"We just need to actually do it." If history has proven anything it's that societies never prepare for problems until they're already collapsing from them. EDIT: Since this got so much of a response I'll add to this - society goes through cycles. The people that solve the problems are the ones that had to live with the collapse and have no choice. Sadly we're seeing the death of a golden age as the system we're in can no longer adapt to the problems we face. I like Kurzgesagt's optimism, but systems either work or they don't. Every system works until it breaks because it cannot change and ours is no different. I hope I'm wrong but if we match the pattern of history I will not be.
if the question is "is civilization about to collapse?" then an answer of "don't worry, humanity will probably survive to rebuild over the following centuries" is maybe not the most reassuring answer.
Then what exactly do you want? There's two paths you can take here. 1. Be pessimistic & constantly comment on Reddit or UA-cam about how fucked we are 2. Be optimistic about the future & try to improve upon yourself & your own relationships with those around you each day Like honestly, what are you expecting? NOBODY & I mean NOBODY has any definitive idea on what the future holds. But come on now, saying NOT to be optimistic is actively sabotaging yourself & everyone around you. It's a bad mindset to have & a hard one to escape.
As an electrician I get overwhelmed with work after a simple thunderstorm.. I couldn't imagine how stressed out I would be trying to rebuild society (assuming I live through the collapse)
The good news is you would be able to take on apprentices without needing certs since there would be no government. It’s more important to get electricity back to a bunch of people than it is to make sure everything is up to code. Obviously you’d go back and check later, but if you had good people helping out, it’d be more helpful than anything.
I was just thinking about how hard it would be to be a leader of new civilization and starting up the industrial revolution again, getting back safe water supply, modern amenities etc
I'm not worried about whether civilization can recover, I'm worried about having to recover. I'm personally not that keen on experiencing civilizational collapse, and knowing that those who make it through will rebuild doesn't really change that. The bronze age collapse is a curious bit of history to us, but to the people living through it, it might as well have been the end of the world. In relation to the bronze age collapse, I'm one of the people learning about it via unfathomable technologies 3000 years later, but in relation to whatever happens in our time, collapse or no, I'm that bronze age rando who would much rather have reliable access to food and not have to go to war.
If there is a collapse, you won't be around long enough for the recovery. Your sole job will be to attempt to survive and produce offspring just like everyone else. It will be your descendants that go through the recovery.
I think this video needs a title change. It doesn't answer if we're on the brink of collapse at all. It simply talks about how civilization would recover if it does collapse.
This collapse is taking so damn long tho... Why isn't like just tomorrow? Why is everyone taking their sweet time. If it breaks now, we can stop worrying about it happening the very next day. Particularly speaking about the so called "wars" we have going on right now.
Interesting that you guys didn't mention the Bronze Age Collapse, which is often the event that many people point to as the defining societal collapse. However, even the Bronze Age Collapse didn't entirely erase civilization, as major civilizations like Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia were able to weather the storm and survive into classical times. I think the collapse of the Roman Empire was simplified here, because while the empire in Italy itself fell, the eastern half of the empire survived, all the way until 1453, and Italy, Spain, France, England, and North Africa were taken over by new kingdoms of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Vandals rather than falling into total societal collapse. In fact, Italy in particular would see a resurgence under king Theodoric the Great. If anything, it was the Byzantines' invasion and reconquest of Italy that actually caused the bigger societal collapse than the fall of Rome itself.
I hate to be that guy but pointing to the bronze age collapse as the end of human society is highly eurocentric, there were plenty of other civilizations during that time period that would have carried out if europe went dark, same with the black death or the dark ages
I mean it's an 11 minute video, of course its explanation for the collapse of the Roman Empire is simplified. Unless they wanted to make a documentary series it kinda has to be.
as always I absolutely loved this video, but just personally I feel like it more answered “can civilization recover from a collapse” than “how likely is it for civilization to collapse?” Cuz honestly im worried more about the latter
@@channelname4331 More accurately, they said that it has always been the rule. Not necessarily that global civilization as we know it will inevitably collapse.
@@SubtleSerpent because a statement like "the earth is getting hotter" is just as much a guess as a fortune teller saying you'll find success 🤣 I have no proof the sun will rise tomorrow, I only have evidence it will. Am I trying to "predict the future", there?
@@SubtleSerpent a lot of those scientists are looking at data and saying what will happen if we continue down the same path. It isn’t fortune telling to tell someone that throwing a ball into the air will lead to it falling down. That’s common sense yeah? But we learned it through observation, the first time someone sees something thrown into the air they don’t know it’ll come back down. But based on the many thousands of times you’ve seen it happen in your life (data) you can pretty safely say that when you do it again, it’ll result in that outcome.
It's harrowing how we've gone from "hey, humanity is doing all kinds of things to help secure our future, its not all bad!" to "hey, not all of us will die, we're like cockroaches!" I appreciate these videos and the message they try and give us but damn I hate that our potential futures look so grim now.
The past couple of years has really given me this sense that the world is more unstable than just a few years ago. Maybe we aren't facing extinction, but it does feel like there is a real chance of civilization stumbling. I hope that is just a worst case scenario. But I can't help but feel a tension, a sense of fear.
well we are in a disruptive phase. All the entropy cause by the rapid technological advances of the last century is still in the system. I mean, the global goal of finance and politics was to create stability at all costs. The rigidity and security acted as guarantor for the economy to savely invest an grow. Phase change is long overdue however and the longer we wait the more voilent it will be (perhabs).
Not worrying about things that are out of your control will make you a happier person. Edit: I would like to shoutout the user Jul W down below for doing his damndest to insult as many users as possible.
“When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters...” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
"...yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters..." We're at our best when we're separated, thanks though. I'm not walking in harmony with people who don't put out the effort and possess the same level of conscientiousness that I do. Doesn't matter who they are.
@@Matt-fs1yy Effort and "conscientiousness" are subjective matters on a scale relative to your environment and upbringing. Do your best to make a friend out of anybody, and you will soon find that they excell in skills that you do not possess and follow respectable values of their own.
@Alex W. No, that's a very bad idea though. What if they murder all your children or something for no reason? Do you think that you should still show them kindness and compassion? Of course not, your response should be to kill them or ensure that their murderous genes are eliminated so that they don't inflict misery on future generations. If somebody hasn't done anything heinous like that then showing compassion and kindness and all of that is fine, but you can't just show compassion in all circumstances, especially in a situation like I mentioned where the recipient of your compassion ensures your extinction!
Reminds me of Hari Seldon coming up with Psychohistory in the Foundation series by Isaac Ssimov. Not trying to prevent the collapse of civilization, but to minimize its duration and damage in order for a new civilization to arise from the ashes as soon as possible. Of course Psychohistory is pure sci-fi (for now) but it's definitely one of the most interesting ideas I've encountered in sci-fi.
I'm currently re-reading the Foundation series for the 4th time because every year that goes by seems like another year of confirmation for the eminent global civilization collapse...
Is modern civilization about to collapse? -No one knows for sure but most historians would say no, not yet. Will modern civilization collapse? -Yes. Will we recover? -Yes.
MIT predicted the fall of civilization in 2040, multiple studies since then have said it was legit and that we're still on track for it. Just from the eyeball test, it certainly feels like we're heading that way (end game capitalism is out of control)
I have no doubt that a new sort of civilization could emerge after a collapse. But still, the problem is what happens to us before there's a new civilization that emerges. I'd like not to spent the end of my life scavaging for food because our current lifestyle is not sustainable...
Right? It's rad that humanity as a whole is pretty resilient but I think it's in everyone's best interest that we work to prevent collapse rather than recover 😅
@@ZombieOfun The problem is, the moment someone says what must be done to prevent collapse (eradicate capitalism), people get extremely defensive, because we've been taught that "this is how things are". And so we keep threading this self-destruction path because everyone is too afraid of ghosts created by the capitalists.
"Did we manage to unlock a new fear for you?" Yes, it happens everytime I see a new Kurzgesagt video or learn a new thing. The possibilities of using the wrong way any knowledge is so great. The good thing is watching these videos show at least someone cares on not going the wrong path. Thanks guys!
So you acknowledge every time you see something new like this it gives you a new fear? That’s exactly what the AI wants. The machine wants you afraid and anxious so you’re easier to control.
My brain is like: BEEP, BEEP! New existential fear unlocked! Specifics: - Number assigned: 189 - Scale: The whole humanity. - Probability of coming true: Depends. Beeeeep..... The fear has been categorized and put to the archive. Sector C. 😄
“Humanity is like a teenager, speeding around drunk corners, blind without a seatbelt.” What an outstanding way to describe the rapid growth of humankind.
Agreed, I'm surprised that they didn't actually answer the question presented in the title. I think that this is one of the few of their videos that's left me a bit puzzled
The title is 'will we collapse' and video shows that 'we may recover'. That's a indirect yes to me. They can't just say 'yes it'll happen' right? That's why they don't directly give the answer.
I feel like there is alot of reasons the current civilization as we know it would have collapse. We have so many things against us at this moment, but at the same time, maybe it's just our perspective. Nowdays we receive so much information in a single day, that perhaps our situation isn't much diferent than older civilizations, we're just more aware of whats going on in the world. I don't really think our brains are used to that much information yet.
A hundred years ago, the economy collapsed so hard most things were sold for pennies, and it was called the Great Depression. We dealt with world wars, outbreaks of awful diseases, and the constant threat of random nuclear annihilation during the entirety of the cold war. Times are hard now, but they've always been hard. Truth is the good old days weren't really all that good. Humans have a _lot_ of flaws, but if there's one thing we do right, it's tenacity. I mean hell, in the 1900s, we created airplanes and gained the ability to fly. 50 years later, we put a man on the fucking moon. 50 years. It's incredible what we can do when we put our minds to it. We will pull through, because that's what we do.
This sounds like something a human trying to cope with our species’ reality would say. We may have fancier gadgets but make no mistake we are just as stupid, shortsighted, quick to anger, and violent as our cavemen ancestors. The reason civilizations never last is because humans cannot fathom a lack of control and power. It’s ingrained in us to conquer all that we can
@@Mr.Bimgus 50 years ago we went on the moon 50 years later and we are debating on if slavery should be taught in public schools. If that’s not regression then I don’t know what is
I agree, with the access of social media, we are more exposed than ever to everyday events, violence and conflict. Our time is no different from what was before, we’re just more aware, and that’s scary
Yall will say anything to comfort yourselves. We have 8 years to mitigate the doomsday scenario we will face as a species in the coming decades. We arent fixing climate change at this point we can only soften how hard it will hit us, which we arent even doing the bare minimum for that. Seriously stop letting youtube channels like this one gaslight you.
Well, the title-question "Is civilization on the brink of collapse?" wasn't really answered. Instead, we got a nice explanation of what a collapse of civilization would mean and why humanity itself would probably survive it
They did answer it. They stated that every major civilization has collapsed and that we're no different, in fact worse off because of our ties to current tech, networking, and major supply chains. That said, they can't just start calling off a bunch of predictions that lead to the collapse, only give examples if something were to go wrong in our very fragile society.
@@the_crypter how would we know we are totallly different from what we were 100 years ago shit even the last 30 or so years. We can only draw back from the past bc we haven’t quite a collapse in modern times just yet.’if we end up surviving one in the future someone will make a video of that in the future but most likely we’ll be dead
Why wouldn't they though? Almost everywhere they look, there is misery and suffering, and life seems hopeless and meaningless. They just want the pain of existence to stop.
doesnt give me much hope that this video is less about "are we on the brink of civilization collapse" and more about "a complete collapse wouldn't be THAT bad"
“Let’s counter existential dread with appreciation for humanity. Look how far we’ve come as a species.” This is the thing I always appreciate about these videos, they manage to make you feel hopeless throughout most of the video, only to offer you some encouraging words at the end.
@@smittyvanjagermanjenson182 except nukes aren't lysol... they're nukes. and last I checked humans don't have the ability to uptake plasmids for survival, nor do we have inherent genes that make us resistant to radiation poisoning. Yeah, antibiotics and thermonuclear weapons are not the same.
Kurzgesagt: "Should you worry about climate change? Of course not, dummy!" Also Kurzgesagt: "We'll be fine if 90% of people die... On an evolutionary timescale." I feel so much better about climate change now. On evolutionary timescales, my horrifying death won't matter to me!
its pretty concerning to see how many people are complementing kurzgesagt for this video. It's strangely disrespectful to the very fans of the channel.
@@maxtoke5557 I agree in many ways , but it is our opinion I think these guys are being waaay too optimistic and unintentionally /intentionally manipulating us
As an amateur marine ecologist i just wanna give a shout and massive thanks for mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes, and phytoplanktons for their contribution to sustain us with absorbing CO2 that we produce.
They are amazing at filtering water too. There was a flood near my grandparents house, and a lot of sediment and junk would have been washed out to sea, and it was, but the area around the mangroves looked much cleaner. It wasn't clean, cause there was a lot of microorganisms like Ecoli and you didn't swim near any rivers, but it it just stopped the potential affects of massive sediment outwash. And some people could recover lost items in the mangroves, but a few feet got hurt cause of those upwards roots
Beautifully animated as always. What I don't like is how you avoid the very question that is asked in the title of the video. Instead of looking at possible signs of a looming collapse you skip right ahead to the rebuilding phase. This is probably trying to put a hopeful, positive spin on things but it basically accepts collapse as a reality as if it has already happened. Which, sadly, makes the title seem like click bait.
this whole channel is click bait Edit: intended for children and the feeble minded, for those who cannot think for themselves, and using cartoons to discuss serious matters non-satirically is a big clue
I'm happy to learn that a mere four centuries after our horrible deaths from civilizational collapse, humanity might finally find life slightly more tolerable again before the cycle begins anew. Thank you Kurzgesagt!
And they don't even get into how we're running out of easily exploitable non-coal energy sources and how renewable or nuclear are nowhere near good enough to replace them (1. because they cost too much upfront energy just to build the new extraction/generation tech, 2. because we're nowhere near having replaced our supply-chain-critical vehicles with electrics), meaning any civilizational recovery will have to stop at the agricultural stage for lack of high-density energy sources to rebuild anything anywhere close to the kind of industry we have today. They're always trying so damn hard to be positive that they end up spreading disinformation, like that utter stupidity from that guy's book, about how we need more people instead of fewer - true, if you want to burn through the remaining energy even faster, and be ever more certain that any civilizational rebirth will be impossible because humans will have nothing to power it with. We're simply almost done on this planet, industrial civilization is done, especially since we're being fed absurd optimistic disinformation like this, lulling us back to sleep and business as usual, ensuring that we will burn all of the remaining easy-energy and leave nothing for the next cycle of civilization that might otherwise have been possible.
I mean........why can't all Countries just go back to the drawing board, reset and just write off all debt and start over. Nobody owes anything, not a penny ! See what I did there
Kurzgesagt has the right mix of techno optimism and doomsday warning to motivate the audience into reducing existential risks. It’s a noble strategy and it appears it’s working - I’m happy to be part of it.
In summary, while the potential for collapse exists, it's important to consider the challenges and efforts being made to address them. It's also important to remember that collapse is not inevitable and that human resilience and innovation have helped us to overcome many challenges in the past.
The greatest challenge to this optimistic perspective is the growth of extremism and disinformation online, which erodes shared understanding and trust and undermines collective policy efforts.
If in the event of extreme disaster on a global scale, anyone who thinks that those surviving will put aside squabbling over petty differences, and pull together to cooperate, I should like to point out how people behaved during the covid19 pandemic, and the callous selfishness displayed as store shelves were emptied of essentials and millions of a**holes refused precautionary measures such as wearing masks and getting vaccine inoculations...
Alongside the many valid criticisms already in the comments, I want to point out that recovery, post-civilizational collapse, does not mean that the civilization itself survived; merely that another eventually replaced it. We are not the Romans, even if we ended up carrying on some of the elements of Roman civilization. When the current "Western Civilization" collapses, whatever replaces it will be something else. And the "Global Civilization" is utterly dependent on the former - when the West falls, globalism falls with it.
@@bizmasterTheSlav Sadly "west" is not a monolithic block. It is not a matter of "west" wanting or not, it is a matter of individuals and a struggle against power.
Civilizations could be replaced but not totally annahilated, the legacy never ceased and inherited to the decendant civilization. We may not be Romans, but the Roman legacy is still alive within western/European civilization as law, engineering, philosophy, social structure, art of governmening, and has been expanded via global colonising until modern era. We may not Romans but the civilization is still surviving. I don't judge such... violent methods/trends which occured and used during the expansion, but just suggesting the civilizations are move on, even after some horrible purge or oppression. We all still got some fragment of local/older civilization whether its original owner gone or not, affected from tradition and culture. So I think it is good enough to tend it as surviving.
Honestly, I think we're in the defining moment of our species. The people alive today will decide how long the human race can last and if we regress or progress.
Each civilisation would have thought the same about themselves. Self entitlement is inherent to humans. The only thing that drives the Human civilisations is their perseverance. We are doing the same and the coming generation will do the same.
Human history shows that adaptability is our greatest strength. The human race has shrugged off extinctions of thousands of species because of our adaptability. The problem is that modern-day civilisation is not actually that adaptable unless we change our tastes and make some key innovations.
We have the key innovations, we know what to do, but the majority of people is too comfortable with their status quo, so why change it? As usual we will start adapting once we really see the repercussions. This time it might be too late by then. I wouldn't say we became more or less adaptive, thought, we became overall more resillient, too, considering modern medicine and other technology. So we have the resources, now we just gotta convince 8 billion people to get an open mindset and change their lives so we can safe everyone, not just a select few.
Your answer reminds me of a deep conversation I had with my best friend when we were teenagers. I had a crisis and asked him "what keeps you going? You don't believe in anything. Why keep going?" He was quiet for a few moments and responded with "I believe in human adaptability. To say I don't believe in anything because of my lack of religion doesn't mean I have no beliefs. Humans can overcome, so we must push through to keep it going." And since then I've enjoyed that idea. This was many decades ago, and it was a powerful conversation for 15 year Olds for us. Good times.
We're not the most adaptible species of Humans - That award goes to the incredibly strong and intelligent Homo erectus, but Homo sapiens still has 200000 years under our belt, which is still nothing to sneeze at
@@Lord_Juvens Don't expect a paradigm shift from the large quantities of Entitled , Hedonist babies.... That ship sailed. Truth is ; " The Great Acceleration" / sixth mass Extinction is in motion, which is easily scientifically verifiable. The first step is Accepting our errors and false Assumptions . If Hope is something rooted in Techno industrial Capitalist optimism - it's pure fantasy.
This demonstrates why it’s so important to have at least some degree of national and even local independence in terms of providing for the essentials. Things like manufacturing microchips obviously can’t be decentralized, but what about power? Food? Water? These are the important things to decentralize as much as possible.
They're important also because localized manufacture of common goods can significantly cut down on greenhouse gas emissions caused by large scale global trade.
Yeah, the pandemic-related supply chain issues have shown we've got some big late bronze age energy afoot. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to write a bad review on some jerk on ebay who sold me some crappy copper stock before the sea peoples show up.
That cannot be anymore true, especially for combatting stuff like climate change. Specific adaptations to solve certain problems is the key to avoid a collapse. Solution, give the people on the ground what they need to solve the problem properly and quickly!
I am a huge fan of this channel, I've been following it for several years now and I always enjoy the content. I always find it intellectually stimulating and more often than not, I learn something new from each video I watch. I love the fact that the information is so well researched, and then explained in easily digestible, sometimes simplified terms so that it's easy for anybody to follow along with and understand - or at least get the very basic idea of the subject. I very rarely find myself disagreeing with the information presented here, or wondering why crucial points weren't mentioned - however, in this video, somewhere around 4:05, it was stated that although civilization collapses have happened regularly in the past, none of them have had the effect of derailing global civilization. This left me wondering why the Bronze Age collapse wasn't mentioned. It was my understanding that after that collapse, humans lost many technologies previously mastered by us, such as writing, plumbing, many agricultural techniques, and some of our knowledge of mathematics and carpentry. Granted, in time we re-learned these lost arts, but it took several generations, most likely over the span of centuries. Clearly, this event did not trigger the end of human civilization - but I think it's more than fair to suggest that it did 'derail' human civilization for a short time, at the very least.
No, it wasn't a derailment as you put it. I study archaeology, and, looking at the evidence we do have, not a lot was lost apart from kingdoms and royal dynasties, which, in my opinion, isn't really a huge loss in the grand scheme of things.
It depends where, the bronze age collapse was the collapse of the hittite, mycean greeks and a lot of Levant city states. But Egypt, and most of the mesopotamian cities would keep going on for ceveral centuries. And even then, it wasnt as much of a "collapse" but rather more a gradual replacement of what was considered important, probably caused by immigration from climate change, who generated cultural shift who led (in some places) pretty quickly place to knew cultural dominance.
Kinda surprised that the title question was never directly answered - the question wasn't "Could civilization recover from collapse?" It was "Is civilization on the brink of collapse?" This went curiously unanswered 🤔
Exactly. It's also kind of dreadful how answering the question "Could civilization recover from collapse?" only implies that the collapse is coming and it's inevitable
Also curious that they barely mentioned the biggest threat to us: climate change... I honestly think it's because Kurzgesagt knows that the collapse has already begun...
We won’t run out of fossil fuels for centuries at least, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with using them, but they’re not the most efficient. Nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric power generation are probably our best bets with the “cleanest footprint” if you’re into that garbage.
It's been my reasoning to "Stop Burning It" for a decade now, Oil & NatGas is needed for so many more important things that burning it to turn things is a massive waste of resources when (nuclear & other non carbon) electricity can turn them better. And I work in the O&G industry, seeing oil wells go dry on my run was a big wake up call.
@@dalel3608 We cant switch over to electric before we figured out and have a good infrastructre around it. All it does now is that the demand is driving the prices up.
@@WarriyaAndPalimine Kind of a chicken/egg problem though, the infrastructure only grows as fast as electric car usage grows. But this argument isn't just about cars, we don't need any new infrastructure for nuclear power for instance
Doesn’t give me much hope that this video is less about “are we on the brink of a civilization collapse” and more about “a collapse wouldn’t be that bad”
@@DragonWoolf its actually the other way around. The continual pursuit of redemption of the individual saves humanity. The obsession around the collective destroys humanity.
@@abstract5249 Communism and Nazism were fundamentally oriented around the collective, not the individual. Communism moreso, but Nazism revolved around the term "das Volk" (=the people), and the optimization of it. These ideologies were disastrous beyond comprehension, killing millions of innocents. Contrarily, in Ancient Rome many life philosophies revolved around improving the individual spiritually, intellectually, socially, and otherwise-- a comparetively less disastrous outcome. Capitalism is fundamentally individualistic, and while it has its own many issues, it is yet to produce a genocidal outcome like those seen from populist and socialist leaders in the past. Obsession with the collective allows authorities to control its people fiercly and puts society in a frenzy over nonsensical ideals. Both are very dangerous.
COLLAPSE OR NOT, Droughts and Water-Shortages and what YOU can do about it, are such important things i will comment multiple times throughout the commentsection: The Channel Some-More-News and Second Thought covered the Drought, Companys causing Water-Shortages, Climate-Change and more Topics important to all of us. UpisNotJump,, Hbomberguy, OCC, Simon Clark, they didnt just cover Climate-Change but more. Hope this comment legit helps. Kurzgesagt aint the only Info-Source you need, after all.
The art and animation are honestly some of the best, if not the best, I've ever seen. It looks cartoonish yet realistic, the nuclear explosions, ruined buildings, and cities are absolutely stunning. My favourite parts were 6:24, 2:20, and 1:30.
@@jordanyates3349 I've been watching for years, even one time I watched all the videos I was interested in back then in a single week and had nothing to watch. This video however, shows the best thing they can do; giving us existential dread then hope to forget that we just questioned our entire existence all in less than 20 minutes, but seriously, this video has been my favourite this year.
Civilization is culture in decay-Spengler....when civilization becomes cosmopolitan/international it secures it's own death. That's why socialists coined socialist feminism in 1837...and August Bebel wrote his thesis: Woman and Socialism...delusions and misplaced visionary internationalism to serve the rise of the Marxist manifesto via a naturalized humanism and secularism...all under the banner of equality Against National fraternity.
You guys are awesome, placing some good vibes in the end despite the disaster presented so well in the video that could happen anytime. Thanks for the hope!
@@k7450 yeah I find the tone utterly bizarre. I got the sense the message was "hey don't worry too much about the inevitable collapse of modern human society that is likely coming, we will probably recover in about 10 thousand years time". I'm like, no, how about we do something now to prevent collapse and the unimaginable suffering that would come along with it? Why just accept what we could change with enough collective effort? This channel is a bit shady at times. Often feels like it normalises current systems of inequality and tries to divert peoples anxieties in to a false sense of optimism.
Civilization has already collapsed, that should be obvious. The complexity scrambled the eggs and we are now watching the demise of it's organization. We peaked some time ago but we didn't realize the shift to downturn. The closest analogy we glimpsed was entropy.
I don't think this video addresses whether we actually are on the brink of collapse or not. It made no observations on how previous civilizations collapsed or on events that led to collapse. It could have drawn upon these observations and make a comparison to them regarding our current civilization. It also could have noted some trends unique to our civilization that may lead to collapse or provide protection against collapse. Sure, nuclear warfare and bioterrorism could be catastrophic, but does the current political, social, and economic landscape provide evidence for such an event to occur?
Collapse? A reset, a Great reset, perhaps? Look at the comments, the vast majority haven't even touched on it, that's how dire the situation we're in, is.
We are collapsing. We've been on a dysgenic path to the stone age since at least the 20th century, if not sooner. tl;dr version: smart people aren't breeding, but dumb people are. average IQ therefore is going down with every generation. have fun in the big cities.
@@2reeceybaby Well that's because you're an antisemite and hoping on an antisemitic conspiracy theories to be correct when they clearly aren't and never will be because you fell down a pipeline and we haven't. What Terry's pointing out is that in a nutshell's liberal ideology keeps throwing their scripts into loopholes that don't answer the question they're setting out to answer because if they did, they would have to produce answers to their questions which they cannot do because no answer that isn't "Hey, capitalism might be _bad_ actually!" can fix the problem's we're currently in because In A Nutshell is still hoping they're gonna be paid in the future by Bill Gates. Also don't bother replying. One, you're antisemitic. Two, I have reply notifications turned off so I won't see it and you're going to waste your time.
@@jaishu123 if humanity has learned anything in the last 6 years, its that conspiracies are just the information that governments want to keep away from the public.
Kurzgesagt-Fans should know more than Anyone that any Potential Collapse or Suffering can be fought by learning about the Problems. So here, i will just randomly drop Climate-Change-Coverage, Workerclass-Struggle-Coverage and more Useful Info: -Some More News -Climate Town -Not Just Bikes -Hbomberguy -Adam Something -Our Changing Climate
I think they did at the start, as much as they can without getting super political. "Civilizations collapse about every X years, its not a question of if, but when." If you look at the timelines, we are also pretty close to X years. An interesting example is that a most countries collapse after about 250 years. The USA is only a few years away from that age, and its tensions are getting pretty high.
Theyve discussed many ways the world could "end." Its such a complicated tight rope walk, nobody actually knows if we are close or not. The point of this video wasnt wild speculation, just that it doesnt matter in the long run if it does collapse
One thing to remember about Rome is that it was never a true societal "collapse" but a violent reshuffling of power as Rome became too bloated and began to balloon out. The Eastern Empire survived another 1000 years pretty much intact, pretty much as the same entity. By the year 1100, Europe was already more advanced than Rome in the year 400. A better example of a societal collapse was the Bronze Age Collapse.
COLLAPSE OR NOT, Droughts and Water-Shortages and what YOU can do about it, are such important things i will comment multiple times throughout the commentsection: The Channel Some-More-News and Second Thought covered the Drought, Companys causing Water-Shortages, Climate-Change and more Topics important to all of us. UpisNotJump,, Hbomberguy, OCC, Simon Clark, they didnt just cover Climate-Change but more.
"By the year 1100, Europe was already more advanced than Rome in the year 400." Which markers did you use for that statement? Rome had sewers as early as 600BCE, The first sewer in post collapse europe was established in late 14th century France...
Sorry I might be misunderstanding a bit. This comes from a place of confusion btw. In the year 1100, Europe was already more advance than Rome in the year 400. Doesn't that sound logical and expected? What's that sentence trying to evoke exactly?
It is nice to know that civilization can likely recover. But I would strongly prefer that it wouldn't collapse in the first place and I think I am not alone with this idea.
We would all prefer that we wake up tomorrow in our soft beds, our air conditioned houses, in our neighborhoods with conveniently built infrastructure. That hardly changes the fact that all which goes up must eventually come down, and the loftier the heights, the harder the impact with the cold hard ground becomes. Enjoy your comfortable life while you can, but prepare for the trials you must endure so that your posterity might be spared such burdens.
It would be nice if we didnt collapse but i think if we dont we will end being oppressed by governments and the people who will ruin as many peoples lives as possible to make a little extra money and they are the people in power and we need collapse to take those people out of power so we can restart but hopefully it doesnt come to that but i doubt humans will just now learn to be better
♥️know♥️ 1 John 5 KJV 13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. 1 Corinthians 15 KJV 1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: Romans 3 KJV 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
A video about secular variation of the earth’s magnetic field would be fascinating. Polar flip is extremely unlikely to happen without a preceding weak magnetic field, and there are no indications that the field is experiencing any significant weakening. You’d want to see a long term weakening of the field before making a prediction. A large impact could cause a much faster pole reversal, but now you’re talking about an event that would cause civilization collapse well before a polar flip caused problems. It’s low low low low probability that we would see a civilization ending chron (flip) in our lifetimes. But let’s say we did. What do you suspect might happen? Would electric motors turn in the opposite direction, like they do in Australia?
I usually love Kurzgesagt videos, but I feel this one didn’t really hit the mark. It was an interesting explanation of what would happen with the survivors in the event of a collapse, but it didn’t really answer the question in the title. I feel the title is a bit ill fitting for the content in the video. I feel like a better title would have been “What happens after a civilization collapses?”
i guess the Question is linked to the Graph at 1:24. If a Civilization collapses on average after 340 years, we can check Countries/Civilizations today, how long they exist in the current Form and how healthy they are. For example... if a Country exists for 250 years and shows signs of social collapse, that can be a Sign for an approaching downfall. Some old countries had already several Steps in their Development. Rising up, getting demolished, rising again in a new Form,..... I would say that the first collapse for a Civilization/Country, will be the worst one, since they have no clue what to do. If you had already a few Collapses, you can compare situation and change the problematic Stuff more easily.
@@smaragdwolf1 except their example the roman empire lasted another thousand years just we renamed it to the byzantine empire. It's not like the world lost all of that knowlege either.
@JZ's BFF I have news for you. 100% of literally everyone will die. So no need to feel disadvantaged or alone for that matter. We all share the same fate one day; Non-existence.
Kurzgesagt-Fans should know more than Anyone that any Potential Collapse or Suffering can be fought by learning about the Problems. So here, i will just randomly drop Climate-Change-Coverage, Workerclass-Struggle-Coverage and more Useful Info: -Some More News -Climate Town -Not Just Bikes -Adam Something -Our Changing Climate
Especially the elites, who think they will get to impose their will on the survivors-history shows that rulers fare the worst in a collapse scenario, as they get targeted as being responsible for the collapse, whether or not they actually were (though they usually were). They're too busy rewriting history to learn anything from it.
As if it matters. The vast majority of people in the modern world would not want to live in a post-collapse world. Who cares if you survive, if everybody you know dies. It would be like starting a new save file and starting a completely new life. In discussions like these I'm reminded of the guy in Sarajevo who sheltered in place during the siege. He survived by looting stores and doing whatever he can. When the siege ended after 2 years he committed suicide, because he couldn't adapt to the old world.
The thing that has troubled me about the collapse of civilisation is less the collapse and more how some people want it to collapse. It is one thing to discuss it, it is another to talk on it with relish as though it is a irrefutable end goal, rather than something to be avoided. It comes across that most people would want to see civilisation dammed if only to end what they do not like on it in hopes of reforging it into something new: and often in their image. People not realising such attitudes and desire to use crisis to their advantage is what doomed societies in the past. This is not what the video talks on but is a concerning trend I see in such discussions.
Have you honestly considered why most would want this sort of thing? Do you not see how a globalized system is already a slow burn in that regard and modern living practices are at an all time unsustainable high?
agreed, its pretty obvious humanity will live. Even with a nuclear holocaust people say we will be extinct... lol yeah okay. We are a virus, we wont die off that easily.
People talk about Hiroshima, but the more impressive feat of recovery is Tokyo. 16 square miles of Tokyo was burned entirely to ash and saw upwards of 100,000+ people killed, and a million left homeless. That's 95% of their capital turned to cinders over night. Who knows how many died after that just trying to survive
I mostly love the videos on this channel but this one felt like a real miss. Points are raised about how we are a global civilisation but this is never really addressed in terms of the hypothetical 'collapse', and instead comparisons are drawn from ancient civilisations vastly removed from our own. If we get hit by a small meteor, ice age or a deadly pandemic I feel like indeed we could in generations time bounce back and salvage what was left. But even then its still very western centric and a bit vague. Geographically speaking, which areas are affected by a collapse seems quite important. If the remaining population after a collapse is confined to less developed island nations while say more developed nations were wiped by nuclear war it would be harder to retrieve lost knowledge. Similarly what if the remaining population was scattered around inhospitable areas with poor climates for farming ? Rebuilding would again be far harder and as other have said would reduce the opportunity to share knowledge as you'd be more focused on basic survival.
The comparison with the Roman empire should have really made them think about the geography, the Eastern Roman Empire was generally less harshly hit and as a result that region ended up not only bouncing back quickly but with the rise of Islam and the subsequent golden age quickly surpassed the Roman Empire and became the center of technological progress.
"which areas are affected by a collapse seems quite important"... this decade, basically boils down to which areas can: - secure oil & gas (as both energy source, but also as an industrial input... Germany in particular is in for a lot of pain) - secure food, or the inputs to grow its food (guess what the Russian block exports...) - access a sufficiently deep pool of capital to even attempt to progress beyond current means
Touched on it, but I think you skimmed over the danger of having burned up the easily accessible energy we'll need to re-industrialise. I fear it would require the discovery of a new low-tech power source that we've somehow missed. A slim prospect, but not as slim as convincing the fossil fuel industry that conserving what's left for humanity's future is worth more than money in the pocket now.
@@elterga6224 Well yeah we won't but if society does collapse and nothing works, how do you think we're going to get that coal and oil? If all the easily accessible coal and oil is gone and we have to dig through hundreds of feet of rock without any technology.
There are low tech sources such as woodgas plant based oils and others but there extremely inefficient compared to oil and coal new tech would have to be very energy efficient or vary sparce
I think one of the biggest advantages is that we have an overabundance of manual precision tools already produced. So if the population were to drop that bad we would have tools for a lifetime even before we need to start producing them again. How many nails and screws you think are already in stock, brand new?
I've been reading ancient history lately and it's amazing how much of a blink of an eye our civilization actually is. My friend and I talk about loads of subjects and literally your entire video was our conversation word for word. I loved it
I was really happy to see this video hit #2 in trending! Kurzgesagt always has such a hopeful feel to it, and I swear the animation somehow keeps getting better and better! Keep up the amazing work :D
An artificial ranking probably pushed personally by UA-cam, a peon of the Google neoliberal corporate empire in conjunction with the monied interests of Bill Gates himself. Optimism sells. But it is not a solution, it is a drug to hide us from the cold reality of imminent unconsented collapse. Embrace nihilism. Embrace cynicism. Get real.
@Jul W Well, kinda...... When looking at the facts most people tend to think that it is hopeless and there is nothing they can do, so they do nothing, which further worsens the problem. Instead of calling people delusional, I just say, "It's not going to be that easy to fix [insert problem here]"
Just want to point out that the concept of "Nuclear Winter" was proposed in the 80s and media has run with it ever since without acknowledging any studies about it in the interim. The underpinning idea is sound (the basic concept being a lot of debris being spread out in the upper atmosphere and blocking sunlight drops global temperatures), but after multiple studies about it the most current attitude towards "Nuclear Winter" is that it would require an unlikely "worst case scenario" where most nuclear weapons on the planet were detonated within a short time span over specific geographical locations, during a certain time of year and "favorable" weather patterns in order to have a real "nuclear winter" like that experienced in the late 19th century from the eruption of Krakatoa. And even then would just last a year at most. The reality is that, in the unlikely event of a nuclear war (no nation really wants to unleash it's whole arsenal, no matter the situation), there will be a sizeable, yet smallish percentage of weapons used, likely on military targets and maybe a few population centers, and at the point they are being used the war is probably nearing its end. It will cause massive destruction in localized areas and probably a LOT of destruction to global infrastructure and economies. But it won't give you a Fallout game scenario. It would take a rather sizeable asteroid impact for that kind of thing to happen, and the planet would likely recover 10 times faster than the "Wasteland" does. The Earth simply is too massive a system, with far too much constant change going on for humans to really "destroy" it. We might be able to destroy ourselves and a lot of life, but we aren't powerful enough to destroy a planet or wipe out all life. Not even close.
The most recent peer-reviewed climatology study that draws from data collected from large forest fires, volcanoes, climate models, food production and supply chains among other factors predict that an all out nuclear war between Russia and the US would result in starvation of 75% of the population, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately 90% of the global population is in the northern hemisphere.
"We have all the tools, all we need to do is to use them" if only the people with the money and power over industry were altruistic enough to help along, then we could solve so many problems right now. But then again, these people didn't get into these positions of power because they ever intended to be altruistic, they ended up there by stepping on and sacrificing other people and the environment. I just hope that all the little people in the world can collectively manage to make a change before it is too late, because the rich and powerful sure as hell won't.
Like what though? what can the 99% even do if money and power is the only thing that can actually make a viable change and it's virtually impossible to make everyone actually ACT altruistic, because most of us are too concerned about our own well-being. The majority of ppl are just going to support it but not act upon it. Whereas if it were just one person doing it, it'd be much easier, however like you said that's not going to happen due to how they got in the position in the first place........
Without faith in God, this is impossible. We need to call upon him and turn from our 'selves' then he will hear (2nd Chor 7:14) and I might suggest that nothing else will work :) That said, I also like playing this stuff and am not here to spoil the fun, but I do believe there are a lot of folks looking for something other than the standard cliches
I think a little bit from everyone help, not just the most powerful. We might not be able to expect the non-altruistic to put in their energy and power and help the world. But you can. Donate and support the community you believe in and find peace in that instead of expecting others to change the world for you.
I can find at least one error within this video. I am a doctor of Ancient History and frequently teach it. Classical Greece is a period, not a culture. It did not last 265 years and then 'collapse' as there was nothing to collapse. Greek culture was not a single state, it was a complicated collection of city-states (poleis) and it is a fact that the poleis existed from about 8th century BC well into the Roman era of rule over the former Greek territories. Athens and the Athenians existed prior to this within the Mycenean period, and Athens as a culture continued to exist throughout the Western Roman empire and was still around during the Byzantine period. I am happy to discuss this further if interested. Sincerely, L.
5:30 There was even a guy who was visiting Hiroshima on business when the bomb was dropped. He survived but because of the destruction it was 3 days before he could return home... To Nagasaki. He gut home just in time to survive the second atomic bombing in history. But the question remains, was he lucky to have survived 2 atomic bombings, or unlucky to be there when they happened. Tsutomu Yamaguchi passed away in 2010, at the age of 93.
Right. Its like when Greg Brady found the tiki in Hawaii. He was wearing it around his neck when some bad things happened... but he was unhurt. He and his brothers assumed it was bad luck. But Mr. Brady, in his patriarchal wisdom, pointed out that it could have been protecting him and that is why he was unhurt. So I would say the guy was lucky. I mean... who can say that they were there for BOTH bombs AND survived. Incredible.
Since luck is something only recognized in the past tense and more of a trait prescribed to survivors I would say he was lucky. Anyone living to their 90s alone is lucky...
The title of this video is a bit inaccurate. The video talks more about whether civilization would recover than whether we are on the brink of collapse.
An other interesting article. Well done. Although, the thought of 1% of the population surviving doesn't really make me optimistic. It's all very well planning for a thousand generations in the future, but my empathy lies most with the immediate and next few generations. I don't want either me, my family or community to suffer the pain, misery and hardship of societal collapse in whatever form it may take. This is where my immediate concerns lie.
@@VK-sz4it That's assuming technological advancement is lost in the first place. It is likely the data will still exist somewhere, and solar panels are easy to set up.
@Saurav Bhandari Sure, but when you're making a presentation you want the audience to be able to understand. Since history books are filled to the brim with stories about the Romans and not the Indus River Valley Civilization they needed something the audience would recognize.
What's possible for humanity as a whole is one thing, but the individual tragedies caused by possible global collapse is a whole other thing. As a person who lives in a country that was struck by war, I can at least tell that people adapt -- though, obviously, it's a different story for everyone. Being able to watch a video like this is sort of a blessing too :) At any rate, at least the Caribbean Crisis showed that it's possible for people to realize that there's a line in the sand. Hopefully, it's going to be the same deal this time. What this video doesn't note is that it's certain individuals that actually have power to influence the way civilization moves forward. The rulers of old had a lot of power, that's for sure; but nowadays it's more about people owning various corporations and industries, bonding together to harbor certain mutual interests. It's their decision to act or do nothing that has the most impact. Probably, that would be the greatest flaw of human civilization -- the fact that everyone's created equal (in terms of humanity, that is) is contrasted by the way we built our society. Sure, ultimately it might be one person's action that tilts the balance of things -- a drunk man saying obscene things on video, or a power station worker falling asleep when he's supposed to do maintenance; but it's the people at the top of the social hierarchy that have the influence to contain or escalate these matters. It's not even about representation anymore, in my opinion -- because voting is mainly about the campaign and political technologies than rational decisions of single individuals, and it's probabilistically impossible for a single vote to tilt elections nowadays. But those are power structures -- in companies, corporations and industries there isn't any sort of democracy at all. People get promoted or demoted by their management, and some more business-savvy individuals quit and start their own businesses; yet it's the top management that always makes the decisions. Corporations and industries hold the power to allow or deny people certain basic commodities, such as electricity, or fresh water -- and decision-making there is based on the top management's interests. That's probably something else that's really unnerving and ultimately irritating for humans -- it appears that over the centuries humanity strove towards equality, yet on that path even more inequality has been created. As I'm writing this, there's an air raid siren sounding outside. Some people have it way worse in my country. Ultimately, I guess there's nothing else to do but hope for the best. There are small steps each individual can do to make the world a better place -- but there's a caveat. It's something that matters in an ideal world, when no power-hungry tyrant or avaricious moghul can screw up the lives of millions on a whim. If that happens -- hothing literally matters on a global scale; though, obviously, every person's life and tragedy and unique experience are all that matters to each and every one of us.
It's miraculous how we are able to connect over vast distances and through devastating wars. I am amazed at how thoughtful and calm you are with the war raging outside. Hope you remain safe.
Personally I'm more concerned about the "immense hardships" that would affect me right now if things went from bad to worse. I was never that worried about the big picture because there is a lot of people and we would have to really f it up now to make it impossible to survive. Like an artificial super virus that would kill everyone etc.
@@Quantum-er8jo in the event of collapse the majority of people will struggle and die, the rich will take off in their spaceships, and they will start the thing over and do it again. that is the concerning part, that most people will suffer and die, but some people likely will survive. most of us won't live. I don't think anybody here disagrees with you
A really interesting book expanding on this topic is “The Knowledge” by Lewis Dartnell. He goes in depth about rebooting a civilization and mixes it with survival techniques. Basically a end of civilization “how to”
WE....W. Double You.....E.Equality (USA Constitution PreAmble) "A More Perfect Union" (Love), perfect (Atonement) (USA Constitution PreAmble) The Rule of Law insures domestic tranquility (USA Constitution PreAmble) Establishing Justice (Tao, Equality, Fair) (USA Constitution PreAmble) Precepts and Principles of The Letter and Spirit of Law
The possibility of civilization collapsing is why we need to construct and stock Knowledge Arks - repositories for our greatest achievements, collective learning in various fields, and slices of our culture. A great deal of knowledge has been lost and had to be rediscovered. Think of all the philosophy, music, literature, poetry, etc. that has vanished in the mists of time.
I believe the channel How to Make Everything has mentioned more than once that that book was the reason he started that channel. Silver lining on his tragedy of his property burning is that's similar to a civilization collapse. Coincidentally the topic of this video.
@@freyathewanderer6359 if you really want to do that properly, make them in buildings of granite; filled with molten salt once finalized to remain geologically buoyant; located buried in the shields/cratons of the world. They will survive forever until rediscovered. And with the added benefit of sticking out like a sore thumb, so when discovered it will be obvious that it was intentional.
Calling the Roman Empire stable at any point in its history is kinda overselling it. They reeled from one crisis to another, just barely surviving due to the momentum of their conquests, until the barracks-room emperors started popping up. And suddenly that momentum stopped and they couldn't withstand the crises anymore.
? The 5 good emperors century long era was incredibly stable politically. The only civil war was Avidius Cassius's rebellion but it wasn't even a war, as he killed himself when he found out Marcus Aurelius was actually alive.
It fell because the economy was in shambles and nobody wanted to fight for Rome anymore because there is no longer an incentive to join the army, people would maim themselves just to avoid service.
This is a very good video but it has some problems. Mainly, it equates Civilizations with States. The graph that shows how long each civilization lasted is misleading because it only shows how long a specific political entity lasted. For example the graph shows that Middle Kingdom Egypt only lasted 403 years. But Egyptian civilization was already thousands of years old when the Middle Kingdom begun and lasted just as long after it ended. The only thing that collapsed at the end of this period was the political unity of Egypt. Other civilizations like the Akkadian empire and Babylonia or Greece and Rome, are just part of the same civilization continuity. There wasn’t any collapse when classical Greece became Hellenistic Greece nor was any when Hellenistic Greece became a Roman province. When Rome fell, Roman language, religion, law and culture were still there, the only thing missing was the empire. And most of the thecnology lost was only lost because there wasn’t any reason or capacity to keep it, not because some catastrophe destroyed everything. A good example is Roman concrete. It was lost because cities declined and there wasn’t much incentive to make it, since changes in imperial administration moved local elites away of public monuments, and eventually no money too. So people just stopped doing it and eventually forgot. Other problem with this part of the video is that it fails to take in account places like China, Japan and India that have a very stable continuity with their ancient cultures and never experienced a Roman like collapse. Tl/DR: a civilization is more than its government and usually lasts way longer than it.
Also the idea of cyclical things in general is kind of a farce, the universe in reality is simply just a big ol chaotic place, at least to us. Civilization is not overdue for a collapse, though the whole environmental thing could end up doing that instead, but I like to take an optimistic approach and think that once older people die off the new generation that is really worried about these problems can at least be able to solve it or slow it down. But I also hope another problem will be addressed when this whole climate stuff is too, and thats preparing humanity to actually be able to work around and foresee future problems instead of being blind till its too late, but I am no scientist.
Was looking for such a comment, thank you :) one of the first times I'm disappointed with a Kurzgesagt video. Brings many fake news and short cuts people (historians/...) try hard to break.
@@mosiarmstrong I usually see it at the end. I think I prefer it that way, since I'd rather read the whole thing and the summary kind of lessens it (but if someone wouldn't rather read the whole thing, they might skip to the bottom and see the TL;DR. Also nice to see the summary after reading the rest, as it can tie it together and give a meaningful takeaway to add to the context). I have seen "TL;DR at bottom" many times though.
At times like these, finding meaning is crucial. Ancient Stoic philosophy has some good ideas (though flawed) for this. Relying on trying to be comfortable won't cut it. We all die, we all get sick, we will all face pain (even in the best of times). We do not all truly live. Part of living a full human life is finding meaning and contributing to something larger than yourself (could be as small as a friend group or as large as humanity itself... maybe even every sentient being). We can actually be happier when we approach life by putting finding meaning first anyway.
What's your opinion about the eastern philosophical approach to forgo the pursuit of meaning and accpet the essential nothingness that is life? Imo the pursuit of meaning for its own sake has always been a very strange thing.
@Detroit Smash Meaning is what you make it. You have to put in the mental effort to find it, its not something that just inherently exists. Someone else's meaning for living might not even register as a reason to live for someone else. It's there, you just need to work towards finding it. Therapists help with that as well.
We shouldn’t HAVE to worry about a collapse. We have the information we need to make the world a better place. Short sighted governments, ignorant people, and a complete lack of drive to do even simple changes to help others can doom us all. And that’s just the US.
There is also a lot of blaming involved. The "others" are the cause. While oneself is doing all the right things or couldn't do anything at all or it wouldn't matter. So all the not ignorant people are fine of pointing out the wrong things others do. Feels kind of stuck, doesn't it?
@@StephanGelenscher The problem is that the 1-10% is UNDOUBTEDLY responsible for 99% of the impact of global society. While every person has a responsibility over their own personal life, people in positions of power have a responsibility over an entire neighborhood, district, city or country. THEY are the only ones that can make an impact on the macro scale and they clearly aren't doing their job right because it doesn't take much looking around to notice all of the macro-scale problems with modern society. Crutch of economical Inter-dependence? Man-made Climate Destruction? Non-renewable energy sources? These aren't problems that an average person has any meaningful sway over. These are also problems that should have been resolved half a century ago if those same top 1% people in power actually did their job responsibly and if they HAD been resolved then we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's not about blame, this is just an objective fact.
it does feel desperate, and bleak. Any person with a common sense can see everything that is wrong with the world yet they are powerless to stop it because those people without a common sense have chosen as their leaders the narcissistic and greedy, self-serving assholes that bow down to our billionnaire overlords
And that's exaclty the problem. You have some ideas how we could fix society. But other people might have other ideas. Ideas that you might despise from people you might call ignorant. And its the other way around too. And so we spend most of our time arguing, thinking that the other side is the devil whose plans will make everything worse.
@@wjzav1971 I didn't mention anything about fixing society. All I said was that the people who ARE in charge of fixing society aren't doing their job right. That's just an objective fact otherwise people wouldn't be debating the possibility of serious civilization collapse in a completely straight-laced fashion.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
"We just need to actually do it." If history has proven anything it's that societies never prepare for problems until they're already collapsing from them. EDIT: Since this got so much of a response I'll add to this - society goes through cycles. The people that solve the problems are the ones that had to live with the collapse and have no choice. Sadly we're seeing the death of a golden age as the system we're in can no longer adapt to the problems we face. I like Kurzgesagt's optimism, but systems either work or they don't. Every system works until it breaks because it cannot change and ours is no different. I hope I'm wrong but if we match the pattern of history I will not be.
... Despite countless warnings. In fact, those who warn are often seen as deceptive enemies with ulterior motives.
@@devilskind92 Can you give examples of said people. Im actually really curious lol.
What our society is, greatly depicts movie "don't look up"
Good thing we are preparing for a rapidly incoming collapse in the next fifty years, right?
… right???
FAAAAAACTS
if the question is "is civilization about to collapse?" then an answer of "don't worry, humanity will probably survive to rebuild over the following centuries" is maybe not the most reassuring answer.
Just being realistic
you know things are looking bad when even Kurzgesagt is giving up on humanity
Look ok the kursgesat team are very broke after the last two videos that need vacation clickbait moeny
another video that doesn't answer the question that it poses...
Then what exactly do you want? There's two paths you can take here.
1. Be pessimistic & constantly comment on Reddit or UA-cam about how fucked we are
2. Be optimistic about the future & try to improve upon yourself & your own relationships with those around you each day
Like honestly, what are you expecting? NOBODY & I mean NOBODY has any definitive idea on what the future holds. But come on now, saying NOT to be optimistic is actively sabotaging yourself & everyone around you. It's a bad mindset to have & a hard one to escape.
As an electrician I get overwhelmed with work after a simple thunderstorm.. I couldn't imagine how stressed out I would be trying to rebuild society (assuming I live through the collapse)
The good news is you would be able to take on apprentices without needing certs since there would be no government. It’s more important to get electricity back to a bunch of people than it is to make sure everything is up to code.
Obviously you’d go back and check later, but if you had good people helping out, it’d be more helpful than anything.
I was just thinking about how hard it would be to be a leader of new civilization and starting up the industrial revolution again, getting back safe water supply, modern amenities etc
Thanks for your hard work. We appreciate you sir!
Depending on how bad it was you might only have like four houses to take care of in your community. 🤷♀️
sorry
“Humanity is like a teenager speeding around blind corners drunk and without a seatbelt” -Kurzgesagt
That was the most factual statement in the whole video.
I read this comment as he said that
No, humanity are all evil, eating each other for clout, this world will be inherited by demons, demon lives matter
Petroleum based Parasitic Plague Phase aka 8.3 Billion…WASF🔥🌎🔥
Bronze Age Collapse...
I'm not worried about whether civilization can recover, I'm worried about having to recover. I'm personally not that keen on experiencing civilizational collapse, and knowing that those who make it through will rebuild doesn't really change that. The bronze age collapse is a curious bit of history to us, but to the people living through it, it might as well have been the end of the world. In relation to the bronze age collapse, I'm one of the people learning about it via unfathomable technologies 3000 years later, but in relation to whatever happens in our time, collapse or no, I'm that bronze age rando who would much rather have reliable access to food and not have to go to war.
Agreed 👍
There's a reason "May you live in interesting times" is meant as a curse.
If there is a collapse, you won't be around long enough for the recovery. Your sole job will be to attempt to survive and produce offspring just like everyone else. It will be your descendants that go through the recovery.
We should not be pussies
Sound like a puff.
I think this video needs a title change. It doesn't answer if we're on the brink of collapse at all. It simply talks about how civilization would recover if it does collapse.
This collapse is taking so damn long tho... Why isn't like just tomorrow? Why is everyone taking their sweet time.
If it breaks now, we can stop worrying about it happening the very next day.
Particularly speaking about the so called "wars" we have going on right now.
Yeah this is one of the more vague kurtz vids I’ve watched in a while
I wasn’t expecting to see you here
How is your break going?
We just want the world of Pokémon to collapse
Doesn't it kind of speak for itself though
Interesting that you guys didn't mention the Bronze Age Collapse, which is often the event that many people point to as the defining societal collapse. However, even the Bronze Age Collapse didn't entirely erase civilization, as major civilizations like Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia were able to weather the storm and survive into classical times. I think the collapse of the Roman Empire was simplified here, because while the empire in Italy itself fell, the eastern half of the empire survived, all the way until 1453, and Italy, Spain, France, England, and North Africa were taken over by new kingdoms of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Vandals rather than falling into total societal collapse. In fact, Italy in particular would see a resurgence under king Theodoric the Great. If anything, it was the Byzantines' invasion and reconquest of Italy that actually caused the bigger societal collapse than the fall of Rome itself.
look like some people is confused, civilization and Empire is different, even the Empire collapse the civilization could be continued.
So much of the BAC is still a complete mystery as well. We still don't really know what caused it and why.
I hate to be that guy but pointing to the bronze age collapse as the end of human society is highly eurocentric, there were plenty of other civilizations during that time period that would have carried out if europe went dark, same with the black death or the dark ages
I mean it's an 11 minute video, of course its explanation for the collapse of the Roman Empire is simplified. Unless they wanted to make a documentary series it kinda has to be.
That's why they showed the western empire disappear but the eastern one remain, isn't it
2:27 they really tried to sneak among us in this sneaky bastards
lol
Lmaoo I WAS searching the comment section to see if anyone else noticed
Blue was not an imposter
@@SamanthaBettin same
My mum used to call me that ,, sneaky basterd ,, my question was - ooh, who did you sleep with ? 😂
as always I absolutely loved this video, but just personally I feel like it more answered “can civilization recover from a collapse” than “how likely is it for civilization to collapse?” Cuz honestly im worried more about the latter
in the video he said that a collapse is the rule
so its inevitable but it wont always affect the citizen that much
@@channelname4331 More accurately, they said that it has always been the rule. Not necessarily that global civilization as we know it will inevitably collapse.
If you are that worried about the future, find a fortune teller. Or a scientist who thinks he is a fortune teller, they seem to be everywhere.
@@SubtleSerpent because a statement like "the earth is getting hotter" is just as much a guess as a fortune teller saying you'll find success 🤣
I have no proof the sun will rise tomorrow, I only have evidence it will. Am I trying to "predict the future", there?
@@SubtleSerpent a lot of those scientists are looking at data and saying what will happen if we continue down the same path.
It isn’t fortune telling to tell someone that throwing a ball into the air will lead to it falling down. That’s common sense yeah? But we learned it through observation, the first time someone sees something thrown into the air they don’t know it’ll come back down.
But based on the many thousands of times you’ve seen it happen in your life (data) you can pretty safely say that when you do it again, it’ll result in that outcome.
It's harrowing how we've gone from "hey, humanity is doing all kinds of things to help secure our future, its not all bad!" to "hey, not all of us will die, we're like cockroaches!"
I appreciate these videos and the message they try and give us but damn I hate that our potential futures look so grim now.
To be fair, this video differs from the Climate Change series, in that it needs to make a lot of worst case assumptions.
"Someone smart"
Someone not smart
We're not exactly like cockroaches but we might still have a chance.. might
It is not the future that looks grim, it's us who see it grim.
@@B1omaH
If we see the future as grim how is that any different than it looking grim?
The past couple of years has really given me this sense that the world is more unstable than just a few years ago. Maybe we aren't facing extinction, but it does feel like there is a real chance of civilization stumbling. I hope that is just a worst case scenario. But I can't help but feel a tension, a sense of fear.
In a way we're slowly but surely digging our own grave lol
well we are in a disruptive phase. All the entropy cause by the rapid technological advances of the last century is still in the system.
I mean, the global goal of finance and politics was to create stability at all costs. The rigidity and security acted as guarantor for the economy to savely invest an grow. Phase change is long overdue however and the longer we wait the more voilent it will be (perhabs).
i pray we only stumble but the great filter is looking more and more imminent
It is all because of russia.
Not worrying about things that are out of your control will make you a happier person.
Edit: I would like to shoutout the user Jul W down below for doing his damndest to insult as many users as possible.
“When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters...”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
"...yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters..."
We're at our best when we're separated, thanks though. I'm not walking in harmony with people who don't put out the effort and possess the same level of conscientiousness that I do. Doesn't matter who they are.
@@Anttyx One can't make every neighbor like them even with the best of effort which is what the commenter was saying.
@@Matt-fs1yy "same level of consciousness" my eyes are gonna roll so hard they could power a turbine you degenerate racist
@@Matt-fs1yy Effort and "conscientiousness" are subjective matters on a scale relative to your environment and upbringing.
Do your best to make a friend out of anybody, and you will soon find that they excell in skills that you do not possess and follow respectable values of their own.
@Alex W. No, that's a very bad idea though. What if they murder all your children or something for no reason? Do you think that you should still show them kindness and compassion? Of course not, your response should be to kill them or ensure that their murderous genes are eliminated so that they don't inflict misery on future generations. If somebody hasn't done anything heinous like that then showing compassion and kindness and all of that is fine, but you can't just show compassion in all circumstances, especially in a situation like I mentioned where the recipient of your compassion ensures your extinction!
"Without civilization, most people would not have been born" -- that's why there were so few humans before 1991. Thank Sid Meier for saving us.
underrated comment, by far the best of this comment section
Bet most people ain't gonna get it
No worries boys we can just buy things with faith👌
Lmao
lmao
Reminds me of Hari Seldon coming up with Psychohistory in the Foundation series by Isaac Ssimov. Not trying to prevent the collapse of civilization, but to minimize its duration and damage in order for a new civilization to arise from the ashes as soon as possible. Of course Psychohistory is pure sci-fi (for now) but it's definitely one of the most interesting ideas I've encountered in sci-fi.
I'm currently re-reading the Foundation series for the 4th time because every year that goes by seems like another year of
confirmation for the eminent global civilization collapse...
Psychohistory is just Fancy Word for Dialectical Materialism.
@@ravenknight4876 it honestly looks like its the other way around
Whoever wrote this video is about as clued in as Azimov's encyclopedists! 🤣
Yeah until you fund out it’s all completly bullshit thanks to Galaxia and Daneel
Is modern civilization about to collapse?
-No one knows for sure but most historians would say no, not yet.
Will modern civilization collapse?
-Yes.
Will we recover?
-Yes.
Will we recover? more of a maybe
@@joeygoll6233i’d say the collapse is more of a maybe
MIT predicted the fall of civilization in 2040, multiple studies since then have said it was legit and that we're still on track for it. Just from the eyeball test, it certainly feels like we're heading that way (end game capitalism is out of control)
Completely hopelessly intractably existentially doomed…
@@joeygoll6233Given human history, more like a "likely".
I have no doubt that a new sort of civilization could emerge after a collapse. But still, the problem is what happens to us before there's a new civilization that emerges. I'd like not to spent the end of my life scavaging for food because our current lifestyle is not sustainable...
EXACTLY. These things don't happen overnight they take some serious time to recover.
Right? It's rad that humanity as a whole is pretty resilient but I think it's in everyone's best interest that we work to prevent collapse rather than recover 😅
That’s when you can choose to opt yourself out. There’s plenty of fast exits.
@@ZombieOfun The problem is, the moment someone says what must be done to prevent collapse (eradicate capitalism), people get extremely defensive, because we've been taught that "this is how things are". And so we keep threading this self-destruction path because everyone is too afraid of ghosts created by the capitalists.
that is coming up soon sorry to tell ya
"Did we manage to unlock a new fear for you?"
Yes, it happens everytime I see a new Kurzgesagt video or learn a new thing. The possibilities of using the wrong way any knowledge is so great. The good thing is watching these videos show at least someone cares on not going the wrong path. Thanks guys!
Try some exurbia videos :p
Truth be said. Kurzgesagt is my monthly does of existential dread.
It'll be fine, just buy this pretty map poster!
So you acknowledge every time you see something new like this it gives you a new fear? That’s exactly what the AI wants. The machine wants you afraid and anxious so you’re easier to control.
My brain is like:
BEEP, BEEP! New existential fear unlocked!
Specifics:
- Number assigned: 189
- Scale: The whole humanity.
- Probability of coming true: Depends.
Beeeeep..... The fear has been categorized and put to the archive. Sector C. 😄
“Humanity is like a teenager, speeding around drunk corners, blind without a seatbelt.” What an outstanding way to describe the rapid growth of humankind.
money-spenders are one toxic culture.
indigenous people are humanity.
No Humanity is a penal colony for extra dimensional beings.
Yeah, but what a ride!
“Speeding around *blind* corners, *drunk* without a seatbelt”
I’m sorry I had to say it but it makes all the difference
@dev stuff what do you mean
I'm not worried about the survival of humanity, I'm worried about my civilization crumbling around me
A bit selfish wouldn't you say?
@@calebfraser5173
Are you saying I shouldn't be concerned with civilization crashing around me bc it's sure to recover within a couple of centuries?
The subject of this video is actually: "Can civilization recover after collapse?".
Agreed, I'm surprised that they didn't actually answer the question presented in the title. I think that this is one of the few of their videos that's left me a bit puzzled
The title is 'will we collapse' and video shows that 'we may recover'. That's a indirect yes to me. They can't just say 'yes it'll happen' right? That's why they don't directly give the answer.
plus he got the wrong answer.
the answer is no.
@@darklight6921 of course civilisation will collapse, what are u talking about
Don't worry; when we all die, we'll all turn into coal and the next civilization can just use that. Problem solved! Long may the dogs reign! 🐶🐕🦮
I feel like there is alot of reasons the current civilization as we know it would have collapse. We have so many things against us at this moment, but at the same time, maybe it's just our perspective. Nowdays we receive so much information in a single day, that perhaps our situation isn't much diferent than older civilizations, we're just more aware of whats going on in the world. I don't really think our brains are used to that much information yet.
A hundred years ago, the economy collapsed so hard most things were sold for pennies, and it was called the Great Depression. We dealt with world wars, outbreaks of awful diseases, and the constant threat of random nuclear annihilation during the entirety of the cold war. Times are hard now, but they've always been hard. Truth is the good old days weren't really all that good. Humans have a _lot_ of flaws, but if there's one thing we do right, it's tenacity. I mean hell, in the 1900s, we created airplanes and gained the ability to fly. 50 years later, we put a man on the fucking moon. 50 years. It's incredible what we can do when we put our minds to it. We will pull through, because that's what we do.
This sounds like something a human trying to cope with our species’ reality would say. We may have fancier gadgets but make no mistake we are just as stupid, shortsighted, quick to anger, and violent as our cavemen ancestors.
The reason civilizations never last is because humans cannot fathom a lack of control and power. It’s ingrained in us to conquer all that we can
@@Mr.Bimgus 50 years ago we went on the moon
50 years later and we are debating on if slavery should be taught in public schools. If that’s not regression then I don’t know what is
I agree, with the access of social media, we are more exposed than ever to everyday events, violence and conflict. Our time is no different from what was before, we’re just more aware, and that’s scary
Yall will say anything to comfort yourselves. We have 8 years to mitigate the doomsday scenario we will face as a species in the coming decades. We arent fixing climate change at this point we can only soften how hard it will hit us, which we arent even doing the bare minimum for that. Seriously stop letting youtube channels like this one gaslight you.
Well, the title-question "Is civilization on the brink of collapse?" wasn't really answered.
Instead, we got a nice explanation of what a collapse of civilization would mean and why humanity itself would probably survive it
They did answer it. They stated that every major civilization has collapsed and that we're no different, in fact worse off because of our ties to current tech, networking, and major supply chains. That said, they can't just start calling off a bunch of predictions that lead to the collapse, only give examples if something were to go wrong in our very fragile society.
@@smittyvanjagermanjenson182 naah, very clickbait title to peddle the bs book.
@@the_crypter how would we know we are totallly different from what we were 100 years ago shit even the last 30 or so years. We can only draw back from the past bc we haven’t quite a collapse in modern times just yet.’if we end up surviving one in the future someone will make a video of that in the future but most likely we’ll be dead
Well... the video basically implied yes.
Yeah before the collapse was more local, now it is global.
The problem isn’t that society might collapse it’s that a large portion of the population looks forward to it
As usual the only comment asking the real questions gets 0 replies
Why wouldn't they though? Almost everywhere they look, there is misery and suffering, and life seems hopeless and meaningless. They just want the pain of existence to stop.
It makes sense though as some of the most popular religions to date hold a global cataclysm/apocalypse to be imminent.
It's only democrats that look forward to societal collapse.
I'm one of them.
doesnt give me much hope that this video is less about "are we on the brink of civilization collapse" and more about "a complete collapse wouldn't be THAT bad"
Starving to death isn't so bad.
@@1pcfred getting hit with a nuclear bomb? nah not too bad lol
Not that bad for those who come after you, that is!
We will not collapse they didn’t even mention colonizing other planets, mining the asteroid belt etc.
Collapse is the only chance we have to change things for the better. We know that if things continue as normal we're all screwed.
Great video as always
Bien
Nice
Wow so beautiful very nyc 👌👍👌👌👍☺️
👍
cool
“Let’s counter existential dread with appreciation for humanity. Look how far we’ve come as a species.”
This is the thing I always appreciate about these videos, they manage to make you feel hopeless throughout most of the video, only to offer you some encouraging words at the end.
Youuu
How many channels are commenting on
then again, there are the amogus’ in the video
DUDE WHY IS THIS GUY LITERALLY EVERYWHERE IN THE COMMENT SECTION OF EVERY VIDEO I WATCH WTF
Yeah they alway tip toe the line of existential dread and optimism that seems unwarranted considering what humans are doing.
For some reason, that bird looking with glee when it finally managed to produce a toast was heart warming.
fr
Today's fact: Ancient Greeks came up with the idea of cyclops after they found a fossil of a mammoth, and had no idea what it was.
cool i didnt know that
Good fact
Still don't know how they managed to think a 2 eyed creature can be a 1 eye standing beast.
I thought it was because maybe the cyclops baby deformity.
Goes to show how misinformed we can be when first looking at what appears to be a complete picture.
"Some people will probably survive." Thank you Kurzgesagt, very reassuring.
Cataclysmic events work like lysol. We can't all just perish lol.
Optimist: the glass is half full
Pessimist: the glass is half empty
Bitcoiner: the glass is totally decentralized
I mean, that's how it would most likely go
"Just leave some petrol for future societies to go the way of the dodo just like we will repeating all of our mistakes"
@@smittyvanjagermanjenson182 except nukes aren't lysol... they're nukes. and last I checked humans don't have the ability to uptake plasmids for survival, nor do we have inherent genes that make us resistant to radiation poisoning. Yeah, antibiotics and thermonuclear weapons are not the same.
Kurzgesagt: "Should you worry about climate change? Of course not, dummy!"
Also Kurzgesagt: "We'll be fine if 90% of people die... On an evolutionary timescale."
I feel so much better about climate change now. On evolutionary timescales, my horrifying death won't matter to me!
its pretty concerning to see how many people are complementing kurzgesagt for this video. It's strangely disrespectful to the very fans of the channel.
@@maxtoke5557 I agree in many ways , but it is our opinion
I think these guys are being waaay too optimistic and unintentionally /intentionally manipulating us
Yep. This channel suffers from what I might call harmful optimism.
@@jaredhoeft2832 🤡🦍
None of the previous collapses involved making the climate so extreme so fast that our physiology cannot adapt to such sudden change.
This is probably one of the most optimistic and inspiring ones you've done yet. I needed this today, thank you.
Don't translate!!! 😎
ເຈົ້າຖືກສາບແຊ່ງເພາະວ່າມັນຖືກແປຖ້າເຈົ້າບໍ່ທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງ, ເຈົ້າຈະຕາຍວິທີດຽວທີ່ຈະທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງແມ່ນເພື່ອຈອງຊ່ອງທາງຂອງຂ້ອຍລົງທະບຽນດຽວນີ້.
Don't translate him he will curse you with death unless you subscribe to his channel.
@@mishan6908 ok i wont
@@mishan6908 you fool i have seen the golden monkey
fun fact
if this were to happen, you would die
you wouldnt rebuild civilisation
a small percentage of humans would
youd perish, theres your optimism
As an amateur marine ecologist i just wanna give a shout and massive thanks for mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes, and phytoplanktons for their contribution to sustain us with absorbing CO2 that we produce.
They are amazing at filtering water too. There was a flood near my grandparents house, and a lot of sediment and junk would have been washed out to sea, and it was, but the area around the mangroves looked much cleaner. It wasn't clean, cause there was a lot of microorganisms like Ecoli and you didn't swim near any rivers, but it it just stopped the potential affects of massive sediment outwash. And some people could recover lost items in the mangroves, but a few feet got hurt cause of those upwards roots
I wish I could smoke them out for that tbh they’re real for that
@@rocketcello5354 thank god for certain microorganisms
As an amateur human I just want to give a shout out to all mammals. Without you the plant life as we know it today would not be able to survive.
So can we grow more of them instead of killing all the cows and eating insects instead?
Beautifully animated as always. What I don't like is how you avoid the very question that is asked in the title of the video. Instead of looking at possible signs of a looming collapse you skip right ahead to the rebuilding phase. This is probably trying to put a hopeful, positive spin on things but it basically accepts collapse as a reality as if it has already happened.
Which, sadly, makes the title seem like click bait.
Whether or not it’s a little clickbait-ish, you should know they did a video on the topic you’re describing some time ago
It is inevitable.
this whole channel is click bait
Edit: intended for children and the feeble minded, for those who cannot think for themselves, and using cartoons to discuss serious matters non-satirically is a big clue
@@ProfessorToadstool theres nothing wrong with cartoons as a medium, you're not a forward thinker because of trust issues with media
This is just a sales pitch for the book and Effective Altruism (EA) in general
All empires fall, it’s inevitable. But out of that, for better or worse, a new empire eventually rises only to fall and be replaced.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes"
- Mark Twain
@SneedGaming ok I believe you
"Jar Jar is the key to all of this."
- Mark Twain
USA=SPQR
I'm happy to learn that a mere four centuries after our horrible deaths from civilizational collapse, humanity might finally find life slightly more tolerable again before the cycle begins anew. Thank you Kurzgesagt!
And they don't even get into how we're running out of easily exploitable non-coal energy sources and how renewable or nuclear are nowhere near good enough to replace them (1. because they cost too much upfront energy just to build the new extraction/generation tech, 2. because we're nowhere near having replaced our supply-chain-critical vehicles with electrics), meaning any civilizational recovery will have to stop at the agricultural stage for lack of high-density energy sources to rebuild anything anywhere close to the kind of industry we have today.
They're always trying so damn hard to be positive that they end up spreading disinformation, like that utter stupidity from that guy's book, about how we need more people instead of fewer - true, if you want to burn through the remaining energy even faster, and be ever more certain that any civilizational rebirth will be impossible because humans will have nothing to power it with.
We're simply almost done on this planet, industrial civilization is done, especially since we're being fed absurd optimistic disinformation like this, lulling us back to sleep and business as usual, ensuring that we will burn all of the remaining easy-energy and leave nothing for the next cycle of civilization that might otherwise have been possible.
I don't think the time scales are valid any longer in terms of how long a civilization survives. It seems to be quite a bit longer.
You are funny!
Jesus loves you
I mean........why can't all Countries just go back to the drawing board, reset and just write off all debt and start over. Nobody owes anything, not a penny ! See what I did there
Kurzgesagt has the right mix of techno optimism and doomsday warning to motivate the audience into reducing existential risks.
It’s a noble strategy and it appears it’s working - I’m happy to be part of it.
yes okokokokok
I've seen it actually working. Kurzgesagt did motivate some people I know to be better.
Don't translate!!! 😎
ເຈົ້າຖືກສາບແຊ່ງເພາະວ່າມັນຖືກແປຖ້າເຈົ້າບໍ່ທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງ, ເຈົ້າຈະຕາຍວິທີດຽວທີ່ຈະທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງແມ່ນເພື່ອຈອງຊ່ອງທາງຂອງຂ້ອຍລົງທະບຽນດຽວນີ້.
Techno but less upload time and more ethical theories of our society and life.
@@mishan6908 ok
In summary, while the potential for collapse exists, it's important to consider the challenges and efforts being made to address them. It's also important to remember that collapse is not inevitable and that human resilience and innovation have helped us to overcome many challenges in the past.
Civilisation will not collapse, we have dafydd!
Disagree as the west becoming more corrupt and inflation going high and countries not using the usd. That could cause collapse.
The greatest challenge to this optimistic perspective is the growth of extremism and disinformation online, which erodes shared understanding and trust and undermines collective policy efforts.
If in the event of extreme disaster on a global scale, anyone who thinks that those surviving will put aside squabbling over petty differences, and pull together to cooperate, I should like to point out how people behaved during the covid19 pandemic, and the callous selfishness displayed as store shelves were emptied of essentials and millions of a**holes refused precautionary measures such as wearing masks and getting vaccine inoculations...
@@NigerianCrusaderdafydd???
Alongside the many valid criticisms already in the comments, I want to point out that recovery, post-civilizational collapse, does not mean that the civilization itself survived; merely that another eventually replaced it. We are not the Romans, even if we ended up carrying on some of the elements of Roman civilization. When the current "Western Civilization" collapses, whatever replaces it will be something else. And the "Global Civilization" is utterly dependent on the former - when the West falls, globalism falls with it.
West has all the necessary experience and capabilities to stop our fall. It is just a question if West wants to survive or no.
@@bizmasterTheSlav
Sadly "west" is not a monolithic block. It is not a matter of "west" wanting or not, it is a matter of individuals and a struggle against power.
@@bizmasterTheSlav It is in the process of a very painful suicide, I think.
Civilizations could be replaced but not totally annahilated, the legacy never ceased and inherited to the decendant civilization. We may not be Romans, but the Roman legacy is still alive within western/European civilization as law, engineering, philosophy, social structure, art of governmening, and has been expanded via global colonising until modern era. We may not Romans but the civilization is still surviving.
I don't judge such... violent methods/trends which occured and used during the expansion, but just suggesting the civilizations are move on, even after some horrible purge or oppression. We all still got some fragment of local/older civilization whether its original owner gone or not, affected from tradition and culture. So I think it is good enough to tend it as surviving.
@Nate Z Nobody in China has The Mandate of Heaven
Honestly, I think we're in the defining moment of our species. The people alive today will decide how long the human race can last and if we regress or progress.
Nice pfp siege is the best game
Liberals already decided for all of us that it's over. "If they don't get it. Burn it down"
agreeed unfortunatley, corrupt people reach for power. and they're the ones in charge, and they don't care
@@Lavender_cow_ just have guns. Ammo. Water. None perishable food. This isnt hard.
Each civilisation would have thought the same about themselves. Self entitlement is inherent to humans. The only thing that drives the Human civilisations is their perseverance. We are doing the same and the coming generation will do the same.
Human history shows that adaptability is our greatest strength. The human race has shrugged off extinctions of thousands of species because of our adaptability. The problem is that modern-day civilisation is not actually that adaptable unless we change our tastes and make some key innovations.
We have the key innovations, we know what to do, but the majority of people is too comfortable with their status quo, so why change it? As usual we will start adapting once we really see the repercussions. This time it might be too late by then.
I wouldn't say we became more or less adaptive, thought, we became overall more resillient, too, considering modern medicine and other technology.
So we have the resources, now we just gotta convince 8 billion people to get an open mindset and change their lives so we can safe everyone, not just a select few.
The human race has CAUSED the extinctions of thousands of species, and not because of our adaptability...
Your answer reminds me of a deep conversation I had with my best friend when we were teenagers. I had a crisis and asked him "what keeps you going? You don't believe in anything. Why keep going?"
He was quiet for a few moments and responded with "I believe in human adaptability. To say I don't believe in anything because of my lack of religion doesn't mean I have no beliefs. Humans can overcome, so we must push through to keep it going."
And since then I've enjoyed that idea. This was many decades ago, and it was a powerful conversation for 15 year Olds for us. Good times.
We're not the most adaptible species of Humans - That award goes to the incredibly strong and intelligent Homo erectus, but Homo sapiens still has 200000 years under our belt, which is still nothing to sneeze at
@@Lord_Juvens Don't expect a paradigm shift from the large quantities of Entitled , Hedonist babies.... That ship sailed. Truth is ; " The Great Acceleration" / sixth mass Extinction is in motion, which is easily scientifically verifiable. The first step is
Accepting our errors and false Assumptions . If Hope is something rooted in Techno industrial Capitalist optimism - it's pure fantasy.
Top ten ways you can positively impact the world: overthrow corrupt and harmful governments
This demonstrates why it’s so important to have at least some degree of national and even local independence in terms of providing for the essentials. Things like manufacturing microchips obviously can’t be decentralized, but what about power? Food? Water? These are the important things to decentralize as much as possible.
They're important also because localized manufacture of common goods can significantly cut down on greenhouse gas emissions caused by large scale global trade.
Yeah, the pandemic-related supply chain issues have shown we've got some big late bronze age energy afoot. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to write a bad review on some jerk on ebay who sold me some crappy copper stock before the sea peoples show up.
@@Archgeek0 Pandemic isnt even talking about how the two bread baskets of the world are in a peer-to-peer FUCKING LAND WAR IN EUROPE
That cannot be anymore true, especially for combatting stuff like climate change. Specific adaptations to solve certain problems is the key to avoid a collapse. Solution, give the people on the ground what they need to solve the problem properly and quickly!
it's called alter-globalization/alterglobalist. Focus on sustaining your own nation while not fully being anti globalist or separatist/isolationist.
I am a huge fan of this channel, I've been following it for several years now and I always enjoy the content. I always find it intellectually stimulating and more often than not, I learn something new from each video I watch. I love the fact that the information is so well researched, and then explained in easily digestible, sometimes simplified terms so that it's easy for anybody to follow along with and understand - or at least get the very basic idea of the subject. I very rarely find myself disagreeing with the information presented here, or wondering why crucial points weren't mentioned - however, in this video, somewhere around 4:05, it was stated that although civilization collapses have happened regularly in the past, none of them have had the effect of derailing global civilization. This left me wondering why the Bronze Age collapse wasn't mentioned. It was my understanding that after that collapse, humans lost many technologies previously mastered by us, such as writing, plumbing, many agricultural techniques, and some of our knowledge of mathematics and carpentry. Granted, in time we re-learned these lost arts, but it took several generations, most likely over the span of centuries. Clearly, this event did not trigger the end of human civilization - but I think it's more than fair to suggest that it did 'derail' human civilization for a short time, at the very least.
No, it wasn't a derailment as you put it. I study archaeology, and, looking at the evidence we do have, not a lot was lost apart from kingdoms and royal dynasties, which, in my opinion, isn't really a huge loss in the grand scheme of things.
It depends where, the bronze age collapse was the collapse of the hittite, mycean greeks and a lot of Levant city states. But Egypt, and most of the mesopotamian cities would keep going on for ceveral centuries. And even then, it wasnt as much of a "collapse" but rather more a gradual replacement of what was considered important, probably caused by immigration from climate change, who generated cultural shift who led (in some places) pretty quickly place to knew cultural dominance.
I'm more worried about "global civilization" being presented as a unified thing when it's mostly talking about western imperialism.
@@Laezar1 what you going on abt my guy
@@np51486 they got a valid point there tho
Seeing the lil' Crewmate at 2:26 was a nice surprise :D Thank you for the video, beautiful and thoughtful as always. 💙
Amogus
Whoa, hey innersloth
thats what I call sus.
Sussy sloth
sus
>Civilizations always collapse but humanity always recovers
Well shit. Guess we gotta wait for another space rock
Kinda surprised that the title question was never directly answered - the question wasn't "Could civilization recover from collapse?" It was "Is civilization on the brink of collapse?" This went curiously unanswered 🤔
No doubt. Underrated comment
Exactly. It's also kind of dreadful how answering the question "Could civilization recover from collapse?" only implies that the collapse is coming and it's inevitable
The answer is yes.
Also curious that they barely mentioned the biggest threat to us: climate change...
I honestly think it's because Kurzgesagt knows that the collapse has already begun...
@@AllenSmithe no lol. The pendulum is already swinging. All of the stupid decisions being made will end soon.
At the end of the day, nothing dictates we have to exist forever.
It's up to us to take on that responsibility
yes ok okokokok
Well said
Don't translate!!! 😎
ເຈົ້າຖືກສາບແຊ່ງເພາະວ່າມັນຖືກແປຖ້າເຈົ້າບໍ່ທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງ, ເຈົ້າຈະຕາຍວິທີດຽວທີ່ຈະທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງແມ່ນເພື່ອຈອງຊ່ອງທາງຂອງຂ້ອຍລົງທະບຽນດຽວນີ້.
@@mishan6908
ບໍ່
then imma just go do federal crimes now
Saving coal and oil for future catastrophes is a great justification for moving away from them that I've never considered before
We won’t run out of fossil fuels for centuries at least, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with using them, but they’re not the most efficient. Nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric power generation are probably our best bets with the “cleanest footprint” if you’re into that garbage.
It's been my reasoning to "Stop Burning It" for a decade now, Oil & NatGas is needed for so many more important things that burning it to turn things is a massive waste of resources when (nuclear & other non carbon) electricity can turn them better. And I work in the O&G industry, seeing oil wells go dry on my run was a big wake up call.
@@dalel3608 We cant switch over to electric before we figured out and have a good infrastructre around it. All it does now is that the demand is driving the prices up.
True
@@WarriyaAndPalimine Kind of a chicken/egg problem though, the infrastructure only grows as fast as electric car usage grows. But this argument isn't just about cars, we don't need any new infrastructure for nuclear power for instance
"Kurzgesus isn't real, it can't hurt you"
Kurzgesus: (2:27)
Doesn’t give me much hope that this video is less about “are we on the brink of a civilization collapse” and more about “a collapse wouldn’t be that bad”
Because in the end you don't matter. Humanity collectively matters, but individuals don't.
@@DragonWoolf its actually the other way around. The continual pursuit of redemption of the individual saves humanity. The obsession around the collective destroys humanity.
that's gates foundation money for you
@@wheatandtares9764 Let me guess. Jordan Peterson fan?
@@abstract5249 Communism and Nazism were fundamentally oriented around the collective, not the individual. Communism moreso, but Nazism revolved around the term "das Volk" (=the people), and the optimization of it. These ideologies were disastrous beyond comprehension, killing millions of innocents.
Contrarily, in Ancient Rome many life philosophies revolved around improving the individual spiritually, intellectually, socially, and otherwise-- a comparetively less disastrous outcome. Capitalism is fundamentally individualistic, and while it has its own many issues, it is yet to produce a genocidal outcome like those seen from populist and socialist leaders in the past.
Obsession with the collective allows authorities to control its people fiercly and puts society in a frenzy over nonsensical ideals. Both are very dangerous.
I’m so impressed by how smooth the animation is. You guys have been improving and doing so well, and always so informative. Thank you
COLLAPSE OR NOT, Droughts and Water-Shortages and what YOU can do about it, are such important things i will comment multiple times throughout the commentsection:
The Channel Some-More-News and Second Thought covered the Drought, Companys causing Water-Shortages, Climate-Change and more Topics important to all of us. UpisNotJump,, Hbomberguy, OCC, Simon Clark, they didnt just cover Climate-Change but more.
Hope this comment legit helps. Kurzgesagt aint the only Info-Source you need, after all.
whats even more amazing of them is how they're able to make videos faster with the qaulity only growing
and then they drop an amongus character in there
@@bonemeal_boi pop pop
Good to look at, but substandard information
The art and animation are honestly some of the best, if not the best, I've ever seen. It looks cartoonish yet realistic, the nuclear explosions, ruined buildings, and cities are absolutely stunning. My favourite parts were 6:24, 2:20, and 1:30.
welcome to the channel. im happy to tell you they're always this good :)
@@jordanyates3349 I've been watching for years, even one time I watched all the videos I was interested in back then in a single week and had nothing to watch. This video however, shows the best thing they can do; giving us existential dread then hope to forget that we just questioned our entire existence all in less than 20 minutes, but seriously, this video has been my favourite this year.
best you've seen of what? The animation and art are great and tie the video together but no where near "the best"
@@trashpanda8297 Art is subjective.
Civilization is culture in decay-Spengler....when civilization becomes cosmopolitan/international it secures it's own death. That's why socialists coined socialist feminism in 1837...and August Bebel wrote his thesis: Woman and Socialism...delusions and misplaced visionary internationalism to serve the rise of the Marxist manifesto via a naturalized humanism and secularism...all under the banner of equality Against National fraternity.
You guys are awesome, placing some good vibes in the end despite the disaster presented so well in the video that could happen anytime. Thanks for the hope!
“An empire impossible to topple, stable and rich and powerful. Until it wasn’t anymore”
Truer now than it ever was
Don't translate!!! 😎
ເຈົ້າຖືກສາບແຊ່ງເພາະວ່າມັນຖືກແປຖ້າເຈົ້າບໍ່ທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງ, ເຈົ້າຈະຕາຍວິທີດຽວທີ່ຈະທໍາລາຍຄໍາສາບແຊ່ງແມ່ນເພື່ອຈອງຊ່ອງທາງຂອງຂ້ອຍລົງທະບຽນດຽວນີ້.
All of human civilization in a nutshell. Usually due to corruption in one way or another.
I mean, less true now that it has ever been, but possible for it to be more true in the future than it was in the past. 😉
@@namAehT Or disunity leading to the breaking down of borders or outside invasion among others.
you mean also The American Empire?
“There is reason for optimism.”
Also Kurz: “…teenager. Reckless, drunk, without a seatbelt.”
teenagers are optimistic. That's why they're reckless, driving drunk without a seatbelt. Otherwise they will be at home huddling in fear.
Loved that one.
Those are important for natural selection, which is good for a species' survival
Kurz: I'm playing both sides so that I always come out on top
@Phobos it objectively is if you’re not brain dead, and just think for five seconds.
This video is so optimistic while not really acknowledging that most of the "us" watching this, would still not survive.
Yeah that bit was weird. This whole video was a bit odd.
and all the comments acting like this is hopeful and not absolutely tragic
Kurzgesagt as always takes the most naive approach to really complex and deep problems. I feel like this is nothing more than propaganda.
@@k7450 yeah I find the tone utterly bizarre. I got the sense the message was "hey don't worry too much about the inevitable collapse of modern human society that is likely coming, we will probably recover in about 10 thousand years time".
I'm like, no, how about we do something now to prevent collapse and the unimaginable suffering that would come along with it? Why just accept what we could change with enough collective effort?
This channel is a bit shady at times. Often feels like it normalises current systems of inequality and tries to divert peoples anxieties in to a false sense of optimism.
Yep, consoling propaganda. At this point i'm convinced they weigh view count vs. honesty and the former wins
Civilization has already collapsed, that should be obvious. The complexity scrambled the eggs and we are now watching the demise of it's organization. We peaked some time ago but we didn't realize the shift to downturn. The closest analogy we glimpsed was entropy.
I don't think this video addresses whether we actually are on the brink of collapse or not. It made no observations on how previous civilizations collapsed or on events that led to collapse. It could have drawn upon these observations and make a comparison to them regarding our current civilization. It also could have noted some trends unique to our civilization that may lead to collapse or provide protection against collapse. Sure, nuclear warfare and bioterrorism could be catastrophic, but does the current political, social, and economic landscape provide evidence for such an event to occur?
Collapse?
A reset, a Great reset, perhaps?
Look at the comments, the vast majority haven't even touched on it, that's how dire the situation we're in, is.
We are collapsing. We've been on a dysgenic path to the stone age since at least the 20th century, if not sooner.
tl;dr version: smart people aren't breeding, but dumb people are. average IQ therefore is going down with every generation. have fun in the big cities.
@@2reeceybabylmfao Republican conspiracy
@@2reeceybaby Well that's because you're an antisemite and hoping on an antisemitic conspiracy theories to be correct when they clearly aren't and never will be because you fell down a pipeline and we haven't. What Terry's pointing out is that in a nutshell's liberal ideology keeps throwing their scripts into loopholes that don't answer the question they're setting out to answer because if they did, they would have to produce answers to their questions which they cannot do because no answer that isn't "Hey, capitalism might be _bad_ actually!" can fix the problem's we're currently in because In A Nutshell is still hoping they're gonna be paid in the future by Bill Gates.
Also don't bother replying. One, you're antisemitic. Two, I have reply notifications turned off so I won't see it and you're going to waste your time.
@@jaishu123 if humanity has learned anything in the last 6 years, its that conspiracies are just the information that governments want to keep away from the public.
I like how the entire video ignores the question if the civilization is on the brink of collapse and just focuses on the recovery after the fact.
Kurzgesagt-Fans should know more than Anyone
that any Potential Collapse or Suffering can be fought
by learning about the Problems.
So here, i will just randomly drop Climate-Change-Coverage,
Workerclass-Struggle-Coverage and more Useful Info:
-Some More News
-Climate Town
-Not Just Bikes
-Hbomberguy
-Adam Something
-Our Changing Climate
Yeah, i think the video is good, but as you say, it doesen't really even address the title they chose.
Funded by gates foundation channel sucks
I think they did at the start, as much as they can without getting super political. "Civilizations collapse about every X years, its not a question of if, but when." If you look at the timelines, we are also pretty close to X years.
An interesting example is that a most countries collapse after about 250 years. The USA is only a few years away from that age, and its tensions are getting pretty high.
Theyve discussed many ways the world could "end." Its such a complicated tight rope walk, nobody actually knows if we are close or not. The point of this video wasnt wild speculation, just that it doesnt matter in the long run if it does collapse
Playing The Fallen Eagle for CK3 really drove home how rough civilisational collapse is.
One thing to remember about Rome is that it was never a true societal "collapse" but a violent reshuffling of power as Rome became too bloated and began to balloon out. The Eastern Empire survived another 1000 years pretty much intact, pretty much as the same entity. By the year 1100, Europe was already more advanced than Rome in the year 400.
A better example of a societal collapse was the Bronze Age Collapse.
COLLAPSE OR NOT, Droughts and Water-Shortages and what YOU can do about it, are such important things i will comment multiple times throughout the commentsection: The Channel Some-More-News and Second Thought covered the Drought, Companys causing Water-Shortages, Climate-Change and more Topics important to all of us. UpisNotJump,, Hbomberguy, OCC, Simon Clark, they didnt just cover Climate-Change but more.
"By the year 1100, Europe was already more advanced than Rome in the year 400." Which markers did you use for that statement? Rome had sewers as early as 600BCE, The first sewer in post collapse europe was established in late 14th century France...
Sorry I might be misunderstanding a bit. This comes from a place of confusion btw.
In the year 1100, Europe was already more advance than Rome in the year 400. Doesn't that sound logical and expected? What's that sentence trying to evoke exactly?
@@quitchiboo rome is ONE city, entire roman empire is not rome.
Sewers is not the peak of civilization.
@UCooRCAZtefYL2FuHziqtTPA who you replying to. Droughts are no conspiracy
It is nice to know that civilization can likely recover. But I would strongly prefer that it wouldn't collapse in the first place and I think I am not alone with this idea.
It's going to collapse. Probably very soon. Best thing you can do I assassinate evil political leaders and others in power
@Анатолий Ручка all with very little power and influence on our politicians.
We would all prefer that we wake up tomorrow in our soft beds, our air conditioned houses, in our neighborhoods with conveniently built infrastructure. That hardly changes the fact that all which goes up must eventually come down, and the loftier the heights, the harder the impact with the cold hard ground becomes.
Enjoy your comfortable life while you can, but prepare for the trials you must endure so that your posterity might be spared such burdens.
It would be nice if we didnt collapse but i think if we dont we will end being oppressed by governments and the people who will ruin as many peoples lives as possible to make a little extra money and they are the people in power and we need collapse to take those people out of power so we can restart but hopefully it doesnt come to that but i doubt humans will just now learn to be better
@dev stuff bot?
Speaking of civilization collapse, would you ever do a video on a polar flip? Or the impact/solutions for a weaker magnetic field?
♥️know♥️
1 John 5 KJV
13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
1 Corinthians 15 KJV
1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
Romans 3 KJV
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
A video about secular variation of the earth’s magnetic field would be fascinating. Polar flip is extremely unlikely to happen without a preceding weak magnetic field, and there are no indications that the field is experiencing any significant weakening. You’d want to see a long term weakening of the field before making a prediction.
A large impact could cause a much faster pole reversal, but now you’re talking about an event that would cause civilization collapse well before a polar flip caused problems.
It’s low low low low probability that we would see a civilization ending chron (flip) in our lifetimes.
But let’s say we did. What do you suspect might happen? Would electric motors turn in the opposite direction, like they do in Australia?
@@alexanderbrown2717 nobody cares
@@alexanderbrown2717 Keep it in church
Lol dont let them sheeps know about this... this is secret information.
Everything is going fine guys, no worries.
Guys you didn't notice but civilization collapsed years ago
2:27 proof
I usually love Kurzgesagt videos, but I feel this one didn’t really hit the mark. It was an interesting explanation of what would happen with the survivors in the event of a collapse, but it didn’t really answer the question in the title. I feel the title is a bit ill fitting for the content in the video. I feel like a better title would have been “What happens after a civilization collapses?”
New civilazation rises, i guess
Useless vedio
i guess the Question is linked to the Graph at 1:24. If a Civilization collapses on average after 340 years, we can check Countries/Civilizations today, how long they exist in the current Form and how healthy they are. For example... if a Country exists for 250 years and shows signs of social collapse, that can be a Sign for an approaching downfall.
Some old countries had already several Steps in their Development. Rising up, getting demolished, rising again in a new Form,.....
I would say that the first collapse for a Civilization/Country, will be the worst one, since they have no clue what to do. If you had already a few Collapses, you can compare situation and change the problematic Stuff more easily.
@@smaragdwolf1 except their example the roman empire lasted another thousand years just we renamed it to the byzantine empire. It's not like the world lost all of that knowlege either.
@@solsystem1342 the roman empire changed drastically before it was renamed. So it wasnt the roman empire anymore.
Drastic changes reset the Clock.
"History is full of incredible recoveries from horrible tragedies"
This might be one of my favourite quotes of Kurzgesagt
Like you’re some kind of prophet? Okay Nostradamus!
Kurzg is making ALL those videos now because western politics have become obsessed with fear mongering
@JZ's BFF I have news for you. 100% of literally everyone will die. So no need to feel disadvantaged or alone for that matter. We all share the same fate one day; Non-existence.
History is also full of avoidable tragedies.
Turn your setbacks into comebacks
"Humanity is like a teenager, speeding around blind corners, drunk, without a seat belt."
Couldn't agree more
Kurzgesagt-Fans should know more than Anyone
that any Potential Collapse or Suffering can be fought
by learning about the Problems.
So here, i will just randomly drop Climate-Change-Coverage,
Workerclass-Struggle-Coverage and more Useful Info:
-Some More News
-Climate Town
-Not Just Bikes
-Adam Something
-Our Changing Climate
Facts
This video has taught me a valuable thing on risk calculus: difference between catasthrophe and opportunity is merely perspective.
The funny part about any collapse theory is that almost all people believe that they will be among the survivors.
Especially the elites, who think they will get to impose their will on the survivors-history shows that rulers fare the worst in a collapse scenario, as they get targeted as being responsible for the collapse, whether or not they actually were (though they usually were). They're too busy rewriting history to learn anything from it.
Oh boy, that's a point to make, but I simply attribute it to overconfidence and optimism bias (though beware of the opposite, catastrophizing events.)
That's your thesis.
As if it matters. The vast majority of people in the modern world would not want to live in a post-collapse world. Who cares if you survive, if everybody you know dies. It would be like starting a new save file and starting a completely new life.
In discussions like these I'm reminded of the guy in Sarajevo who sheltered in place during the siege. He survived by looting stores and doing whatever he can. When the siege ended after 2 years he committed suicide, because he couldn't adapt to the old world.
@Jul W It took like a few years to rebuild after the wars. It will take generations to rebuild after a collapse of the entire world.
The thing that has troubled me about the collapse of civilisation is less the collapse and more how some people want it to collapse. It is one thing to discuss it, it is another to talk on it with relish as though it is a irrefutable end goal, rather than something to be avoided. It comes across that most people would want to see civilisation dammed if only to end what they do not like on it in hopes of reforging it into something new: and often in their image. People not realising such attitudes and desire to use crisis to their advantage is what doomed societies in the past.
This is not what the video talks on but is a concerning trend I see in such discussions.
I agree with you here - reminds me of doom prepper stuff. This shouldn't be something we want.
Have you honestly considered why most would want this sort of thing? Do you not see how a globalized system is already a slow burn in that regard and modern living practices are at an all time unsustainable high?
@@chelseashift people scoff at doom peppers until it's time they're tested, and find out they're more prepared than anyone.
@@westy229 literally no one is arguing that preppers aren't prepared. you are missing the point.
@@haroldgarrett2932 i may have misinterpreted their comment, but as far as I see it we are discussing the same thing no?
I think most of us care a lot more about how/if civilisation will collapse than whether humanity as a whole could pull through.
agreed, its pretty obvious humanity will live. Even with a nuclear holocaust people say we will be extinct... lol yeah okay. We are a virus, we wont die off that easily.
I like the subtle among us floating in 2:27
@@simonvutov7575 who asked?
@@JustaPonderer Amogus
@@JustaPonderer I did
People talk about Hiroshima, but the more impressive feat of recovery is Tokyo. 16 square miles of Tokyo was burned entirely to ash and saw upwards of 100,000+ people killed, and a million left homeless. That's 95% of their capital turned to cinders over night. Who knows how many died after that just trying to survive
Who did did this
I mostly love the videos on this channel but this one felt like a real miss. Points are raised about how we are a global civilisation but this is never really addressed in terms of the hypothetical 'collapse', and instead comparisons are drawn from ancient civilisations vastly removed from our own. If we get hit by a small meteor, ice age or a deadly pandemic I feel like indeed we could in generations time bounce back and salvage what was left.
But even then its still very western centric and a bit vague.
Geographically speaking, which areas are affected by a collapse seems quite important. If the remaining population after a collapse is confined to less developed island nations while say more developed nations were wiped by nuclear war it would be harder to retrieve lost knowledge. Similarly what if the remaining population was scattered around inhospitable areas with poor climates for farming ? Rebuilding would again be far harder and as other have said would reduce the opportunity to share knowledge as you'd be more focused on basic survival.
The comparison with the Roman empire should have really made them think about the geography, the Eastern Roman Empire was generally less harshly hit and as a result that region ended up not only bouncing back quickly but with the rise of Islam and the subsequent golden age quickly surpassed the Roman Empire and became the center of technological progress.
"which areas are affected by a collapse seems quite important"... this decade, basically boils down to which areas can:
- secure oil & gas (as both energy source, but also as an industrial input... Germany in particular is in for a lot of pain)
- secure food, or the inputs to grow its food (guess what the Russian block exports...)
- access a sufficiently deep pool of capital to even attempt to progress beyond current means
Jesus that's dedication to write that much
there is no global civilisation
Video missed but comments are on point..
Touched on it, but I think you skimmed over the danger of having burned up the easily accessible energy we'll need to re-industrialise. I fear it would require the discovery of a new low-tech power source that we've somehow missed. A slim prospect, but not as slim as convincing the fossil fuel industry that conserving what's left for humanity's future is worth more than money in the pocket now.
We won’t run out of coal and oil for centuries
@@elterga6224 Well yeah we won't but if society does collapse and nothing works, how do you think we're going to get that coal and oil? If all the easily accessible coal and oil is gone and we have to dig through hundreds of feet of rock without any technology.
There are low tech sources such as woodgas plant based oils and others but there extremely inefficient compared to oil and coal new tech would have to be very energy efficient or vary sparce
@@jaycobhilgendorf8539 you’ve never been out to a rig have you?
Heavy technology intensive coal and oil is plenty, but on a colapse, we'll lose the technology expertise and suply chain! Then no more coal and oil!
I think one of the biggest advantages is that we have an overabundance of manual precision tools already produced. So if the population were to drop that bad we would have tools for a lifetime even before we need to start producing them again.
How many nails and screws you think are already in stock, brand new?
At least 12.
@@Ranstone You sure ?
@@auronheimdall1072 he's not wrong, there is, at the very fewest, 12 nails in existence. The actual number may vary
@@FirstnameLastname-sb3hj I don't know man it seemed quite a lot !
@@auronheimdall1072 more than 12?
Ngl these videos make me feel a lot better , takes a lot of worry away ^^
I've been reading ancient history lately and it's amazing how much of a blink of an eye our civilization actually is. My friend and I talk about loads of subjects and literally your entire video was our conversation word for word. I loved it
Did...you see that?
DID YOU SEE THAT NEAR THE SATELITE IN 02:27?!
Jesus loves you
@@Dots_The_Demon_Lord AMOGUS!?
@@armstrongeditz7602 Finally, you noticed!
@@Dots_The_Demon_Lord we have a impostor right there
I was really happy to see this video hit #2 in trending! Kurzgesagt always has such a hopeful feel to it, and I swear the animation somehow keeps getting better and better! Keep up the amazing work :D
Number 1 on trending now
An artificial ranking probably pushed personally by UA-cam, a peon of the Google neoliberal corporate empire in conjunction with the monied interests of Bill Gates himself.
Optimism sells. But it is not a solution, it is a drug to hide us from the cold reality of imminent unconsented collapse. Embrace nihilism. Embrace cynicism. Get real.
would like but it has 69 likes
I EXPOSED THIS UA-camR YOU GOTTA WATCH
@Jul W Well, kinda...... When looking at the facts most people tend to think that it is hopeless and there is nothing they can do, so they do nothing, which further worsens the problem. Instead of calling people delusional, I just say, "It's not going to be that easy to fix [insert problem here]"
Just want to point out that the concept of "Nuclear Winter" was proposed in the 80s and media has run with it ever since without acknowledging any studies about it in the interim. The underpinning idea is sound (the basic concept being a lot of debris being spread out in the upper atmosphere and blocking sunlight drops global temperatures), but after multiple studies about it the most current attitude towards "Nuclear Winter" is that it would require an unlikely "worst case scenario" where most nuclear weapons on the planet were detonated within a short time span over specific geographical locations, during a certain time of year and "favorable" weather patterns in order to have a real "nuclear winter" like that experienced in the late 19th century from the eruption of Krakatoa. And even then would just last a year at most.
The reality is that, in the unlikely event of a nuclear war (no nation really wants to unleash it's whole arsenal, no matter the situation), there will be a sizeable, yet smallish percentage of weapons used, likely on military targets and maybe a few population centers, and at the point they are being used the war is probably nearing its end. It will cause massive destruction in localized areas and probably a LOT of destruction to global infrastructure and economies. But it won't give you a Fallout game scenario.
It would take a rather sizeable asteroid impact for that kind of thing to happen, and the planet would likely recover 10 times faster than the "Wasteland" does. The Earth simply is too massive a system, with far too much constant change going on for humans to really "destroy" it. We might be able to destroy ourselves and a lot of life, but we aren't powerful enough to destroy a planet or wipe out all life. Not even close.
Erupt a few super volcanoes and it may produce a massive drop in sunlight with the ash clouds.
The most recent peer-reviewed climatology study that draws from data collected from large forest fires, volcanoes, climate models, food production and supply chains among other factors predict that an all out nuclear war between Russia and the US would result in starvation of 75% of the population, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately 90% of the global population is in the northern hemisphere.
Wait, reason and logic in a UA-cam comment??? Nice 😏
@@TheAmericanAmerican I just follow the Science™
@@simkoning4648 No offense my friend, but do you realize how many compound things you just put forward to realize such an outcome?
Nothing is forever lasting.❤️
- Lord Buddha
"We have all the tools, all we need to do is to use them" if only the people with the money and power over industry were altruistic enough to help along, then we could solve so many problems right now. But then again, these people didn't get into these positions of power because they ever intended to be altruistic, they ended up there by stepping on and sacrificing other people and the environment. I just hope that all the little people in the world can collectively manage to make a change before it is too late, because the rich and powerful sure as hell won't.
@rued siuu stolen comment?
Like what though? what can the 99% even do if money and power is the only thing that can actually make a viable change and it's virtually impossible to make everyone actually ACT altruistic, because most of us are too concerned about our own well-being. The majority of ppl are just going to support it but not act upon it. Whereas if it were just one person doing it, it'd be much easier, however like you said that's not going to happen due to how they got in the position in the first place........
Without faith in God, this is impossible. We need to call upon him and turn from our 'selves' then he will hear
(2nd Chor 7:14) and I might suggest that nothing else will work :)
That said, I also like playing this stuff and am not here to spoil the fun, but I do believe there are a lot of folks looking for something other than the standard cliches
You said it @-Neo-. In a nutshell.
I think a little bit from everyone help, not just the most powerful. We might not be able to expect the non-altruistic to put in their energy and power and help the world. But you can. Donate and support the community you believe in and find peace in that instead of expecting others to change the world for you.
I can find at least one error within this video. I am a doctor of Ancient History and frequently teach it. Classical Greece is a period, not a culture. It did not last 265 years and then 'collapse' as there was nothing to collapse. Greek culture was not a single state, it was a complicated collection of city-states (poleis) and it is a fact that the poleis existed from about 8th century BC well into the Roman era of rule over the former Greek territories. Athens and the Athenians existed prior to this within the Mycenean period, and Athens as a culture continued to exist throughout the Western Roman empire and was still around during the Byzantine period. I am happy to discuss this further if interested. Sincerely, L.
another error is the BS propaganda lie of cLiMatE cHaNgE. It would happen regardless of what you, insignificant humans, burn
Indeed i agree this caught my eye aswell as a greek watching this video 😂.
the video really could have used some more work
@@henkhenkste6076 yea this feels like hopium grasping for straws cranked to the max
@@johnpaulcross424 wouldn't really call it grasping at straws just very generalized
5:30 There was even a guy who was visiting Hiroshima on business when the bomb was dropped.
He survived but because of the destruction it was 3 days before he could return home... To Nagasaki.
He gut home just in time to survive the second atomic bombing in history.
But the question remains, was he lucky to have survived 2 atomic bombings, or unlucky to be there when they happened.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi passed away in 2010, at the age of 93.
Eric Taylor God that's horrible
How the hell did he survive that?
Right. Its like when Greg Brady found the tiki in Hawaii. He was wearing it around his neck when some bad things happened... but he was unhurt. He and his brothers assumed it was bad luck. But Mr. Brady, in his patriarchal wisdom, pointed out that it could have been protecting him and that is why he was unhurt.
So I would say the guy was lucky. I mean... who can say that they were there for BOTH bombs AND survived. Incredible.
Both.
Since luck is something only recognized in the past tense and more of a trait prescribed to survivors I would say he was lucky. Anyone living to their 90s alone is lucky...
The title of this video is a bit inaccurate. The video talks more about whether civilization would recover than whether we are on the brink of collapse.
An other interesting article. Well done. Although, the thought of 1% of the population surviving doesn't really make me optimistic. It's all very well planning for a thousand generations in the future, but my empathy lies most with the immediate and next few generations. I don't want either me, my family or community to suffer the pain, misery and hardship of societal collapse in whatever form it may take. This is where my immediate concerns lie.
This. Screw recovery I care about preventing collapse
Lol, it would take 20 years tops to get back to 80s level of technology.
@@VK-sz4it That's assuming technological advancement is lost in the first place. It is likely the data will still exist somewhere, and solar panels are easy to set up.
Damn think of all the people reading your comment in 1000 years you just did dirty
@Saurav Bhandari Sure, but when you're making a presentation you want the audience to be able to understand. Since history books are filled to the brim with stories about the Romans and not the Indus River Valley Civilization they needed something the audience would recognize.
What's possible for humanity as a whole is one thing, but the individual tragedies caused by possible global collapse is a whole other thing. As a person who lives in a country that was struck by war, I can at least tell that people adapt -- though, obviously, it's a different story for everyone. Being able to watch a video like this is sort of a blessing too :)
At any rate, at least the Caribbean Crisis showed that it's possible for people to realize that there's a line in the sand. Hopefully, it's going to be the same deal this time. What this video doesn't note is that it's certain individuals that actually have power to influence the way civilization moves forward. The rulers of old had a lot of power, that's for sure; but nowadays it's more about people owning various corporations and industries, bonding together to harbor certain mutual interests. It's their decision to act or do nothing that has the most impact. Probably, that would be the greatest flaw of human civilization -- the fact that everyone's created equal (in terms of humanity, that is) is contrasted by the way we built our society. Sure, ultimately it might be one person's action that tilts the balance of things -- a drunk man saying obscene things on video, or a power station worker falling asleep when he's supposed to do maintenance; but it's the people at the top of the social hierarchy that have the influence to contain or escalate these matters. It's not even about representation anymore, in my opinion -- because voting is mainly about the campaign and political technologies than rational decisions of single individuals, and it's probabilistically impossible for a single vote to tilt elections nowadays. But those are power structures -- in companies, corporations and industries there isn't any sort of democracy at all. People get promoted or demoted by their management, and some more business-savvy individuals quit and start their own businesses; yet it's the top management that always makes the decisions. Corporations and industries hold the power to allow or deny people certain basic commodities, such as electricity, or fresh water -- and decision-making there is based on the top management's interests. That's probably something else that's really unnerving and ultimately irritating for humans -- it appears that over the centuries humanity strove towards equality, yet on that path even more inequality has been created.
As I'm writing this, there's an air raid siren sounding outside. Some people have it way worse in my country. Ultimately, I guess there's nothing else to do but hope for the best. There are small steps each individual can do to make the world a better place -- but there's a caveat. It's something that matters in an ideal world, when no power-hungry tyrant or avaricious moghul can screw up the lives of millions on a whim. If that happens -- hothing literally matters on a global scale; though, obviously, every person's life and tragedy and unique experience are all that matters to each and every one of us.
This... Was beautiful...
(Sniff)
I'm crying right now.
Nice
It's miraculous how we are able to connect over vast distances and through devastating wars. I am amazed at how thoughtful and calm you are with the war raging outside. Hope you remain safe.
Cлава Укриане!:) Thank you for your text
Be safe bro
Personally I'm more concerned about the "immense hardships" that would affect me right now if things went from bad to worse. I was never that worried about the big picture because there is a lot of people and we would have to really f it up now to make it impossible to survive. Like an artificial super virus that would kill everyone etc.
Wow
I feel the same way, it would have to be unusually bad for all humans to perish.
I mean if there was collapse kind of bold to assume most of us will live. So why worry about hardship if haven’t even gotten to that point.
@@Quantum-er8jo in the event of collapse the majority of people will struggle and die, the rich will take off in their spaceships, and they will start the thing over and do it again. that is the concerning part, that most people will suffer and die, but some people likely will survive. most of us won't live. I don't think anybody here disagrees with you
Nope it would only take a food shortage followed by a lack of electricity. It only takes a few mistakes from a few members of government.
I am learning english while i see your interesting videos, thanks for teach us all this curious things
A really interesting book expanding on this topic is “The Knowledge” by Lewis Dartnell. He goes in depth about rebooting a civilization and mixes it with survival techniques. Basically a end of civilization “how to”
Lewis Dartnell had a great interview on this on the 80,000 Hours podcast
WE....W. Double You.....E.Equality
(USA Constitution PreAmble)
"A More Perfect Union"
(Love), perfect (Atonement)
(USA Constitution PreAmble)
The Rule of Law insures domestic tranquility
(USA Constitution PreAmble)
Establishing Justice
(Tao,
Equality,
Fair)
(USA Constitution PreAmble)
Precepts and Principles
of The
Letter and Spirit
of Law
The possibility of civilization collapsing is why we need to construct and stock Knowledge Arks - repositories for our greatest achievements, collective learning in various fields, and slices of our culture. A great deal of knowledge has been lost and had to be rediscovered. Think of all the philosophy, music, literature, poetry, etc. that has vanished in the mists of time.
I believe the channel How to Make Everything has mentioned more than once that that book was the reason he started that channel. Silver lining on his tragedy of his property burning is that's similar to a civilization collapse. Coincidentally the topic of this video.
@@freyathewanderer6359 if you really want to do that properly, make them in buildings of granite; filled with molten salt once finalized to remain geologically buoyant; located buried in the shields/cratons of the world. They will survive forever until rediscovered. And with the added benefit of sticking out like a sore thumb, so when discovered it will be obvious that it was intentional.
Calling the Roman Empire stable at any point in its history is kinda overselling it. They reeled from one crisis to another, just barely surviving due to the momentum of their conquests, until the barracks-room emperors started popping up. And suddenly that momentum stopped and they couldn't withstand the crises anymore.
what about the 200 years of relative peace during Pax-Romana?
How come?
What's the measurement? Wouldn't you compare it to other, similar empires and then decide? What do you base your opinion on, Zach?
So kinda like modern society?
? The 5 good emperors century long era was incredibly stable politically. The only civil war was Avidius Cassius's rebellion but it wasn't even a war, as he killed himself when he found out Marcus Aurelius was actually alive.
It fell because the economy was in shambles and nobody wanted to fight for Rome anymore because there is no longer an incentive to join the army, people would maim themselves just to avoid service.
This is a very good video but it has some problems. Mainly, it equates Civilizations with States. The graph that shows how long each civilization lasted is misleading because it only shows how long a specific political entity lasted. For example the graph shows that Middle Kingdom Egypt only lasted 403 years. But Egyptian civilization was already thousands of years old when the Middle Kingdom begun and lasted just as long after it ended. The only thing that collapsed at the end of this period was the political unity of Egypt. Other civilizations like the Akkadian empire and Babylonia or Greece and Rome, are just part of the same civilization continuity. There wasn’t any collapse when classical Greece became Hellenistic Greece nor was any when Hellenistic Greece became a Roman province. When Rome fell, Roman language, religion, law and culture were still there, the only thing missing was the empire. And most of the thecnology lost was only lost because there wasn’t any reason or capacity to keep it, not because some catastrophe destroyed everything. A good example is Roman concrete. It was lost because cities declined and there wasn’t much incentive to make it, since changes in imperial administration moved local elites away of public monuments, and eventually no money too. So people just stopped doing it and eventually forgot. Other problem with this part of the video is that it fails to take in account places like China, Japan and India that have a very stable continuity with their ancient cultures and never experienced a Roman like collapse.
Tl/DR: a civilization is more than its government and usually lasts way longer than it.
Also the idea of cyclical things in general is kind of a farce, the universe in reality is simply just a big ol chaotic place, at least to us.
Civilization is not overdue for a collapse, though the whole environmental thing could end up doing that instead, but I like to take an optimistic approach and think that once older people die off the new generation that is really worried about these problems can at least be able to solve it or slow it down.
But I also hope another problem will be addressed when this whole climate stuff is too, and thats preparing humanity to actually be able to work around and foresee future problems instead of being blind till its too late, but I am no scientist.
Was looking for such a comment, thank you :) one of the first times I'm disappointed with a Kurzgesagt video. Brings many fake news and short cuts people (historians/...) try hard to break.
Doesn't the TL/DR come first usually?
This video feels pretty half baked and too short to convey the amount of complexities needed within discussion
@@mosiarmstrong I usually see it at the end. I think I prefer it that way, since I'd rather read the whole thing and the summary kind of lessens it (but if someone wouldn't rather read the whole thing, they might skip to the bottom and see the TL;DR. Also nice to see the summary after reading the rest, as it can tie it together and give a meaningful takeaway to add to the context). I have seen "TL;DR at bottom" many times though.
Humanity will thrive, progress and become immortal only when empires and the concept of empire is permanently erased from the psyche of humanity.
2:27 WHY IS THERE AN AMOGUS????
Sus🤨
he is the imposter so he got injected out
Sus
SUS!?!?!?
The chemistry in the group is . Everybody gets along and pulls each other up through adversity. Love this team.
At times like these, finding meaning is crucial. Ancient Stoic philosophy has some good ideas (though flawed) for this. Relying on trying to be comfortable won't cut it. We all die, we all get sick, we will all face pain (even in the best of times). We do not all truly live. Part of living a full human life is finding meaning and contributing to something larger than yourself (could be as small as a friend group or as large as humanity itself... maybe even every sentient being). We can actually be happier when we approach life by putting finding meaning first anyway.
Reminds me of the Calvin & Hobbes strip where Hobbes wishes for a sandwich: it doesn't have to be big
What's your opinion about the eastern philosophical approach to forgo the pursuit of meaning and accpet the essential nothingness that is life? Imo the pursuit of meaning for its own sake has always been a very strange thing.
@@ThomasOrtizMusic if this world didn't have pain, it would be a different story
@Detroit Smash Meaning is what you make it. You have to put in the mental effort to find it, its not something that just inherently exists. Someone else's meaning for living might not even register as a reason to live for someone else. It's there, you just need to work towards finding it. Therapists help with that as well.
@Detroit Smash truth>narrative 👍🏼
2:27 something is sus there!
Kurzgesagt dipping into history, eh? This should be interesting
New to this channel? They've produced several historical videos.
@@xdoctorblindx true haha
We shouldn’t HAVE to worry about a collapse. We have the information we need to make the world a better place. Short sighted governments, ignorant people, and a complete lack of drive to do even simple changes to help others can doom us all. And that’s just the US.
There is also a lot of blaming involved.
The "others" are the cause. While oneself is doing all the right things or couldn't do anything at all or it wouldn't matter.
So all the not ignorant people are fine of pointing out the wrong things others do.
Feels kind of stuck, doesn't it?
@@StephanGelenscher The problem is that the 1-10% is UNDOUBTEDLY responsible for 99% of the impact of global society. While every person has a responsibility over their own personal life, people in positions of power have a responsibility over an entire neighborhood, district, city or country. THEY are the only ones that can make an impact on the macro scale and they clearly aren't doing their job right because it doesn't take much looking around to notice all of the macro-scale problems with modern society. Crutch of economical Inter-dependence? Man-made Climate Destruction? Non-renewable energy sources? These aren't problems that an average person has any meaningful sway over. These are also problems that should have been resolved half a century ago if those same top 1% people in power actually did their job responsibly and if they HAD been resolved then we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's not about blame, this is just an objective fact.
it does feel desperate, and bleak. Any person with a common sense can see everything that is wrong with the world yet they are powerless to stop it because those people without a common sense have chosen as their leaders the narcissistic and greedy, self-serving assholes that bow down to our billionnaire overlords
And that's exaclty the problem. You have some ideas how we could fix society. But other people might have other ideas. Ideas that you might despise from people you might call ignorant. And its the other way around too. And so we spend most of our time arguing, thinking that the other side is the devil whose plans will make everything worse.
@@wjzav1971 I didn't mention anything about fixing society. All I said was that the people who ARE in charge of fixing society aren't doing their job right. That's just an objective fact otherwise people wouldn't be debating the possibility of serious civilization collapse in a completely straight-laced fashion.