My editor at the TLS claims he didn’t plan it this way, but the day after the last arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia expired, the Times Literary Supplement of London published my review of three excellent, very different books about apocalypse.
Collapse, doomsday, end of times — it goes by many names, and as a subject of speculation or scholarship, it has a rich and colorful history. These books cover many angles on societal collapse — mass panics and hoaxes, extreme resource depletion, war, and the greatest leveller of all, climate catastrophe. If there is one takeaway from all three, it would be that collapse can have a surprisingly salutary effect on societies. The Black Death led to technological innovations in printing and navigation; the Maya collapse reduced pressures on the land and allowed its survivors to pick up the pieces and, eventually, thrive. Collapse can be transformative, not just traumatic.
Except when it isn’t. The expiration of the New START capping the number of nuclear warheads on the part of the world’s two biggest arsenals — the United States under Trump, Russia under Putin, an unsettling pair indeed — should remind everybody that the potential for planetary Armageddon is still very much with us. Sure, collapse can force societies to face their worst habits and deepest pathologies. But first we have to make it out alive.