Re:How Ancient People Saw Themselves
by eep_social on Thursday October 30, 2025 @04:16PM
(#45764816)
> always been another group to move in and take up the abandoned land
Completely agree with your points, but I think it’s worth mentioning that the collapsing populations may not have been aware of this depending on their level of isolation and cultural view on outsiders.
Re:How Ancient People Saw Themselves
by Tyrannosaur on Thursday October 30, 2025 @10:42PM
(#45767764)
> "Collapse" is maybe hyperbole in this case, if it's building on our own history to extrapolate forward.
In the story, "at some point" generally involved technologies we are currently incapable of; the greater technology actually facilitating the greater collapse. Which at the most obvious included nuclear catastrophe.
I think my contention is with "collapse" rather than something like "crash". The latter implies a cyclical downswing (reasonable), the former implies the absolute end of a cycle through the non-viability of the prior order. One means "start the round/match over," one means "find some wood to start carving a new board and game pieces". The new game probably won't be recognizable, and you're talking about not just the events but the setting and context being unfamiliar. Every civilization goes through that? I suppose, but only because every life-bearing planet goes through that, civilization-bearing or not.
I think the mistake comes from something common to a lot of sci-fi, which is mistaking the scale of a planetary setting. It takes a lot of energy to disrupt life on a global scale (we're managing it, but it's taken hundreds of years). "At some point" is carrying a lot of weight in that observation.