Climate Change Could Trigger Societal Collapse Sooner Than You Think

The End of Everything Is on the Schedule

Here is a number that should stop you cold: 76. That is how many times Danilo Brozović’s 2022 paper on societal collapse has been cited by other academics. Not 700. Not 7,000. Seventy six. For a paper that systematically reviews what we actually know about the collapse of civilizations, that citation count suggests something unsettling: we are not paying enough attention to a question that might define the next few decades.

Brozović, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg, did something simple and overdue. He read 361 articles and 73 books on societal collapse, then organized them into five distinct conversations that scholars have been having, often without talking to each other. The conversations are about past collapses, general explanations of collapse, alternatives to collapse, fictional collapses, and the specific link between future climate change and societal collapse (Brozović, 2022).

The result is not a prediction. It is a map. And the map shows that the territory is far more dangerous than most of us assume.

Why the Word “Collapse” Makes Academics Uncomfortable

Here is the first thing Brozović discovered. Scholars cannot agree on what collapse even means. Some define it as a rapid loss of political and economic complexity. Others see it as a slower process where institutions fail but people adapt. A third group insists collapse is a myth, that civilizations transform rather than die.

This disagreement is not academic hair splitting. It determines how we interpret every piece of evidence. If you think collapse means total extinction, you will dismiss warnings as alarmist. If you think collapse means a gradual, painful unwinding of the systems you depend on, you might start paying attention.

Brozović found that the most useful definitions come from researchers who study past collapses, like the Roman Empire or the Maya. Those scholars tend to describe collapse as a rapid simplification of social structure, a drop in population, and a loss of centralized authority. It is not the end of all human life. It is the end of a particular way of organizing it.

The Five Conversations Nobody Is Having Together

Brozović’s major contribution was to show that five separate groups of researchers are studying collapse, and they are barely reading each other’s work.

Past Collapses: The Archaeologists Are Worried

The first conversation is about what actually happened to previous civilizations. The archaeological record is clear. The Roman Empire did not just fade away. It experienced a catastrophic loss of complexity in the fifth century. The Maya civilization underwent repeated collapses, with populations dropping by as much as 90 percent in some regions. The Bronze Age civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean collapsed so thoroughly that writing disappeared from Greece for 400 years.

Brozović found that these past collapses share a disturbing pattern. They were not caused by a single factor. They were caused by feedback loops. Environmental stress weakened food production. Food shortages triggered political instability. Political instability made it impossible to manage resources. Resource mismanagement made the environmental stress worse. The loop accelerated until the system could no longer support itself.

General Explanations: The Theorists Have a Favorite Model

The second conversation is about why collapse happens at all. The most influential model comes from the ecologist Thomas Homer Dixon, who argued that collapse occurs when a society’s complexity exceeds its energy supply. More complex societies require more energy to maintain. When energy becomes scarce, the society must either simplify or collapse.

Brozović found that this model has been widely cited but rarely tested against historical data. It is elegant. It may also be wrong. Other researchers point out that many collapses happened when energy was abundant, but the society had organized itself in ways that made it brittle.

Alternatives to Collapse: The Optimists Have a Point

The third conversation is about whether collapse is inevitable. A group of scholars argues that societies can transform rather than collapse. They point to examples like the transition from feudalism to capitalism, or the way Japan modernized after the Meiji Restoration without collapsing.

Brozović noted an important tension here. The transformation advocates tend to study political systems. The collapse advocates tend to study ecological systems. The two groups are talking past each other. A political system can transform. An ecological system can collapse. When they are linked, as they are now, the outcome is unpredictable.

Fictional Collapses: The Novelists Saw It Coming

The fourth conversation is about how collapse is portrayed in fiction. Brozović reviewed novels, films, and video games that depict societal collapse. He found that fictional collapses tend to be sudden, violent, and caused by external shocks like asteroids or pandemics.

This matters because fiction shapes public expectations. If people expect collapse to look like a zombie apocalypse, they will not recognize the slow, grinding process that historical collapses actually followed. The fictional version is exciting. The real version is boring, then catastrophic.

Future Climate Change and Societal Collapse: The Conversation We Need Most

The fifth conversation is the one Brozović wanted to highlight. It is about how ongoing climate change might trigger collapse. This is the conversation with the most at stake and the least agreement.

Some researchers argue that climate change will act like the environmental stresses that triggered past collapses. Others argue that modern societies are more resilient because of technology and global trade. A third group warns that global trade makes societies more interconnected and therefore more vulnerable to cascading failures.

Brozović found that this conversation is the least developed of the five. There are more papers about fictional collapses than about the specific mechanisms by which climate change could cause modern civilization to fail.

The Methodology: How He Read 434 Sources Without Losing His Mind

Brozović used a systematic literature review method. He searched major academic databases for terms like “societal collapse,” “civilization collapse,” and “social collapse.” He screened 2,847 initial results and ended up with 361 articles and 73 books that met his criteria for relevance and quality.

He then coded each source according to which of the five conversations it belonged to, what theoretical framework it used, and what evidence it presented. This allowed him to map the intellectual landscape of collapse studies.

The method has limitations. Systematic reviews can only include what has been published, and academic publishing has biases toward Western perspectives and English language sources. Brozović acknowledged that his review likely missed important work from non English speaking researchers and from indigenous knowledge systems.

What the Research Actually Shows About Climate and Collapse

Here is where Brozović’s review becomes genuinely alarming. When he looked at the papers that specifically addressed climate change and societal collapse, he found a consistent pattern. The papers that model future scenarios tend to assume that collapse is possible but not probable. The papers that study past collapses tend to assume that collapse is probable but not inevitable.

The tension between these two groups is not being resolved. The modelers assume that modern societies are different. The historians assume that human nature is the same. Both assumptions are untested.

Brozović identified several mechanisms by which climate change could trigger collapse:

• ▸Food system failure. Climate change reduces crop yields in many regions. Trade can compensate for local shortfalls, but only if the shortfalls are not global. If multiple breadbasket regions fail simultaneously, trade cannot help.

• ▸Economic disruption. Climate impacts damage infrastructure, reduce labor productivity, and increase insurance costs. These effects compound over time.

• ▸Political instability. Resource scarcity triggers migration, conflict, and the breakdown of governance. Failed states cannot respond to climate emergencies.

• ▸Technological brittleness. Modern societies depend on complex technological systems. These systems are efficient but fragile. A single point of failure can cascade.

Brozović found that most papers only examined one of these mechanisms. Almost none examined how they interact. This is a critical gap because historical collapses were caused by multiple feedback loops, not single causes.

What the Research Does Not Prove: The Open Questions

Brozović’s review is honest about what it does not know. The most important open question is whether modern societies are fundamentally different from past ones.

Modern societies have science, global communication, and renewable energy. These could make us more resilient. They could also make us more vulnerable by creating dependencies that past societies did not have.

A second open question is whether collapse, if it happens, would be global or regional. Past collapses were always regional. Climate change is global. No one has modeled what a global collapse would look like.

A third question is about time scales. Some models suggest collapse could happen within decades. Others suggest centuries. The uncertainty is enormous, and Brozović found that researchers are not transparent about their assumptions.

A fourth question is about adaptation. Some societies have successfully adapted to environmental stress. Others have collapsed. The difference between them is not well understood.

Why This Paper Matters More Than Its Citation Count Suggests

Seventy six citations is not nothing. But for a paper that synthesizes 434 sources on a topic that could determine the future of human civilization, it is shockingly low. Brozović’s work should be required reading for anyone making decisions about climate policy, economic planning, or national security.

Instead, it sits in an academic journal, read mostly by other academics, while the public conversation about climate change focuses on degrees of warming and emissions targets. Those things matter. But they miss the larger question. The question is not whether we can keep warming below 1.5 degrees. The question is whether the systems we have built can survive the stress we are putting them through.

Brozović’s review suggests that the answer is not obvious. And that is the scariest part. We do not know if collapse is coming. We do not know how fast it would happen. We do not know what it would look like. We have not even agreed on what the word means.

What This Actually Means

• ▸The risk of societal collapse from climate change is not being studied with the urgency it deserves. The gap between what we know about past collapses and what we model about future ones is dangerous. Filling that gap should be a research priority.

• ▸Collapse is not a binary event. It is a process that can take decades or centuries. The early stages look like normal problems getting worse. Recognizing the pattern requires understanding the feedback loops, not just the symptoms.

• ▸Resilience and complexity are not the same thing. Modern societies are more complex than any previous civilization. That complexity provides benefits, but it also creates vulnerabilities. A simpler society might be more stable.

• ▸The most useful question is not “will we collapse?” It is “what would we need to do to make collapse less likely?” Brozović’s review suggests that the answer involves reducing inequality, diversifying food systems, and building redundancy into critical infrastructure. None of these are new ideas. But they are rarely framed as collapse prevention.

• ▸Ignorance is not safety. The fact that we do not know how climate change could trigger collapse does not mean it will not happen. It means we are flying blind. And we are flying into a storm.