Unexpected Consequences: 12 Factors That Could Destroy Civilization

The Goddess is said to be benevolent and merciful, but she may get angry and become cruel and ruthless.

We are used to discussing major events that may destroy civilization, or even the whole humankind. Most are related to global warming: tipping points, “hothouse Earth,” famines, tsunamis, and all the rest. Then, there are other human-made disasters, including the nuclear holocaust and homemade exterminations carried out with simple tools such as machetes. Recently, it became fashionable to cite artificial intelligence as a threat to human beings.

But Earth’s ecosystem, of which we are part, is a complex adaptive system that may react in unexpected ways to minor perturbations. So, could things we don’t consider so important become major killers? It is part of the game of catastrophism, a scientific field that goes under the name of eschatology. To know more, you may read the book, “Global Catastrophic Risks” (2008) edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković.

So, for a little (perverse) fun, here are some less-known disasters that could befall humankind. I tried to list them in order of decreasing probability, starting from those already occurring to those unlikely ever to occur. In all case, we see manifestation of the part of the “Seneca Effect” that says “Ruin is Rapid.”

1. CO2 Poisoning. Our species has evolved with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere always under 300 parts per million. At present it is over 420 ppm; and it is growing. Additionally, people live in homes with sealed windows to keep heat from escaping. But that also has the effect of keeping CO2 concentrations much higher than in the open. A typical apartment may reach 1000-2000 ppm, even higher if gas stoves are used, while the habit of wearing face masks may further raise these levels. For the short term, it is believed that CO2 concentrations have no ill effects if under 5000 ppm, but measurable slowdowns in cognitive abilities can be seen already over 600 ppm. The mechanism of CO2/O2 exchange in the lungs is a delicate process that depends on specific chemical equilibria, and the effects on human metabolism are scarcely known. We have no idea of what the effects of lifetime exposure are to these concentrations of CO2, and when we’ll know, it will be too late to do something about that. 

2. Global Dumbing. Proficiency in mathematics and literacy scores is declining in the US and also everywhere where data are available. We see a similar effect as a decline in IQ scores; it is called the “Reverse Flynn Effect.” Several factors may be the cause: much is said about the devastation of the public school system generated by the reaction to the COVID crisis. But it is also clear that the trend had already started before the pandemic. Maybe it is a result of pollution; CO2 is a suspect. Or of too much TV? Or is it TikTok that numbs our minds? We cannot say, but the behavior of humankind looks dumber and dumber as time goes by. If the trend continues, we can find ourselves in even bigger troubles than we are now. For an eye-opening experience, read “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes.

3. Global Dementia. It is a variant of the Global Dumbing effect, but it affects mainly the elderly. While global dumbing implies only a relatively minor decline in cognitive abilities, dementia means that the affected persons are eventually turned into vegetals. The number of cases of demented people is on the rise everywhere, especially in Western countries. It may be explained by the increasing prevalence of old people in the population age pyramid, but there may be other reasons. Again, it may be correlated to the mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, CO2 pollution or other pollutants, TikTok, or God knows what. In any case, there is no known cure: once a brain is damaged by dementia, it cannot be restored to its former condition. The cost to keep demented people alive is in itself a burden for society. But the real risk is to have demented people as political leaders during the stage in which they are not wholly “dumbed out,” and their mental decline is not widely recognized. During this stage, a demented person may become aggressive and ruthless. Thinking that a US president can start a nuclear war, it is not impossible that a single demented person may destroy civilization.

4. Mass Suicide. This subject brings to mind the example of the lemmings, small rodents supposed to commit suicide by throwing themselves down a cliff en masse. It is just a legend. In the real world, there is little or no evidence that animals commit suicide. Maybe whales do that when they “beach” themselves — the exact opposite of when humans commit suicide by drowning themselves. But we’ll probably never know what a whale thinks, so it may well be that humans are the only creatures that commit suicide. Many do so using creative methods, such as when people engage in the game of Russian roulette. In my 2019 book, “Before Collapse” I noted that we may estimate that every year a few hundred Americans play this game, and a few dozen of them succumb to it. Of course, these are small numbers that do not qualify as “mass suicide.” If we want an example of large-scale mass suicide, we must think of Germany during the last years of WW2, when the German government distributed free cyanide pills to the population. There was a perverse logic in the idea of pushing people to kill themselves. It served to remove the “unproductive” people, mainly the elderly, to leave more resources for those engaged in fighting. The allies, on their part, played the game on their own, distributing pamphlets in German to Germans with detailed instructions on how to hang themselves. Today, this subject is not well known, since both sides seem to be ashamed of what they did, so that most of the material on this subject has disappeared from the English language Web. But you can read something about it, again, in my book “Before Collapse,” and also in “Promise Me that You’ll Shoot Yourself” by Florian Huber. We don’t know how many Germans followed the suggestions from their government (or from the allied ones), but maybe they were a few tens of thousands. It may not be impossible that a smarter effort on the part of the current governments may convince much larger numbers of people to kill themselves. That might be done in various ways; for instance, convincing them to take drugs that make them well in the short term but kill them in the medium and long term. It is already being done with alcohol, crack, cocaine, and other “recreational drugs.” You can read a sci-fi example in Antonio Turiel’s story “Good Vibes.” Apart from that, most of the drugs marketed by the pharmaceutical industry have been tested only for their short-term effects, and no short-term test can account for all possible long-term risks. Could a malign government diffuse a drug supposedly healing people but in reality conceived to kill people? That wouldn’t really count as suicide because people won’t know that they are taking a poison, but it is unlikely that they won’t at least suspect that. It is a possibility that we shouldn’t discount, considering the moral qualities of our current leaders.

5. Ultraviolet radiation and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC). The paradigmatic unexpected consequence of the diffusion of new technologies is that of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). They were developed in the 1930s as inert gases that could be used for a variety of purposes, including working fluids in refrigerators. Nobody thought they could have important negative effects; yet the law of the unexpected consequences struck hard. In the 1970s, it was discovered that CFC functioned as a chlorine pump that transferred chlorine from the Earth's surface to the high atmosphere, where it damaged the ozone layer that protects the biosphere from ultraviolet radiation. It was precisely because CFCs are so inert: they are not decomposed by the normal cleaning mechanisms of the lower atmosphere but only by ultraviolet radiation in the stratosphere. The case of CFCs is one of the few where effective international regulations could be enacted to stop their production, yet they haven’t disappeared yet, and the “ozone hole” is not closed. Could it be that some liberist politician decides that CFCs are a fake threat and that it is perfectly safe to restart producing them? Even if that doesn’t happen, could it be that the damage done to the ozone layer is sufficient to have major consequences on the ecosystem in the near future? An unsettling question that only the future can answer.

6. Heavy Metal Poisoning: Lead. Humans are the only animals that mine metals from Earth’s crust. The problem is that what they mine out cannot be un-mined, and many mined metals never existed in the ecosystem before humans started extracting and using them. Several heavy metals used in industry are known to be poisons for the human body, and several others may well be, even though nothing is known for sure. Lead is among the earliest metals used by humankind thousands of years ago. Lead causes an ailment known as "saturnism," which causes cognitive impairment, behavioral problems, and an increased risk of criminal behavior. The Romans had the bad idea of drinking wine in lead cups, and it is said that lead poisoning was one of the causes of the fall of their empire. In modern times, we use lead for a variety of purposes, for instance, as an additive of gasoline and for a variety of paints. A correlation between criminal behavior and exposure to lead has been observed, even though causation cannot be proven. Lead was slowly eliminated from the market, and the world's production peaked in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the world still produces more than 3 million tons of lead per year, 50 times more than the ancient Romans. This lead mostly remains in the biosphere, and nobody knows what will be its long-term effects on human health. Will we all go crazy? It cannot be excluded.

7. Heavy Metal Poisoning: Platinum and Platinum Group Metals (PGM).  Platinum is a rare metal in the Earth's crust; its global production is less than 200 tons per year. Nevertheless, its uses as catalyst for organic reactions, in particular for oxidation, make it an important technological metal. A widespread use of platinum is for the catalytic converter of gasoline cars, and if fuel cells were to become a widespread technology, they would need an amount of platinum much larger than its current values. However, the catalytic converters, alone, have caused the diffusion of platinum in the biosphere and its gradual incorporation into the food chain. This fact is well known, just as it is known that platinum has destructive metabolic effects, so much that it can be used as an anti-cancer agent. Nevertheless, there do not seem to exist studies linking platinum concentration and human health. It is another case in which we are marching into an unknown world of our own making.  

8. Infertility and demographic decline. It is known that the birth rate in the Western World has been going down well below the replacement rate during the past decades. We do not know what factors are leading to this phenomenon, nor whether it is caused by political/economic factors (the "demographic transition") or chemical phenomena related to pollution. We know that the sperm count in Western human males has declined by nearly 60% during the past 50 years or so. Different possible causes have been proposed, but the real ones are not known. Low sperm counts do not necessarily mean a reduction in fertility, and there may well be more physiological effects leading to the observed decline. Whether the human species may go extinct for this effect is impossible to say, but it may not be completely excluded. 

9. Loss of keystone species. You surely heard that if bees were to disappear, humankind would soon follow them along the route to extinction. It may well be an exaggeration, but it is true that bees are a “keystone species,” one of those species that keep together a whole ecosystem. Losing the activity of pollination that bees carry out would damage the whole food chain, and that would have dire effects on humankind’s survival. This is well-known, but it doesn’t seem that anyone is really worried about that. One of the substances believed to be killing bees is glyphosate, sold under the commercial name “Roundup.” It is used as a herbicide in agriculture. In addition to killing bees, it is also carcinogenic for humans. Yet, all the calls to abolish its use have gone unheard. Is this another example of Freud’s “death instinct”? Maybe.

10. Assorted Acts of God. Mostly, humans tend to be the cause of their own doom, but there are several possible disasters for which — at least — they are not responsible. A classic example is a large asteroidal impact, the subject of several science-fiction movies. Improbable but not impossible, and if it were to happen, there would be little chance for a heroic crew of cosmonauts to stop the incoming object. Other astronomical factors include supernovae exploding close enough to flood Earth with gamma rays — not good for the biosphere. Then, for a threat from the inside, we may think of gigantic volcanic eruptions. We know that such eruptions were the cause of several major mass extinctions in Earth’s history. What happened in the past may happen again, and the “Yellowstone hot spot” is a place where truly horrible things could happen, although, fortunately, probably not in the short term.

11. Predators. Humans are one of the few species in the ecosystem that have no specialized predators, apart from viruses and bacteria. But we have been living with epidemics for millennia, and we know that they take their toll and then disappear. Recently, humans have been toying with viruses to make them more deadly, but if it was the case of the SARS-Cov-2, we have to say that it was an abysmal failure as a tool for exterminating humankind. More interesting and also unsettling could be the case of larger predators. For instance, we are clearly seen as prey by mosquitoes, and we don’t seem to be able to eradicate them, no matter what we do. Yet, mosquitoes have no interest in exterminating humankind, and it is hard to see how they could do that. How about larger predators? Of course, large mammals or reptiles, such as lions or crocodiles, have no chance to do more than marginal damage to humankind, even supposing that they can survive the onslaught enacted on them by humans. But we might imagine swift and deadly creatures that could bank on their capability to reproduce fast enough to outpace the human capability to kill them. Think of a hornet: it is an awesome beast. What if a species of hornets were to learn that they can live on human flesh? How would you fight their swarms? It is fantasy, yes, but…

12. Unknown unknowns. We owe Donald Rumsfeld the concept that there are risks that not only we can’t evaluate but we don’t even know exist. Imagine you were an Iroquoian living in the 15th century in what’s today the state of New York. You couldn’t possibly imagine that on the other side of the great ocean, there is a nation of evil people armed with lightning bolts who will soon invade your lands and kill most of your people, leaving a few survivors to make wampums in a small stretch of fenced land called “Indian Reservation.” Clearly, there are more things on Earth than the Iroquois philosophy could imagine, and that’s true also for our scientific knowledge. There may be global risks that we can’t even imagine. How about fungi turning us into zombies? (they do that with ants). How about vampires? (can we prove that they don’t exist?) What if our leaders really were a different species bent on destroying humankind? (The way they behave seems to be aimed exactly at that.) Or, worst of all, the Goddess Gaia deciding that she has had enough of these silly monkeys who think they know better than her?

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 1 Corinthians 1:27