What do you think would be the minimal requirement to trigger social collapse? I'd claim it's much less than nuclear annihilation. We live in a deeply interdependent society with a society that demands excesses of consumption. Like the article mentions, one possible cause of social collapse could be something as innocuous as a solar storm. Or maybe there might be no cause at all.

The Great Depression is interesting in that there was no external physical mechanism of the sort of famine, plague, or war behind it. It was driven entirely by economics. One day everybody is doing everything as they do and society is moving along fine. The next day, society is collapsing. And today we live in a more interdependent society with greater consumption and lower self sufficiency. The impact would be greater; the original wasn't exactly a walk in the park.

So ultimately I don't really see the end of society as being the same as doomsday. It's likely to just be a liminal phase. And the optimist in me would like to imagine that at the end of the tunnel, we might even be able to come out as a much better people. It seems we, both as individuals and as societies, only seem to learn by sticking our finger in the fire. But at least once we do, we tend to learn not to do it again.