We’ll survive the apocalypse
palladiummag.com
The collapse of society can seem, to some, like a “thrilling possibility”, says Adam Van Buskirk. “Deep-green radicals, apocalyptic cults and pessimistic online doomers,” to name just a few, positively relish the prospect. Social ills seem to them so entrenched that blowing it all up and starting again looks attractive.
Their mistake is in imagining that society is so fragile that the dreamers will be able to take control among the ruins. History would suggest otherwise. Previous natural and man-made disasters, and any imaginable future one, up to and including nuclear war, will not lead to the end of civilisation as know it nor a collapse in everyday life. The legal systems that we live under have “amazing durability”. The day after the apocalypse, it will be business as usual.
You might, for example, expect a plague that rapidly killed 30% to 50% of the population to lead to the collapse of society. But during the “brutal first wave” of the Black Death in England in 1348-1349, life carried on more or less as normal, as we can see from the record of tax receipts, court cases and parish death records. A decree of 1349 ordered malingering labourers back to work and imposed wage and price controls.
Trade is eternal
Modern states are no different. At the close of World War
II, Berlin was in ruins and its residents underwent food rationing. But after a few months, many essential workers and low-level bureaucrats were clocking in again as usual. By 1946, many of Berlin’s essential services were back to normal. By the 1946 tax year, revenues were stable and the occupation forces ran balanced budgets for domestic costs. Pensions were paid, even, as Hitler had promised, to foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS. And “if bureaucracy is resilient, then trade is eternal”. Global trade predates the Iron Age, and in the long run no disaster in human history has permanently ended trade between regions and continents. The amount of Russian gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines actually increased in the weeks following the invasion, with Russia paying transit fees to Ukraine in full.
Surely nuclear war, though, would end society? Probably not. Official models predict that, despite high death tolls and infrastructure damage, the total shock of nuclear war could “fall within the range historically absorbed by modern economies and governments”. If the bomb drops, you might be eating “gruel unloaded from a truck”, but you’ll probably still be able to post on Twitter – and have to file a tax return.