Demographic Collapse

DEMOGRAPHIC COLLAPSE IS a term used to describe the decline of population or part of a population, especially its size, growth, density, or distribution. The term is connected to and often synonymous with societal collapse and is sometimes expressed simply as collapse.

Societal collapse is the broad decay or long-term decline of a specific culture and its institutions. Societal collapse frequently describes plagues, sudden and massive loss of human life, and the resulting breakdown of a civilization. The term is frequently attributed to William McNeill's Plagues and Peoples.

The 14th-century Black Death of Europe and the death of large numbers of indigenous peoples in the Americas from smallpox, measles, and typhus transmitted by the arriving Europeans are the most commonly cited examples of demographic collapse. Other examples ...