Scientists at MIT predicted the collapse of human civilization by 2040: Are we ahead of schedule or lacking behind?

In 1972 researchers at MIT concluded that the society was on track to collapse by the year 2040. In a follow-up study conducted by an analyst at KPMG, they found that we are ahead of schedule. Advanced human civilizations have existed for at best 10,000 years. At that time, many great empires rose from nothing and returned to nothing, leaving behind little more than artifacts and crumbling architecture. While it’s hard for historians to definitively say what caused any of these particular collapses, the determining factors tend to fall into four broad categories. Political issues, social and cultural issues, environmental issues, and of course the one that we’re specifically interested in, economic issues.

Any civilization that has been reduced a little more than an entry into a textbook fell through some combination of these four factors. Some were almost instantaneous. The great city of Pompeii succumbed to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Some took a few weeks. The Aztec empire collapsed after 93 days of resistance against the Spanish, and some took centuries. 300 years, separated the height of the Roman Empire with its eventual collapse.

Our modern civilization is the greatest ever known. Hundreds of thousands of times wealthier and more advanced than even the most massive empires of history could have imagined. If you’re reading this article, you have access to the Internet. If you have access to the Internet, you have access to a source of knowledge that scholars and kings could not have dreamt of just 100 years ago. The same is true for other modern luxuries that we take for granted. Climate control, worldwide travel, cheap and effective clothing, medicine, instantaneous communication, plentiful and safe food, water on tap, and even little luxuries like being able to listen to your favorite song pretty much whenever you feel like it.

A question I get asked a lot is who the richest person in history is. The answer is Elon Musk, or it was a few weeks ago when he was worth more than $270 billion. That might change depending on when you actually read this article. Oh, but what about Rockefeller, the Rothschilds, the Romanoves or even that Mansa Musa guy that people like to bring…