The number may continue to drop as there will be fewer children born and less still that will survive at all.
The world will be a totally different place altogether. If one were to travel in to the future perhaps 50-60 years, considering that such an event happened right now, the sight of Berlin for instance would boggle the mind. There would be trees and weeds growing out of roads and highways, out of rotting buildings and pavements. Creepers would have scaled the tallest remaining buildings. The whole place would be overgrown by everything. Packs of wild dogs, the remains of the once domestic house pet, would prowl the streets, scavenging off the remains and living off the large amount of rodents that now occupy the many buildings and sewers, tunnels and the like. It would be a nasty place to be. The remains of diseases would still linger in the air, in structures and on the packs of dogs, many of which would be rabid. There would be pretty much no human life there at all. A place totally void of the people that once built it from the ground up, a process that is slowly but surely reversing its self. In the country sides, the same thing will have happened. Farms would be over grown and become impassable fields of bracken and thorn. The grass lands, now infertile from millennia of degradation, would support only the toughest plants. Thick tracts of thorn bushes and bracken would resemble that of a jungle in a tropical climate. The forests will have expanded too, slowly regaining their lost land. Eventually, given another 50-60 years the remains of the cities would have crumbled, the bracken and thorn replaced with trees which would have grown throughout the continent and no doubt the entire world. The remains of man would have settled in these growing forests, living a way of life not dissimilar to stone age man of 7000+ years ago. They would have, eventually, regained a way of life more suited to them. The agriculturalists who perhaps would have attempted to replicate a more ‘civilized’ life style would have died out, either from bandits, who would have roamed the country side, looting anything worth looting and raping anyone worth raping and killing and burning the rest, or from failed crops, due mainly to the lack of decent tools, or seeds for that matter. The bandits too would eventually die, as there would be nothing more to loot and rape and the rest would have been killed or burnt away. So that’s the end of it? Maybe not, hopefully not, but it might. If so it will most likely follow some similar path. Only time will tell our fate so we can only wait and see.

Social collapse Worse-case scenario

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Cause: EMP event derived from a large scale solar emission event.
Initial effect: Total destruction of unprotected electronic devices within hours of radiation contact on Earth.

Initial event causes almost all electronic equipment to be rendered useless due to static overload. This in turn causes a failure of all electronic communications systems which delays the reaction time, but eventually it will be realized as to the magnitude of the ensuing situation, which will cause mass panic:

• A rush for food stocks will occur
• A rush for essential medical supplies will occur
• Crime rates will exponentially increase over the first weeks after the event
• Law enforcement and military intervention will be over run and will collapse internally.
• Mass exodus will occur out of major cities causing a clogging of transport routes.
• Government systems will collapse entirely
• Small scale localized wars will take place over essential territories (Food production, power production, water sources)
• Short Lived due to lack of resources
• Massive spread of contagious pathogens due to collapse of sanitary and health systems.
• Extremely rapid spread causing large scale fatality rates on a global scale

After a period of between 5 weeks and around 3 months there will have been a large scale evacuation out of major cities and urban centers into the outskirts and country side. As a result urban environments will have totally collapsed due to looting and the spread of fires, as well as the failure of water systems causing flooding in tunnels and subways networks. Criminal activities will follow the moving populations centrifugally away from urban centers, as well as be created in population conglomerations due to competition of resources. Small communities will develop in the country side in national parks or on farmsteads and after several months will become relatively self sufficient, however will be repeatedly attacked by bandit groups or other communities  over resources or equipment, such as livestock or farming tools.

Social effects:

•  Immediate removal of electronic devices from households causing fast civil unrest on a local scale
• Loss of food preservation devices (i.e. Fridge/Freezes) causes food to spoil over a number of days, depending on climate.
• Communication devices will become in-operational; as a result transfer of information regarding events becomes impossible aside from direct person-to-person conversation.
• Unlike conventional “natural disasters “ where a perspective of the actual scale of the event can be ascertained, if communication devices were to be disabled there would be a significant delay in the large scale reaction to the event.
• There would be no effective effort to control civilian populations and to provide effective aid.
• All forms of transportation apart from manually operated or diesel powered vehicles will cease to function, however due to  a combination of social factors, mainly being the largely petrol operated motor vehicles on the roads which will stop on roads, causing them to be un-traversable in convention motor vehicles. Also since production of all fuels will stop, any remaining vehicles will be unusable.

Social Life

• Food production and transportation will permanently cease.
• Food outlets will no longer be stocked with food, and existing stocks that require constant maintaining of environment (i.e. Freezers, refrigeration, heating) will spoil within 48 hours.
• Any durable food stocks (Canned, freeze-dried etc.) only make up a third to a half of all stocks at any one time.
• Any food stocks in an outlet are limited due to the reliance of constant restocking of goods.
•  Existing stocks will be removed within hours, to a maximum time span of a day

 

• Large scale starvation causes massive death rates
• Loss of medical services and supplies causes increased death rates due to disease
• Loss of sanitation and running water supplies causes fast spread of disease and increase of pests
• Food will be almost non-existent in large cities, and perhaps smaller ones to large towns.
• Any operating electrical system i.e. wind turbine or solar panel will be fought over and ultimately destroyed in the attempt to do so
• Mass exodus out of urban areas will occur, as a result the surrounding hinterlands and countryside will be devastated along with any food production or agricultural systems still in operation.
• Crime rates will rise exponentially as the remaining populations fight over very limited resources, mainly food but also, depending on the climate and region: water, clothing and shelter as well as transportation such as bicycles or horses
• Small communities will settle around major urban areas, and will expand continually outwards when available resources are depleted.
• Populations will continue to fall dramatically as mass famine, epi-/pandemics, violence in the form of wars or otherwise, exposure to extreme climate, lack of water and so on.
• The remains of urban centers will be most likely torn apart by a number of things; the most prevalent one would be fire which would consume, without opposition, large portions of a city, most substantially suburban areas.  
• Movement of populations in and amongst urban regions, most notably suburban areas in the case of conurbation or other extensive, interlocking metropolitan regions.
• Areas that are moderately still intact will attract settlers back or directly into suburban regions where, given appropriate conditions and population densities, small communities will occur in the ruins.
• Scavenging and looting will be wide spread and will create a form of trade or for support for small communities.
• Areas with extensive rural regions (i.e. Canada, the American North-West and Lake Region, as well as largely unoccupied areas of Eastern Russia, North West China and many parts of Africa and Australia) will better be able to support the large amount of migrants from urban centers. Regions such as Western Europe and the American East Coast will suffer severely due to the high density conurbations and “Megalopolises” that span the entire area.

Population

• Globally populations will suffer substantially in all areas and forms of society (with the exception on those with absolutely no connection with modern civilization, both politically and physically) due to the globalised nature of modern society. Any community dependant on external sources for food, water or supplies of any kind will be affected, depending on their reliance on such imports.
• Clearly the most effected will be the high-density, technologically advanced modern cities that make up all of the western world, as well as the up-and-coming cities, such as Beijing in China as well as many Indian cities that are becoming more advanced. Their high density will be the major factor in their outcome, coupled with the high expanse of the metropolitan area which will make evacuation a major issue after the event. In the United States in particular where the common ideology of “suburbia” where one lives 40-50 miles from their place of work will cause significant issues depending on the time of the event. I.e. during typical working hours, a very large proportion of the population will be in the downtown area, about 50-60 miles inside the urban zone where there is little access to significant food or other supplies present in supermarkets or other vendors, most of which are located in or around the suburbs.
• It is logical to assume that high-density areas of population would be worst affected closer to the initial event, where a steep population decline will occur do to the large volume of people as well as the layout of the urban center, being access to food outlets mainly, however water will be a significant issue, especially in cities not situated along a river or other fresh water source.
• Death rates will initially rise at an exponential rate as food immediately runs out, and any lack of water is emphasized, and forms of conflict or other violence arise from both prior issues.  As time progresses disease will become prevalent as sewerage lines stagnate and the continual creation of human waste is added to the immediate environment, be it sewerage or carrion.
• Hygiene will become the major factor in the spread of disease, which will be attached to the availability of fresh clean water in the immediate area.
• It may be the case where many new strains of a particular virus of pathogen will play a major part in the effect of disease on the population, such is the result of large scale antibiotic use causing both a loss in natural immunity, as well as very potent pathogens which will overpower any existing immunities.

• Hospitals will play a major role in the spread of such super diseases as hygiene within them breaks down accompanying the influx of patients and the lack of any or all services, as well as any pre-existing pathogen that may have remained dormant (i.e. golden staph infection etc.).
• Antibiotics will soon become one of the highest valued commodities alongside food and water (depending on the climate and geographic location) and will quickly attract many instances of extreme violence.
• Any person with dependencies on artificial drugs (Insulin or others treating chronic disorders, such as immune suppressants for transplant patients) will most likely not survive more than a few weeks depending on their requirements. Those on life support, in open surgery or with pacemakers will die almost immediately.