(from Wikipedia Brittanica, 89th Ed., published 3615)

(For historical reasons, this article refers to the first global collapse of civilization on Earth in 2018.  For subsequent collapses, or for the 2416 implosion of Mars from overmining, refer to “Great Global Collapse (disambiguation).”)

By the turn of the twenty-first century, most of the Earth had developed primitive, post-tribal civilizations¹.  These civilizations were oligarchical, with hereditary ruling castes that distinguished themselves with claims of wealth, or divine or popular mandate². These civilizations were primarily guided by mysticism; at the time of the first collapse, the two predominant forms were bibliomancy³ and economics⁴.

The Economists in particular supported and fought for increasingly opulent acts of worship, which resulted in a sharp rise in the consumption of natural resources and the emission of pollutants.  It also caused a worldwide reduction in well-being, which the clergy excused with claims that those who traded piously, in the name of  Growth and Profit, would be provided for after death⁵.

Some evidence survives that suggests a small but significant number of dissenters argued that this worship would cause the destruction of the earth, the destruction of the biosphere, the end of human civilization, among other things⁶.  Evidence also survives suggesting that many of these dissenters were followers of a cult of “Scientists” who worshipped observation, statistics⁷ and repeatability.  We also know that their religion was heavily ridiculed by both the bibliomancers and the economists⁸, who waged a decades-long propaganda war against it⁹ (it is noteworthy that, at the time, the average human lifespan was less than one century) on a scale not seen for several hundred years after the collapse¹⁰. It eventually erupted into violence, leading to the burning at the stake of several thousands of Scientists in “witch trials,” most famously at Salem, where Albert Einstein¹¹ was executed.

Records show that the collapse began in earnest in 2012. By this point, its inevitability was widely known and even admitted by the leading mystics, who suggested only renewed faith in their ideals would solve their problems. For reasons that are not now understood, they refused to expand their ability to generate electricity, and the power distribution system in north America failed completely after a July hurricane forced several power stations offline¹². As an emergency measure, the grid was broken into smaller regional sections and hundreds of dirty coal generating stations were brought to account for the shortfall of local supply.

The resulting rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is attributed to the unexpected collapse of the Greenland ice shelf later that fall, which spilled into the northern Atlantic ocean and stopped the mid-Atlantic conveyor current. Without the temperature balancing influence of the current, Europe suffered the coldest winter since the previous ice age¹³, leading to energy rationing and thousands of deaths, and the equatorial regions and southern hemisphere faced record heat. Previously fertile regions were flooded by savage tropical storms or seared with drought, resulting in massive crop failures in South America, and Asia.

In the resulting famine, the North American meat farming industry struggled to feed their stock, and decided to feed it to itself, mixed with effluent from the deforestation industry¹⁴. This, combined with widespread misuse of medicines and bizarre farming methods are widely attributed to the appearance of the Delinquent Bovine Pellucidum Influenza. Marked by visible symptoms similar to leprosy and causing extreme aggression in the week prior to death, this highly contagious disease would claim an estimated five billion victims by 2050.

The reactions to these combined crises are difficult to ascertain, as the information surviving this period was largely stored on delicate wafers of magnetic material or on reflective discs that were vulnerable to oxidation¹⁵.  The bibliomancers suggested inaction and prayer, in the belief that the arrival of a saviour was imminent.  Excavations in the 25th century¹⁶ discovered recordings of hymns that identify this saviour as the “Funk Soul Brother.”  Accounts of what the Funk Soul Brother was supposed to do are not clear, but the belief in his timely arrival was widespread.  The Economists suggested that the ruling parties “continue to aggressively infuse capital to promote growth in key industries.”  No records clarifying the meaning of this phrase survive.  In the meantime, surviving evidence suggests that the ruling elite in north America staged fights between donkeys and elephants for the distraction of the public¹⁷.  Exactly why this happened before any preventative action is unknown.  Other responses are even more inexplicable: one group called “The Church of the Black Star” suggested that plenty would be restored directly from the lower digestive tract of the north American emperor, Hope Obama.

After the collapse, there are no surviving records except for those kept by a group who referred to themselves as “The Foundation.”¹⁸ After nearly a century of violence, most of the population had reverted to subsistence farming.  At this point, the Foundation spread out from its headquarters in the Nelson valley in the former state of Canada in an attempt to restore technological civilization.

1. See “Neolithic Cultures”.
2. See “Divine Right of Presidents”.
3. A belief that books—especially old, long and boring ones written by schizophrenics and edited by sociopaths—could reveal all truth. See “Neolithic Mysticism”.
4. A school of mysticism which claimed to conjure things by exchanging them back and forth until they got bigger. See “Neolithic Mysticism”.
5. This seems to be a recurring theme in neolithic religions.  For a more detailed discussion, see “Neolithic Cultures”.
6. For example, the return of a supernatural extraterrestrial named Elvis.  For more detail, see “Neolithic Scientism.”
7. For the branch of mathematics involving probability, see “Probabilistic Mathematics”.  For the practice generating numbers to support unfounded claims of causality, see “Pseudoscientism.”
8. Both schools wanted to know why Scientism didn’t explain the existence of their gods.
9. Most famously, the “Never Trust Something That Leads To Cellular Phones” campaign of 2011.
10. The campaign to create a chimpanzee nation on the asteroid 243 Ida was considerably larger and lengthier, lasting a full century and covering four planets.  See “The Chimpish Question”.
11. His “General Relativity” was wrong, but impressive for its time.  He is also believed to be responsible for discovering a method of creating beer with bubbles.
12. See “Hurricane Edison”.
13. Some people were proud that humanity finally made one of its own.  See “Recent Ice Ages”.
14. Many people made a living from cutting down trees so they could be cut into uniform blocks and left to rot in yards.  The parts that could not be cut into appropriately sized pieces were often ground to a powder and used to absorb sewage as well as feed animals and poor people.
15. See “Neolithic Tools”.
16. See “Excavation of Ancient New York”.
17. This was the most popular arena event since the Roman Empire fed Christians to large cats.  For more detail, see “United States Congress”.
18. This organization was deliberately formed in the  years before the collapse to preserve knowledge and speed the return of civilization.  For more information, see “Foundation, The (Post-Neolithic)”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 4:23 pm and is filed under General Rambling, Politics, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.