X-events: the collapse of everything

The modern industrialized world is a complex system on a scale never before witnessed in the history of humankind. Technologically dependent, globally interconnected, it offers seemingly limitless conveniences, choices, and opportunities. Yet this same modern civilization is as unstable as a house of cards, fear complexity scientists like John L. Casti. All it would take to downsize our way of life-to send us crashing back to the 19th century way of life-is a nudge from what Casti calls an X-Event, an unpredictable occurrence that with extreme, even dire, consequences. When an X-Event strikes - and scientists believe it will-finance, communication, defense, and travel will stop dead in their tracks. The flow of food, electricity, medicine, and clean water will be disrupted for months, if not years. What will you do? A renowned systems theorist, Casti shows how our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate.

pt. I Why Normal Isn't So "Normal" Anymore -- pt. II Getting Down to Cases -- X-Event 1 Digital Darkness -- A Long-Term, Widespread Failure of the Internet -- X-Event 2 When Do We Eat? -- Breakdown of the Global Food-Supply System -- X-Event 3 The Day The Electronics Died -- A Continent-Wide Electromagnetic Pulse Destroys All Electronics -- X-Event 4 A New World Disorder -- The Collapse of Globalization -- X-Event 5 Death by Physics -- Destruction of the Earth Through the Creation of Exotic Particles -- X-Event 6 Blown Away -- Destabilization of the Nuclear Landscape -- X-Event 7 Running on Empty -- Drying Up of World Oil Supplies -- X-Event 8 I'M Sick of It -- A Global Pandemic -- X-Event 9 Dark And Dry -- Failure of the Electric Power Grid and Clean Water Supply -- X-Event 10 Technology Run Amok -- Intelligent Robots Overthrow-Humanity -- X-Event 11 The Great Unwinding -- Global Deflation and the Collapse of World Financial Markets -- pt. III X-Events Redux.