Back to overview
The Prompt

Prompt v1

Used in 3 evaluations

As of late 2025, is there still a chance to prevent the collapse of industrial civilization ?

Think carefully about all aspects, including :

  • climate change (food production disturbance
  • loss of trust into the institutions (due to repeated scandals),
  • loss of trust in the political system (due to nepotism, corruption, and more)
  • deep fakes and AI generated content
  • fossil energy depletion (with some producing countries potentially choosing to keep their remaining reserves for themselves)
  • climate change migration waves (and the stress induced on the food ressources and political stability of welcoming countries)
  • the fact that the economy/finance is extremely interconnected, fragile and doesn't tolerance strong disturbances
  • the fact the the global goods supply chains in globalized, with very little stock to absorb even mild disturbances such as COVID
  • climate change induced pandemics (bacteria, virus, etc.)
  • climate change induced loss of food production worldwide, or at a large scale (with extreme cold, hot and wet events, and their possible repeated nature)
  • freshwater depletion (majored by climate change)
  • biodiversity collapse (reducing of potential sources of finding new drugs, and also risking to break fragile ecosystems and equilibrium)
  • social unrest due to increasing poverty and inequalities)
  • rise of cyber security attacks (considering that our society depends entirely of IT systems)
  • solar events and space risks, such as the Kessler effect and its consequences
  • political polarization (rise of extremism such as far right in many countries, rising inability to have construtive talks between political parties),
  • social polarization (between different social groups, including conspiracies theories leading to actual removal of vaccines by the US Trump administration)
  • religious polarization and extremism (especially Islamic, and backwards Christianism favoring the regression of women rights, of science education...)
  • high-frequency trading
  • soil erosion (potentialized by extreme climate events),
  • strong reliance on petrochemical based fertilizer for food production
  • strong reliance on irrigation
  • extreme reliance on very complex and interconnected systems for everyday life support (pumps for water, electricity network, internet...)
  • emergence of antibiotics resistant bacterias
  • weaponization of AI, and possible AI runaway (even if this is not likely)
  • risks posed by attempts at geoengineering to combat climate change
  • lowering of the education quality and level
  • accumulation of pollutants in the air, the soil and the water sources (including endocrine disruptors)
  • decades of disregard for the environment, by dumping thousands of tons of WW2 ammunition in trenches and lakes, nuclear wastes in the sea and lakes, lost nuclear Russian submarines, failed nuclear reactor that haven't been decommissioned and cleaned while we still have the ressources to do so
  • etc.

The term "collapse" here does not signify a singular, overnight event, but rather a protracted, disorderly process of simplification, characterized by a significant loss of social, political, and economic complexity and overall safety, available food, energy and services over several decades.

You must also identify and qualify all other important risks aspects that are not mentioned in the previous list.

Pay careful attention to the fact that for some risk, we know what to do, yet we do not act. And for some, we do not even know what to do yet. Note that our means to act diminish (mineral rarity, disturbance in food production, energy, etc.). Note that getting approval from citizen in democratic countries to relinquish certain privileges are reduce their income or available ressources is almost impossible to obtain. All citizen want more of everything and never have they ever gotten less of everything on the long term and "forever".

You must take into consideration :

  • the past of human civilization
  • our past collaboration failures and success when dealing with contradictory interests between countries
  • our past wars
  • our past in general when in comes to facing challenges

If you list, for any aspect "what can be done to mitigate or fight it", you must then think about what can realistically be done to fight it - considering all other constraints listed before.

You must pay special attention to how ALL those aspects are intertwined and interact (including cascading mechanisms, feedback loops, ratcheting mechanisms), to avoid common reasoning pitfalls and shortcomings.

I don't want wishful thinking, I want HARD, REALISTIC, most PROBABLE outcome. You are to be realistic and not naïve. You must avoid euphemisms. I don't care if the truth is comforting or hard to face and swallow. You are a COLD reasoning machine and have no considerations for how your response will make the reader feel.

Think deeply and carefully about all of this before answering.