How Is America Going To End?

Slate.com looks at a number of apocalytic scenarios in considering how the United States could cease to exist.

If and when America expires, we probably won’t agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.

In tribute to Demandt, I’ve gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I’ve paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America’s future death.

You can “play” the game by selecting up to five causes of disaster that you think will lead to America’s demise and then click play. Your choices are then analyzed and your view of apocalypse is displayed.

My selected criteria matched my view of civilizational collapse influenced by my Kaplan-esque “pessimistic realist” view of the world, but the verdict on my selection was: “You are a humanitarian internationalist. You’re convinced mankind will terminate America—but at least we won’t off ourselves in the process. You’ll know you’re right when: Everyone on Earth pledges allegiance to a world government; the feds default on the national debt.” I think that’s right in the first part—America’s destruction will be man-made yet the human race will survive its collapse—but I don’t think it results in world government. Slate is taking a survey of the results and will be back with an analysis of the reader input on Friday.