Last Updated 10.1.25. (G)

Humanity is heading into a deteriorating and undeclared globalized and planetary emergency involving the growing potential for the probable collapse of numerous critical global survival and stability systems (such as the climate, the environment, the economy, and our political and social systems). This crisis of multiple major global problems occurring simultaneously is often referred to as a polycrisis.

As you read about the 13 parts of the global polycrisis below, it is also helpful to consider our key deteriorating or problematic global systems, like a row of dominoes. Once one of them falls in the direction of the others, most of the others will fall as well. (After you finish this page, we strongly recommend that you read the Wikipedia page on what is a polycrisis. It will help make everything you are reading on this page seem more accurate and even reasonable.)

There is a real and credible probability of a widespread global extinction and collapse process triggered primarily by the primary and secondary consequences of runaway global heating, interacting with the world's other 12 major crises.

Other than a growing number of climate scientists and intelligence agency climate analysts, most people have no idea that a runaway global warming-fueled extinction and collapse crisis is already unfolding. They also have no idea that from 2025 to about 2031, the consequences of runaway global heating (which are already bad now) will rise dramatically, many nearly doubling. 

This dramatic and pre-exponential rise will be due to crossing many more climate change tipping points and feedback loops over those six years. Most individuals who have heard about this issue do not believe our governments could ever let this happen or would hide it.

This denial is understandable because the idea of a runaway, global heating-driven extinction and collapse process already in progress is not only overwhelmingly frightening but also far too complex for many to comprehend, as it is unprecedented in human history.  

Reviewing the information and analysis in the article below, it will quickly become clear to you whether we are or are not in a global extinction and collapse process. 

You will discover: 

1. Led by runaway global warming, the collective worsening of our 13 major global crises (listed below) is likely to lead to the extinction of approximately half of humanity by mid-century. 

2. Almost everything you have been told about the worst climate change and global heating consequences arriving late in the 21st century is DEAD wrong. 

3. Almost everything you have been told that we still have until 2035, 2040, or 2050 to make critical extinction-preventing global fossil fuel reductions is also dead wrong. 

And most importantly,

4. What we must and can still do to prevent, adapt to, slow down, and survive a cascading convergence of endless catastrophes from the worsening of runaway global heating and the other 12  global crises disrupting, interacting, and amplifying each other as well as going over their tipping points. (At the end of this document, you will find links to a practical plan called the Job One for Humanity Plan B. It will show you how to make the best of our difficult future.)

Your understanding of the following global collapse and extinction processes, as well as your preparation for them, will be the critical factors most affecting your future comfort, safety, and survival. Depending upon your current location, the following warning signs (the primary and secondary consequences of our current runaway global heating) might even help determine the best location for your survival. 

While reading the 13 major global crises below, remember that they are not separate, stand-alone, or unconnected occurrences. The 13 global crises listed below are highly interactive, interconnected, and interdependent with one another. When any of them worsens, it can cause the worsening of several or even most global crises. 

Continue to think of the following 13 global crises like an intertwined plate of spaghetti. Each separate noodle (global crisis) to

The collapse polycrisis we describe below presents humanity's greatest opportunity to resolve many intractable global problems and inequities that could not (and have not) been previously solved. The end of this document will also point you toward information on how the Great Global Collapse can be transformed into humanity's greatest opportunity and potential for a Great Global Rebirth.

(Please note that we did not prioritize this list because individuals will see these crises with different values and priorities. We also did not include a sudden global thermal nuclear war in humanity's greatest global challenges as its own special category. We did not include it that way because it is a commonly accepted and known given, that in any moment, since the beginning of the Cold War, the world could tumble into global nuclear war. If so, the world would be basically over for all of humanity within days or months, except for those people in fallout shelters who would try to survive for decades to hundreds of years until the planet stops being radioactive.

While it is a real growing risk, it is not something that most people have any influence over. We did indirectly, although included in the section on conflicts and wars that could escalate into nuclear because of all of the 13 global crises going on at one time.)

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 1: The Earth is overpopulated.

The Earth has a carrying capacity of approximately 1.5 billion to 2 billion people, as illustrated in the figure below. On average, about 141 million people are born every year, and usually, pre-pandemic, 50 million people a year died.

We are currently at nearly 8 billion people, on track to reach 9.8 billion by 2050. Although we have already surpassed sustainable population levels, no government is currently implementing a human reproduction policy. Future and current generations will suffer unthinkable catastrophes because, as humanity, we failed to manage the size of our global population to match the sustainable carrying capacity of our global environment and the Earth's available and renewable resources.

 

 

Overpopulation and its inevitable overconsumption, which exceed our carrying capacity, are the primary causes behind today's global warming emergency. Furthermore, as the global population continues to rise, the additional population further multiplies and amplifies the most harmful consequences of almost all the other 12 global crises below. This is particularly true for global resource depletion, also known as overshoot of global resources. (See Global Crisis and Challenge 2.)

 

 

 

Overpopulation also exacerbates the numerous primary and secondary consequences of runaway global heating, which are further discussed on this page. 

(For a candid and balanced article on the immense suffering caused by our global overpopulation challenge, please see this article, Population, the Great Knee-Jerker: A Holistic Survey and Plea to Reduce Suffering.) Please also click this carrying capacity link for more about why our beyond carrying capacity and rapidly rising overpopulation challenge is extremely dangerous to everyone's future.)

As you will discover, overpopulation and Crisis 2 below are intimately intertwined and connected.

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 2: Overconsumption is causing ever-rising, critical global resource depletion. 

This overconsumption is also known as global resources overshoot.) This overshoot is driven first by overpopulation in relation to the carrying capacity of the land and sea acreage available for a given population.

Overshoot also manifests itself in the consequent toxic pollution of water, lands, and air, crop failures, overfishing, topsoil loss, resource distribution injustice, and the massive "overconsumption and waste" of the Earth's very finite resources and its limited carrying capacity. In addition to the numerous consequences of runaway global heating, which include crop failures, global resource depletion, such as phosphate fertilizers, will significantly exacerbate food shortages and lead to soaring food prices, ultimately resulting in mass starvation and migration.

The future is likely to face numerous resource shortages due to overshoot. Expect shortages in clean, drinkable water, food, raw materials, and medical and other manufactured supplies. Never forget that a critical or essential missing resource can halt the entire system's functioning. 

We are likely to experience numerous resource shortages in the near future. For example, the following are estimates of when only a few of our critical global resources will be depleted:

Freshwater in 12 years (2032),

Fish stocks will be almost totally gone by 2050,

Adequate topsoil for crop growing will be gone by 2070.

(See this page to see 90 percent of fish stock already overfished and to see charts on how this loss will throw much of the world into starvation.) The rapid depletion of phosphorus, a critical nutrient for crop fertilizers, is of particular concern. Adequate access to this could run out in as little as 35 to 45 years.

 

 

If you still do not believe that resource depletion and overshoot of our carrying capacity are huge problems. Watch this fantastic resource overshoot video with great graphics, global resource depletion amounts, and time frames in simple illustrations by Hugh Montgomery, a noted English professor. (We strongly recommend you watch this video for all the food and non-food resources in accelerating depletion, adding to the mass starvation peril. [Forward the video to the 10 minutes and 30-second mark to begin watching Professor Hugh Montgomery's compelling graphic presentation.])

Many other critical mineral and non-mineral resources will also run out soon. Click here to see a chart with the key essential resources that will be depleted. After overpopulation, which is the main amplifier of global resource depletion, overshoot is considered by most experts to be the key major cause behind or feeding runaway global heating and almost all of our other 12 global crises.

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 3: Escalating pollution of lands, air, and waters. 

Ongoing and accelerating toxic pollution kills crops and fish stocks and poisons our air, water, and soil, creating and accelerating all types of global health, social, and economic problems. (Ocean heating and ocean acidification from carbon from runaway global heating will eventually kill off much of the oceans' oxygen-producing plankton. These plankton are responsible for as much as 50% of all oxygen produced on the planet.) 

Pollution from micro-plastics in the air, water, soil, and food chain, and the new presence of the now-everywhere PFAS "forever chemicals" are deeply concerning for our future. Future generations, with their accelerated cancer and other pollution-related disease rates, will curse us because of our greed and incompetence in failing to regulate microplastic and PFAS production. 

 

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 4: loss of biodiversity.

We are experiencing a higher rate of plant and animal extinctions than at any other time in human history. This extinction, in part, is due to an ongoing and accelerating loss of natural habitat due to overpopulation, runaway global heating, overuse, pollution, etc. (Leading Stanford University biologists, who were first to reveal that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth, released new research this week showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner, which may be another tipping point for the collapse of human civilization.) This biodiversity is critical because it supports or is essential to our critical food chains.

 

 

 Global Crisis and Challenge 5: Mass Migration.

Political and economic instability, increasing terrorism, conflicts, and war, plus runaway global heating and many of the other listed global challenges on this page, will both create and expand sudden, massive migrations of millions, then billions, of desperate refugees and climate migrants. During this phase, as most of the listed global challenges on this page intensify, various stronger governments will order precautionary evacuations of selected individuals and groups to limit casualties and losses from their most vulnerable areas. Before 2030-2035, due to runaway global heating alone, the world will see hundreds of millions of climate migrants (climate refugees).

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 6: Escalating local, regional, and international criminality, conflicts, terrorism, and war. 

Expect these population-destabilizing security and stability threats to intensify, increase in frequency, and expand in scale. This threat escalation will occur at local levels, both urban and rural, as well as at regional and international levels. Vastly increased levels of survival-driven criminality, conflicts, terrorism, and war will be due to the world experiencing almost all of the global challenges on this page getting steadily worse. Global nuclear or widespread chemical or biological war is also a real and escalating threat, as most global challenges on this page worsen. 

Nations with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons will eventually fight to the death for the few remaining safe lands, dwindling food supplies, and other critical resources. In addition, the ever-increasing mass migrations of desperate climate refugees (climagees) illegally crossing borders will soon be treated as hostile territorial invasions. We estimate that when atmospheric carbon reaches about a 425-450 ppm level, we will begin to see a sharp and almost exponential rise in these issues. 

 

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 7: increasing global economic instabilities 

There are numerous global economic instabilities already existing within the global financial system. One or more of these instabilities will interact with intensifying climate change, leading to the first global or multinational recession or depression. (These new monster recessions and depressions will be fueled by the ever-rising costs and, worse, climate change consequences, as well as being driven by escalating national debt and deficits, using exotic new investment vehicles like the deregulated high-risk hedge fund trades and derivatives that "gamed the system" in the 2008 economic crash. 

Even AI and the new AI agents (which will arrive in the next 3 to 5 years), and which will radically eliminate many entry-level and programming jobs worldwide, could easily and quickly lead to a widespread or global recession or depression.

The first real global depression or recession could also occur sooner than we are prepared for due to bursting balloons in new real estate or commodities, new challenges to the US currency continuing as the world's reserve currency, lack of adequate national financial reserves, low financial system resilience, hidden pre-existing global economic system weaknesses, new and unexpected major economic shocks (like a new COVID-like new pandemic, causing mutation, new military conflicts, escalating and costly runaway global warming catastrophes or even some unforeseen risk from the rising global use and speculation on cryptocurrencies. 

Suppose any of the above (or other currently unknown major financial risks) hit our global economic systems with sufficient intensity, along with the greatly intensified consequences of climate change. In that case, we could very easily experience our first true global depression or recession, where almost every nation will share the same painful levels of economic downturn.

Our national, multinational, and international financial systems are much more vulnerable to the many risks listed on this page, and they are far more fragile than we are being led to believe.

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 8: Increasing Political System Instability and Collapsing Governments. 

Fueled by escalating climate change consequences, existing internal and external conflicts, soaring deficits, and other intensifying global challenges listed on this page, poorly managed nations with weak economies and low existing resilience will fall first. In 2025, numerous countries are on the verge of economic or political collapse. As the increased stresses of these listed global challenges continue to grow upon all nations, stronger nations will also steadily collapse.  

 

 

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 9: The rise of many more dictators and ultra-nationalistic governments

Some of them will harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to monitor and control their populations. The 13 major global problems listed on this page will naturally produce fear in humanity. When people are in fear, they look to a strong personality or leader who promises simple solutions and acts deliberately. With the recent change in the US administration, 71% of the world's population is currently under what would be considered authoritarian rule.

The cycle of fear over intensifying global and local problems has happened repeatedly. The best example is the rise of Nazism and Adolf Hitler. 

As things steadily worsen toward multiple global system collapses, the fear responses of national citizens will intensify. Global politics and politicians will quickly move more toward right-wing nationalism and "cult of personality-type" dictators.

These new ultra-nationalistic governments run by dictators will not hesitate to use the many powers of artificial intelligence to monitor every move of their citizens and use AI technology to control their citizens' thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Adding the new AI technology to the previous three generations of mind control and coercive persuasion technologies allows the dictators of tomorrow to create the perfect slave state far beyond what was envisioned by George Orwell in his book 1984.

How soon more global governments move to ultra-nationalistic right-wing dictatorships will be determined by how fast the 13 global problems you see on this page worsen and how fast human fear is fueled by ruthless politicians and ratcheted up by our worsening conditions. The bad news is that, at our current level of worsening of these 13 factors, one can expect to see more fear and global challenges to democratic governments from nationalistic, right-wing movements, as well as an increase in countries becoming more nationalistic, right-wing, and dictator-friendly.

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 10: New COVID-19-like pandemics and other new and older disease epidemics will continue to flare up every decade or less. 

This will partly be due to the consequences of runaway global heating, including the melting of permafrost, loss of natural animal habitats, increased consumption of wild animals, overcrowding, less resilient health systems, mass migrations, wars and conflicts, and many of the other challenges and consequences listed on this page. Additionally, new and older disease epidemics will occur more frequently and be more severe because of the abuse of antibiotics in animal product production. This abuse has resulted in bacteria that are now resistant to every known type of antibiotic. 

Worse yet, it is estimated that we will face a new global pandemic threat every 5-10 years due to the direct and indirect consequences of runaway global heating. (Most people have no idea that pandemics and epidemics are also part of the predicted "normal" results of the escalating global heating emergency.) 

Directly and indirectly, the severe loss of natural wild animal habitat caused by runaway global heating, the eating of more wild and non-domesticated animals, and the exploding of hungry world populations crowding into urban areas will be a continuous contributing or the prime cause of new zoological Covid-like diseases crossing over from animal populations into human populations and becoming pandemics.

More COVID-19-type global pandemics could come as often as every decade. The AIDS virus became widespread in the late 1970s, the SARS virus in 2003, the MERS virus in 2012, and the Ebola virus in 2013. Click here for more about how escalating runaway global heating may begin producing COVID-19-like pandemics every decade. 

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 11: growing economic inequality, social and racial injustice, and more poverty. 

As all of the above global challenges and emergencies worsen and climate change accelerates, there will be rapidly growing economic inequality, social and racial injustice, and more poverty. Today, less than 1% of the world's population owns more than 50% of all wealth. Over the last several decades, this ownership percentage has continued to grow in favor of the wealthy. Growing economic inequality and poverty often increase food shortages and cause food prices to soar, leading again to mass starvation and migrations. This year (2020,) 130 million people are lacking adequate food and could starve to death. COVID-19's effect on the world economy could double that number in the next few years. Over the following decades, global heating consequences will raise that number into the hundreds of millions, eventually rising well past a billion.) 

 

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 12: Fourth-generation mind control technology combined with supercomputers, artificial intelligence (AI), social media, and surveillance, identification, and tracking technologies will steadily destroy existing democracies and turn mu of the global population into the enslaved.

It is estimated that 70% of the world's population is already under dictatorial or authoritarian governmental control. When you combine fourth-generation mind control with AI, supercomputers, surveillance software, and other technologies, it will not take long at all to put most of the rest of the world into nations controlled by dictators and authoritarian governments. When these technologies work together, it will not take long for outside and internal forces to bring down the strongest democracies.

The rapidly rising extreme dangers of fourth generation mind control to the world's population, (and the three generations of mind control technology that have proceeded it, are described in detail near the bottom of this document in a section called, The nine biggest reasons why most of our above 13 critical global crises have not been solved or will be nearly impossible to fix. See Reason 7: Our stone-age impaired brains are also being attacked and compromised by 4th generation mind control technology enabled by supercomputers, advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance and identification software, and today's social media and search platforms.

 

Global Crisis and Challenge 13: The ever-accelerating climate change emergency.

This climate change emergency is causing escalating desertification, sea-level rise, flooding, deforestation, reef collapse, droughts, wildfires, extreme storms, and the spread of diseases through epidemics and pandemics. All of these runaway global heating-specific consequences are increasing in scale, severity, and frequency as our average global temperature continues to rise. 

Accelerating climate change is the single greatest disruptor and global threat multiplier of the 21st century. It can directly or indirectly significantly amplify and multiply the adverse consequences of almost every other global crisis listed on this page. The climate change emergency, if not resolved soon, will itself cause the deaths of most of humanity by mid-century. Worse yet, due to the runaway global heating caused by climate change, we will also cross several extinction-evoking global warming tipping points long before 2050. (These critical runaway global heating tipping points are described here.)

This runaway global heating is also detrimental to the world's economy. The rising consequences of the runaway global heating emergency will eventually consume larger and larger percentages of every nation's Gross Domestic Productivity (GDP.) Loss estimates range from 3-5% of national GDPs now to as much as 30% of the total national GDP in the final phases of the runaway global heating emergency.

As runaway global heating reaches its later Climageddon Scenario phases, it will become far more likely that we will destroy ourselves in a massive war or nuclear conflict over the remaining scarce resources or the very limited, safe lands.

 

 

 

Excluding the challenges of having no real global government (which is an evolutionary, structural, and developmental issue) and the immediate threat of global thermonuclear war, our out-of-control, runaway global heating is the single most dangerous global challenge today. It is also the most dangerous global challenge because:

a.) It is also the most immediate and probable meta-trigger for the growing possibility of a chain reaction of whipsawing and simultaneous ecological, economic, social, and political falling domino catastrophes and the converging global system collapses involving directly or indirectly most of the other critical global challenges listed above. 

 

 

If you think about accelerating runaway global heating as a brightly burning match that will ignite the highly explosive and destructive "fuels" already existing within most of the other 12 critical challenges listed above, you would have another good idea of why we have to get the runaway global heating emergency under control as our immediate and top priority. 

b) Runaway global heating is already a severe security threat unfolding. It is currently causing substantial global problems. It is rapidly growing toward crossing four critical extinction-evoking tipping points.  It is, in fact, already all but out of our control. It can and will end about half or more of the human species within our lifetimes if we do not act soon! 

 

 

The best researched timetable for mass human extinction and widespread global collapse as soon as 2035:

Click here to review our essential three-article summary of the world's best research on the key global collapse and extinction from MIT, the Club of Rome, KPMG, etc. It will show you how, by 2035, humanity could already be deep into mass human extinction and widespread global collapse.

These three articles also explore the five factors, besides climate change, predicted to bring about mass extinction and global collapse sometime before 2050. The last of these three articles integrates our most current climate change research (which wasn't in the original study) by MIT, the Club of Rome, KPMG, etc. This third article updates the timeframe for the collapse and mass extinction, shifting the worst of the collapse and extinction cycle to occur between approximately 2035 and 2045.

 

 

How primary and secondary runaway global heating-related consequences will unfold as disruptors and threat multipliers, accelerating and amplifying a globalized extinction and collapse process

"Unfortunately, most people do not realize it is not just the ever-increasing global warming heat that is so dangerous to our future; it is also all of the other primary and secondary climate-related consequences that will make the future a nightmare if we do not fix this mess immediately!" Lawrence Wollersheim

We will experience the following primary and secondary consequences of runaway global heating because we are failing miserably in reducing our global fossil fuel use. As time passes, the following consequences will continue to increase in frequency, severity, and scale.

The most important thing to remember as these consequences converge is that they will bring about later consequences more rapidly due to feedback loops, synergies, interdependencies, and tipping points. Worse yet, these runaway global heating consequences will suddenly become exponentially worse, unpredictably and regularly.

This is because these consequences will feed into and collide with each other, and they will also be fed by the worsening of our other 12 global crises! No government, global corporation, or global NGO will be able to keep up with these accelerating and interacting consequences. These primary and secondary consequences, accelerating and collectively occurring simultaneously, will create unimaginable global chaos.

Many of the following primary and secondary consequences are interconnected and interdependent. Some also exist in transformative relationships and within interconnected linear and non-linear processes that can amplify or multiply the consequences of the other, thereby further disrupting our ability to predict or control these consequences.

No single runaway global heating consequence, by itself, creates global collapse, complete human extinction, or our doomsday. However, cumulatively and synergistically, as the primary and secondary consequences below intensify and unfold in continuous waves, they will bring about Climageddon, our runaway global heating doomsday, and ultimately, our extinction.

The primary and secondary consequences listed below are critical and powerful warning signs to watch for in the news, indicating that our runaway global heating emergency is accelerating and worsening in your area, and that you should act before it is too late. 

When reading the lists of runaway global heating primary and secondary consequences, remember that the consequences listed earlier are already occurring or will occur first. The consequences listed near the end of the list will take longer to unfold.

(For those interested in more detailed timeframes, temperatures, and triggering events on when and how the following runaway global heating consequences will occur, please see the six unique phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.)

One last and important collapse perspective to consider comes from the Post Carbon Institute:

“In reality, there are degrees of collapse, and history shows that the process has usually taken decades and sometimes centuries to unfold, often in stair-steps punctuated by periods of partial recovery. Further, it may be possible to intervene in the collapse to improve outcomes for ourselves, our communities, our species, and thousands of other species. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, medieval Irish monks may have “saved civilization” by memorizing and transcribing ancient texts. Could we, with planning and motivation, do as much?”

What can you do about the polycrisis described above?

Addressing the polycrisis requires a range of actions by governments worldwide, as well as individual efforts from us.

On our website, we provide in-depth coverage of numerous solutions that work at the individual level and are practical. Many of these solutions center around emergency preparation, adaptation, resilience building, and, in some extreme cases, migration.

And, there is much more beyond that to get started with the many actions that you can do to make a real difference, please click this link.