When wolf packs become large, hunting success increases because large packs enable the specialisation of hunting skills, and allow for maximum collaboration. Birth rates go up as the abundance of food results in high fertility. When human societies become large, resource exploitation efficiency increases because large societies enable the specialisation of skills and allow for unprecedented … Continue reading The Density Threshold: The Parable of The Wolf

In a recent YouTube interview about my new book The Biology of Collapse, I was asked what timetable I gave for “The Collapse”, as if I was some type of Nostradamus-type guru who can predict the day when the sky will fall. I’m afraid that collapse does not work that way. It is neither a sci-fi moment nor … Continue reading Economic Comorbidities: Can A Single Cat Scratch Lead to The End of Civilisation?

Like any substance abuse victim that has reached rock bottom, human civilisation has become utterly ignorant of the pain it is inflicting upon itself. With every addictive personality there comes a point where the addiction takes over, replacing the actual person it infected: the subject is demoted into a host object as the drug becomes an internal parasite … Continue reading 8 Billion Junkies: The Addiction That Is Killing Civilisation

Human civilisations have been jumping off cliffs since the beginning of their existence: we are the most risk-taking species to have lived on Earth, equipped with the most ambitious, careless, imaginative thought processes that evolved as successful survival strategies. We don’t simply take risks: we devise them in our corporate board rooms, execute them in our … Continue reading Risk Kills. Will We Ever Learn?

I was once asked during an interview: “how do you reform a broken system?” - in other words, how do you change everything? The timeless popularity of this naïve question is evident in the scores of book titles available that promise to literally change the world in 10 steps. There is a reason why I’ve never written … Continue reading The One Attribute of All Systems Everyone Underestimates

Humans are the only organism reliant on technologies that are not integrated into its DNA. If you take an insect or animal and move it to a new habitat far away, it will always have a much higher chance of survival than a human. This is because all of its technologies are in-built: all of … Continue reading The Technophyte