How long can a civilization survive before it collapses? Stable utopias are the least likely scenarios'

A model evaluates how long civilizations can remain active before collapsing by varying resource consumption, institutional strength, and technological crisis risk. Ten possible futures are projected a thousand years ahead, showing outcomes ranging from near-permanent spirals of crisis to periods of stabilization lasting centuries. Stable societies are described as uncommon, because realistic conditions on present-day Earth do not match requirements for long-term stability. Those requirements include genuine post-scarcity, distributed global governance, and the absence of existential risks. The scenarios are designed to test which types of civilizations can survive rather than to predict detailed consequences of each configuration. Optimistic futures are framed as Golden Age and Out of Eden.

"Resource depletion, institutional fragility, and potential technological crises have all served as key variables for a group of researchers trying to determine how long a civilization can remain active before collapsing. In that effort, the authors sketched out 10 possible futures a thousand years from now. The work was led by astrobiologist Celia Blanco, a researcher at Spain's Center for Astrobiology (CSIC-INTA) and the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle, Washington."

"It seeks to explore how different combinations of resource consumption and governance can lead to stable societies, recurring collapses, or long cycles of rebuilding. The model is not intended to explore the consequences of each configuration, Blanco notes. The study's scenarios function more as variations to answer one question: what kind of civilization manages to survive? In some futures, humanity falls into near-permanent spirals of crisis. In others, it manages to stabilize for centuries."

"But stable situations are the minority. Stable utopias are probably the least plausible scenarios, Blanco says. Not because they're impossible, but because they require conditions we do not see on present-day Earth: genuine post-scarcity, distributed global governance, and the absence of existential risks, the researcher explains."

Read at english.elpais.com