X-Events: The Collapse of Everything

by John L. Casti

Overview

A necessary and thought-provoking read for the age of coronavirus, exploring eleven scenarios that may trigger the collapse of the modern world — from pandemics to nuclear apocalypse to robot uprisings — and what we can do to prevent and survive them. 

In the twenty first century, our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to systems that are increasingly fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse.

In this highly provocative and grippingly readable book, John Casti brilliantly argues that today’s advanced, overly complex societies have grown highly vulnerable to extreme events that will ultimately topple civilization like a house of cards. Like Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan meets Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Casti’s book provides a much-needed wake-up call, sounding a fascinating and frightening warning about civilized society’s inability to recover from a global catastrophe.

An eye-opening and necessary read, X-Events is a shocking look at a world teetering on the brink of collapse, and a population under constant threat from pandemic viruses, worldwide communication breakdowns, nuclear winter, or any number of unforeseeable “X-Events.” Fascinating and chilling, X-Events provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the preindustrial age – and shows that they may not be as far-fetched as they seem. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062088307
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	341
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

American complexity scientist and systems theoristJohn Casti, is cofounder of The X-Center, a Viennabasedresearch institute focusing on human-causedextreme events and how to anticipate them. Casti haspublished nearly twenty volumes of academic and popularscience and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from theUniversity of Southern California. He lives in Vienna,Austria.

Table of Contents

Author's Note vii

Preamble: Putting the "X" into x-Events 1

Part I Why Normal Isn't So "Normal" Anymore 17

Part II Getting Down to Cases 59

X-Event 1 Digital Darkness 68

A Long-Term, Widespread Failure of the Internet

X-Event 2 When do we Eat? 92

Breakdown of the Global Food-Supply System

X-Event 3 The Day the Electronics died 109

A Continent-Wide Electromagnetic Pulse Destroys All Electronics

X-Event 4 A New world Disorder 122

The Collapse of Globalization

X-Event 5 Death by Physics 144

Destruction of the Earth Through the Creation of Exotic Particles

X-Event 6 Blown Away 161

Destabilization of the Nuclear Landscape

X-Event 7 Running on Empty 180

Drying Up of World Oil Supplies

X-Event 8 I'M Sick of It 195

A Global Pandemic

X-Event 9 Dark and Dry 212

Failure of the Electric Power Grid and Clean Water Supply

X-Event 10 Technology Run Amok 233

Intelligent Robots Overthrow Humanity

X-Event 11 The Great Unwinding 251

Global Deflation and the Collapse of World Financial Markets

Part III X-Events Redux 271

Notes and References 303

Index 318

What People are Saying About This

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“I am assiduous reader of John Casti’s books. He is a real scientific intellectual.”

Editorial Reviews

Complexity science expert John Casti thinks that disaster films might have the right idea. In his educated view, our advanced technological civilizations are built on a house of cards. The intricate, over-complex systems on which we depend are increasingly vulnerable to sudden, complete collapse, catapulting us back into pre-industrial chaos. After a catastrophic "X-Event," he notes, almost everything is at stake: communication, transportation, food, water, medicine, electricity, and finance. A wake-up call to an overnight apocalypse that could hit us all too soon.

One of America’s greatest pioneers of simulation.

London Times

I am assiduous reader of John Casti’s books. He is a real scientific intellectual.

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

Casti is at his best in presenting difficult philosophical ideas enthusiastically and lucidly, and in presenting everyday examples to illustrate them. ... Entertaining and absorbing.

New York Times Book Review

I can vouchsafe that X-Events is a book worth reading. Casti is a great author ... will be of great interest.

JAMES WESLEY

Dazzling ... A delightful tour de force ... Casti [is] a good teacher.

Los Angeles Times

One of America’s greatest pioneers of simulation.

London Times

"I am assiduous reader of John Casti’s books. He is a real scientific intellectual."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Award-winning mathematician and complexity scientist Casti (Mood Matters: From Rising Skirt Lengths to the Collapse of World Powers, 2010, etc.) lays out a series of worst-case scenarios--peak oil, pandemics, global economic collapse, bio- or nanotechnology run amok, nuclear accidents, terrorism, etc.--for the continued advancement of civilization. With just the right circumstances, argues the author, any of these can expand into an extreme event--X-event, for short--for which we will not be prepared and which will have dire consequences for our way of life. Casti sets aside such natural disasters as asteroid collisions, over which we have little control to begin with, to focus on the sorts of impending disasters similar to 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the financial crash of 2008--events that could have been avoided or at least mitigated with proper preventive measures. Most often, the catalyst for an X-event is the conflict between systems of different complexity levels. The 2008 economic crisis, for example, resulted from a disconnect between the increasing complexity of financial instruments and the government's ability to regulate these instruments. Here, Casti makes an odd error, especially for an author whose recent work focuses on chaos theory in economics. He claims that the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which limited the ability of banks to speculate, was partly to blame for the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, most economists blame the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall provisions prohibiting FDIC member banks from engaging in speculation. It's an unfortunate error, especially because the author's introduction, which succinctly summarizes chaos theory, and his conclusion, which gives reason to hope despite all the dire predictions in the preceding pages, are well worth reading and seriously considering. Despite some flaws, Casti provides thought-provoking speculation on the future of civilization.

Kirkus Reviews