CINXE.COM

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.bbc.com:80/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","20170805020227","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1501898547"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1"> <title>BBC - Future - How Western civilisation could collapse</title> <meta name="keywords" content="story, STORY, story, image, comment-analysis,prediction, , what-if"> <meta name="description" content="Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future."> <meta name="author" content="Rachel Nuwer"> <meta property="og:title" content="How Western civilisation could collapse"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse"/> <meta property="og:description" content="Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future."/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@BBC_Future"> <meta name="twitter:title" content="How Western civilisation could collapse"> <meta name="twitter:description" content="Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future."> <meta property="og:author" content="Rachel Nuwer"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227im_/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="624"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="351"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227im_/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg"> <script> window.getUriParamByName=function(name) { name = name.replace(/[\[]/, "\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\]"); var regex = new RegExp("[\\?&]" + name + "=([^&#]*)"); var results = regex.exec(window.location.search); return (results === null ? "" : decodeURIComponent(results[1].replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\-_]/g, ''))); } var digitalData= {"environment":"live","pageInstanceID":"www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","module":{"id":"wwfuture","backendModuleId":"wwfuture","isGeoRestricted":false,"name":"Future","domain":"future","brandColor":"#589e50","description":"BBC Future"},"page":{"attributes":{"country":"GB","language":"en-GB"},"pageInfo":{"affiliate":false,"author":"Rachel Nuwer","pageID":"wwfuture/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","shortPageID":"how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","pageName":"How Western civilisation could collapse","description":"Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future.","partner":false,"publicationDate":"2017-04-18T08:38:21.432185Z","business-unit":"BBC.com","destinationURL":"","bodyTextCharacterLength":11200},"keywords":{"pageType":"story","STORY":"1","asset_type":"story","media":"image","tags":["comment_analysis","prediction"],"destination":[],"column":"what-if","sectn":"what-if"},"tags":["story","STORY","story","image",["comment_analysis","prediction"],[],"what-if","what-if"],"category":{"pageType":"story","STORY":"1","asset_type":"story","media":"image","tags":["comment_analysis","prediction"],"destination":[],"column":"what-if","sectn":"what-if","entityFactory":{"entities":{}},"primaryCategory":"future","section":false,"horizontal":false,"supersection":false}}}; digitalData.page.pageInfo.ocid=getUriParamByName('ocid'); digitalData.page.pageInfo.icid=getUriParamByName('icid'); digitalData.page.pageInfo.referrer=document.referrer; </script> <link href="https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375" rel="publisher"/> <script type="text/javascript"> window.optimizely = window.optimizely || []; window.optimizely.push({ type: 'cookieExpiration', cookieExpirationDays: 1095 }); </script> <script src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/https://cdn.optimizely.com/public/4621041136/s/features_prod.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227cs_/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40/css/wwfuture/core.css"/> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/> <meta property="fb:admins" content="100004154058350"/>  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227cs_/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/style/orb.min.css">    <script class="js-require-lib" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/requirejs/lib.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> bbcRequireMap = {"jquery-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jquery/0.4.1/sharedmodules/jquery-1.7.2", "jquery-1.4":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jquery/0.4.1/sharedmodules/jquery-1.4", "jquery-1.9":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jquery/0.4.1/sharedmodules/jquery-1.9.1", "jquery-1.12":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jquery/0.4.1/sharedmodules/jquery-1.12.0.min", "jquery-2.2":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jquery/0.4.1/sharedmodules/jquery-2.2.0.min", "istats-1":"//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://nav.files.bbci.co.uk/nav-analytics/0.1.0-43/js/istats-1", "swfobject-2":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/swfobject/0.1.10/sharedmodules/swfobject-2", "demi-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/demi/0.10.1/sharedmodules/demi-1", "gelui-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/gelui/0.9.13/sharedmodules/gelui-1", "cssp!gelui-1/overlay":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/gelui/0.9.13/sharedmodules/gelui-1/overlay.css", "relay-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/relay/0.2.6/sharedmodules/relay-1", "clock-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/clock/0.1.9/sharedmodules/clock-1", "canvas-clock-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/clock/0.1.9/sharedmodules/canvas-clock-1", "cssp!clock-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/clock/0.1.9/sharedmodules/clock-1.css", "jssignals-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jssignals/0.3.6/modules/jssignals-1", "jcarousel-1":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/jcarousel/0.1.10/modules/jcarousel-1", "bump-3":"//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://emp.bbci.co.uk/emp/bump-3/bump-3"}; require({ baseUrl: 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/', paths: bbcRequireMap, waitSeconds: 30 }); </script> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/ if (typeof bbccookies_flag === 'undefined') { bbccookies_flag = 'ON'; } showCTA_flag = true; cta_enabled = (showCTA_flag && (bbccookies_flag === 'ON')); (function(){var m="ckns_policy",q="Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT",i={ads:true,personalisation:true,performance:true,necessary:true};function c(u){if(c.cache[u]){return c.cache[u]}var t=u.split("/"),v=[""];do{v.unshift((t.join("/")||"/"));t.pop()}while(v[0]!=="/");c.cache[u]=v;return v}c.cache={};function a(u){if(a.cache[u]){return a.cache[u]}var v=u.split("."),t=[];while(v.length&&"|co.uk|com|".indexOf("|"+v.join(".")+"|")===-1){if(v.length){t.push(v.join("."))}v.shift()}c.cache[u]=t;return t}a.cache={};function s(t,y,u){var E=[""].concat(a(window.location.hostname)),B=c(window.location.pathname),D="",w,C;for(var x=0,A=E.length;x<A;x++){w=E[x];for(var v=0,z=B.length;v<z;v++){C=B[v];D=t+"="+y+";"+(w?"domain="+w+";":"")+(C?"path="+C+";":"")+(u?"expires="+u+";":"");bbccookies.set(D,true)}}}window.bbccookies={POLICY_REFRESH_DATE_MILLIS:new Date(2015,4,21,0,0,0,0).getTime(),POLICY_EXPIRY_COOKIENAME:"ckns_policy_exp",_setEverywhere:s,cookiesEnabled:function(){var t="ckns_testcookie"+Math.floor(Math.random()*100000);this.set(t+"=1");if(this.get().indexOf(t)>-1){e(t);return true}return false},get:function(){return document.cookie},getCrumb:function(t){if(!t){return null}return decodeURIComponent(document.cookie.replace(new RegExp("(?:(?:^|.*;)\\s*"+encodeURIComponent(t).replace(/[\-\.\+\*]/g,"\\$&")+"\\s*\\=\\s*([^;]*).*$)|^.*$"),"$1"))||null},policyRequiresRefresh:function(){var u=new Date();u.setHours(0);u.setMinutes(0);u.setSeconds(0);u.setMilliseconds(0);if(bbccookies.POLICY_REFRESH_DATE_MILLIS<=u.getTime()){var t=bbccookies.getCrumb(bbccookies.POLICY_EXPIRY_COOKIENAME);if(t){t=new Date(parseInt(t));t.setYear(t.getFullYear()-1);return bbccookies.POLICY_REFRESH_DATE_MILLIS>=t.getTime()}else{return true}}else{return false}},_setPolicy:function(t){return f.apply(this,arguments)},readPolicy:function(){return l.apply(this,arguments)},_deletePolicy:function(){s(m,"",q)},_isConfirmed:function(){return n()!==null},_acceptsAll:function(){var t=l();return t&&!(j(t).indexOf("0")>-1)},_getCookieName:function(){return b.apply(this,arguments)},_showPrompt:function(){var t=((!this._isConfirmed()||this.policyRequiresRefresh())&&window.cta_enabled&&this.cookiesEnabled()&&!window.bbccookies_disable);return(window.orb&&window.orb.fig)?t&&(window.orb.fig("no")||window.orb.fig("ck")):t},_getPolicy:this.readPolicy};function b(u){var t=(""+u).match(/^([^=]+)(?==)/);return(t&&t.length?t[0]:"")}function j(t){return""+(t.ads?1:0)+(t.personalisation?1:0)+(t.performance?1:0)}function f(x){if(typeof x==="undefined"){x=i}if(typeof arguments[0]==="string"){var u=arguments[0],w=arguments[1];if(u==="necessary"){w=true}x=l();x[u]=w}else{if(typeof arguments[0]==="object"){x.necessary=true}}var v=new Date();v.setYear(v.getFullYear()+1);bbccookies.set(m+"="+j(x)+";domain=bbc.co.uk;path=/;expires="+v.toUTCString()+";");bbccookies.set(m+"="+j(x)+";domain=bbc.com;path=/;expires="+v.toUTCString()+";");bbccookies.set(m+"="+j(x)+";domain=bbci.co.uk;path=/;expires="+v.toUTCString()+";");var t=new Date(v.getTime());t.setMonth(t.getMonth()+1);bbccookies.set(bbccookies.POLICY_EXPIRY_COOKIENAME+"="+v.getTime()+";domain=bbc.co.uk;path=/;expires="+t.toUTCString()+";");bbccookies.set(bbccookies.POLICY_EXPIRY_COOKIENAME+"="+v.getTime()+";domain=bbc.com;path=/;expires="+t.toUTCString()+";");bbccookies.set(bbccookies.POLICY_EXPIRY_COOKIENAME+"="+v.getTime()+";domain=bbci.co.uk;path=/;expires="+t.toUTCString()+";");return x}function o(t){if(t===null){return null}var u=t.split("");return{ads:!!+u[0],personalisation:!!+u[1],performance:!!+u[2],necessary:true}}function n(){var t=new RegExp("(?:^|; ?)"+m+"=(\\d\\d\\d)($|;)"),u=document.cookie.match(t);if(!u){return null}return u[1]}function l(t){var u=o(n());if(!u){u=i}if(t){return u[t]}else{return u}}function e(t){return document.cookie=t+"=;expires="+q+";"}var g=!(window.bbccookies_flag==="ON"&&!bbccookies._acceptsAll()&&!window.bbccookies_disable);var k={},d={"personalisation":"ckps_.+|X-AB-iplayer-.+|ACTVTYMKR|BBC_EXAMPLE_COOKIE|BBCIplayer|BBCiPlayerM|BBCIplayerSession|BBCMediaselector|BBCPostcoder|bbctravel|CGISESSID|ed|food-view|forceDesktop|h4|IMRID|locserv|MyLang|myloc|NTABS|ttduserPrefs|V5|WEATHER|BBCScienceDiscoveryPlaylist_.+|bitratePref|correctAnswerCount|genreCookie|highestQuestionScore|incorrectAnswerCount|longestStreak|MSCSProfile|programmes-oap-expanded|quickestAnswer|score|servicePanel|slowestAnswer|totalTimeForAllFormatted|v|BBCwords|score|correctAnswerCount|highestQuestionScore|hploc|BGUID|BBCWEACITY|mstouch|myway|BBCNewsCustomisation|cbbc_anim|cbeebies_snd|bbcsr_usersx|cbeebies_rd|BBC-Latest_Blogs|zh-enc|pref_loc|m|bbcEmp.+|recs-.+|_lvd2|_lvs2|tick|_fcap_CAM1|_rcc2","performance":"ckpf_.+|optimizely.*|BBCLiveStatsClick|id|_em_.+|cookies_enabled|mbox|mbox-admin|mc_.+|omniture_unique|s_.+|sc_.+|adpolicyAdDisplayFrequency|s1|ns_session|ns_cookietest|ns_ux|NO-SA|tr_pr1|gvsurvey|bbcsurvey|si_v|sa_labels|obuid|mm_.+|mmid|mmcore.+|mmpa.+","ads":"ckad_.+|rsi_segs|c","necessary":"ckns_.+|BBC-UID|blq\\.dPref|SSO2-UID|BBC-H2-User|rmRpDetectReal|bbcComSurvey|IDENTITY_ENV|IDENTITY|IDENTITY-HTTPS|IDENTITY_SESSION|BBCCOMMENTSMODULESESSID|bbcBump.+|IVOTE_VOTE_HISTORY|pulse|BBCPG|BBCPGstat|ecos\\.dt"};function r(){var x=document.cookie.replace(/; +/g,";").split(";"),u,v=[];for(var w=0,t=x.length;w<t;w++){u=x[w];v.push(bbccookies._getCookieName(u))}return v}function h(w){var v=JSON.stringify(w);if(typeof(k[v])!=="undefined"){return k[v]}var u="";for(var t in w){if(w.hasOwnProperty(t)&&d[t]){if(w[t]===true){u+=(u?"|":"")+d[t]}}}k[v]=new RegExp("^("+(u?u:".*")+")$","i");return k[v]}bbccookies.getPolicyExpiryDateTime=function(){return bbccookies.POLICY_EXPIRY_COOKIENAME};bbccookies.purge=function(){var u=bbccookies.readPolicy(),w=r(),x;for(var v=0,t=w.length;v<t;v++){if(!bbccookies.isAllowed(w[v],u)){x=new Date();x.setTime(0);x=x.toUTCString();s(w[v],"deleted",x)}}};function p(){if(g){return}bbccookies.purge();contentLoaded(window,bbccookies.purge);if(window.addEventListener){window.addEventListener("beforeunload",bbccookies.purge,false)}else{if(window.attachEvent){window.attachEvent("onbeforeunload",bbccookies.purge)}else{window.onbeforeunload=bbccookies.purge}}}bbccookies.set=function(u,t){if(g){return document.cookie=u}var v=bbccookies._getCookieName(u);if(t||bbccookies.isAllowed(v)){return document.cookie=u}return null};bbccookies.isAllowed=function(v){var u=bbccookies.readPolicy();var t=h(u);return t.test(v)};p()})(); /*! * contentloaded.js * * Author: Diego Perini (diego.perini at gmail.com) * Summary: cross-browser wrapper for DOMContentLoaded * Updated: 20101020 * License: MIT * Version: 1.2 * * URL: * http://javascript.nwbox.com/ContentLoaded/ * http://javascript.nwbox.com/ContentLoaded/MIT-LICENSE * */ function contentLoaded(d,i){var c=false,h=true,k=d.document,j=k.documentElement,a=k.addEventListener,n=a?"addEventListener":"attachEvent",l=a?"removeEventListener":"detachEvent",b=a?"":"on",m=function(o){if(o.type==="readystatechange"&&k.readyState!="complete"){return}(o.type==="load"?d:k)[l](b+o.type,m,false);if(!c&&(c=true)){i.call(d,o.type||o)}},g=function(){try{j.doScroll("left")}catch(o){setTimeout(g,50);return}m("poll")};if(k.readyState==="complete"){i.call(d,"lazy")}else{if(!a&&j.doScroll){try{h=!d.frameElement}catch(f){}if(h){g()}}k[n](b+"DOMContentLoaded",m,false);k[n](b+"readystatechange",m,false);d[n](b+"load",m,false)}}if(typeof(require)==="function"&&!require.defined("orb/cookies")){define("orb/cookies",window.bbccookies)}; /*]]>*/</script> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/ (function(){window.orb={};window.orb.figState={ad:0,ap:0,ck:1,eu:1,mb:0,tb:0,uk:1,df:1};window.orb.fig=function(a){return(arguments.length)?window.orb.figState[a]:window.orb.figState};window.orb.fig.device={};window.orb.fig.geo={};window.orb.fig.user={};window.orb.fig.isDefault=function(){return window.orb.fig("df")};window.orb.fig.device.isTablet=function(){return window.orb.fig("tb")};window.orb.fig.device.isMobile=function(){return window.orb.fig("mb")};window.orb.fig.geo.isUK=function(){return window.orb.fig("uk")};window.orb.fig.geo.isEU=function(){return window.orb.fig("eu")};window.fig=window.fig||{};window.fig.manager={include:function(e){e=e||window;var g=false;var j=e.document,k=j.cookie,i=k.match(/(?:^|; ?)ckns_orb_fig=([^;]+)/),h;if(i){i=this.deserialise(decodeURIComponent(RegExp.$1));this.setFig(e,i)}if(window.fig.async&&typeof JSON!="undefined"){var b=(document.cookie.match("(^|; )ckns_orb_cachedfig=([^;]*)")||0)[2];h=b?JSON.parse(b):null;if(h){this.setFig(e,h);g=true}}var a="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://fig.bbc.co.uk/frameworks/fig/1/fig.js";if(g){j.write('<script src="'+a+'" async><'+"/script>")}else{j.write('<script src="'+a+'"><'+"/script>")}},confirm:function(a){return true},setFig:function(a,b){(function(){a.orb=a.orb||{};a.orb.figState=b})()},deserialise:function(b){var a={};b.replace(/([a-z]{2}):([0-9]+)/g,function(){a[RegExp.$1]=+RegExp.$2});return a}}})();fig.manager.include();/*]]>*/</script>  <script type="text/javascript">window.bbcFlagpoles_istats="ON",require.config({paths:{"istats-1":"//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://nav.files.bbci.co.uk/nav-analytics/0.1.0-72/js/istats-1","megavolt-client":"//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://nav.files.bbci.co.uk/nav-analytics/0.1.0-72/js/megavolt-client"}}),require.defined("orb/cookies")||(window.bbccookies?define("orb/cookies",function(){return window.bbccookies}):define("orb/cookies",function(){return{isAllowed:function(e){return!1}}})),require(["megavolt-client","istats-1","orb/cookies"],function(e,t,o){if(o.isAllowed("s1")){e.setMegavoltUrl("https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://mvt.api.bbc.com");e.setMegavoltTimeout("1000");t.addCollector({name:"default",url:"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://sa.bbc.co.uk/bbc/bbc/s",separator:"&"});var i="future.story.20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse.page";t.setCountername(i),window.istats_countername&&t.setCountername(window.istats_countername),t.addLabels("ml_name=webmodule&ml_version=72")}});</script> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/ window.bbcFlagpoles_istats = 'ON'; window.orb = window.orb || {}; if (typeof bbccookies !== 'undefined' && bbccookies.isAllowed('s1')) { var istatsTrackingUrl = '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://sa.bbc.co.uk/bbc/bbc/s?name=future.story.20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse.page&pal_route=webserviceapi&app_type=responsive&language=en-GB&pal_webapp=barlesque&prod_name=frameworks&app_name=frameworks'; require(['istats-1'], function (istats) { var counterName = (window.istats_countername) ? window.istats_countername : istatsTrackingUrl.match(/[\?&]name=([^&]*)/i)[1]; istats.setCountername(counterName); istats.addLabels('pal_route=webserviceapi&app_type=responsive&language=en-GB&pal_webapp=barlesque&prod_name=frameworks&app_name=frameworks'); var c = (document.cookie.match(/\bckns_policy=(\d\d\d)/) || []).pop() || ''; istats.addLabels({ 'blq_s': '4d', 'blq_r': '2.7', 'blq_v': 'default', 'blq_e': 'pal', 'bbc_mc': (c ? 'ad' + c.charAt(0) + 'ps' + c.charAt(1) + 'pf' + c.charAt(2) : 'not_set') } ); }); } /*]]>*/</script> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/ (function(undefined){if(!window.bbc){window.bbc={}}var ROLLING_PERIOD_DAYS=30;window.bbc.Mandolin=function(id,segments,opts){var now=new Date().getTime(),storedItem,DEFAULT_START=now,DEFAULT_RATE=1,COOKIE_NAME="ckpf_mandolin";opts=opts||{};this._id=id;this._segmentSet=segments;this._store=new window.window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage(COOKIE_NAME);this._opts=opts;this._rate=(opts.rate!==undefined)?+opts.rate:DEFAULT_RATE;this._startTs=(opts.start!==undefined)?new Date(opts.start).getTime():new Date(DEFAULT_START).getTime();this._endTs=(opts.end!==undefined)?new Date(opts.end).getTime():daysFromNow(ROLLING_PERIOD_DAYS);this._signupEndTs=(opts.signupEnd!==undefined)?new Date(opts.signupEnd).getTime():this._endTs;this._segment=null;if(typeof id!=="string"){throw new Error("Invalid Argument: id must be defined and be a string")}if(Object.prototype.toString.call(segments)!=="[object Array]"){throw new Error("Invalid Argument: Segments are required.")}if(opts.rate!==undefined&&(opts.rate<0||opts.rate>1)){throw new Error("Invalid Argument: Rate must be between 0 and 1.")}if(this._startTs>this._endTs){throw new Error("Invalid Argument: end date must occur after start date.")}if(!(this._startTs<this._signupEndTs&&this._signupEndTs<=this._endTs)){throw new Error("Invalid Argument: SignupEnd must be between start and end date")}removeExpired.call(this,now);var overrides=window.bbccookies.get().match(/ckns_mandolin_setSegments=([^;]+)/);if(overrides!==null){eval("overrides = "+decodeURIComponent(RegExp.$1)+";");if(overrides[this._id]&&this._segmentSet.indexOf(overrides[this._id])==-1){throw new Error("Invalid Override: overridden segment should exist in segments array")}}if(overrides!==null&&overrides[this._id]){this._segment=overrides[this._id]}else{if((storedItem=this._store.getItem(this._id))){this._segment=storedItem.segment}else{if(this._startTs<=now&&now<this._signupEndTs&&now<=this._endTs&&this._store.isEnabled()===true){this._segment=pick(segments,this._rate);if(opts.end===undefined){this._store.setItem(this._id,{segment:this._segment})}else{this._store.setItem(this._id,{segment:this._segment,end:this._endTs})}log.call(this,"mandolin_segment")}}}log.call(this,"mandolin_view")};window.bbc.Mandolin.prototype.getSegment=function(){return this._segment};function log(actionType,params){var that=this;require(["istats-1"],function(istats){istats.log(actionType,that._id+":"+that._segment,params?params:{})})}function removeExpired(expires){var items=this._store.getItems(),expiresInt=+expires;for(var key in items){if(items[key].end!==undefined&&+items[key].end<expiresInt){this._store.removeItem(key)}}}function getLastExpirationDate(data){var winner=0,rollingExpire=daysFromNow(ROLLING_PERIOD_DAYS);for(var key in data){if(data[key].end===undefined&&rollingExpire>winner){winner=rollingExpire}else{if(+data[key].end>winner){winner=+data[key].end}}}return(winner)?new Date(winner):new Date(rollingExpire)}window.bbc.Mandolin.prototype.log=function(params){log.call(this,"mandolin_log",params)};window.bbc.Mandolin.prototype.convert=function(params){log.call(this,"mandolin_convert",params);this.convert=function(){}};function daysFromNow(n){var endDate;endDate=new Date().getTime()+(n*60*60*24)*1000;return endDate}function pick(segments,rate){var picked,min=0,max=segments.length-1;if(typeof rate==="number"&&Math.random()>rate){return null}do{picked=Math.floor(Math.random()*(max-min+1))+min}while(picked>max);return segments[picked]}window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage=function(name){validateCookieName(name);this._cookieName=name;this._isEnabled=(bbccookies.isAllowed(this._cookieName)===true&&bbccookies.cookiesEnabled()===true)};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.setItem=function(key,value){var storeData=this.getItems();storeData[key]=value;this.save(storeData);return value};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.isEnabled=function(){return this._isEnabled};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.getItem=function(key){var storeData=this.getItems();return storeData[key]};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.removeItem=function(key){var storeData=this.getItems();delete storeData[key];this.save(storeData)};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.getItems=function(){return deserialise(this.readCookie(this._cookieName)||"")};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.save=function(data){window.bbccookies.set(this._cookieName+"="+encodeURIComponent(serialise(data))+"; expires="+getLastExpirationDate(data).toUTCString()+";")};window.bbc.Mandolin.Storage.prototype.readCookie=function(name){var nameEq=name+"=",ca=window.bbccookies.get().split("; "),i,c;validateCookieName(name);for(i=0;i<ca.length;i++){c=ca[i];if(c.indexOf(nameEq)===0){return decodeURIComponent(c.substring(nameEq.length,c.length))}}return null};function serialise(o){var str="";for(var p in o){if(o.hasOwnProperty(p)){str+='"'+p+'"'+":"+(typeof o[p]==="object"?(o[p]===null?"null":"{"+serialise(o[p])+"}"):'"'+o[p].toString()+'"')+","}}return str.replace(/,\}/g,"}").replace(/,$/g,"")}function deserialise(str){var o;str="{"+str+"}";if(!validateSerialisation(str)){throw"Invalid input provided for deserialisation."}eval("o = "+str);return o}var validateSerialisation=(function(){var OBJECT_TOKEN="<Object>",ESCAPED_CHAR='"\\n\\r\\u2028\\u2029\\u000A\\u000D\\u005C',ALLOWED_CHAR="([^"+ESCAPED_CHAR+"]|\\\\["+ESCAPED_CHAR+"])",KEY='"'+ALLOWED_CHAR+'+"',VALUE='(null|"'+ALLOWED_CHAR+'*"|'+OBJECT_TOKEN+")",KEY_VALUE=KEY+":"+VALUE,KEY_VALUE_SEQUENCE="("+KEY_VALUE+",)*"+KEY_VALUE,OBJECT_LITERAL="({}|{"+KEY_VALUE_SEQUENCE+"})",objectPattern=new RegExp(OBJECT_LITERAL,"g");return function(str){if(str.indexOf(OBJECT_TOKEN)!==-1){return false}while(str.match(objectPattern)){str=str.replace(objectPattern,OBJECT_TOKEN)}return str===OBJECT_TOKEN}})();function validateCookieName(name){if(name.match(/ ,;/)){throw"Illegal name provided, must be valid in browser cookie."}}})(); /*]]>*/</script> <script type="text/javascript"> document.documentElement.className += (document.documentElement.className? ' ' : '') + 'orb-js'; fig.manager.confirm(); </script> <script src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/script/orb/api.min.js"></script> <script src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/script/orb/font.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var blq = { environment: function() { return 'live'; } } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ function oqsSurveyManager(w, flag) { if (flag !== 'OFF' && (w.orb.fig("no") || w.orb.fig("uk"))) { w.document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/script/vendor/edr.min.js"><'+'/script>'); } } oqsSurveyManager(window, 'ON'); /*]]>*/ </script>  <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ var _sf_startpt = (new Date()).getTime(); /*]]>*/ </script><style type="text/css">.bbccom_display_none{display:none;}</style><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ var bbcdotcomConfig, googletag = googletag || {}; googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; var bbcdotcom = false; (function(){ if(typeof require !== 'undefined') { require({ paths:{ "bbcdotcom":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/script" } }); } })(); /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ var bbcdotcom = { adverts: { keyValues: { set: function() {} } }, advert: { write: function () {}, show: function () {}, isActive: function () { return false; }, layout: function() { return { reset: function() {} } } }, config: { init: function() {}, isActive: function() {}, setSections: function() {}, isAdsEnabled: function() {}, setAdsEnabled: function() {}, isAnalyticsEnabled: function() {}, setAnalyticsEnabled: function() {}, setAssetPrefix: function() {}, setVersion: function () {}, setJsPrefix: function() {}, setSwfPrefix: function() {}, setCssPrefix: function() {}, setConfig: function() {}, getAssetPrefix: function() {}, getJsPrefix: function () {}, getSwfPrefix: function () {}, getCssPrefix: function () {} }, survey: { init: function(){ return false; } }, data: {}, init: function() {}, objects: function(str) { return false; }, locale: { set: function() {}, get: function() {} }, setAdKeyValue: function() {}, utils: { addEvent: function() {}, addHtmlTagClass: function() {}, log: function () {} }, addLoadEvent: function() {} }; /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function(){ if (typeof orb !== 'undefined' && typeof orb.fig === 'function') { if (orb.fig('ad') && orb.fig('uk') == 0) { bbcdotcom.data = { ads: (orb.fig('ad') ? 1 : 0), stats: (orb.fig('uk') == 0 ? 1 : 0), statsProvider: orb.fig('ap') }; } } else { document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'+('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.bbc.com' : 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://tps.bbc.com')+'/wwscripts/data">\x3C/script>'); } })(); /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function(){ if (typeof orb === 'undefined' || typeof orb.fig !== 'function') { bbcdotcom.data = { ads: bbcdotcom.data.a, stats: bbcdotcom.data.b, statsProvider: bbcdotcom.data.c }; } if (bbcdotcom.data.ads == 1) { document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'+('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.bbc.co.uk' : 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk')+'/wwscripts/flag">\x3C/script>'); } })(); /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function(){ if (window.bbcdotcom && (typeof bbcdotcom.flag == 'undefined' || (typeof bbcdotcom.data.ads !== 'undefined' && bbcdotcom.flag.a != 1))) { bbcdotcom.data.ads = 0; } if (/[?|&]ads/.test(window.location.href) || /(^|; )ads=on; /.test(document.cookie) || /; ads=on(; |$)/.test(document.cookie)) { bbcdotcom.data.ads = 1; bbcdotcom.data.stats = 1; } if (window.bbcdotcom && (bbcdotcom.data.ads == 1 || bbcdotcom.data.stats == 1)) { bbcdotcom.assetPrefix = "https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/"; if (/(sandbox|int)(.dev)*.bbc.co*/.test(window.location.href) || /[?|&]ads-debug/.test(window.location.href) || document.cookie.indexOf('ads-debug=') !== -1) { document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/style/dist/bbcdotcom.dev.css" />'); } else { document.write('<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/style/dist/bbcdotcom.css" />'); } (function() { var useSSL = 'https:' == document.location.protocol; var src = (useSSL ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js'; document.write('<scr' + 'ipt src="' + src + '">\x3C/script>'); })(); if (/(sandbox|int)(.dev)*.bbc.co*/.test(window.location.href) || /[?|&]ads-debug/.test(window.location.href) || document.cookie.indexOf('ads-debug=') !== -1) { document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/script/dist/bbcdotcom.dev.js">\x3C/script>'); } else { document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/script/dist/bbcdotcom.js">\x3C/script>'); } } })(); /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.data.stats == 1) { document.write('<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://secure-us.imrworldwide.com/">'); document.write('<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://me-cdn.effectivemeasure.net/">'); document.write('<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ssc.api.bbc.com/">'); } if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.data.ads == 1) { document.write('<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.googletagservices.com/">'); } </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function(){ if (window.bbcdotcom && (bbcdotcom.data.ads == 1 || bbcdotcom.data.stats == 1)) { bbcdotcomConfig = {"adFormat":"standard","adKeyword":"","adMode":"smart","adsEnabled":true,"appAnalyticsSections":"","asyncEnabled":false,"disableInitialLoad":false,"advertInfoPageUrl":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170805020227\/http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/privacy\/cookies\/international\/","advertisementText":"Advertisement","analyticsEnabled":true,"appName":"barlesque","assetPrefix":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170805020227\/http:\/\/static.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/1.61.0\/","customAdParams":[],"customStatsParams":[],"headline":"","id":"","inAssociationWithText":"in association with","keywords":"","language":"","orbTransitional":false,"outbrainEnabled":true,"adsenseEnabled":true,"adsportappEnabled":true,"palEnv":"live","productName":"","sections":[],"comScoreEnabled":true,"comscoreSite":"bbc","comscoreID":"19293874","comscorePageName":"","slots":"","sponsoredByText":"is sponsored by","adsByGoogleText":"Ads by Google","summary":"","type":"","features":{"testfeature":{"name":"testfeature","envs":["sandbox","int","test"],"on":true,"options":{},"override":null},"lxadverts":{"name":"lxadverts","envs":[],"on":true,"options":{},"override":null}},"staticBase":"\/bbcdotcom","staticHost":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170805020227\/http:\/\/static.bbci.co.uk","staticVersion":"1.61.0","staticPrefix":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20170805020227\/http:\/\/static.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/1.61.0","dataHttp":"tps.bbc.com","dataHttps":"www.bbc.com","flagHttp":"www.bbc.co.uk","flagHttps":"www.bbc.co.uk","analyticsHttp":"sa.bbc.com","analyticsHttps":"ssa.bbc.com"}; bbcdotcom.config.init(bbcdotcomConfig, bbcdotcom.data, window.location, window.document); bbcdotcom.config.setAssetPrefix("https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbci.co.uk/bbcdotcom/1.61.0/"); bbcdotcom.config.setVersion("1.61.0"); document.write(''); document.write(''); document.write(''); if (/[?|&]ex-dp/.test(window.location.href) || document.cookie.indexOf('ex-dp=') !== -1) { bbcdotcom.utils.addHtmlTagClass('bbcdotcom-ex-dp'); } } })(); /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function() { window.bbcdotcom.head = true; }()); /*]]>*/ </script>  <script type="text/javascript"> // Globally available search context window.SEARCHBOX={"variant":"default","locale":"en","navSearchboxStaticPrefix":"//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://nav.files.bbci.co.uk/searchbox/1.0.0-129","searchboxAppStaticPrefix":"//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://search.files.bbci.co.uk/searchbox-app/1.0.16","searchFormHtml":"<div tabindex=\"-1\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg\" data-react-checksum=\"1923032532\"><div data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0\"><section class=\"se-searchbox-panel\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0\"><div class=\"se-g-wrap\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0\"><div class=\"se-g-layout\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0\"><div class=\"se-g-layout__item se-searchbox-title\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.0\">search</div><div class=\"se-g-layout__item se-searchbox\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1\"><form accept-charset=\"utf-8\" id=\"searchboxDrawerForm\" method=\"get\" action=\"//search.bbc.co.uk/search\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0\"><label class=\"se-searchbox__input\" for=\"se-searchbox-input-field\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0.0\"><span class=\"se-sr-only\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.0\">Search Term</span><input name=\"q\" type=\"text\" value=\"\" id=\"se-searchbox-input-field\" class=\"se-searchbox__input__field\" maxlength=\"512\" autocomplete=\"off\" autocorrect=\"off\" autocapitalize=\"off\" spellcheck=\"false\" tabindex=\"0\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1\"/></label><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"scope\" value=\"\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0.2\"/><button type=\"submit\" class=\"se-searchbox__submit\" tabindex=\"0\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0.3\">Search</button><button type=\"button\" class=\"se-searchbox__clear se-searchbox__clear--visible\" tabindex=\"0\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.0.0.0.1.0.4\">Close</button></form></div></div></div></section><div aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\" class=\"se-suggestions-container\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.1\"><section class=\"se-g-wrap\" data-reactid=\".2fvssx2jgg.0.1.0\"></section></div></div></div>","searchScopePlaceholder":"","searchScopeParam":"","searchScopeTemplate":"","searchPlaceholderWrapperStart":"","searchPlaceholderWrapperEnd":""}; window.SEARCHBOX.suppress = false; window.SEARCHBOX.searchScope = SEARCHBOX.searchScopeTemplate.split('-')[0]; </script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227cs_/http://nav.files.bbci.co.uk/searchbox/1.0.0-129/css/main.css">    <link rel="stylesheet" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227cs_/http://static.bbc.co.uk/id/0.37.24/style/id-cta.css"/> <link rel="stylesheet" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227cs_/http://static.bbc.co.uk/id/0.37.24/style/id-cta-v5.css"/>  <script type="text/javascript"> /* <![CDATA[ */ var map = {}; if (typeof(map['jssignals-1']) == 'undefined') { map['jssignals-1'] = 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://static.bbc.co.uk/frameworks/jssignals/0.3.6/modules/jssignals-1'; } require({paths: map}); /* ]]> */ </script> <script src="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://static.bbc.co.uk/id/0.37.24/modules/idcta/dist/idcta-1.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> (function () { if (!window.require) { throw new Error('idcta: could not find require module'); } if(typeof(map) == 'undefined') { var map = {}; } if(!!document.createElementNS && !!document.createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/svg', "svg").createSVGRect) { document.documentElement.className += ' id-svg'; } var ptrt = RegExp("[\\?&]ptrt=([^&#]*)").exec(document.location.href); var ENDPOINT_URL = '//' + ((window.location.protocol == "https:") ? ('ssl.bbc.co.uk').replace("www.", "ssl.") : ('ssl.bbc.co.uk').replace("ssl.", "www.")); var ENDPOINT_CONFIG = ('/idcta/config?callback&locale=en-GB&ptrt=' + encodeURI((ptrt ? ptrt[1] : document.location.href))).replace(/\&/g, '&'); var ENDPOINT_TRANSLATIONS = '/idcta/translations?callback&locale=en-GB'; map['idapp-1'] = '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbc.co.uk/idapp/0.72.58/modules/idapp/idapp-1'; map['idcta'] = '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbc.co.uk/id/0.37.24/modules/idcta'; map['idcta/config'] = [ENDPOINT_URL + ENDPOINT_CONFIG, '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbc.co.uk/id/0.37.24/modules/idcta/fallbackConfig']; map['idcta/translations'] = [ENDPOINT_URL + ENDPOINT_TRANSLATIONS, '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.bbc.co.uk/id/0.37.24/modules/idcta/fallbackTranslations']; require({paths: map}); /* * Temporary code * To be removed when old id-statusbar-config is no longer supported */ define('id-statusbar-config', ['idcta/id-config'], function(conf) { return conf; }); define('idcta/id-statusbar-config', ['idcta/id-config'], function(conf) { return conf; }); })(); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227cs_/http://mybbc.files.bbci.co.uk/notification-ui/3.8.1/css/main.min.css"/>  <script> var isIE8=false, _config={"version":"rc43","adpolicy":{"ad-display-frequency":180},"weather_api":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://open.live.bbc.co.uk","full_forecast_url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/"},"bbc":{"ps":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk"},"ww":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com"}},"domain":"www.bbc.com","images":{"default":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2g/t3/p02gt3v6.jpg","title":"BBC Future Default Placeholder","URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2r/tx/p02rtx8g.jpg"},"capital-external-promotion":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe//images/live/p0/2y/vw/p02yvwtm.jpg","title":"BBC Capital External Link"},"autos-external-promotion":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2y/vx/p02yvx7t.jpg","title":"BBC Autos External Link"},"culture-external-promotion":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2v/0x/p02v0x03.jpg","title":"BBC Culture External Link"},"earth-external-promotion":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/30/k9/p030k9by.jpg","title":"BBC Earth External Link"},"future-external-promotion":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2r/tx/p02rtx8g.jpg","title":"BBC Future External Link"},"travel-external-promotion":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2j/hr/p02jhrqm.jpg","title":"BBC Travel External Link"},"column-index":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2r/rg/p02rrg78.jpg","title":"BBC Future Column Index Placeholder"},"section-index":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2r/rg/p02rrgc8.jpg","title":"BBC Future Section Index Placeholder"},"search-results":{"URL":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2r/rd/p02rrd5l.jpg","title":"BBC Future Search Results Placeholder"}},"module":{"id":"wwfuture","backendModuleId":"wwfuture","isGeoRestricted":false,"name":"Future","domain":"future","brandColor":"#589e50","description":"BBC Future"},"moduleId":"wwfuture","environment":"live","socialIcons":{"default":{"desktop":["facebook","twitter","reddit","linkedin","google","email"],"mobile":["facebook","twitter","reddit","whatsapp","google","email"]},"slideshow_gallery":{"desktop":["email","facebook","twitter","pinterest","reddit"],"mobile":["email","facebook","twitter","pinterest","whatsapp"]},"sol_video_player":{"desktop":["email","facebook","twitter","pinterest","reddit"],"mobile":["email","facebook","twitter","pinterest","whatsapp"]}},"socialLinks":{"facebook":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture"},"twitter":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://twitter.com/BBC_FUTURE","username":"BBC_Future"}},"analytics":{"is_enabled":true,"bbc_vertical_regex":"/^http(|s):\\/\\/[a-z0-9\\-.]+.bbc.com\\/(future|culture|earth|capital|autos|travel|britain)(\\/)?(.*)?/","comscore":{"is_enabled":true,"url_ssc_http":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ssc.api.bbc.com/","url_ssc_https":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://ssc.api.bbc.com/","url_scorecard_http":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b","url_scorecard_https":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/b","suite":"bbc","customer_id":"19774467","user_tracking_cookie":"ckpf_sscid","user_tracking_cookie_legacy":"ckpf_uid","delay_tracking_cookie":"ckpf_wwverticalscs","tracking_timeout":500}},"image_recipe":{"recipe_prefix":"live/","watermarking_enabled":true},"static":{"url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40","brand-img-dir":"/img/shared/brands/","vertical":"future","module":"wwfuture"}}, _entityMapping="wwfuture/story/{id}", _exposedData={"story":{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":1121334,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2929,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg","SourceWidth":5207,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"A severe drought in Syria left many people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate, which may have been a factor that led to civil war (Credit Getty Images):","SynopsisShort":"(Credit Getty Images):","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-667635240.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj61","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj61","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p050dj61","_id":"59826f9c543960df95e00abb"}],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":468565,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2403,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/50/dj/p050djbp.jpg","SourceWidth":4272,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"A protest group in Argentina demonstrates against United States interference in the crises in Syria and Venezuela (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050djbp.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-667786670.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050djbp","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050djbp","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p050djbp","_id":"59826f9b543960df95e00aba"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":1121334,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2929,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg","SourceWidth":5207,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"A severe drought in Syria left many people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate, which may have been a factor that led to civil war (Credit Getty Images):","SynopsisShort":"(Credit Getty Images):","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-667635240.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj61","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj61","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p050dj61","_id":"59826f9c543960df95e00abb"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":969143,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2025,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/50/dj/p050dj7r.jpg","SourceWidth":3600,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"A South African police van is set on fire following protests about inequality in 2016 (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj7r.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-617967704.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj7r","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj7r","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p050dj7r","_id":"5983199e543960df95e062d3"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":1516719,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2813,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/50/dj/p050dj81.jpg","SourceWidth":5000,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"One of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a cost (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj81.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-468527942.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj81","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj81","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p050dj81","_id":"59826f9d543960df95e00abd"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":616609,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1519,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/50/dj/p050dj8d.jpg","SourceWidth":2701,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Some civilisations simply fade out of existence - becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj8d.jpg","Title":"iStock-178819005.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj8d","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p050dj8d","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p050dj8d","_id":"598478ef543960df95e11ea0"}],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":354897,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2145,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/1q/2n/p01q2ng7.jpg","SourceWidth":2078,"SynopsisLong":"(Rachel Nuwer)","SynopsisMedium":"(Rachel Nuwer)","SynopsisShort":"(Rachel Nuwer)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/1q/2n/p01q2ng7.jpg","Title":"rachelheadshotcrop.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p01q2ng7","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p01q2ng7","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p01q2ng7","_id":"5982e75e543960df95e04901"}],"Description":"<p>Rachel Nuwer is a science journalist who contributes to\nvenues such as The New York Times, Scientific American and Smithsonian. Her\nwebsite is <a href=\"http://rachelnuwer.com/\">rachelnuwer.com</a> and you can\nfollow her on twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/rachelnuwer\">@rachelnuwer</a>.\nShe lives in Brooklyn.</p>","Email":[],"Links":null,"Name":"Rachel Nuwer","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"c575dd82-8272-4f0b-9c80-40e01bb0a58e","Id":"wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"rachel-nuwer"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"c575dd82-8272-4f0b-9c80-40e01bb0a58e","Id":"wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"rachel-nuwer"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:author:wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","_id":"5981d0d8543960df95dde185"}],"BodyHtml":"<p>The political economist Benjamin Friedman once <a href=\"http://harvardmagazine.com/2006/01/growth-is-good.html\">compared</a> modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.</p><p>Such collapses have occurred many times in human history, and no civilisation, no matter how seemingly great, is immune to the vulnerabilities that may lead a society to its end. Regardless of how well things are going in the present moment, the situation can always change. Putting aside species-ending events like an asteroid strike, nuclear winter or deadly pandemic, history tells us that it’s usually a plethora of factors that contribute to collapse. What are they, and which, if any, have already begun to surface? It should come as no surprise that humanity is currently on an unsustainable and uncertain path – but just how close are we to reaching the point of no return?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p050dj7r\"}}</p><p>While it’s impossible to predict the future with certainty, mathematics, science and history can provide hints about the prospects of Western societies for long-term continuation.</p><p>Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615\">findings</a> that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.</p><blockquote><p> Disaster comes when elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources   </p></blockquote><p>That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues. Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the <a href=\"https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/3/4/470/2669331/Modeling-sustainability-population-inequality\">top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined</a>. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day.  </p><p>For both scenarios, the models define a carrying capacity – a total population level that a given environment’s resources can sustain over the long term. If the carrying capacity is overshot by too much, collapse becomes inevitable. That fate is avoidable, however. “If we make rational choices to reduce factors such as inequality, explosive population growth, the rate at which we deplete natural resources and the rate of pollution – all perfectly doable things – then we can avoid collapse and stabilise onto a sustainable trajectory,” Motesharrei said. “But we cannot wait forever to make those decisions.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p050dj81\"}}</p><p>Unfortunately, some experts believe such tough decisions exceed our political and psychological capabilities. “The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual,” says Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and author of <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008674K64/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1\">2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years</a>. “The climate problem will get worse and worse and worse because we won’t be able to live up to what we’ve promised to do in the Paris Agreement and elsewhere.”  </p><p>While we are all in this together, the world’s poorest will feel the effects of collapse first. Indeed, some nations are already serving as canaries in the coal mine for the issues that may eventually pull apart more affluent ones. <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241\">Syria</a>, for example, enjoyed exceptionally high fertility rates for a time, which fueled rapid population growth. A severe drought in the late 2000s, likely made worse by human-induced climate change, combined with groundwater shortages to cripple agricultural production. That crisis left large numbers of people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate. Many flooded into urban centres, overwhelming limited resources and services there. Pre-existing ethnic tensions increased, creating fertile grounds for violence and conflict. On top of that, poor governance – including neoliberal policies that eliminated water subsidies in the middle of the drought – tipped the country into civil war in 2011 and sent it careening toward collapse. </p><blockquote><p> Another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone is the increasing occurrence of ‘nonlinearities’, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order   </p></blockquote><p>In Syria’s case – as with so many other societal collapses throughout history – it was not one but a plethora of factors that contributed, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, and author of <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Upside-Down-Catastrophe-Creativity-Civilization/dp/1597260657\">The Upside of Down</a>. Homer-Dixon calls these combined forces tectonic stresses for the way in which they quietly build up and then abruptly erupt, overloading any stabilising mechanisms that otherwise keep a society in check.</p><p>The Syrian case aside, another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone, Homer-Dixon says, is the increasing occurrence of what experts call nonlinearities, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the rise of ISIS, Brexit, or Donald Trump’s election.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p050dj8d\"}}</p><p>The past can also provide hints for how the future might play out. Take, for example, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. By the end of the 100BC the Romans had spread across the Mediterranean, to the places most easily accessed by sea. They should have stopped there, but things were going well and they felt empowered to expand to new frontiers by land. While transportation by sea was economical, however, transportation across land was slow and expensive. All the while, they were overextending themselves and running up costs. The Empire managed to remain stable in the ensuing centuries, but repercussions for spreading themselves too thin caught up with them in the 3rd Century, which was plagued by civil war and invasions. The Empire tried to maintain its core lands, even as the army ate up its budget and inflation climbed ever higher as the government debased its silver currency to try to cover its mounting expenses. While some scholars cite the beginning of collapse as the year 410, when the invading Visigoths sacked the capital, that dramatic event was made possible by a downward spiral spanning more than a century.</p><blockquote><p> Eventually, Rome could no longer afford to prop up its heightened complexities   </p></blockquote><p>According to Joseph Tainter, a professor of environment and society at Utah State University and author of <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X\">The Collapse of Complex Societies</a>, one of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.1057/abstract\">complexity</a> has a cost. As stated in the laws of thermodynamics, it takes energy to maintain any system in a complex, ordered state – and human society is no exception. By the 3rd Century, Rome was increasingly adding new things – an army double the size, a cavalry, subdivided provinces that each needed their own bureaucracies, courts and defences – just to maintain its status quo and keep from sliding backwards. Eventually, it could no longer afford to prop up those heightened complexities. It was fiscal weakness, not war, that did the Empire in.</p><p>So far, modern Western societies have largely been able to postpone similar precipitators of collapse through fossil fuels and industrial technologies – think hydraulic fracturing coming along in 2008, just in time to offset soaring oil prices. Tainter suspects this will not always be the case, however. “Imagine the costs if we have to build a seawall around Manhattan, just to protect against storms and rising tides,” he says. Eventually, investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy reaches a point of diminishing returns, leading to fiscal weakness and vulnerability to collapse. That is, he says “unless we find a way to pay for the complexity, as our ancestors did when they increasingly ran societies on fossil fuels.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p050djbp\"}}</p><p>Also paralleling Rome, Homer-Dixon predicts that Western societies’ collapse will be preceded by a retraction of people and resources back to their core homelands. As poorer nations continue to disintegrate amid conflicts and natural disasters, enormous waves of migrants will stream out of failing regions, seeking refuge in more stable states. Western societies will respond with restrictions and even bans on immigration; multi-billion dollar walls and border-patrolling drones and troops; heightened security on who and what gets in; and more authoritarian, populist styles of governing. “It’s almost an immunological attempt by countries to sustain a periphery and push pressure back,” Homer-Dixon says.</p><p>Meanwhile, a widening gap between rich and poor within those already vulnerable Western nations will push society toward further instability from the inside. “By 2050, the US and UK will have evolved into two-class societies where a small elite lives a good life and there is declining well-being for the majority,” Randers says. “What will collapse is equity.”</p><p>Whether in the US, UK or elsewhere, the more dissatisfied and afraid people become, Homer-Dixon says, the more of a tendency they have to cling to their in-group identity – whether religious, racial or national. Denial, including of the emerging prospect of societal collapse itself, will be widespread, as will rejection of evidence-based fact. If people admit that problems exist at all, they will assign blame for those problems to everyone outside of their in-group, building up resentment. “You’re setting up the psychological and social prerequisites for mass violence,” Homer-Dixon says. When localised violence finally does break out, or another country or group decides to invade, collapse will be difficult to avoid.</p><p>Europe, with its close proximity to Africa, its land bridge to the Middle East and its neighbourly status with more politically volatile nations to the East, will feel these pressures first. The US will likely hold out longer, surrounded as it is by ocean buffers. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p050dj61\"}}</p><blockquote><p> As time passes, some empires simply become increasingly inconsequential   </p></blockquote><p>On the other hand, Western societies may not meet with a violent, dramatic end. In some cases, civilisations simply fade out of existence – becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper. The British Empire has been on this path since 1918, Randers says, and other Western nations might go this route as well. As time passes, they will become increasingly inconsequential and, in response to the problems driving their slow fade-out, will also starkly depart from the values they hold dear today. “Western nations are not going to collapse, but the smooth operation and friendly nature of Western society will disappear, because inequity is going to explode,” Randers argues. “Democratic, liberal society will fail, while stronger governments like China will be the winners.” </p><p>Some of these forecasts and early warning signs should sound familiar, precisely because they are already underway. While Homer-Dixon is not surprised at the world’s recent turn of events – he predicted some of them in his 2006 book – he didn’t expect these developments to occur before the mid-2020s.</p><p>Western civilisation is not a lost cause, however. Using reason and science to guide decisions, paired with extraordinary leadership and exceptional goodwill, human society can progress to higher and higher levels of well-being and development, Homer-Dixon says. Even as we weather the coming stresses of climate change, population growth and dropping energy returns, we can maintain our societies and better them. But that requires resisting the very natural urge, when confronted with such overwhelming pressures, to become less cooperative, less generous and less open to reason. “The question is, how can we manage to preserve some kind of humane world as we make our way through these changes?” Homer-Dixon says.</p><p><em>Join 800,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><strong><em>Facebook</em></strong></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><strong><em>Twitter</em></strong></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><strong><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></strong></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em> </p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":267692,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/3s/22/p03s22rm.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/3s/22/p03s22rm.jpg","Title":"(Credit: iStock)","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p03s22rm","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p03s22rm","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p03s22rm","_id":"5981f6c3543960df95dfcaf6"}],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"","Name":"What If","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"What If...","CreationDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"d4482238-5ef4-4bf6-b8ce-6d7a2f4f2f1a","Id":"wwfuture/column/what-if","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/what-if"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"d4482238-5ef4-4bf6-b8ce-6d7a2f4f2f1a","Id":"wwfuture/column/what-if","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/what-if"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/what-if","_id":"5981d0e1543960df95dde80c"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":114650,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2h/7r/p02h7rqj.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"(Thinkstock)","SynopsisMedium":"(Thinkstock)","SynopsisShort":"(Thinkstock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2h/7r/p02h7rqj.jpg","Title":"eyelights_thinkstock.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02h7rqj","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02h7rqj","_id":"59839d89543960df95e0aad3"}],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"Stories that inspire, intrigue and enlighten","Name":"Best of BBC Future","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Best of BBC Future"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-05-02T06:56:30.095016Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"e6539848-9854-4af2-b3c8-a95e2d9060f3","Id":"wwfuture/column/best-of-bbc-future","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-05-02T06:56:30.095016Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/best-of-bbc-future"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/best-of-bbc-future","_id":"5981d0e5543960df95dded4e"}],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2017-04-18T06:02:42.264Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"How Western civilisation could collapse","HeadlineShort":"How Western civilisation could collapse","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future, says Rachel Nuwer. ","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[{"Content":{"Description":"Apple News Publish: Select to publish, remove to unpublish. (Do not just delete or unpublish the story)","Name":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Entity":"option","Guid":"13f4bc85-ae27-4a34-9397-0e6ad3619619","Id":"option/publish-applenews-system-1","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Project":"","Slug":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:option:option/publish-applenews-system-1","_id":"5981d336543960df95df2a6f"}],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":244046,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g3/p04yg3n1.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g3/p04yg3n1.jpg","Title":"democracy 6.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg3n1","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg3n1","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg3n1","_id":"5984eaf5543960df95e15923"}],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":518169,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g2/p04yg27w.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Since World War Two, democratic processes and the voice of the people have largely guided the formation of governments in many of the world's superpowers (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g2/p04yg27w.jpg","Title":"democracy 2.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg27w","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg27w","_id":"5984eafa543960df95e15926"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":823406,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1yx.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Recent major events like Brexit have prompted re-examination of democracy's future and its place in the world (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1yx.jpg","Title":"democracy 1.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg1yx","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg1yx","_id":"5984eafb543960df95e15927"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":804761,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1tx.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"New world leaders like Donald Trump have benefited from the global rise of populist and nationalist sentiment (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1tx.jpg","Title":"democracy 3.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg1tx","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg1tx","_id":"5984eaf6543960df95e15924"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":310595,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1q5.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"In Communist China, which is rapidly emerging as a new global superpower, citizens view government as a form of guardianship (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1q5.jpg","Title":"democracy 5.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg1q5","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg1q5","_id":"5984eafa543960df95e15925"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":401466,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1f7.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Student protester Joshua Wong has mobilised pro-democracy groups in his native Hong Kong (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g1/p04yg1f7.jpg","Title":"democracy 4.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg1f7","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg1f7","_id":"5984eaff543960df95e15928"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":244046,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1080,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4y/g3/p04yg3n1.jpg","SourceWidth":1920,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"","SynopsisShort":"Democracy","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4y/g3/p04yg3n1.jpg","Title":"democracy 6.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04yg3n1","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04yg3n1","_id":"5984eaf5543960df95e15923"}],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"","Email":[],"Links":null,"Name":"Douglas Heaven","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-10-12T15:04:56.389583Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"7490b014-455a-4484-9fc3-ff54fa2acc52","Id":"wwfuture/author/douglas-heaven","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-10-12T15:04:56.389583Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"douglas-heaven"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:author:wwfuture/author/douglas-heaven","_id":"5981d0dc543960df95dde621"}],"BodyHtml":"<p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hz4ny\">Joshua Wong</a> was 17 when he was first arrested for his political views. But by then he had been taking part in pro-democracy protests for more than three years. In 2011, aged 14, he founded a student activist group in Hong Kong to campaign against the government's introduction of a compulsory school curriculum that was favourable to the Communist Party of China: the new curriculum ignored events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, in which several hundred students were shot and killed, and was critical of democracy.</p><p>In 2012, Wong organised large-scale demonstrations: a handful of students went on hunger strike and tens of thousands of people flooded the plazas outside Hong Kong's government headquarters. By 2014 – the year of his first arrest – Wong was a leading figure in the so-called Umbrella Revolution, a series of protests that swept across Hong Kong after China announced it would be screening candidates in the territory's own coming elections. Now 20, Wong is the secretary general of Demosisto, a pro-democracy political party he co-founded last year.</p><blockquote><p> The problem is in the heart of the most mature democracies in the West – Joan Hoey, Economist Intelligence Unit   </p></blockquote><p>Wong is championed by democratic countries in the West. Time magazine nominated him for Person of the Year in 2014 and Fortune named him one of their “world's greatest leaders” in 2015. But as Wong – and others like him – fight for democracy, many countries that applaud his activism appear to be letting it slip. By more than one measure, democracy around the world is declining.</p><p>Trust in political institutions – including the electoral process itself - are at an all-time low. New converts to democracy in Europe and the Middle East are sliding back into authoritarian rule. And populist leaders who are expected to curb certain civil liberties are winning votes. Societies the world over are experiencing a strong backlash to a system of government that has largely been the hallmark of developed nations for generations.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04yg27w\"}}</p><p>“A lot of focus gets put on places like Russia, the Middle East or China,” says Joan Hoey at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in London. “But the problem is here, in the heart of the most mature democracies in the West.”</p><p>Hoey's stark assessment is shared by many others. Western states are worrying about the health of democracy for the first time since perhaps the end of World War Two, says Larry Diamond, a political sociologist at Stanford University in California and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank that ‘promotes political and economic freedom’. “We’ve not seen anything like this in decades, and we don’t know where it’s heading,” he says. “We don’t know how serious it is.”</p><p>Diamond has been watching democracy around the world go through what he calls “a mild but protracted recession” for about a decade. Parts of the world new to the democratic system – such as former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe or states working through the aftermath of the Arab Spring – are slowly slipping back into authoritarianism.</p><blockquote><p> We’ve not seen anything like this in decades, and we don’t know where it’s heading. We don’t know how serious it is   </p></blockquote><p>But last year, everything changed. Democracy is now in trouble in some of the most mature democracies in the world, he says. “We can now talk of a crisis.”</p><p>In fact, the decline of democracy has been measured. Every year since 2006, Hoey and her colleagues at the EIU have produced a report called the Democracy Index, which provides a comprehensive ranking of nearly every country in the world on a 10-point scale. It combines regional data and multiple surveys conducted in 167 countries to measure the quality of political processes, civil liberties, the functioning of government, public participation and political culture. Each country is then classed as a full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarian regime.</p><p>The results of <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-20\">last year’s report are sobering</a>. Overall, the global average score fell with 72 countries dropping in the ranking compared to 2015, and just 38 moving up. The number of “full democracies” dropped from 20 to 19, with the US now classed as “flawed”. According to the EIU's measure, around half the world's population (49.3%) live in a democracy of some kind. But only 4.5% of people live in a “full democracy” - half as many as in 2015.</p><p>And the EIU's measure is not the only one that suggests a rapid, fundamental shift in global politics. Andrew Reynolds, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina and founder of the Electoral Integrity Project, which assesses the quality of democracies around the world, has argued that the US state of <a href=\"http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/27/14078646/north-carolina-political-science-democracy\">North Carolina should no longer be considered a democracy</a> after it brought in voting restrictions that reportedly disenfranchised black voters.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04yg1yx\"}}</p><p>So, what's going on? What’s behind the erosion of a political system that’s guided the world’s most developed economies for decades?</p><p>A common explanation is that the world is still reacting to the global financial crisis and the austerity policies that followed. This had a major corrosive effect on democracy, changing the way people viewed their political leaders. According to this view, the effect will be short-term – when economies start to pick up again, politics will return to normal. But what we're seeing is not a temporary blip, says Hoey.</p><p>Take the US. Its relegation to “flawed democracy” in the EIU’s ratings is not because of the 2016 presidential election. “The US has been teetering on the brink for many years,” says Hoey. “Donald Trump is a beneficiary of a deep-seated and long-standing problem.”</p><p>The level of public trust in democratic institutions in the US has been plummeting for decades. According to a survey carried out in 2015 by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organisation in Washington DC that investigates demographic trends, only <a href=\"http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/\">19% of people trust the government to do the right thing “always or most of the time”</a>. In 1958, when the American National Election Study asked the same question, 73% of people did.</p><p>Some may argue that this is because governments no longer feel like they are “of the people, by the people, for the people”, as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address. Over the last half century, the business of governing has arguably become more technocratic, with positions of power populated by larger numbers of professional politicians and policy wonks. Many long-established political parties once had closer ties with specific groups of people. Left-wing or social democratic parties in particular were set up to represent the will of the working class. Those ties have stretched to breaking point, however.</p><p>More generally, old divisions between left and right that once gave voters clear alternatives have fallen, especially since the 1990s and the end of the Cold War. Parties that represented two competing visions of how society should be run throughout the 20th Century have suffered a body blow, says Hoey. As parties on both sides moved to the centre, the gulf between political elites and the electorate opened up even more. “Politics is no longer about the big questions and big issues,” says Hoey. “It has become soulless.”</p><p>Cue populists like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, the former leader of UK party Ukip. Such politicians have been able to win support by talking about issues that established parties have been unwilling to address candidly. Ukip wields no hard political power – its only elected member of Parliament defected last week – but its outspoken views on immigration and criticism of EU technocrats shaped the Brexit debate. Similarly, Trump also crafted his campaign around immigration and a pledge to “drain the swamp” of political elites that no longer shared the values of millions of voters.</p><blockquote><p> Many are suddenly talking about the need to defend democracy. 'But defend democracy against what? Against the people?'   </p></blockquote><p>The resulting political shocks were a wake-up call, says Hoey. But in failing to talk about the things that mattered to people, the mainstream parties had it coming. People want their voices heard and when they had an opportunity to make a difference with a direct vote – one that promised to make a bigger difference than the usual box-ticking every four years - they grabbed it. “The chickens have come home to roost,” she says.</p><p>As a result of the populist backlash, political elites – which includes many in the media – are suddenly talking about the need to defend democracy. “But defend democracy against what? Against the people?” asks Hoey. By getting the public involved in the biggest political debate in decades, Brexit was phenomenal, she says. “People who hadn’t voted for years came out.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04yg1tx\"}}</p><p>Yet many still identify the populist backlash itself as the problem, rather than an expression of a deeper issue. Brexit and Trump voters are stigmatised for being bigots – “deplorables” – or for being misled by misinformation or lying politicians. But to dismiss millions of people like that will get us nowhere, says Hoey.   </p><p>“Our political parties have run away from talking about the issues that matter to people,” she says. “If you're not asking the really big questions about what kind of society you want to live in, what’s left?” If people care about something, it needs to be discussed – no matter how difficult a topic.</p><p>“You need to have clashes of opinion,” she argues. “If you want to revise democracy that’s the only way to do it. There are no other fixes.”</p><p>For Hoey, Brexit and the election of Trump are electoral shocks that could be good for democracy in the long-run. “All these years, nobody’s really cared about democracy,” she says. “Suddenly everyone’s talking about it and that’s great.” But Diamond sees a darker side. “Many deep thinkers about politics, from Plato to the authors of the US constitution, have worried about the vulnerability of pure democracy to the tyranny of the majority.”</p><p>The reason that many countries have representative democracies – in which people elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf – or other structures, such as second chambers of government, is that the will of the people needs to be balanced with things like equality and civil liberty. Some states have constitutions that set out their citizens' incontrovertible rights explicitly. Most have independent judicial systems. “You need brakes, like in a car,” says Diamond. “If all you have is the accelerator pedal it’s not a very safe vehicle.”</p><blockquote><p> Many deep thinkers about politics have worried about the vulnerability of pure democracy to the tyranny of the majority </p></blockquote><p>The danger inherent in the democratic process is that a leader can be elected who removes those brakes. When people feel threatened, either physically – by terrorism, say – or economically, they tend to be more receptive to authoritarian populist appeals and more willing to give up certain freedoms.</p><p>Trump has support for banning immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries, for example. And last year, the UK government was able to pass the most sweeping internet-surveillance legislation of any democracy. “In the US and most of Western Europe, the checks and balances are very likely to be strong enough to prevent severe damage to democratic freedoms and constitutional safeguards,” says Diamond. “But 'very likely' is not 'certain'.”</p><p>Diamond is struck by how quickly democratic processes and institutions are being dismantled in European countries like Hungary and Poland – states that have long been absorbed into the European Union. “Maybe we are going to have some shocking lessons about the durability of democracy,” he says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04yg1q5\"}}</p><p>Diamond agrees with Hoey about the underlying causes of the populist surge across the West. “When people are saying they can't stomach any more immigration, when they don't know if they're going to be able to retire or what kind of jobs their kids are going to get, the political elite needs to listen and adapt or things are going to unravel,” he says.</p><p>But simply talking about these issues may not be enough. To compete with more authoritarian rivals, Diamond thinks mainstream politicians will need to concede ground, stepping back from liberal social and economic policies – on equality, immigration or global trade – that have been advanced in recent years. For example, Geert Wilders' nationalist party in the Netherlands did worse than expected in this month’s elections. This was because the Dutch prime minister saw what was happening and made some significant policy adjustments, says Diamond.</p><p>Despite being on the back foot, many people believe democracy is the best system of government humans have come up with, an end point to political evolution. In non-democratic countries around the world – in parts of Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa – <a href=\"http://afrobarometer.org/blogs/do-africans-still-want-democracy-new-report-gives-qualified-yes\">survey data shows that people want it</a>. As China has become richer and its economy more modern, you can see a growing aspiration for democracy from the middle classes, says Hoey. “It's human nature to want to be free.”</p><blockquote><p> The political elite needs to listen and adapt or things are going to unravel </p></blockquote><p>Which is why people like Joshua Wong devote themselves to fighting for it. Feelings are strong on both sides, however. When Wong travelled to Taiwan in January, he was met by around 200 pro-China protestors at the airport. One broke through police lines and tried to punch him. Wong ended up being placed under police protection for his visit. Is democracy really the only morally legitimate system for choosing a society's leaders?</p><p>“I don’t see any stable authoritarian states out there,” says Diamond. He believes governments in places like China, Russia and Iran will eventually collapse. ”The only well-functioning authoritarian regime in the world is Singapore and I'm not sure even that is going to last,” he says. “In any case, you can’t build a theory on a city state of just a few million people.”</p><p>Not everyone thinks things are so clear cut, however. Daniel Bell at Tsinghua University in Beijing argues that a lot of Western ideas about democracy verge on dogma. A Canadian political scientist trained in the UK, Bell has spent many years living and working in China. “In the West we tend to divide the world into good democratic regimes that set the path for all the others, and bad authoritarian regimes that are on the wrong side of history,” he says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04yg1f7\"}}</p><p>Bell points out that non-democratic states can take many forms. There are family-run dictatorships like in North Korea, military dictatorships like in Egypt, monarchies like in Saudi Arabia. Each is quite different. And some, like China's meritocratic system – in which government officials are not elected by the public, but appointed and promoted according to their competence and performance – should not be dismissed outright. “To put them all in the same camp is ridiculous,” says Bell. “It’s not a good way of trying to understand what’s going on in China.”  </p><p>The Communist Party of China has 88 million members. Its membership is managed by the Department of Organisation, which is essentially a huge human resources department. To be a member of the party, candidates must pass a set of examinations. Government officials are thus selected from across the country and from various sectors of society according to merit. Promotion from low-ranking official to the very top of government is then – in principle – simply a matter of performance.</p><p>One obvious issue is a lack of transparency in how merit is measured. At the lower levels of government, the system is becoming more open to public scrutiny. Some Chinese cities are now experimenting with putting budgets online and allowing people to comment on the budgets, which lets citizens see how their local officials are performing. But how the party selects its top-tier leaders is not generally known, says Bell. “If they were a bit more open, it would help to legitimise the system abroad.”</p><blockquote><p> If [China] say they’re going to do something by 2030, we can be pretty sure they’re going to do it </p></blockquote><p>The biggest challenge to Chinese politics is corruption. A democratic system can live with corruption because corrupt leaders can be voted out of power, at least in theory. But in a meritocratic system, corruption is an existential threat. If political leaders are seen to be corrupt, they cannot claim superior merit and thus lose the one quality that justifies their position. Because of this, China needs more mechanisms to keep its politicians accountable. Chinese officials have studied the British civil service to learn how to deal with corruption, for example. “Elections are a safety valve that isn't available in China,” says Bell. “But they know this. It's why they're having the longest and most systematic anti-corruption drive in recent history.”  </p><p>There are obvious flaws in China's system, says Bell. But he also ticks off several advantages. Political officials at the top all have substantial experience at running a country – “unlike in the US with the current president”. The government is also not subject to the electoral cycle and can focus on its policies. “If they say they’re going to do something by 2030, we can be pretty sure they’re going to do it,” he says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04yg3n1\"}}</p><p>This has allowed China to pull millions out of poverty in just a few decades, build a vast amount of new infrastructure in the <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170223-chinas-zombie-factories-and-unborn-cities\">biggest construction drive the world has ever seen</a>, and begin to tackle its substantial urban pollution and greenhouse emissions. Officials used to be judged mainly on how well they did at reducing poverty, says Bell. Now they are expected to make environmental improvements too.</p><blockquote><p> The West has tried to export democracy not only at the point of a gun, but also by imposing legislation </p></blockquote><p>Bell says lots of surveys show that the Chinese system has strong support within the country at most levels of society, where the government is viewed as providing a form of guardianship. He agrees with Hoey that as China gets richer and its middle class grows, more people will want to have a say in how the country is run. But that need not necessarily mean a call for democracy. Instead, perhaps more people will sign up to join the ruling party. Everybody now has equal rights to take the examinations that put you on the road to becoming a public official, he says. “There are different ways of participating in politics.”</p><p>Whatever happens, democracy is much more likely to flourish when it is homegrown. The attempts in the last few decades to export democracy around the world have proved to be an absolute disaster, says Hoey. “The whole idea is wrong in principle because democracy is not ours to dispense,” she says. “It has to come from the people to have any meaning. It needs to have roots deep in the values and culture of the country.”</p><p>Yet the West has tried to export democracy not only at the point of a gun – such as in the many military interventions in the Middle East – but also by imposing legislation. The EU pushes its Western values and body of laws on new members, for example. This can be quite intrusive, says Hoey. As a result, rather than being seen as a universal human aspiration, democracy can sometimes come across as a specifically Western product – and rejected as such.</p><p>With the political climate around the world shifting and many countries adopting a more nationalist outlook, the US and Western Europe have abandoned most of their ambitions for regime change around the world. But looking inwards may be no bad thing. “If the West wants to promote democracy then they should do it by example,” says Hoey.</p><p><em>Join 800,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><strong><em>Facebook</em></strong></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><strong><em>Twitter</em></strong></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><strong><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></strong></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em> </p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"<p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170228-a-guide-to-humanitys-greatest-challenges\" target=\"_blank\">Future Now asked 50 experts</a> – scientists, technologists, business leaders and entrepreneurs – to name what they saw as the most important issues of the 21st Century.</p>\n<p>Inspired by these responses, we're publishing a series of feature articles and videos that take an in-depth look at the <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/grand-challenges\" target=\"_blank\">biggest challenges we face today</a>.</p>","CalloutPosition":"middle","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"Grand Challenges","Campaign":null,"Collection":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"","Name":"Grand Challenges","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Grand Challenges","CreationDateTime":"2017-03-01T11:16:12.756515Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"3f52a790-5ab8-424b-928b-263e268e37b9","Id":"wwfuture/column/grand-challenges","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-03T07:17:22.643245Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/grand-challenges"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-01T11:16:12.756515Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"3f52a790-5ab8-424b-928b-263e268e37b9","Id":"wwfuture/column/grand-challenges","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-03T07:17:22.643245Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/grand-challenges"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/grand-challenges","_id":"5981d0e5543960df95ddedbd"}],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2017-03-30T10:06:09.101Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The uncertain future of democracy","HeadlineShort":"The uncertain future of democracy","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":[{"Content":{"Headline":"Future Now","HorizontalEnabled":true,"HorizontalUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/future-now","Name":"future-now","PartnerAssetSelect":"","PartnerBackground":null,"PartnerBody":"","PartnerEnabled":false,"PartnerHeadline":"","PartnerImage":null,"PartnerUrl":"","PartnerVideo":null,"PartnerVideoImage":null,"Promotion":null,"PromotionHeadline":"","PromotionImageUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/future-now"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-11-29T09:51:17.980617Z","Entity":"horizontal","Guid":"29e77956-709b-4843-bd87-fb61047318ff","Id":"wwfuture-now/horizontal/future-now","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-29T09:58:12.148067Z","Project":"wwfuture-now","Slug":"future-now"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:horizontal:wwfuture-now/horizontal/future-now","_id":"5981d105543960df95de0236"}],"Intro":"The West’s grandest challenge could be preserving the post-war stability that has existed for more than half a century.","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[{"Content":{"Description":"Apple News Publish: Select to publish, remove to unpublish. (Do not just delete or unpublish the story)","Name":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Entity":"option","Guid":"13f4bc85-ae27-4a34-9397-0e6ad3619619","Id":"option/publish-applenews-system-1","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Project":"","Slug":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:option:option/publish-applenews-system-1","_id":"5981d336543960df95df2a6f"}],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":null,"RelatedTag":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Description":"","LinkUrl":"","Name":"Grand Challenges"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-01T19:35:36.820419Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"5160bb81-c58c-49e4-97e0-739dee7cb7f6","Id":"tag/grand-challenges","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-07-24T11:03:08.823013Z","Project":"","Slug":"grand-challenges"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/grand-challenges","_id":"5981d409543960df95dfa406"}],"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"The West’s grandest challenge could be preserving the post-war stability that has existed for more than half a century.","SummaryShort":"The US is now rated a ‘flawed democracy’ – and it's not the West's only problem","SuperSection":[{"Content":{"General":{"AdTargetingId":"future-now","Banner":"future-now","Description":"Your guide to a fast-changing world","Name":"Future Now","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Theme":"futuristic-blue"},"TopStories":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-01-11T17:39:36.114056Z","Entity":"supersection","Guid":"de26824e-4fe3-447a-b25d-16aeb2720252","Id":"wwfuture/supersection/future-now","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-08-01T14:02:04.111568Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"future-now"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:supersection:wwfuture/supersection/future-now","_id":"5981d40a543960df95dfa4dd"}],"Tag":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"","LinkUrl":"","Name":"Comment & Analysis","CreationDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"8a3da437-6c7a-4d2f-9b1f-c0b5da873a2f","Id":"tag/comment-analysis","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Project":"","Slug":"comment-analysis"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"8a3da437-6c7a-4d2f-9b1f-c0b5da873a2f","Id":"tag/comment-analysis","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Project":"","Slug":"comment-analysis"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/comment-analysis","_id":"5981d40d543960df95dfa6e6"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Description":"","LinkUrl":"","Name":"Grand Challenges","CreationDateTime":"2017-03-01T19:35:36.820419Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"5160bb81-c58c-49e4-97e0-739dee7cb7f6","Id":"tag/grand-challenges","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-07-24T11:03:08.823013Z","Project":"","Slug":"grand-challenges"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-01T19:35:36.820419Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"5160bb81-c58c-49e4-97e0-739dee7cb7f6","Id":"tag/grand-challenges","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-07-24T11:03:08.823013Z","Project":"","Slug":"grand-challenges"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/grand-challenges","_id":"5981d409543960df95dfa406"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Politics","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/22986","Name":"Politics","CreationDateTime":"2014-10-21T08:10:15Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"a87c1553-a7fa-408f-a94a-fdb669cc8d72","Id":"tag/politics","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-08-18T11:17:57.265155Z","Project":"","Slug":"politics"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-10-21T08:10:15Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"a87c1553-a7fa-408f-a94a-fdb669cc8d72","Id":"tag/politics","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-08-18T11:17:57.265155Z","Project":"","Slug":"politics"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/politics","_id":"5981d40a543960df95dfa52e"}],"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:15:10.770465Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"707953ec-6bcb-4ae3-93bf-adb9105e159c","Id":"wwfuture/story/20170330-the-uncertain-future-of-democracy","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-30T10:59:06.973777Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20170330-the-uncertain-future-of-democracy"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:15:10.770465Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"707953ec-6bcb-4ae3-93bf-adb9105e159c","Id":"wwfuture/story/20170330-the-uncertain-future-of-democracy","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-30T10:59:06.973777Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20170330-the-uncertain-future-of-democracy"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20170330-the-uncertain-future-of-democracy","_id":"5984eb00543960df95e15929"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":1822266,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":4140,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/qn/p04hqnsb.jpg","SourceWidth":7360,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"(Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/qn/p04hqnsb.jpg","Title":"iStock-529436337.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqnsb","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqnsb","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hqnsb","_id":"598289cc543960df95e01882"}],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":1906367,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2457,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/qd/p04hqdvd.jpg","SourceWidth":4368,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Large cities such as New York may not be the best place to be post-apocalypse (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/qd/p04hqdvd.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-172374279.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqdvd","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hqdvd","_id":"5983e692543960df95e0d0f5"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":3545106,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":3375,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/qf/p04hqflv.jpg","SourceWidth":6000,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"The concrete surfaces of a city would not make for a good place to grow food (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/qf/p04hqflv.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-525800563.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqflv","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hqflv","_id":"59822ee0543960df95dfe8ec"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":1517968,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":2936,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/qg/p04hqgvz.jpg","SourceWidth":5220,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Rural life may prove more comfortable (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/qg/p04hqgvz.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-126266349.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqgvz","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hqgvz","_id":"59822ee1543960df95dfe8ed"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":986262,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1625,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/qh/p04hqhg6.jpg","SourceWidth":2889,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"What would you prioritise if you had the world to yourself? (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"What would you prioritise if you had the world to yourself? (Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/qh/p04hqhg6.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-120223243.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqhg6","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hqhg6","_id":"5982852e543960df95e01612"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":3013162,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":3159,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/qj/p04hqjjb.jpg","SourceWidth":5616,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Electricity may not last long (Credit: Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Electricity may not last long (Credit: Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/qj/p04hqjjb.jpg","Title":"GettyImages-597786281.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hqjjb","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hqjjb","_id":"5984b0eb543960df95e13b3e"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":2015967,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":4140,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/4h/vq/p04hvqzz.jpg","SourceWidth":7360,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"If we rebuilt society from scratch, what would it look like? (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"If we rebuilt society from scratch, what would it look like? (Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/4h/vq/p04hvqzz.jpg","Title":"iStock-529458011.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p04hvqzz","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p04hvqzz","_id":"59822ee0543960df95dfe8eb"}],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"","Email":[],"Links":null,"Name":"Lewis Dartnell","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-11-24T16:40:29.100183Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"b4ffd1ef-64a3-483c-b615-5334ee00505b","Id":"wwfuture/author/lewis-dartnell","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-24T16:40:29.100183Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"lewis-dartnell"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:author:wwfuture/author/lewis-dartnell","_id":"5981d0d9543960df95dde39d"}],"BodyHtml":"<p>Let's imagine a thought experiment.</p><p>An aggressive viral plague has struck humanity. Spreading astonishingly quickly through our modern world of dense cities and international airliners, we'd already lost the fight in a matter of weeks. Civilisation has collapsed and the vast majority of humanity has died. But you've survived. You fell deliriously ill, but through some innate immunity you lived through the raging fever, and have woken up in your cold house, with no electricity, no water in the taps or gas feeding the boiler or stove. The streets are eerily quiet, and no airplane contrails criss-cross the sky. You're a survivor in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.</p><p>These are all tropes we're familiar with from books like Canticle for Leibowitz or The Road, recent computer games like The Last of Us, and films like I Am Legend or Mad Max. On the whole, these narratives feature protagonists wearing a little too much tight leather, and a lone hero striving through the wilderness. But how realistic are these scenarios?</p><blockquote><p> Fictional end-of-the-world narratives feature protagonists wearing a little too much tight leather   </p></blockquote><p>If you did ever find yourself a survivor of a global catastrophe that wiped out most of humanity, what could you do about it? What would be the most vital knowledge you'd need to survive, and eventually thrive? It's here that the lone hero trope falls down. There's safety in numbers, and of course, we were only able to progress through history and build the modern world in the first place by working together; humanity is an inherently social, collaborative species. So while there will undoubtedly be a period of turmoil following a collapse, people will once again settle down into communities soon enough.</p><p>The question is, what next...? What will be your immediate priorities, and what capabilities should your community aim to recover over the following years? This is one possible chronology.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04hqdvd\"}}</p><p><strong>FIRST FEW DAYS</strong></p><p>Once people stop monitoring and maintaining the power stations, the grid will go down pretty quickly. But by scavenging solar panels, or portable generators from a building site, you'll be able to keep your life electrified for the time being.</p><p>The internet will evaporate as soon as the servers behind it start dropping-off as the fuel in their automatic back-up generators runs out, so don't think that you'll be able to rely on Wikipedia for knowledge. But this doesn't mean your smartphone will become a useless brick. The compass uses an internal magnetometer so you'll still be able to find your way around, and in fact the last map you loaded will continue to help you navigate with GPS.</p><p>The GPS satellite network will continue working well for a few weeks after the collapse, but after about six months the position accuracy will have degraded until it's all-but-useless. Your priorities in the immediate aftermath will be to ensure you find a stockpile of bottled water and canned food, and also a set of decent outdoors clothing.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04hqflv\"}}</p><p><strong>FIRST WEEKS</strong></p><p>In the first few weeks you'll probably have encountered pockets of other survivors. Treat strangers with a wary caution until you've found a small band you can trust and rely upon for mutual protection, and this will also greatly improve the effectiveness with which you can forage for supplies and scavenge what you need.</p><p>By now, the urban area you started in is beginning to get pretty unpleasant. The stench of innumerable rotting bodies fills the air, and unfed pet dogs have formed into increasingly aggressive packs. In any case, a modern city is a grossly artificial bubble, supported only by the civilisation that constructed it.</p><p>Without mains electricity to run lifts or lighting, natural water sources likely contaminated, and the ground itself smothered in tarmac and concrete, you'll find life easier in a more rural setting. A traditional farmhouse with fireplaces for heating and cooking will be far more comfortable after the collapse than a modern high-tech apartment. You can always make scavenging forays back into the crumbling urban areas to restock supplies while you try to relearn how to make and do things for yourself.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04hqgvz\"}}</p><p><strong>FIRST MONTHS</strong></p><p>Your main concern is going to be how to secure safe drinking water and avoid the water-borne diseases that have been the scourge of humanity for millennia. Boiling is a sure-fire way to kill pathogens but uses a great deal of fuel. Purification tablets can be scavenged from camping stores but sooner or later you will need to apply some basic chemistry to ensure the water you put to your lips isn't going to kill you.</p><blockquote><p> You will need to apply some basic chemistry to ensure the water you put to your lips isn't going to kill you   </p></blockquote><p>Water can be chemically disinfected by scavenging kitchen bleach or even swimming pool chlorine (sodium hypochlorite and calcium hypochlorite) and diluting it enough so that it kills microbes but doesn't poison you. Here you are exploiting the chemistry of chlorine, which also underlies the tap water we drink today – historically, it was such developments in hygiene and public health that enabled us to live in fabulously dense cities.</p><p>Until you've worked out how to make chlorine yourself, a very low-tech method for water disinfection can be used: solar disinfection. This is a technique being taught around the developing world by the WHO, and simply involves filling a plastic bottle with suspect water and leaving it in bright sunshine for a day or two. The ultraviolet rays from the Sun will pass right through the bottle and kill any pathogens.</p><p>Simply washing your hands is also exceedingly effective at blocking disease transmission. Soap can be made by hydrolysing animal fat or plant oils; by boiling with alkalis. Alkalis are one of the most crucial classes of chemicals throughout history, and can be extracted from your natural environment. Potash (potassium carbonate) can be extracted by trickling water through ashes from a hardwood fire, and soda ash from burned seaweed or other salt-tolerant coastal plants like samphire or saltwort. Collecting seaweed for soda production was a huge industry along the Atlantic coasts of Scotland and Ireland for centuries. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04hqhg6\"}}</p><p><strong>FIRST YEARS</strong></p><p>As preserved food runs out, you'll be facing starvation if you've not rebooted your own agriculture. Growing your own vegetables and fruit may be straightforward, but how many of us today know how to grow our own staple cereal crops; wheat, rice or maize?</p><blockquote><p> The millstones in a windmill or waterwheel are like a technological extension of our own molar teeth   </p></blockquote><p>Cereals are in fact species of grass; they're fast-growing and produce nutritious grain, but the human body is biologically-disadvantaged and we don't have four stomachs like a cow to be able to digest grass. Instead, we've had to apply our brains to the problem and invent technologies to aid our bodies. We need to physically grind wheat grain into flour and then use the transformative effect of fire in an oven to bake the flour into bread and release nutrients that our bodies can absorb. In this way the millstones in a windmill or waterwheel are like a technological extension of our own molar teeth, and the oven we use for baking bread or the pot we use for boiling rice is like an external pre-digestive system.</p><p>The primary problem is how you productively cultivate cereal crops in the first place – food surplus is the fundamental basis of any civilisation. If one person can feed 10 others who are not rooted to the fields and can specialise in other skills, then your society becomes more capable. Tools for working the soil like a plough and harrow could be scavenged, or created by repurposing steel items with a simple forge. But the crucial trick, one that evaded medieval farmers, is how to consistently maintain the fertility of your fields over the years. Without modern artificial fertilisers, you'll need to replenish nitrates in the soil by ploughing-in animal manure and cycling leguminous plants – peas, lentils, clover, alfalfa – with your cereal crops. Dissolving bones in acid will provide phosphates, and spreading crushed chalk or limestone will counter rising soil acidity.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04hqjjb\"}}</p><p><strong>FIRST DECADES</strong></p><p>As your community becomes increasingly self-sufficient rather than relying on scavenging what's been left-behind, you'll need to relearn traditional skills like blacksmithing and making metal tools and keeping machinery and engines running. Civilisation has advanced thanks to the growth of mechanical power: waterwheels and windmills then steam engines, turbines and internal combustion engines, to alleviate the hard toil of human muscles.</p><p>A capable civilisation also needs fuel. Before the late 1800s and the exploitation of coal and then crude oil, the source of vital chemistry – acids, alcohols, solvents, tars – was by 'dry distillation' of wood; baking timber in an air-tight container and collecting the vapours released as it was converted to charcoal. You can even run a car engine on the gases given off by pyrolysis of wood; during World War Two there were over a million gassifier-powered cars – wood-fuelled cars – driving along the roads of Europe.</p><blockquote><p> During World War Two there were over a million wood-fuelled cars driving along the roads of Europe   </p></blockquote><p>Without access to crude oil for the reboot (our civilisation has already sucked-up all the easily-exploited oil) you can also make biodiesel for running machinery from rendered animal fat or plant oil reacted with methanol (wood alcohol, dry-distilled from timber) and lye (made by reacting soda with quicklime from roasted chalk or limestone).</p><p>In your nascent chemical industry, other easily-extractable substances will also have multiple uses. For example, ethanol, from fermenting grain and then distilling to concentrate the alcohol, is a versatile solvent and effective disinfectant. Charcoal is useful not only for producing high temperatures for forging metals or creating bricks or glass, but is also a chemical 'reductant' and so is needed for smelting metals out of their rocky ores.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04hvqzz\"}}</p><p><strong>FIRST CENTURIES</strong></p><p>In the long term, the only way for the post-apocalyptic society to advance and redevelop knowledge and capabilities is to come to understand the workings of the natural world, and to apply that understanding to exploiting particular principles in the creation of useful technologies. The best way for confidently ascertaining how things work is the scientific method; to rigorously test your theories against carefully-designed experiments or observations of the natural phenomena – the scientific method is itself an invention, a kind of knowledge-generation machinery.</p><blockquote><p> There is one substance, utterly indispensible to how we've conducted science through history   </p></blockquote><p>In order to effectively investigate the world you need tools, and there is one substance that is utterly indispensible to how we've conducted science through history. It is relatively strong, chemically unreactive, and completely transparent. This wonder material is of course: glass.</p><p>You need glass to make test-tubes to learn about chemical reactions, and to make thermometers and barometers to understand about temperature and pressure (key prerequisite principles for building technologies like the steam engine, and then internal combustion engine), and glass can even manipulate light itself; forming lenses for the microscope and telescope. To make a simple glass, all you need are three ingredients – silica, soda, and lime, which can be gathered as sand, seaweed, and chalk or limestone. In a true Robinson Crusoe effort, you could make your own glass from scratch on a single beach.</p><p>And so with these tools for science, and a rational and enquiring mindset, you could hope that your post-apocalyptic society rapidly recovers after the collapse and avoids another Dark Ages. It may take decades or more, but a new form of civilisation could emerge from the apocalypse. What that world would look like is anybody’s guess, but with a bit of human ingenuity, we have the potential to rebuild – and perhaps even improve upon – the sophisticated society we know today.</p><p>--</p><p><em>Prof Lewis Dartnell is a research scientist and writer based at University of Westminster. This feature is inspired by his book </em><a href=\"http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/the-book/\"><em>The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>Join 700,000+ Future fans by liking us on</em> <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em><strong>Facebook</strong></em></a><em>, or follow us on</em> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em><strong>Twitter</strong></em></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em><strong>Google+</strong></em></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em><strong>LinkedIn</strong></em></a> <em>and</em> <a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em><strong>Instagram</strong></em></a></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"Take a deep dive into the big stories in science, technology and health written by some of the best writers around.","Name":"In Depth","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"In Depth","CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T10:55:47.308249Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"2f2913c9-bea2-4db6-bb48-d5d2e0871b8d","Id":"wwfuture/column/in-depth","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-05-02T07:03:58.850159Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/in-depth"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T10:55:47.308249Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"2f2913c9-bea2-4db6-bb48-d5d2e0871b8d","Id":"wwfuture/column/in-depth","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-05-02T07:03:58.850159Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/in-depth"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/in-depth","_id":"5981d0dc543960df95dde626"}],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-11-24T16:37:45.337Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"How to cope with the end of the world","HeadlineShort":"How to cope with the end of the world","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Are you prepared for the collapse of society? Here’s the knowledge you’d need to reboot civilisation.\n","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[{"Content":{"Description":"Apple News Publish: Select to publish, remove to unpublish. (Do not just delete or unpublish the story)","Name":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Entity":"option","Guid":"13f4bc85-ae27-4a34-9397-0e6ad3619619","Id":"option/publish-applenews-system-1","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Project":"","Slug":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:option:option/publish-applenews-system-1","_id":"5981d336543960df95df2a6f"}],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":[],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Etched with strange pictograms, lines and wedge-shaped markings, they lay buried in the dusty desert earth of Iraq for thousands of years. The clay tablets left by the ancient Sumerians around 5,000 years ago provide what are thought to be the earliest written record of a long dead people.</p><p>Although it took decades for archaeologists to decipher the mysterious language preserved on the slabs, they have provided glimpses of what life was like at the dawn of civilisation.</p><p>Similar tablets and carved stones have been unearthed at the sites of other mighty cultures that have long since vanished – from the hieroglyphics of the Ancient Egyptians to the inscriptions of the Maya of Mesoamerica.</p><blockquote><p> A slide back into the technological dark ages is not beyond comprehension </p></blockquote><p>The stories and details they contain have stood the test of time, surviving through the millennia to be unearthed and deciphered by modern historians. But there are fears that future archaeologists may not benefit from the same sort of immutable record when they come to search for evidence of our own civilisation. We live in a digital world where information is stored as lists of tiny electronic ones and zeros that can be edited or even wiped clean by a few accidental strokes on a keyboard. “Unfortunately we live in an age that will leave hardly any written traces,” explained Martin Kunze.</p><p>Kunze’s solution is the <a href=\"http://memory-of-mankind.com/\">Memory of Mankind</a> project, a collaboration between academics, universities, newspapers and libraries to create a modern version of those first ancient Sumerian tablets discovered in the desert. Their plan is to gather together the accumulated knowledge of our time and store it underground in the caverns carved out in one of the oldest salt mines in the world, in the mountains of Austria’s picturesque Salzkammergut. “The main point of what we are doing is to store information in a way that it is readable in the future. It is a backup of our knowledge, our history and our stories,” says Kunze.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04cdmrs\"}}</p><p>Creating a stone “time capsule” may seem archaic in the age where most of our knowledge now floats around the internet cloud, but a slide back into the technological dark ages is not beyond comprehension. The advent of the internet has seen people have more information at their fingertips than at any previous point in human history. Yet the huge repositories of knowledge we have built up are perilously vulnerable.</p><p>Ever more information is being stored digitally on remote computer servers and hard disks. How many of us have hard copies of the photographs we took on our last holiday, for example.</p><p>The situation gets more serious when we consider scientific papers that are now solely published online. Entire catalogues of video footage from news broadcasters, television and film are stored digitally. Official documents and government papers reside in digital libraries.</p><p>Yet a conference of space weather scientists, together with officials from Nasa and the US Government, earlier this year warned of the fragile nature of all this digital information. Charged particles thrown out by the sun in a powerful solar storm could trigger electromagnetic surges that could <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120423-solar-storm-warning\">render our electronic devices useless</a> and wipe data stored in memory drives.</p><p>Such storms are a real threat, and they happen relatively regularly. A <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449593/BIS-15-457-space-weather-preparedness-strategy.pdf\">report produced by the British Government last year</a> highlighted that severe solar storms appear to happen every 100 years.</p><p>The last major coronal mass ejection to hit the Earth, known as <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859\">the Carrington event</a>, was in 1859 and is thought to have been the biggest in 500 years. It blew telegraph systems all over the world and pylons threw sparks. In the age of the internet, such an event would be catastrophic.</p><p>But there are other threats too – malicious hackers or even careless officials could tamper with these digital records or delete them altogether. And what if we simply lose the ability to read this information? Technology is changing so fast that media formats are quickly rendered obsolete. Minidiscs, VHS and the humble floppy disk have become outdated within decades.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04cdmsg\"}}</p><p>Few computers even come with DVD drives now, while giving the current generation of teenagers a floppy disk would leave them flummoxed. If information is stored on one of these formats and the technology needed to access it disappears completely, then it could be lost forever.</p><blockquote><p> It is very likely that in the long term the only traces of our present activities will be global warming, nuclear waste and Red Bull cans – Martin Kunze </p></blockquote><p>Hence the desire to keep a hard copy of our most important documents. Unfortunately, even the more traditional forms of storing information are also unlikely to keep information safe for more than a few centuries. While we have some paper manuscripts that have survived for hundreds of years – and in the case of papyrus scrolls, for thousands – unless they are stored in the right conditions, most disintegrate to dust after a couple of hundred years. Newspaper can decompose within six weeks if it gets wet.</p><p>“It is very likely that in the long term the only traces of our present activities will be global warming, nuclear waste and Red Bull cans,” says Kunze. “The amount of data is inflating rapidly, so the real challenge becomes selecting what we want to keep for our grandchildren and those that come after them.”</p><p>Which is why Kunze and his colleagues are instead looking further back in time for inspiration, to those Sumerian stone tablets. The Memory of Mankind team hopes to create an indelible record of our way of life by imprinting official documents, details about our culture, scientific papers, biographies, popular novels, news stories and even images onto square ceramic plates measuring eight inches (20cm) across.</p><p>This hinges on a special process that Kunze describes as “ceramic microfilm”, which he says is the most durable data storage system in the world. The flat ceramic plates are covered with a dark coating and a high energy laser is then used to write into them.</p><p>Each of these tablets can hold up to five million characters – about the same as a four-hundred-page book. They are acid- and alkali-resistant and can withstand temperatures of 1300C. A second type of tablet can carry colour pictures and diagrams along with 50,000 characters before being sealed with a transparent glaze.</p><p>The plates are then stacked inside ceramic boxes and tucked into the dark caverns of a <a href=\"https://www.salzwelten.at/en/hallstatt/saltmine/\">salt mine in Hallstatt</a>, Austria. As a resting place for what could be described as the ultimate time capsule, it is impressive. In the right light the walls still glisten with the remnants of salt, which extracts moisture and desiccates the air.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04cdn81\"}}</p><p>The salt itself has a Plasticine-like property that helps to seal fractures and cracks, keeping the tomb watertight. Buried beneath millions of tonnes of rock, the records will be able to survive for millennia and perhaps even entire ice ages, Kunze believes.</p><p>In some distant future after our own civilisation has vanished, they could prove invaluable to any who find them. They could help resurrect forgotten knowledge for cultures less advanced than our own, or provide a wealth of historical information for more advanced civilisations to ensure our own achievements, and our mistakes, can be learned from.</p><p>But it could also have value in the shorter term too.</p><p>“We are trying to create something that will not only be a collection of information for a distant future, but it will also be a gift for our grandchildren,” says Kunze. “Memory of Mankind can serve as a backup of knowledge in case of an event like war, a pandemic or a meteorite that throws us back centuries within two or three generations. A society can lose skills and knowledge very quickly – in the 6th Century, Europe largely lost the ability to read and write within three generations.”</p><blockquote><p> The Baywatch star and singer David Hasselhoff has a particularly lengthy entry </p></blockquote><p>Already the Memory of Mankind archive contains an eclectic glimpse of our society. Among the information etched into the ceramic plates are books summarising the history of individual countries around the world. Towns and villages have also opted to include their own local histories. A thousand of the world’s most important books – chosen by combining published lists using an algorithm developed by the University of Vienna – will be cut into the coating on the ceramic plates.</p><p>Museums are including images of precious objects in their collections along with descriptions of what we have learned about them. The Krumau Madonna – a sculpture dating to the late 14th Century currently sitting in the Museum of Art History in Vienna – is already there, along with paintings by the Baroque artists Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.</p><p>There are plates featuring pictures of fossils – dinosaurs, prehistoric fish and extinct ammonites – alongside a description of what we know about them. Even our current understanding of our own origins are included, with pictures of one of the earliest examples of sculpture ever found – the Venus of Willendorf.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04cdnj3\"}}</p><p>Much of the material included on the tablets is in German, but there are tablets in English, French and other languages.</p><p>A handful of celebrities have also found themselves immortalised in the salt-lined vaults. Baywatch star and singer David Hasselhoff has a particularly lengthy entry as does German singer Nena who had a hit with 99 Red Balloons in the 1980s. Nestled among them is a plate detailing the story of Edward Snowden and his leak of classified material from the US National Security Agency.</p><p>The University of Vienna has been placing prize winning PhD dissertations and scientific papers onto the tablets. Included in the archive are plates describing genetic modification and bioengineering patents, explaining what today’s scientists have achieved and how they managed it.</p><p>And alongside research, everyday objects like washing machines, smartphones and televisions are also being documented as a record of what life is like today.</p><p>The plates also serve as a warning for future generations – with sites of nuclear waste dumps pinpointed so future generations might know to avoid them or to clean them up if they have the technology. Newspapers have been asked to send their daily editorials to provide a repository of opinions as well as facts.</p><p>In many ways, the real problem is what not to include. “We probably have about 0.1% of the antique literature yet in the modern world publishing is as easy as posting something on the internet or sending a tweet,” explains Kunze. “Publications about science, space flight and medicine – the things we really spend money on – drown in the mass of data we produce. The Large Hadron Collider produces something like 30 Petabytes of data a year, but this is equal to just 0.003% of annual internet traffic. “A random fragment of 0.1% of our present day data will result in a very distorted view of our time.”</p><blockquote><p> We are saving cooking recipes and stories of love and personal events - Martin Kunze </p></blockquote><p>To tackle this, Kunze and his colleagues are organising a conference in November next year to bring scientists, historians, archaeologists, linguists and philosophers together to create a blueprint for selecting content for the project. The team also hope to immortalise glimpses of mundane, everyday life as members of the public are encouraged to create tablets of their own. “We are saving cooking recipes and stories of love and personal events,” adds Kunze. “On one plate, a little girl has included three photographs of her confirmation and written a short bit of text about it. They give a glimpse of everyday life that will be very valuable.”</p><p><strong>Preserved tweets</strong></p><p>Memory of Mankind is not the only project to face the daunting task of preserving humanity’s accumulated knowledge. Librarians around the world are also looking at the knotty problem of how to save the information from the modern age.</p><p>The University of California Los Angeles, for instance, is archiving tweets related to major events and preserving them in their own archives. “We are collecting tweets from Cairo on the day of the January 25th revolution for example,” explained Todd Grappone, associate university librarian. “We are then translating them into multiple languages and saving them in file formats that are likely to be robust for the future. We are only doing it digitally at the moment as we have something like 1,000 cellphone videos from that event alone, but the value of that is enormous.”</p><p>Another project, called the <a href=\"http://hudoc2014.manucodiata.org/\">Human Document Project</a>, is aiming to record information on wafers of tungsten/silicon nitride. Initially they have been etching them with dozens of tiny QR codes – a type of two-dimensional barcode – which can be read using smartphones, but they say the final disks will hold information written in a form that can be read using a microscope.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04cdp69\"}}</p><p>Leon Abelmann, a researcher at Twente University in Enschede, the Netherlands, is one of the driving forces behind the project. He says that they are hoping to produce something that will be able to survive for one million years and are now starting to collaborate with the Memory of Mankind. “We would be really happy if we found information left for us by an intelligence that has already been extinct for a million years,” he said. “So we think future intelligent beings will be too. The mere fact that we need to take a helicopter view of ourselves will hopefully make us realise that the differences between us are trivial.”</p><p>Buried under a mountain, it may seem unlikely that any future generations would be able to find these tablets. For this reason, Memory of Mankind has engraved small tokens with a map pinpointing the archives’ location, which they are providing to everyone taking part in the project. The holders can then bury them at strategic places around the world or pass them onto the next generation.</p><p>To ensure those who do find it can actually read what is in there, the Memory of Mankind team has been creating their own Rosetta Stone – thousands of images labelled with their names and meanings.</p><p>All of which gives a hint at the ambition of what they are trying to do. The individuals who unearth this gold-mine of knowledge could be very different from our own. In a few thousand years civilisation may have advanced beyond our reckoning or descended back to the dark ages. Perhaps it will not even be humans who end up uncovering our memories. “We could be looking at some other form of intelligent life,” adds Kunze.</p><p>We will never know what those future archaeologists will make of our civilisation when they wipe the dust away from the tablets in thousands of years’ time, but we can hope that like the ancient Sumarians, we will not be forgotten.</p><p><em>Join 700,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em>LinkedIn</em></a><em> and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em>Instagram</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em> </p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-10-18T13:08:35.734Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The world’s knowledge is being buried in a salt mine","HeadlineShort":"The plan to bury a library in a mine","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"The Memory of Mankind project aims to save our most precious documents from an apocalypse – by burying microscopic engravings in an Austrian salt mine.","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":[],"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"The Memory of Mankind project aims to save our most precious documents from an apocalypse – by burying microscopic engravings in an Austrian salt mine.","SummaryShort":"Our most important documents will be locked in Salzwelten for millennia","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-10-19T08:55:26.824343Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"1f26a5d2-dc91-4d4e-b5fc-3d6995308a8f","Id":"wwfuture/story/20161018-the-worlds-knowledge-is-being-buried-in-a-salt-mine","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-10-27T11:48:19.681994Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20161018-the-worlds-knowledge-is-being-buried-in-a-salt-mine"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20161018-the-worlds-knowledge-is-being-buried-in-a-salt-mine","_id":"59829ad1543960df95e021c3"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":[],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"ib2video","AssetVideoIb2":[],"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":null,"BodyHtml":"<p>Sometimes, it is the life that’s hidden away in the dark that is the most intriguing.</p><p>Italian scientist Francesco Sauro has been studying the microbial life that inhabits caves for years. The Italian scientist believes that these simple forms of life – sometimes isolated from the rest of our planet for many millions of years – may hold some valuable clues to our evolutionary journey.</p><p>When he discovered a huge cave in Venezuela’s remote Auyan tepui region, he found a new mineral – rossiantonite – and microbes that had developed cut off from the rest of the planet.</p><p>“Caves are witness to geographic history,” he says. “They preserve much more than the surface. They are archives of time, of the evolution of the landscape and life.”</p><p>Watch the video above to see why Sauro believes caves like this can shed light on the earliest days of life on Earth.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04jbjpp\"}}</p><p><em>Join 700,000+ Future fans by liking us on</em> <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><strong><em>Facebook</em></strong></a><em>, or follow us on</em> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><strong><em>Twitter</em></strong></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><strong><em>Google+</em></strong></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><strong><em>LinkedIn</em></strong></a> <em>and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><strong><em>Instagram</em></strong></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week</em><em>”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-11-21T16:02:33Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The secrets of life hidden in enormous caves","HeadlineShort":"Could this region hold life's secrets?","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"In some of the planet’s biggest caves, primitive life has been existing for millions of years in isolation. Could it hold answers to evolution on Earth?","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"video","SummaryLong":"In some of the planet’s biggest caves, primitive life has been existing for millions of years in isolation. Could it hold answers to evolution on Earth?","SummaryShort":"The caves beneath may hold clues to our evolution","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-11-21T01:49:31.230108Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"e84e99ac-a64b-41f8-99ff-3eea4be19d2c","Id":"wwfuture/story/20161118-the-secrets-of-life-hidden-in-enormous-caves","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-29T10:34:08.169203Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20161118-the-secrets-of-life-hidden-in-enormous-caves"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20161118-the-secrets-of-life-hidden-in-enormous-caves","_id":"5984351d543960df95e0fa45"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>I had a discussion that made me ask a disconcerting question: how will I be viewed after I die? I like to think of myself as someone who is ethical, productive and essentially decent. But perhaps I won’t always be perceived that way. Perhaps none of us will.</p><p>No matter how benevolent the intention, what we assume is good, right or acceptable in society may change. From slavery to sexism, there’s plenty we find distasteful about the past. Yet while each generation congratulates itself for moving on from the darker days of its parents and ancestors, that can be a kind of myopia.</p><p>I was swapping ideas about this with Tom Standage, author and digital editor of The Economist. Our starting point was those popular television shows from the 1970s that contained views or language so outmoded they probably couldn’t be aired today. But, as he put it to me: “how easy it is to be self-congratulatory about how much less prejudiced we are than previous generations”. This form of hindsight can be dangerously smug. It can become both a way of praising ourselves for progress rather than looking for it to continue, and of distracting ourselves from uncomfortable aspects of the present.</p><p>Far more interesting, we felt, is this question: how will our generation be looked back on? What will our own descendants deplore about us that we take for granted?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qfv8\"}}</p><p>Some possibilities are more obvious than others. <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140617-the-perplexing-pig-paradox\">Eating meat and factory farming</a> may move towards the margins of acceptability, given the intensive use of resources and cruelty they represent. Another kind of profligacy the future might regret is the over-prescription of antibiotics. In terms of prejudice, meanwhile, our descendants may – hopefully – wonder how still-marginalised groups like transgender people ever faced intolerance; let alone how some parts of the world continued to criminalise homosexuality, reject equal rights for women, or hold some groups of workers in modern slavery.</p><p>All this, of course, is really about what we ought to deal with right now; about those wishes we desperately hope to see fulfilled, and the kind of world we hope to leave behind. What, I wondered, would some of today’s most influential thinkers make of my question?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qg3w\"}}</p><p>Since our handling of the environment is perhaps the most vital legacy we’ll leave our children, I made my first approach to the founder of one of the most influential of all modern environmental ideas: James Lovelock, the British scientist behind Gaia theory. He seemed an appropriate first port of call as his Gaia theory proposes that the Earth itself can be seen as a self-regulating system, and that the changes brought by humanity will have profound consequences for its ability to sustain life and civilisation as we know it.</p><p>Born in 1919, Lovelock has already lived through more profound global transformations in social norms than most of us will ever experience. In answering my question, however, he took a personal view, considering how his own children might look back on the present in years to come. “With four children, nine grandchildren and at the latest count seven great grandchildren,” he explained, “I feel fairly qualified to answer.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qfsv\"}}</p><p>His actual living descendants, he says, appear to be less angry about the present than might be expected. “They seem to take the present era for granted and only deplore specifics, such as tribal wars.” It’s the generation still unborn that will be maddened by the consequences of today’s environmental profligacy.</p><p>“Were I still reproducing,” Lovelock told me, “I suppose my children born recently would in a decade or so begin to deplore the failure of our governments (irrespective of political colour) to keep [the UK] habitable. Have we forgotten that we nearly starved in World War Two? We need energy also to survive…” – and this, at anything like our present level of comfort and development, is far from assured.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qg3s\"}}</p><p>For many people I know, there’s something existentially paralysing about climate change: a disbelieving horror matched to feelings of impotence, denial or despair. Yet our descendants may feel quite differently, argued my next expert – Kate Raworth, an economist at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, who specialises in “the rewriting of economics to make it a fit tool for addressing the 21st Century’s social and ecological challenges”.</p><p>Raworth believes that our children will “deplore our persistently linear thinking and doing”. In other words, the way we tackle problems like climate change in isolation. Over time a different way of seeing the world according to “systems thinking” will emerge. The trouble is, she explains, we tend to treat fields like education, economic growth and environmental impact as if they are not related, but they’re all interconnected – we just don’t fully understand how yet. “The economy is nested within society which is nested within the planet, and these systems are all interacting with each other.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qg3c\"}}</p><p>It’s a hopeful thought to set alongside Lovelock’s prognosis. A future society will have “a far wiser understanding of how the planet functions, how our pressure on it threatens our own well being, and how our economic mindset needs to reflect that,” says Raworth. And this wisdom should bring profound changes to the way we live and think about our world.</p><p>One contemporary tenet that Raworth believes will soon become archaic is the insistence that evaluating anything from health to nature means quantifying its market value. “From the impact of HIV/AIDS to climate change, if you want your issue heard, get an economist to put a price on it… Future generations will be amazed that we were still putting GDP at the centre of national economic policy,” she told me, “even while we knew we were running down the very social and environmental wealth on which it was all based. Rather than asking what is really going on, we’re happy to pretend that something doesn’t count if we don’t care to count it.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qfw7\"}}</p><p>For thinkers like Raworth, a hopeful vision of the late 21st Century is one in which “material metrics” play a larger part than mere finance in judging the success of societies. She sees it as a world where “our carbon, land, nitrogen and water footprints will be part of our own ways of monitoring our personal and national lifestyles, alongside our health and sense of wellbeing”.<br /> <strong><br /> </strong>Raworth’s insistence on re-thinking the present was a vision that, in a different sense, the author and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford echoed when I spoke to him. For Harford, one great short-sightedness in our current measuring of the world is national border controls – and the way in which global migration is assessed in terms of value, costs and benefits.</p><p>“We allow ourselves such freedoms in the developed world, and we like to tout our concern for the very poor,” he explained. “Yet we think it's natural that someone born in, say, Somalia, must stay in Somalia and not come to Europe or America – and that if that person has a hard life, the fault is with Somalia and not with our border guards. When we argue about the costs and benefits of immigration, the fact that immigration might be of some benefit to the person migrating is rarely discussed.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qgc8\"}}</p><p>It’s an idea that begs some fundamental questions. Will where someone is born still dictate their prospects through the coming centuries? In what sense can we hope to measure the flourishing of individuals across the world as a metric of human progress, rather than the productivity of nations?</p><p>From <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index\">indexes of development</a> and <a href=\"http://uhri.ohchr.org/en\">human rights</a> to those of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_Index\">quality-of-life</a> and <a href=\"http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/en/\">health</a>, the world already bristles with attempts to move forward on these fronts. A more radical answer, however, is that the most meaningful way of bettering our future is not simply to seek enhancements, but rather to focus on lessening the suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable.</p><p>For the philosopher Peter Singer, this lessening of suffering is a moral imperative more urgent than any other – and one that should not be restricted to the human race. As he bluntly replied when I put my question to him, “the way so many of us wallow in our affluence while doing very little to help those in extreme poverty” is one clear flaw that the future ought to deplore, alongside our treatment of animals, which “will (I hope) seem to [our descendants] as barbarous as the Roman circuses now seem to us”.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qg12\"}}</p><p>Singer backs his polemical work with practical advocacy. His website <a href=\"http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/\">The Life You Can Save</a> provides a framework for lessening suffering. On the site, he ranks 10 carefully selected charities to whom you can give money today.</p><p>It’s a sentiment I found echoed by Roman Krznaric, cultural thinker and author of the book Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution. “The biggest future crisis our children (and their children) will have to face is declining social cohesion,” he told me. “Communities are being fractured by growing urbanisation, and an overdose of free-market culture has ratcheted up levels of narcissism to record levels.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qg6c\"}}</p><p>As an antidote to this narcissism, Krznaric recommends a new form of emphasis on empathy as a fundamental human value: on promoting “the ability to step into the shoes of other people and look at the world from their perspective” as the ultimate social glue. Only through building empathy, he argues, can we hope to thrive together in a future of increasingly scarce resources and escalating competition – something for which his work sets out a detailed practical programme.</p><p>At the other end of the scale, another apathetic act that we may one day regret is our attitude to the risks of major catastrophe. If you take a long enough view, it’s fairly certain that one day humanity will face a threat or disaster that will kill whole swathes of Earth’s population – or even bring us to the brink of extinction. And how we prepare for that day will define us in the eyes of the survivors.</p><p>This is the terrain of Nick Bostrom, the founding director of the <a href=\"http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/\">Future of Humanity Institute</a> in Oxford, and a thinker who has made it his business to weigh and measure worst conceivable futures. \"If humans are still around after a massive catastrophe,\" Bostrom told me, “they may look back and think it a grave dereliction that we did not do more to reduce existential risk. But if humanity is gone, and there is nobody left to deplore our era, that doesn't make us any less deplorable.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qh4b\"}}</p><p>Bostrom has a list of potential “game over” scenarios that includes global pandemics, nuclear weapons, nanotechnology (highly destructive miniscule machines self-reproducing and destroying life as we know it), synthetic biology (artificially-created organisms able to infect, kill or take over the world’s ecosystems) or artificial intelligence (super-intelligent machines that decide they’re not interested in the continuation of human life).</p><p>For Bostrom, the question is not simply how we deal with obvious threats; it’s whether we should take seriously even the slight chance of something happening that could end human life as we know it – a question he and his colleagues answer with a resounding “yes”. And it is far worse if we are fully aware and do not act. “The harms that are most obvious,” he told me, “are the ones for which we may carry the heaviest moral responsibility.”</p><p>For Steven Pinker, there’s one risk above all on Bostrom’s list that nobody can ignore: nuclear weapons. The professor of psychology at Harvard and prolific author has recently explored the place of violence in modern societies. His 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Naturemakes the case that violence has actually declined over time. When it comes to <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121109-is-world-peace-possible\">nuclear war</a>, however, a shattering possibility still hangs over us.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qh9d\"}}</p><p>As he put it to me, nuclear weapons “violate every norm of civilised warfare… disproportionate to any threat, indiscriminate in killing civilians in inconceivable numbers and in poisoning the environment. They are useless as an ordinary weapon in war, and their effectiveness as a deterrent depends entirely on the willingness of leaders to murder millions of innocent civilians”. And, most alarmingly, “though the taboo against using them has held for two thirds of a century, the probability of use through an accident or in the hands of a fanatic is not zero”.</p><p>So what happens if the worst case scenario arrives, and something like a nuclear war devastates the planet? For Nick Bostrom’s colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute, the philosopher Stuart Armstrong, our responsibilities to prepare for existential risk are not only about prevention – but also about how we prepare our descendants for possible aftermaths.</p><p>“One thing we are interested in,” he told me, “is whether the Industrial Revolution can be repeated. After most disasters there would be some survivors. Would they be able to rebuild technological civilisation? And what could we do that might enable or help them to rebuild?”</p><p>It’s a chilling thought. If a catastrophic event undoes much of the last few thousand years of development, will our descendants be able to rebuild industrial civilisation – and is there anything we can do to help them? Put like this, almost everything we’re doing today can feel extraordinarily short-sighted.</p><p>“If there is a disaster,” Armstrong argues, “our descendants will resent us for not preparing resources to help them. We are bad at keeping records.” Our generation stores its most vital information on CDs, hard drives or in the digital cloud, assuming that we will always have the means to power and decode these. If the future loses this technology, much of their past and its achievements will effectively cease to exist.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p021qgkv\"}}</p><p>What can we learn from all this? As I digested the responses I have heard, it became clear that speculating about future disapproval is a sobering existential process: an attempt to see the peculiar circumstances of our own time through more impartial eyes – and to admit just how peculiar we are.</p><p>Hopefully, the future will be too busy getting on with its present to spend much time looking backwards. But while the early 21st Century belongs to us, one imperative is clear: we must try to stretch our imaginations beyond present concerns. As a final conversation with the science fiction author Greg Bear brought home to me, our capacity to think about the future is one of our species’ most remarkable talents. The power of great science fiction, Bear argued, is that it does not so much predict the future, as shape it. “Good books change the way we think,” he says, “and thus, their futures can’t come true—not completely.”</p><p>The truth is we will never escape some measure of disapproval from our descendants. If, though, we can grasp their possible futures with sufficient faith and rigour, we may achieve the best anyone can hope for: averting the worst, aspiring toward the best, and handing on a culture (if not a planet) in better shape than the one we inherited.</p><p><em>What do you think future generations will deplore about our behaviour today? L</em><em>et us</em><em> know </em><em>on</em><em>our </em><em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a></em><em> or </em><em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a></em><em> page, or message us on </em><em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a></em><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-06-27T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"What our descendants will deplore about us","HeadlineShort":"How our descendants will hate us","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"How will the future view us? Tom Chatfield asked some of the world’s best minds, and discovered that we will be seen as barbaric in ways we may not even realise.","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"How will the future view us? Tom Chatfield asked some of the world’s best minds, and discovered that we will be seen as barbaric in ways we may not even realise","SummaryShort":"What will make us seem barbaric in future ","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:01Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"65694a4c-497e-4d9f-b666-19c5e91a35ac","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140627-how-our-descendants-will-hate-us","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:01Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140627-how-our-descendants-will-hate-us"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140627-how-our-descendants-will-hate-us","_id":"598496cd543960df95e12dc7"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Right now, in three facilities in the US and Russia, there are around 300 people teetering on the cusp of oblivion. They exist in a state of deep cooling called cryopreservation, and entered their chilly slumber after their hearts had stopped beating. Before undergoing true cell death, the tissues of their brains were suspended using an ice-free process called <a href=\"http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/vitrification.html\">vitrification</a>. All are legally deceased, but if they could speak, they would likely argue that their remains do not constitute dead bodies at all. Instead, in a sense, they are just unconscious.</p><p>No-one knows if it’s possible to revive these people, but more and more of the living seem to believe that uncertainty is better than the alternative. Around 1,250 people who are still legally alive are on cryonics waiting lists, and new facilities are opening in Oregon, Australia and Europe soon.</p><blockquote><p> We have a saying in cryonics: being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to you – Dennis Kowalski, Cryonics Institute </p></blockquote><p>“We have a saying in cryonics: being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to you,” says Dennis Kowalski, president of the <a href=\"http://www.cryonics.org/\">Cryonics Institute</a> in Michigan, the largest cryonics organization in the world. “There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to be brought back, but there is a guarantee that if you get buried or cremated, you’ll never find out.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s222w\"}}</p><p>To the uninitiated, cryonics might seem the stuff of “Vanilla Sky,” “Demolition Man,” and other purely science fiction works. But <a href=\"http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-cryonics/\">many researchers</a> believe that it is a credible field of inquiry, and cryobiologists are slowly chipping away at the possibility of revival. Most recently, a team <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401500245X\">succeeded at</a> thawing a previously vitrified rabbit brain. Even after several weeks of storage, the synapses that are thought to be crucial for brain function were intact. The rabbit was still dead, though – the researchers did not attempt to resuscitate the animal afterwards.</p><p>While a thawed out rabbit brain does not a fully revitalised person make, some believe that cryogenic revival might someday be as commonplace as treating a case of the flu or mending a broken arm. “This is really not so earth-shattering or philosophically weird as you might think,” says Aubrey de Grey, co-founder and chief science officer at the <a href=\"http://www.sens.org/\">Sens Research Foundation</a> in California, a non-profit organisation dedicated to changing the way we research and treat age-related ill health. “It’s just medicine – another form of healthcare that helps people who are seriously sick. Once you get your head around that, it’s much less scary.” </p><blockquote><p> They would immediately face the challenge of rebuilding their lives as strangers in a strange land </p></blockquote><p>But assuming cryonics does wind up working, for the newly reborn citizens of the past there would be more to their stories than simply opening their eyes and declaring a happy ending. Instead, they would immediately face the challenge of rebuilding their lives as strangers in a strange land. How that would play out depends on a host of factors, including how long they were gone, what kind of society they returned to, whether they know anyone when they are brought back and in what form they return. Answering these questions is a matter of pure speculation, but experts have spent time turning them over – not the least so some can better prepare for their own potential return.</p><p>Much of a cryogenically preserved person’s experience in coming back would depend on the time scale involved. Some enthusiasts are optimistic, using the law of accelerating returns to justify predictions that within the next 30 to 40 years we could develop medical technologies capable of enhancing biological systems, preventing disease and even reverse-engineering aging. If that comes to pass, then there’s a chance that those frozen today would actually be welcomed back by people they knew in their first phase of life – their grown grandchildren, for example.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s2255\"}}</p><blockquote><p> Lifetime members of the Cryonics Institute can enroll their spouse for half price, and underage children are free </p></blockquote><p>If such advances take longer, on the order of 100 or more years, however, patients would not have such immediate social support in the contemporary world. Some, like Kowalski, are getting around this by simply sticking together: he, his wife and their children have all signed up for cryogenic suspension. Indeed, lifetime members of the Cryonics Institute can enroll their spouse for half price, and underage children are free. “We do that to encourage the family unit to stay together,” Kowalski says.</p><p>But even if a cryogenically preserved person was on his or her own, Kowalaski does not think that would necessarily be a deal breaker for eventually attaining happiness. As he puts it: “If you were on an airplane today with all your family and friends and it crashed and you’re the only survivor, would you commit suicide? Or would you go out and put your life back together, and make new family and friends?”</p><p>Other cryogenically revived people would be a good starting point for replacing lost connections. Like refugees arriving in a new country, communities of formerly vitrified persons would likely bond around their shared experience and temporal origins.</p><p>Where members of those communities would live or how they would support themselves are other unanswered questions. “If they arrive and don’t know much and don’t have any income, they’re going to have to be cared for,” says Daniel Callahan, co-founder and senior research scholar at the <a href=\"http://www.thehastingscenter.org/\">Hastings Center</a>, a research institution dedicated to bioethics and health policy. “Who’s going to do that?”</p><p>In an attempt to anticipate these needs, the Cryonics Institute invests a fraction of patient fees – currently $28,000 with life insurance – into stocks and bonds. The hope is that future returns can help revived persons get back on their feet, so to speak.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s21ss\"}}</p><p>It is possible, however, that money will no longer exist by the time cryonics pays off, and that people will not have to work for a living. A society that has achieved the medical breakthroughs necessary to cure disease and end aging, Kowalski and others believe, may also be one bereft of poverty and material want. In such a scenario, clothing, food and homes, fabricated with 3D printers or some other advanced means, would be abundant and freely available. “It doesn’t make sense that they’d take the time to revive people into some dystopian, backward future,” Kowalski says. “You can’t have the technology to wake people up and not have the technology to do a bunch of other great things, like provide abundance to the population.” </p><blockquote><p> They would be dislocated, alienated and coming to grips with the certainty that everyone they had ever known is lost </p></blockquote><p>Still, even if cryogenically revived persons come back to a more equitable and advanced future, the mental flip-flops required to adjust to that new world would be substantial. Dislocated in time, alienated from society and coming to grips with the certainty that everyone and everything they had ever known is irretrievably lost, they would likely suffer symptoms of intense trauma. And that’s not to mention the fact that some may have to deal with a whole new body because only their head was preserved.</p><p>“Even for someone extremely resilient, the need to adapt themselves to a new body, culture and environment seems extremely challenging,” says <a href=\"file:///web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://c/Users/fisherw1/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/OVHW3350/jeffreykauffmanpsychotherapy.com\">Jeffry Kauffman</a>, a psychotherapist based outside of Philadelphia. “These people would be forced to ask themselves, ‘Just who am I, really?’”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s228s\"}}</p><p>Others, however, believe that cryonics’ psychological repercussions will prove trivial road bumps for those brought back, thanks to superior forms of future therapy as well as the resilience of the human spirit. “We’re born without consent into a strange world, that’s the human condition,” says <a href=\"http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4e54-5931-4d54-5530\">Abou Farman</a>, an anthropologist at the New School in New York City. “We tend to adapt to strange situations all the time.”</p><p>Kowalski agrees, pointing out that people who move from developing countries to more industrialised ones often do well in their new environment. Likewise, those whose bodies are altered by an accident or in combat are able to carry on.</p><p>There’s no doubt though that the intensity of this transition would likely be something completely new to psychologists. Trauma, like depression, can play out in a variety of forms, so the trauma cryonics may trigger could be unlike any iteration we’ve seen before, Kauffman says. “There are a diversity of phenomenologies based in part on differences in what happened, so we can only guess based on other trauma what some aspects of this new one may be.”</p><p>There is also the question of how those from the distant past would go about creating relationships with those from the present. Forging genuine connections might prove challenging, Kauffman says, because contemporary persons would likely view antiquated arrivals “as spectacles.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s21m0\"}}</p><p>Although de Grey counters that “people treat other people as oddities all the time,” in this case, the social isolation would likely be more staggering than anything comparable today. “In even 100 years the world can change enormously,” Callahan says. “If you add another 100 years to that, my god, it’s going to be very different indeed. Those from that time would be almost alien creatures.”</p><p><strong>Still human? </strong></p><p>These scenarios are still based in the realm of the imaginable, but there is an additional, wildcard option for how all of this could turn out. Should only a person’s consciousness be salvaged and uploaded into some sort of virtual state of being – think Johnny Depp in “Transcendence” – then all bets are off for making predictions on how they would respond. As Kauffman points out, the brain functions in conjunction with sensory organs and other bodily sensations, and even those cut off from their bodies, such as quadriplegic persons, still have self-images. To be bodiless but aware is a ghost-like state completely foreign to what any human has ever experienced before. “What that would be is really just hard to imagine,” Callahan says.</p><blockquote><p> Immortality could also be cause for alarm. An uploaded brain will have beaten death </p></blockquote><p>Immortality could also be cause for alarm. An uploaded brain, in a sense, will have beaten death, which raises basic psychological and philosophical questions. “We can say that death is at the root of consciousness, normative law and human existence,” Kauffman says. “The loss of death is likely to radically alter who or what the being or creature is.”</p><p>There’s no guarantee that this ‘being’ would be the same one who first entered into the cryogenic process, either. As de Grey says, the question remains of “whether scanning the brain and uploading it into a different substrate is revival at all, or if you’d be creating a new individual with the same characteristics.”</p><p>Regardless of who or what that ghost in the machine turned out to be, programming in a digital suicide option would likely be necessary – just in case the experience proved too overwhelming or oppressive. “I think they’d have to decide in advance what the escape hatch would be if it didn’t work out,” Callahan says. “Is it that the company is authorised to kill you, or are you left to do it yourself?”  </p><p>Despite the unknowns, some would still be willing to give such an existence a shot. “If the option was complete oblivion and nothingness or uploading my mind into a computer, I’d like to at least try it,” Kowalski says. “It could be pretty cool.”</p><p>--</p><p><em>Join 500,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em>LinkedIn</em></a><em> and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em>Instagram</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-04-25T00:20:35Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"If cryonics suddenly worked, we’d need to face the fallout","HeadlineShort":"The unsettling side of cryopreservation","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"If we could actually cryogenically preserve people for years – or even centuries – what would it feel like for those individuals to wake up? Rachel Nuwer explores the question in a new BBC Future series called 'What If…’","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"If we could actually cryogenically preserve people for years – or even centuries – what would it feel like for those individuals to wake up?","SummaryShort":"If cryonics suddenly worked, we’d need to face the fallout","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-04-25T03:22:17.044536Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"e3abbb61-82cd-4026-bebb-6d219c809797","Id":"wwfuture/story/20160424-if-cryonics-suddenly-worked-wed-need-to-face-the-fallout","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-04-29T05:38:55.848542Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20160424-if-cryonics-suddenly-worked-wed-need-to-face-the-fallout"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20160424-if-cryonics-suddenly-worked-wed-need-to-face-the-fallout","_id":"5983ce4a543960df95e0c3cf"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Sarah Shourd’s mind began to slip after about two months into her incarceration. She heard phantom footsteps and flashing lights, and spent most of her day crouched on all fours, listening through a gap in the door.</p><p>That summer, the 32-year-old had been hiking with two friends in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan when they were arrested by Iranian troops after straying onto the border with Iran. Accused of spying, they were kept in solitary confinement in Evin prison in Tehran, each in their own tiny cell. She endured almost 10,000 hours with little human contact before she was freed. One of the most disturbing effects was the hallucinations.</p><p>“In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there,” she <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/in-an-iranian-prison-tortured-by-solitude.html?_r=0\">wrote in the New York Times in 2011</a>. “At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn’t until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realised the screams were my own.”</p><p>We all want to be alone from time to time, to escape the demands of our colleagues or the hassle of crowds. But not <em>alone</em> alone. For most people, prolonged social isolation is all bad, particularly mentally. We know this not only from reports by people like Shourd who have experienced it first-hand, but also from psychological experiments on the effects of isolation and sensory deprivation, some of which had to be called off due to the extreme and bizarre reactions of those involved. Why does the mind unravel so spectacularly when we’re truly on our own, and is there any way to stop it?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01z14w5\"}}</p><p>We’ve known for a while that <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/health-21517864\">isolation is physically bad for us</a>. Chronically lonely people have higher blood pressure, are more vulnerable to infection, and are also more likely to develop <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6332883.stm\">Alzheimer’s disease and dementia</a>. Loneliness also interferes with a whole range of everyday functioning, such as sleep patterns, attention and logical and verbal reasoning. The mechanisms behind these effects are still unclear, though what is known is that social isolation unleashes an extreme immune response – a cascade of stress hormones and inflammation. This may have been appropriate in our early ancestors, when being isolated from the group carried big physical risks, but for us the outcome is mostly harmful.</p><p>Yet some of the most profound effects of loneliness are on the mind. For starters, isolation messes with our sense of time. One of the strangest effects is the ‘time-shifting’ reported by those who have spent <a href=\"http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php\">long periods living underground without daylight</a>. In 1961, French geologist Michel Siffre led a two-week expedition to study an underground glacier beneath the French Alps and ended up staying two months, fascinated by how the darkness affected human biology. He decided to abandon his watch and “live like an animal”. While conducting tests with his team on the surface, they discovered it took him five minutes to count to what he thought was 120 seconds. <br /> <strong><br /> </strong>A similar pattern of ‘slowing time’ was reported by Maurizio Montalbini, a sociologist and caving enthusiast. In 1993, Montalbini spent 366 days in an underground cavern near Pesaro in Italy that had been designed with Nasa to simulate space missions, breaking his own world record for time spent underground. When he emerged, he was convinced only 219 days had passed. His sleep-wake cycles had almost doubled in length. Since then, researchers have found that in darkness most people eventually adjust to a 48-hour cycle: 36 hours of activity followed by 12 hours of sleep. The reasons are still unclear.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01z14mr\"}}</p><p>As well as their time-shifts, Siffre and Montalbini reported periods of mental instability too. But these experiences were nothing compared with the extreme reactions seen in notorious sensory deprivation experiments in the mid-20th Century.</p><p>In the 1950s and 1960s, China was rumoured to be using solitary confinement to “brainwash” American prisoners captured during the Korean War, and the US and Canadian governments were all too keen to try it out. Their defence departments funded a series of research programmes that might be considered ethically dubious today.</p><p>The most extensive took place at McGill University Medical Center in Montreal, led by the psychologist Donald Hebb. The McGill researchers invited paid volunteers – mainly college students – to spend days or weeks by themselves in sound-proof cubicles, deprived of meaningful human contact. Their aim was to reduce perceptual stimulation to a minimum, to see how their subjects would behave when almost nothing was happening. They minimised what they could feel, see, hear and touch, fitting them with translucent visors, cotton gloves and cardboard cuffs extending beyond the fingertips. As <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v196/n1/pdf/scientificamerican0157-52.pdf\">Scientific American magazine reported at the time</a>, they had them lie on U-shaped foam pillows to restrict noise, and set up a continuous hum of air-conditioning units to mask small sounds.</p><p>After only a few hours, the students became acutely restless. They started to crave stimulation, talking, singing or reciting poetry to themselves to break the monotony. Later, many of them became anxious or highly emotional. Their mental performance suffered too, struggling with arithmetic and word association tests.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01z152c\"}}</p><p>But the most alarming effects were the hallucinations. They would start with points of light, lines or shapes, eventually evolving into bizarre scenes, such as squirrels marching with sacks over their shoulders or processions of eyeglasses filing down a street. They had no control over what they saw: one man saw only dogs; another, babies.</p><p>Some of them experienced sound hallucinations as well: a music box or a choir, for instance. Others imagined sensations of touch: one man had the sense he had been hit in the arm by pellets fired from guns. Another, reaching out to touch a doorknob, felt an electric shock.</p><p>When they emerged from the experiment they found it hard to shake this altered sense of reality, convinced that the whole room was in motion, or that objects were constantly changing shape and size.</p><p><strong>Distressing end</strong></p><p>The researchers had hoped to observe their subjects over several weeks, but the trial was cut short because they became too distressed to carry on. Few lasted beyond two days, and none as long as a week. Afterwards, Hebb wrote in the journal American Psychologist that the results were “very unsettling to us… It is one thing to hear that the Chinese are brainwashing their prisoners on the other side of the world; it is another to find, in your own laboratory, that merely taking away the usual sights, sounds, and bodily contacts from a healthy university student for a few days can shake him, right down to the base.”</p><p>In 2008, clinical psychologist <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/isolation/highlights/\">Ian Robbins recreated Hebb’s experiment in collaboration with the BBC</a>, isolating six volunteers for 48 hours in sound-proofed rooms in a former nuclear bunker. The results were similar. The volunteers suffered anxiety, extreme emotions, paranoia and significant deterioration in their mental functioning. They also hallucinated: a heap of 5,000 empty oyster shells; a snake; zebras; tiny cars; the room taking off; mosquitoes; fighter planes buzzing around.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04f5qb5\"}}</p><p><em>A clip from BBC Horizon’s Total Isolation experiment – <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/isolation/\">read more information about the programme here</a>.</em></p><p>Why does the perceptually deprived brain play such tricks? Cognitive psychologists believe that the part of the brain that deals with ongoing tasks, such as sensory perception, is accustomed to dealing with a large quantity of information, such as visual, auditory and other environmental cues. But when there is a dearth of information, says Robbins, “the various nerve systems feeding in to the brain’s central processor are still firing off, but in a way that doesn’t make sense. So after a while the brain starts to make sense of them, to make them into a pattern.” It creates whole images out of partial ones. In other words, it tries to construct a reality from the scant signals available to it, yet it ends up building a fantasy world.</p><p>Such mental failures should perhaps not surprise us. For one thing, we know that other primates do not fare well in isolation. One of the most graphic examples is psychologist Harry Harlow’s experiments on rhesus macaque monkeys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1960s, in which he deprived them of social contact after birth for months or years. They became, he observed, “enormously disturbed” even after 30 days, and after a year were “obliterated” socially, incapable of interaction of any kind. (A comparable social fracturing has been observed in humans: consider<a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015p62y\"> the children rescued from Romanian orphanages</a> in the early 1990s, who after being almost entirely deprived of close social contact since birth grew up with serious behavioural and attachment issues.)</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01z14q3\"}}</p><p>Secondly, we derive meaning from our emotional states largely through contact with others. Biologists believe that human emotions evolved because they aided co-operation among our early ancestors who benefited from living in groups. Their primary function is social. With no one to mediate our feelings of fear, anger, anxiety and sadness and help us determine their appropriateness, before long they deliver us a distorted sense of self, a perceptual fracturing or a profound irrationality. It seems that left too much to ourselves, the very system that regulates our social living can overwhelm us.</p><p>Take the 25,000 inmates held in <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/isolation/tour/\">“super-maximum security” prisons</a> in the US today. Without social interaction, supermax prisoners have no way to test the appropriateness of their emotions or their fantastical thinking, says Terry Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, who has interviewed thousands of supermax prisoners. This is one of the reasons many suffer anxiety, paranoia and obsessive thoughts. Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a leading authority on the mental health of inmates in the US, believes that some of them purposefully initiate brutal confrontations with prison staff just to reaffirm their own existence – to remember who they are.</p><p><strong>Coping strategy</strong></p><p>Social isolation is not always debilitating, however. Are some better than others at coping? And can you train yourself to resist the worst effects? Here scientists have fewer hard answers, but we can at least look to the lessons of individuals who thrived – or floundered – under isolation.</p><p>When Shourd was imprisoned in Iran, she was arguably among the least-equipped people to cope, because her incarceration came out of the blue. People in her circumstances have their world suddenly inverted, and there is nothing in the manner of their taking – no narrative of sacrifice, or enduring for a greater good – to help them derive meaning from it. They must somehow find meaning in their predicament – or mentally detach themselves from their day-to-day reality, which is a monumental task when alone.</p><p>Hussain Al-Shahristani managed it. He was Saddam Hussein’s chief nuclear adviser before he was tortured and shut away in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad after refusing on moral grounds to cooperate on the development of an atomic weapon. He kept his sanity during 10 years of solitary confinement by taking refuge in a world of abstractions, making up mathematical problems which he then tried to solve. He is now deputy energy minister of Iraq. Edith Bone, a medical academic and translator, followed a similar strategy during the seven years she spent imprisoned by the Hungarian communist government after World War Two, constructing an abacus out of stale bread and counting out an inventory of her vocabulary in the six languages she spoke fluently.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01z1z1m\"}}</p><p>Such experiences may be easier to take if you belong to a military organisation. Keron Fletcher, a consultant psychiatrist who has helped debrief and treat hostages, says mock detention and interrogation exercises of the kind he himself underwent while serving with the Royal Air Force are a good preparation for the shock of capture. “They teach you the basics of coping,” he says. “Also, you know your buddies will be busting a gut to get you back in one piece. I think the military are less likely to feel helpless or hopeless. Hopelessness and helplessness are horrible things to live with and they erode morale and coping ability.”</p><p>US senator John McCain is a good example of how a military mindset bestows psychological advantages. His five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, during which he refused to yield to his interrogators, actually seemed to strengthen him. Though note what he had to say about the two years he spent in isolation: “It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment… The onset of despair is immediate, and it is a formidable foe.”</p><p><strong>Extreme reality</strong></p><p>Psychologists who study how people cope with isolation have learnt much from solo explorers and mountaineers. For many adventurers deprived of human company – albeit voluntarily – the landscape itself can serve as an effective surrogate, drawing them out of themselves into the beauty or grandeur of their surroundings. Norwegian psychologist Gro Sandal at the University of Bergen in Norway, who has interviewed many adventurers about how they cope in extreme environments, says that transcending the reality of their situation in this way is a common coping mechanism. “It makes them feel safer. It makes them feel less alone.”</p><p>A similar psychological mechanism could explain why shipwrecked mariners marooned on islands have been known to anthropomorphise inanimate objects, in some cases creating a cabal of imaginary companions with whom to share the solitude. It sounds like madness but is likely a foil against it. Take the way sailor Ellen MacArthur nicknamed her trimaran “Mobi”, during her record-breaking solo circumnavigation of the globe in 2005. During the voyage she signed emails to her support team “love e and mobi”, and in her published account uses “we” rather than “I”.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01z1z8s\"}}</p><p>There is no more poignant illustration of the power of solitude to sink one person while lifting up another than the stories of Bernard Moitessier and Donald Crowhurst, two of the competitors in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe round-the-world yacht race. The trophy, offered to the first sailor to complete a solo non-stop circumnavigation of the globe, was won in 313 days by Robin Knox-Johnston, the only one out of nine starters to finish. He seemed to relish being alone with his boat, but not as much as Moitessier, an ascetic Frenchman who practised yoga on deck and fed cheese to the shearwater birds that shadowed him. Moitessier found the experience so fulfilling, and the idea of returning to civilisation so distasteful, that he abandoned the race despite a good chance of victory and just kept on sailing, eventually landing in Tahiti after travelling more than halfway round the world again. “I continue non-stop because I am happy at sea,” he declared, “and perhaps because I want to save my soul.”</p><p>Crowhurst, meanwhile, was in trouble from the start. He left England ill-prepared and sent fake reports about his supposed progress through the southern seas while never actually leaving the Atlantic. Drifting aimlessly for months off the coast of South America, he became increasingly depressed and lonely, eventually retreating to his cabin and consolidating his fantasies in a rambling 25,000-word philosophical treatise before jumping overboard. His body was never found.</p><p>What message can we take from these stories of endurance and despair? The obvious one is that we are, as a rule, considerably diminished when disengaged from others. Isolation may very often be the “sum total of wretchedness”, as the writer Thomas Carlyle put it. However, a more upbeat assessment seems equally valid: it is possible to connect, to find solace beyond ourselves, even when we are alone. It helps to be prepared, and to be mentally resilient. But we shouldn’t underestimate the power of our imagination to knock over prison walls, penetrate icy caves or provide make-believe companions to walk with us.</p><p><em>This article is based on the book </em><a href=\"https://www.oneworld-publications.com/books/michael-bond/the-power-of-others\"><em>The Power of Others</em></a><em> by Michael Bond (Oneworld Publications).</p><p></em><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-05-14T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"How extreme isolation warps the mind","HeadlineShort":"How extreme isolation warps minds","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"When people are isolated from human contact, their mind can do some truly bizarre things, says Michael Bond. Why does this happen?","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"When people are isolated from human contact, their mind can do some truly bizarre things, says Michael Bond. Why does this happen?","SummaryShort":"The strange ways loneliness affects us","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"2f957eda-1fe1-4cb2-a32a-80a4fae6aa63","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-08T16:12:32.190702Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds","_id":"5982843e543960df95e0159d"}],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Are you prepared for the collapse of the modern world? Lewis Dartnell describes what knowledge you’d need to reboot civilisation.\n","SummaryShort":"A cheat sheet for the apocalypse","SuperSection":null,"Tag":null,"CreationDateTime":"2016-11-25T06:26:06.884313Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"f4f36689-7748-4239-91b0-167272130fc2","Id":"wwfuture/story/20161124-how-to-cope-with-the-end-of-the-world","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-25T10:07:25.414835Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20161124-how-to-cope-with-the-end-of-the-world"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-11-25T06:26:06.884313Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"f4f36689-7748-4239-91b0-167272130fc2","Id":"wwfuture/story/20161124-how-to-cope-with-the-end-of-the-world","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-25T10:07:25.414835Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20161124-how-to-cope-with-the-end-of-the-world"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20161124-how-to-cope-with-the-end-of-the-world","_id":"59822ee2543960df95dfe8ef"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":125106,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/ld/p02fldy3.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"The lighting of a cross during the Christian Los Escobazos Festival in Spain, celebrating the conception of the Virgin Mary (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"The lighting of a cross during the Christian Los Escobazos Festival in Spain, celebrating the conception of the Virgin Mary (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/ld/p02fldy3.jpg","Title":"09_460137986_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02fldy3","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02fldy3","_id":"5984edce543960df95e15aac"}],"AssetImagePromo":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":79100,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flg1n.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flg1n.jpg","Title":"08_457983910_getty_976.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flg1n","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flg1n","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flg1n","_id":"5984b30b543960df95e13c56"}],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":231834,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flg54.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Azerbaijani Muslims pray at the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"Azerbaijani Muslims pray at the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Azerbaijani Muslims pray at the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flg54.jpg","Title":"04_452875614_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flg54","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flg54","_id":"5984b30b543960df95e13c55"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":115489,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flf9c.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"In the Philippines, survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan march during a religious procession (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"In the Philippines, survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan march during a religious procession (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flf9c.jpg","Title":"03_450349165_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flf9c","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flf9c","_id":"598519a7543960df95e17157"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":78637,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flflq.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"A rabbi reads during Purim festivities (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"A rabbi reads during Purim festivities (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"A rabbi reads during Purim festivities (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flflq.jpg","Title":"01_72325640_getty__976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flflq","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flflq","_id":"5984b309543960df95e13c52"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":79100,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flg1n.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flg1n.jpg","Title":"08_457983910_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flg1n","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flg1n","_id":"5984b30b543960df95e13c56"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":253974,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flggp.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Buddhist monks file towards a ceremony at Sampov Treileak pagoda in Cambodia (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"Buddhist monks file towards a ceremony at Sampov Treileak pagoda in Cambodia (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flggp.jpg","Title":"02_123205608_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flggp","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flggp","_id":"59851e19543960df95e173a5"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":93292,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flgpt.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"A devotee at Thailand's Vegetarian Festival (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"A devotee at Thailand's Vegetarian Festival (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"A devotee at Thailand's Vegetarian Festival (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lg/p02flgpt.jpg","Title":"06_456366628_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flgpt","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flgpt","_id":"5984b30b543960df95e13c57"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":87753,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flfyd.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"A priest in Ukraine holds a cross in the ruins of Kiev's Trade Union building earlier this year (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"A priest in Ukraine holds a cross in the ruins of Kiev's Trade Union building earlier this year (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flfyd.jpg","Title":"10_470945891_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flfyd","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flfyd","_id":"5984b308543960df95e13c50"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":156401,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flf5d.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Yemeni girls show their hands decorated with traditional henna designs as they celebrate the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"Yemeni girls show their hands decorated with traditional henna designs as they celebrate the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"(Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flf5d.jpg","Title":"05_452886784_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flf5d","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flf5d","_id":"5984b30a543960df95e13c54"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":131360,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flfs0.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"An Indian Sikh lights candles during Bandi Chhor Divas, or Diwali (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"An Indian Sikh lights candles during Bandi Chhor Divas, or Diwali (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"An Indian Sikh lights candles during Bandi Chhor Divas, or Diwali (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2f/lf/p02flfs0.jpg","Title":"07_457721266_getty_976.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02flfs0","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02flfs0","_id":"5984b309543960df95e13c51"}],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Description":"<p>Rachel Nuwer is a science journalist who contributes to\nvenues such as The New York Times, Scientific American and Smithsonian. Her\nwebsite is <a href=\"http://rachelnuwer.com/\">rachelnuwer.com</a> and you can\nfollow her on twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/rachelnuwer\">@rachelnuwer</a>.\nShe lives in Brooklyn.</p>","Email":[],"Links":null,"Name":"Rachel Nuwer","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"c575dd82-8272-4f0b-9c80-40e01bb0a58e","Id":"wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"rachel-nuwer"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:author:wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","_id":"5981d0d8543960df95dde185"}],"BodyHtml":"<p>A growing number of people, millions worldwide, say they believe that life definitively ends at death – that there is no God, no afterlife and no divine plan. And it’s an outlook that could be gaining momentum – despite its lack of cheer. In some countries, openly acknowledged atheism has never been more popular.</p><p>“There’s absolutely more atheists around today than ever before, both in sheer numbers and as a percentage of humanity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Living-Secular-Life-Answers-Questions-ebook/dp/B00INIQQEA/ref=la_B001HD3S8U_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417626000&sr=1-1\">Living the Secular Life</a>. According to a <a href=\"http://redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/RED-C-press-release-Religion-and-Atheism-25-7-12.pdf\">Gallup International survey</a> of more than 50,000 people in 57 countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77% to 68% between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist rose by 3% – bringing the world’s estimated proportion of adamant non-believers to 13%.</p><p>While atheists certainly are not the majority, could it be that these figures are a harbinger of things to come? Assuming global trends continue might religion someday disappear entirely?</p><p>It’s impossible to predict the future, but examining what we know about religion – including why it evolved in the first place, and why some people chose to believe in it and others abandon it – can hint at how our relationship with the divine might play out in decades or centuries to come. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flfyd\"}}</p><p>Scholars are still trying to tease out the complex factors that drive an individual or a nation toward atheism, but there are a few commonalities. Part of religion’s appeal is that it offers security in an uncertain world. So not surprisingly, nations that report the highest rates of atheism tend to be those that provide their citizens with relatively high economic, political and existential stability. “Security in society seems to diminish religious belief,” Zuckerman says. Capitalism, access to technology and education also seems to correlate with a corrosion of religiosity in some populations, he adds.</p><p><strong>Crisis of faith</strong></p><p>Japan, the UK, Canada, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, France and Uruguay (where the majority of citizens have European roots) are all places where religion was important just a century or so ago, but that now report some of the lowest belief rates in the world. These countries feature strong educational and social security systems, low inequality and are all relatively wealthy. “Basically, people are less scared about what might befall them,” says Quentin Atkinson, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flf5d\"}}</p><p>Yet decline in belief seems to be occurring across the board, including in places that are still strongly religious, such as Brazil, Jamaica and Ireland. “Very few societies are more religious today than they were 40 or 50 years ago,” Zuckerman says. “The only exception might be Iran, but that’s tricky because secular people might be hiding their beliefs.” </p><p>The US, too, is an outlier in that it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but also has high rates of religiosity. (Still, <a href=\"http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/\">a recent Pew survey</a> revealed that, between 2007 and 2012, the proportion of Americans who said they are atheist rose from 1.6% to 2.4%.)</p><p>Decline, however, does not mean disappearance, says Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and author of <a href=\"http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/IndexBook.html\">Big Gods</a>. Existential security is more fallible than it seems. In a moment, everything can change: a drunk driver can kill a loved one; a tornado can destroy a town; a doctor can issue a terminal diagnosis. As climate change wreaks havoc on the world in coming years and natural resources potentially grow scarce, then suffering and hardship could fuel religiosity. “People want to escape suffering, but if they can’t get out of it, they want to find meaning,” Norenzayan says. “For some reason, religion seems to give meaning to suffering – much more so than any secular ideal or belief that we know of.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flf9c\"}}</p><p>This phenomenon constantly plays out in hospital rooms and disaster zones around the world. In 2011, for example, a massive earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand – a highly secular society. There was a <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0049648\">sudden spike of religiosity</a> in the people who experienced that event, but the rest of the country remained as secular as ever. While exceptions to this rule do exist – religion in Japan plummeted following World War II, for instance – for the most part, Zuckerman says, we adhere by the Christchurch model. “If experiencing something terrible caused all people to become atheists, then we’d all be atheists,” he says.  </p><p><strong>The mind of god</p><p></strong>But even if the world’s troubles were miraculously solved and we all led peaceful lives in equity, religion would probably still be around. This is because a god-shaped hole seems to exist in our species’ neuropsychology, thanks to a quirk of our evolution.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flflq\"}}</p><p>Understanding this requires a delve into “dual process theory”. This psychological staple states that we have two very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2. System 2 evolved relatively recently. It’s the voice in our head – the narrator who never seems to shut up – that enables us to plan and think logically.</p><p>System 1, on the other hand, is intuitive, instinctual and automatic. These capabilities regularly develop in humans, regardless of where they are born. They are survival mechanisms. System 1 bestows us with an innate revulsion of rotting meat, allows us to speak our native language without thinking about it and gives babies the ability to recognise parents and distinguish between living and nonliving objects. It makes us prone to looking for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning for seemingly random events like natural disasters or the death of loved ones.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flfs0\"}}</p><p>In addition to helping us navigate the dangers of the world and find a mate, some scholars think that System 1 also enabled religions to evolve and perpetuate. System 1, for example, makes us instinctually primed to see life forces – a phenomenon called hypersensitive agency detection – everywhere we go, regardless of whether they’re there or not. Millennia ago, that tendency probably helped us avoid concealed danger, such as lions crouched in the grass or venomous snakes concealed in the bush. But it also made us vulnerable to inferring the existence of invisible agents – whether they took the form of a benevolent god watching over us, an unappeased ancestor punishing us with a drought or a monster lurking in the shadows.</p><p>Similarly, System 1 encourages us to see things dualistically, meaning we have trouble thinking of the mind and body as a single unit. This tendency emerges quite early: young children, regardless of their cultural background, are inclined to believe that <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12220/abstract\">they have an immortal soul</a> – that their essence or personhood existed somewhere prior to their birth, and will always continue to exist. This disposition easily assimilates into many existing religions, or – with a bit of creativity – lends itself to devising original constructs.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flg1n\"}}</p><p>“A Scandinavian psychologist colleague of mine who is an atheist told me that his three-year-old daughter recently walked up to him and said, ‘God is everywhere all of the time.’ He and his wife couldn’t figure out where she’d gotten that idea from,” says Justin Barrett, director of the Thrive Center for Human Development at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Born-Believers-Science-Childrens-Religious/dp/B00D1G9LXC\">Born Believers</a>. “For his daughter, god was an elderly woman, so you know she didn’t get it from the Lutheran church.”</p><p>For all of these reasons, many scholars believe that religion arose as “a byproduct of our cognitive disposition”, says Robert McCauley, director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Culture at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and author of <a href=\"http://www.robertmccauley.com/books/why-religion-is-natural-and-science-is-not\">Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not</a>. “Religions are cultural arrangements that evolved to engage and exploit these natural capacities in humans.”</p><p><strong>Hard habits to break</p><p></strong>Atheists must fight against all of that cultural and evolutionary baggage. Human beings naturally want to believe that they are a part of something bigger, that life isn’t completely futile. Our minds crave purpose and explanation. “With education, exposure to science and critical thinking, people might stop trusting their intuitions,” Norenzayan says. “But the intuitions are there.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flg54\"}}</p><p>On the other hand, science – the system of choice that many atheists and non-believers look to for understanding the natural world – is not an easy cognitive pill to swallow. Science is about correcting System 1 biases, McCauley says. We must accept that the Earth spins, even though we never experience that sensation for ourselves. We must embrace the idea that evolution is utterly indifferent and that there is no ultimate design or purpose to the Universe, even though our intuition tells us differently. We also find it difficult to admit that we are wrong, to resist our own biases and to accept that truth as we understand it is ever changing as new empirical data are gathered and tested – all staples of science. “Science is cognitively unnatural – it’s difficult,” McCauley says. “Religion, on the other hand, is mostly something we don’t even have to learn because we already know it.”</p><p>“There’s evidence that religious thought is the path of least resistance,” Barrett adds. “You’d have to fundamentally change something about our humanity to get rid of religion.” This biological sticking point probably explains the fact that, although <a href=\"http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/\">20% of Americans</a> are not affiliated with a church, 68% of them say that they still believe in God and 37% describe themselves as spiritual. Even without organised religion, they believe that some greater being or life force guides the world.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flggp\"}}</p><p>Similarly, many around the world who explicitly say they don’t believe in a god still harbour superstitious tendencies, like belief in ghosts, astrology, karma, telepathy or reincarnation. “In Scandinavia, most people say they don’t believe in God, but paranormal and superstitious beliefs tend to be higher than you’d think,” Norenzayan says. Additionally, non-believers often lean on what could be interpreted as religious proxies – sports teams, yoga, professional institutions, Mother Nature and more – to guide their values in life. As a testament to this, witchcraft is <a href=\"http://www.bkmag.com/2013/11/18/witches-as-the-new-hipsters/\">gaining popularity</a> in the US, and paganism seems to be the <a href=\"http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/features/it-s-a-moot-point-but-paganism-may-be-the-fastest-growing-religion-in-britain-1-6199786\">fastest growing religion</a> in the UK.</p><p>Religious experiences for non-believers can also manifest in other, more bizarre ways. Anthropologist Ryan Hornbeck, also at the Thrive Center for Human Development, found evidence that the World of Warcraft is <a href=\"http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.600630\">assuming spiritual importance</a> for some players in China, for example. “WoW seems to be offering opportunities to develop certain moral traits that regular life in contemporary society doesn’t afford,” Barrett says. “People seem to have this conceptual space for religious thought, which – if it’s not filled by religion – bubbles up in surprising ways.”</p><p><strong>The in-group</p><p></strong>What’s more, religion promotes group cohesion and cooperation. The threat of an all-powerful God (or gods) watching for anyone who steps out of line likely helped to keep order in ancient societies. “This is the supernatural punishment hypothesis,” Atkinson says. “If everyone believes that the punishment is real, then that can be functional to groups.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02flgpt\"}}</p><p>And again, insecurity and suffering in a population may play a role here, by helping to encourage religions with stricter moral codes. In a <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16784.abstract\">recent analysis</a> of religious belief systems of nearly 600 traditional societies from around the world, Joseph Bulbulia at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and his colleagues found that those places with harsher weather or that are more prone to natural disasters were more likely to develop moralising gods. Why? Helpful neighbours could mean the difference between life and death. In this context, religion evolved as a valuable public utility.</p><p>“When we see something so pervasive, something that emerges so quickly developmentally and remains persistent across cultures, then it makes sense that the leading explanation is that it served a cooperative function,” says Bulbulia.</p><p>Finally, there’s also some simple mathematics behind religion’s knack for prevailing. Across cultures, people who are more religious also tend to have more children than people who are not. “There’s very strong evidence for this,” Norenzayan says. “Even among religious people, the more fundamentalist ones usually have higher fertility rates than the more liberal ones.” Add to that the fact that <a href=\"http://www.academia.edu/1590808/The_Importance_of_Religious_Displays_for_Belief_Acquisition_and_Secularization\">children typically follow their parents’ lead</a> when it comes to whether or not they become religious adults themselves, and a completely secularised world seems ever more unlikely.</p><p><strong>Enduring belief</strong></p><p>For all of these reasons – psychological, neurological, historical, cultural and logistical – experts guess that religion will probably never go away. Religion, whether it’s maintained through fear or love, is highly successful at perpetuating itself. If not, it would no longer be with us.</p><p>And even if we lose sight of the Christian, Muslim and Hindu gods and all the rest, superstitions and spiritualism will almost certainly still prevail. More formal religious systems, meanwhile, would likely only be a natural disaster or two away. “Even the best secular government can’t protect you from everything,” says McCauley. As soon as we found ourselves facing an ecological crisis, a global nuclear war or an impending comet collision, the gods would emerge.</p><p>“Humans need comfort in the face of pain and suffering, and many need to think that there’s something more after this life, that they’re loved by an invisible being,” Zuckerman says. “There will always be people who believe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain the majority.”</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"A grand tour of our planet’s last outposts. In a rapidly changing world, writer Rachel Nuwer sets out to find the last remaining places, people, technologies and resources of their kind.","Name":"Last Place on Earth","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Last Place on Earth","CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"98c431f6-a141-4d77-883c-be660f7c0c98","Id":"wwfuture/column/last-place-on-earth","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/last-place-on-earth"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"98c431f6-a141-4d77-883c-be660f7c0c98","Id":"wwfuture/column/last-place-on-earth","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/last-place-on-earth"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/last-place-on-earth","_id":"5981d0dc543960df95dde667"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":[],"CollectionType":"section","Description":"Science & Environment","Name":"Science & Environment","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Science & Environment"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T10:51:45.984509Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"1aa4ccec-87b5-44b8-b5af-c553debaf6f6","Id":"wwfuture/section/science-environment","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T13:51:20.083392Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"section/science-environment"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/section/science-environment","_id":"5981d0e2543960df95dde9c8"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":[],"CollectionType":"section","Description":"Health","Name":"Health","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Health"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T10:44:06.503434Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"00a9a33a-e393-4d09-8029-7e9d5bd1d8cb","Id":"wwfuture/section/health","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T13:52:37.074442Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"section/health"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/section/health","_id":"5981d0e2543960df95dde9ad"}],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-12-19T11:16:55Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Will religion ever disappear? ","HeadlineShort":"Will religion ever disappear? ","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Atheism is on the rise around the world, so does that mean spirituality will soon be a thing of the past? Rachel Nuwer discovers that the answer is far from simple.","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>In 1504, an anonymous mapmaker – most likely an Italian – carved a meticulous depiction of the known world into two halves of <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oldest-globe-to-depict-the-new-world-may-have-been-discovered/2013/08/19/503b2b4a-06b4-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?hpid=z1\">conjoined ostrich eggs</a>. The grapefruit-sized globe included recent breaking discoveries of mysterious distant lands, including Japan, Brazil and the Arabic peninsula. But blanks remained. In a patch of ocean near Southeast Asia, that long-forgotten mapmaker carefully etched the Latin phrase Hic Sunt Dracones – “Here are the dragons.”</p><p>Today it is safe to say there are no unknown territories with dragons. However, it’s not quite true to say that every corner of the planet is charted. We may seem to have a map for everywhere, but that doesn’t mean they are complete, accurate or even trustworthy.</p><p>For starters, all maps are biased toward their creator’s subjective view of the world. As <a href=\"https://web.duke.edu/isis/gessler/topics/lewis-carroll.htm\">Lewis Carroll famously pointed out</a>, a perfectly objective and faithful 1:1 representation of the world would literally have to be the same size as the place it depicted. Therefore, mapmakers must make sensible design decisions in order to compress the physical world into a much smaller, flatter depiction. Those decisions inevitably introduce personal biases, however, such as our tendency to place ourselves at the centre of the world. “We always want to put ourselves on the map,” says Jerry Brotton, a professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary University London, and author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/A-History-World-12-Maps/dp/0670023396\">A History of the World in 12 Maps</a>. “Maps address an existential question as much as one that’s about orientation and coordinates.</p><p>“We want to find ourselves on the map, but at the same time, we are also outside of the map, rising above the world and looking down as if we were god,” he continues. “It’s a transcendental experience.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxw4n\"}}</p><p>Which is why, he says, the first thing most new Google Earth users do is to look up their own address. Modern technology enables this exercise in ego, but the tendency itself is nothing new. It dates back to the oldest known world map, a 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablet discovered near Baghdad that puts Babylon at its centre. Mapmakers throughout history adopted a similar bias toward their own homeland, and little seems to have changed since then. Today, American maps still tend to centre on America; <a href=\"http://i.imgur.com/9RVtPrn.png\">Japanese maps</a> on Japan; and <a href=\"http://xiaoyanwangblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/blog-9-east-vs-west-south-vs-north.html\">Chinese ones</a> on China. Some <a href=\"http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/\">Australian maps</a> are even rotated so that the southern hemisphere is on top. It’s such an ego-centric approach that the United Nations sought to avoid it when they created <a href=\"http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/maplib/flag.htm\">their emblem</a> – a map of the world neutrally centered on the North Pole.</p><p>Similarly, maps can overestimate their creators’ geographic worth, or reveal bias against certain places. Africa’s true size, for example, has been <a href=\"http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/maps/page10.html\">chronically downplayed</a> throughout the history of mapmaking, and even now, non-Africans <a href=\"http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg\">tend to underestimate</a> the size of that truly massive continent – which is large enough to cover China, the US and much of Europe.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvmc\"}}</p><p>Religious, political and economic agendas also come into play, adulterating a map’s objectivity. The maps of World War II, for example, were incredibly propagandist, depicting “dreadful red bears and red perils,” Brotton says. “The maps were distorted to tell a political message.</p><p>“A map,” he continues, “will always have an agenda, an argument, a proposal about what the world looks like from a particular perspective.”</p><p><strong>Skewed view</strong></p><p>Even today’s digital maps adhere to this rule, he says. Google and other digital mapmakers turn the world into “<a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10091089/Jerry-Brotton-lets-take-maps-back-from-Google.html\">one enormous web browser</a>”, he explains, driven by commercial interests.</p><p>But Manik Gupta, the group product manager at Google Maps, counters that Google Maps’ primary goal mirrors that of its company: to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Commerce is just one part of that. “At the end of the day, technology is a tool,” Gupta says. “Our job is to make sure it’s super accurate and works. Users then decide how they want to use it.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvvx\"}}</p><p>Nevertheless, even digital maps skew toward the things that their users deem most important. Those areas that the majority sees as unworthy of attention – poor neighbourhoods like the Orangi shanty town in Karachi, Pakistan, or the Neza-Chalco-Itza slum in Mexico city – as well as those places that mapmakers do not often go – war-torn regions, North Korea – remain grossly undermapped.</p><p>This neglect means maps of remote regions can contain errors that go unnoticed for years. Scientists paying a visit to <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20442487\">Sandy Island</a>, a speck of land in the Coral Sea near New Caledonia, recently discovered that the island simply did not exist. The “phantom island” had found its way onto Australian maps and Google Earth at least a decade ago, probably due to human error.</p><p>Google has two approaches to addressing these problems: <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20141031-google-street-view-maps-south-georgia-for-the-first-time\">sending mapmakers out into the wilderness</a> with Street View cameras attached to backpacks, bikes, boats or snowmobiles, and launching <a href=\"http://www.google.com/mapmaker\">Map Maker</a>, a tool created in 2008 that allows anyone anywhere to enhance existing Google maps. “If it’s important, then most likely the users will put it on the map,” Gupta says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvjj\"}}</p><p>But while many communities have literally put themselves on the map, others have not. (Most likely, mapping Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or the floating slum of Makoko in Lagos isn’t a top priority for those living there.) Traditional paper maps tend to neglect these areas as well. “They’re places that the state denies or doesn’t want to portray as part of its landscape,” says Alexander Kent, a senior lecturer in geography and GIS at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. “Far from being something objective that just reflects what’s on the ground, the person behind the map has the power to determine what goes on it or not.”  </p><p>In recognition of this problem, a new effort called the <a href=\"http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Missing_Maps_Project\">Missing Maps Project</a> – organised by the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team – recruits volunteers to fill in the cartographical blanks in the developing world. It’s <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/06/missing-maps-human-genome-project-unmapped-cities\">too early to tell</a> whether the project will make a substantial dent, but launch parties are scheduled in London and Jakarta to try and drum up interest among potential volunteers.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cyqky\"}}</p><p>The ocean, likewise, is one of the most poorly mapped areas of the planet, despite the fact that it occupies the most space. “The great terra incognita is the ocean bed,” Brotton says. In light of increasing interest in underwater mining and drilling, certain countries – especially Russia – are looking to lay claim on large tracts of ocean floor. Additionally, with sea ice quickly receding, more and more territory will come up for grabs. “As the landscape changes, it becomes possible to exploit more mineral resources, so mapping becomes extremely powerful and important,” Brotton says. To draw attention to this gap of knowledge, Brotton and artist Adam Lowe are creating <a href=\"http://www.factum-arte.com/pag/261/Terra-Forming---Engineering-the-Sublime\">a 3D map of the ocean floor</a> without water. “I think geographers are beginning to understand that mapping the oceans is one of the great untold stories,” he says.</p><p><strong>Low quality</strong></p><p>For others, though, untold stories abound even in some of the most prolifically mapped places in the world. <a href=\"https://imusgeographics.com/\">Dave Imus</a>, an award-winning mapmaker based in Oregon, acknowledges that much of the world has been mapped in a basic sense, but believes that the vast majority of maps are not good enough.</p><p>“So many maps are difficult to understand, forcing the eye and mind to work overtime trying to perceive what it’s looking at,” he says. And a digital map, with spoken directions, “is good for helping you find a restaurant, but you’re no more connected with your surroundings than looking for the next turn”.</p><p>Frustrated with the maps on offer for the US, he set out to make his own, turning to the “really exquisite, expressive” mapping style of Swiss cartographers as inspiration. “It’s my hypothesis that the reason Europeans are so much more geographically aware than we Americans is that they have these maps that make their surroundings understandable and we don’t,” he says.</p><p><a href=\"http://www.imusgeographics.com/listitems_63/usa-maps\">{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvdf\"}}</a></p><p>The fruit of his labour is the <a href=\"http://www.imusgeographics.com/listitems_63/usa-maps\">Essential Geography of the United States of America</a>, a highly informative map that does away with the muddle of rainbow-coloured states of traditional US maps, instead delineating boundaries in green and allowing each state’s actual features – mountains, forests, lakes, urban centres, highways – to characterise those places. City populations are indicated in yellow patches, and rather than cram in as many towns as possible, Imus uses census data to standardise rural places in terms of what counts as a hub in that particular area – whether that means 500 or 5,000 people. Major landmarks and transportation centres like airports are marked; Native American reserves are included (something lacking on many maps); and elevation of not only of mountains but also cities is noted. “The National Geographic map of the US has some elevations of mountain peaks but doesn’t even tell you the elevation of Denver, Colorado,” Imus says. “As a consequence, it doesn’t communicate anything meaningful about what that place is like if you’ve never been there.”</p><p><strong>High standard</strong></p><p>Such maps are incredibly time consuming and expensive to produce, however. Imus spent 6,000 hours on his. As a result, as far as Imus knows, only Europe, Japan, New Zealand and now the US have maps available that meet these high standards. “We think we’re living in this modern age and everything’s been done, but for people who look at mapping at a slightly different angle, they’ll see things that still need to be done virtually everywhere,” he says. Still, Imus dreams of a day when such maps will be widely available everywhere and at increasingly fine scales, such as at the state and city level. Ultimately, he hopes this would foster a more geographically literate society. “I’ve felt misunderstood at times,” Imus says, “but I’ve gotten so much great feedback on this project that I feel like people now get it and it’ll continue on.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvhy\"}}</p><p>But even the most detailed maps cannot get around one fundamental problem in the way of creating a near-perfect cartographic representation for any place in the world: the incredible pace of change, both human and nature-made, that characterises life on the planet. Some cities in Asia and Africa, Gupta says, are undergoing so much construction that Google Maps have been unable to keep up. At the same time, natural landscapes are constantly in a state of flux – now, more so than ever. Islands are being devoured by the sea, ice floes are disappearing, shorelines are eroding and forests are being cleared. “The very moment you build a perfect map of the world is the moment it goes out of date,” Gupta says. “The real world will always be a little bit ahead of how we represent it, because change is constant.”</p><p>In that sense, the entire world is undermapped, and it will always remain that way. A birds-eye view of a city tells you it’s there, but not how to navigate through all corners of it. A foldout map is a relic of the time it went to print, unable to take into account earthquake destruction, new roads or renegotiated borders. And Google Maps can provide turn-by-turn instructions for biking from London to Brighton, but fails utterly when asked to do the same for traversing a Brazilian favela or the Gobi desert’s dunes.</p><p>Even our best maps, then, are merely more up to date and truer to place than others. Our age-old quest to capture uncharted land and space will never end.</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-11-28T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The last unmapped places on Earth","HeadlineShort":"The last unmapped places","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Have we mapped the whole planet? As Rachel Nuwer discovers, there are mysterious, poorly charted places everywhere, but not for the reasons you might think. ","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Have we mapped the whole planet? As Rachel Nuwer discovers, there are mysterious, poorly charted places everywhere, but not for the reasons you might think. ","SummaryShort":"Uncharted regions closer than you think","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-28T02:13:06Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"cc715c69-d11d-4110-ad2c-7d7e8cc0f50b","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-08T10:22:35.06575Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141127-the-last-unmapped-places"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","_id":"59848856543960df95e126e7"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":[],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Somewhere between 1.8 million and 12,000 years ago, our ancestors mastered the <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/who_invented_fire_when_did_people_start_cooking_.html\">craft of fire building</a>. Anthropologists often cite this event as the spark that truly allowed us to become human, giving us the means to cook, keep warm and forge tools. But fire also marked another important first for us: the invention of man-made pollution.</p><p>Pollution, by definition, is something introduced into the environment that harmfully disrupts it. While nature sometimes produces its own damaging contaminants – wildfires send up billows of smoke and ash, volcanoes belch noxious gases – humans are responsibile for the lion’s share of the pollution plaguing the planet today.</p><p>Wherever we go, we seem to have a knack for leaving our rubbish and waste behind. Visit even the most remote outpost on the planet and you will witness this first hand. Shredded tyres and plastic bottles punctuate the vast expanse of the Gobi desert; plastic bags ride the currents in the middle of the Pacific; and spent oxygen canisters and raw sewage mar the snows of Mount Everest.</p><p>Still, the world is a big place. Might there be some last holdouts free from the taint of our pollution? Answering that question works best if we break down the environment into four realms – the sky, land, freshwater and ocean.</p><p><strong>Sky and land</p><p></strong>Air pollution comes in many forms. Smog is mostly composed of <a href=\"http://www.epa.gov/pm/basic.html\">particulate matter</a> and ozone – a greenhouse gas that forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds produced by cars and industrial plants react together in the presence of sunlight. And its impact on human health and the environment can be severe. In India alone, ozone pollution causes crop losses equivalent to <a href=\"http://news.agu.org/press-release/ozone-pollution-in-india-kills-enough-crops-to-feed-94-million-in-poverty/\">$1.2 billion per year</a>. In terms of <a href=\"http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/documents/GAW-2013-Heather.pdf\">human health</a>, outdoor air pollution costs an estimated one million lives per year, while air pollution produced in homes – usually a by-product of cooking fires – kills around two million people annually. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z3tq\"}}</p><p>When carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and other primary pollutants (those that are injected directly into the atmosphere) find their way high into the atmosphere, they often get transformed through chemical reactions into what scientists refer to as secondary pollutants. Some of these pollutants can linger for months. Others, like methane, are less reactive and may circulate the globe for years until they are eventually broken down or find their way to the ground via snow or rain. As Helen ApSimon, a professor of air pollution studies at Imperial College London, points out, this means “you don’t necessarily get away from air pollution by being further from the sources”.</p><p>Pollution expelled into the air gets transported vast distances by winds and atmospheric currents. “One thing we see very often is that pollution starts off in one place but ends up somewhere very far afield,” says David Edwards, director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research Earth System Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029zdjj\"}}</p><p>For instance, Indonesia has recently been clearing large tracts of forest with fire to create new palm oil plantations – and Singapore now contends with significant haze problems due to its neighbour’s slash-and-burn tendencies. Smoke pollution can travel even further than that, however: fires used for farming in South America and southern Africa are a major source of air pollution for the entire southern hemisphere. On occasions, says Edwards, “pollution emitted from one source region can find its way around the globe more than once.”</p><p>So based on what we know about atmospheric currents and pollution distribution, it’s safe to say that there are no places on the planet guaranteed to be fully free from air pollution. And therefore that goes for the land surface too.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z3f4\"}}</p><p>That said, however, there are places where the air is cleaner. In general, the Southern Hemisphere’s air is better than the Northern Hemisphere’s, just by virtue of the fact that fewer people live there. While pollution does move around the world, there is less mixing between the hemispheres due to barrier-like wind patterns. The South Pole, therefore, probably contains the cleanest air on Earth given its remoteness.</p><p>But as ApSimon points out, there’s still a massive pollution-caused hole in the ozone layer hovering over Antarctica, and deposits of black carbon can be readily spotted on that continent’s snow. So even if the air there is likely the cleanest, it’s by no means pristine.</p><p>Deep caves, too, could contain relatively pollution-free air, so long as they didn’t have much circulation with the outside world. “I can imagine there could be deep caves where there’s been very little air exchange for a long time,” ApSimon says. “Mind you, you don’t know what else is in that deep cave – I’m thinking there could be lots of guano.” Bat poo, in other words.</p><p><strong>Water</p><p></strong>Air pollution, unfortunately, also affects water, and therefore cancels out hope that perfectly clean freshwater bodies exist. “If one looks at pollution broadly, then it’s unlikely that there is a pristine catchment anywhere that hasn’t been polluted, because anthropogenic influences like air pollution have really gone all over the world,” says Thomas Chiramba, chief of the freshwater ecosystem unit at the United Nations Environment Program, based in Nairobi, Kenya.</p><p>But while pollution from the air does settle in water, it’s actually pollution from land that acts as the primary contaminant for freshwater resources. Chemicals, fertilisers and waste seep into groundwater and wash into lakes, streams and rivers, often winding up in the ocean. The result is dead zones – swathes of fresh or saltwater devoid of life. Dead zones occur when nutrient loads from land cause massive microbial blooms, which in turn deplete the water of oxygen. These tubs of death are found all over the world, but the Gulf of Mexico’s <a href=\"http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/named/msbasin/zone.cfm\">Mississippi River Delta</a> is perhaps the most infamous example.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2qy\"}}</p><p>Raw sewage and industrial waste are primary culprits wreaking havoc on freshwater. In many countries, “sanitation” refers only to removing waste from homes – not treating it before returning it to the environment. By some estimates, 80% of wastewater generated in developing countries is discharged directly into local waterways. That figure can be worse on a case-to-case basis: New Delhi dumps 99% of its wastewater into the Yamuna River, for example, while Mexico City pumps all of its liquid refuse into the Mezquital Valley. “That is the main source of pollution all over the world,” says Asit Biswas, founder of the Third World Centre for Water Management in Mexico, and a distinguished visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. “As a result, the rivers become polluted, and people living downstream are forced to drink that water.”</p><p><a href=\"http://www.thirdworldcentre.org/drinkingwaterrisk.pdf\">According to Biswas’s research</a>, none of South Asia’s 1.65 billion people have access to clean, safe tap water; more than half of China’s rivers and lakes are too polluted to drink; and 72% of samples collected from Pakistan’s water supply system were found to be unfit for human consumption. What’s bad for humans is also bad for the environment. According to <a href=\"http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/\">a report</a> recently issued by the WWF, animal populations living in freshwater have declined by 75% over the last 40 years, thanks largely to pollution.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2t9\"}}</p><p>As with the air, freshwater bodies furthest from humans are probably also the cleanest. Canada’s far northern lakes and rivers, along with the Arctic and Antarctic’s freshwater are likely candidates for least-polluted bodies of water. Glacial layers that formed prior to the Industrial Revolution as well as sub-glacier lakes trapped far below the surface could in fact be pristine. Antarctica’s Lake Vostok, for instance, is buried under ice that is 400,000 years old. But these water bodies are clean because humans cannot physically get to them – other than by using drills. When it comes to more accessible areas, remote corners of the Congo Basin and the Amazon rainforest could be close contenders for second place. “Where you have the smallest human populations, you’ll also find increasingly pristine freshwater resources,” Chiramba says.</p><p><strong>Ocean</p><p></strong>Even the oceans, which remain largely unexplored and occupy a whopping 70% of the Earth’s surface, has not escaped our pollution’s reaches. Today, an estimated 60-80% of marine pollution originates from land, reaching the water through harbours, dirty beaches and polluted waterways that drain into the sea. Of that pollution, plastic is the most pervasive. That’s because most plastic takes centuries – perhaps even longer – to completely disappear. Paper, on the other hand, disintegrates quickly, and glass isn’t nearly as common as it used to be.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2xn\"}}</p><p>Surprisingly, some of the remotest places in the ocean are also some of the most polluted, thanks to the patterns of the currents. Midway Atoll, a speck of land in the middle of the North Pacific, for example, is uninhabited save for scientists who visit for a few weeks at a time. But it’s covered in washed up debris, which often fatally finds its way into the digestive system of seabirds living there.</p><p>Likewise, the deep sea was once thought to be largely cut off from the human world, but the more we explore, the more we are coming to terms with the fact that that is not the case. “I’ve done a lot of work on the bottom of the ocean with submarines and ROVs [remote operated vehicles], and there’s human debris everywhere,” says Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. “It brings home the fact that human beings are an integral part of marine ecosystems now.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2v2\"}}</p><p>On the deep-sea floor, the most readily identifiable pollution tends to be cans and bottles, though discarded fishing gear, ropes, metal objects, military ammunition and even old shoes regularly turn up, too. The diversity of garbage represents the fact that, historically, “people used the ocean as a dumping ground”, Levin says. In addition to the things we can see, much more is likely buried under the sediment, she adds, while other forms of pollution cannot be spotted by the human eye, such as microplastic – former bottles and bags that have broken down into ever smaller particles. Those tiny plastic pieces fill the ocean and “are probably impossible to ever clean up”, says Jenni Brandon, a graduate student in biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution, who specialises in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. “A lot of people think those particles can really be around forever.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2lc\"}}</p><p>Plastic pollution is not the only man-made waste contaminating the ocean, however. Oil spills regularly occur all over the world, even if the majority of them escape the notice of Western media. Persistent chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also leach into the water from land, and then travel up the marine food chain.</p><p>And not all marine pollution is physical. Noise pollution caused by things like ship engine noise and sonar is becoming an increasing problem that has been implicated in whale, dolphin and squid deaths. “There are some places that don’t have physical debris – or at least where we haven’t found physical debris,” Brandon says. “But it would be hard to find anywhere that hasn’t had any human impacts.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z3md\"}}</p><p>Some human impacts on the marine realm can also be completely unexpected. In 2007, for example, several amphipod crustaceans scooped up from water 11km (6.8 miles) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean <a href=\"http://www.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_52/issue_4/1685.html\">turned out to have cow DNA within their guts</a>. “How do you get cow to the bottom of the Kermadec Trench?” Levin says. “I’m sure it was just a ship dumping its leftovers.”</p><p>While a burger for lunch may or may not harm those trench-dwelling creatures, it does demonstrate just how deeply our influence on the planet reaches. Whether our contaminants take the form of a discarded lunch, human excrement or billions of metric tonnes of airborne pollutants, we’re left with an unfortunate but clear answer: there probably is no place on Earth without pollution. In other words, as Biswas says, “We human beings have done a wonderful job of contaminating the environment around us.”</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a>.</p><p><em>Update:</em> <em>The forest-clearance behind Singapore's</em> <em>haze</em> <em>problem is predominantly in Indonesia, not Malaysia.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-11-04T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Are there any pollution-free places left on Earth? ","HeadlineShort":"Is anywhere free from pollution?","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Humans appear to have done a thorough job of contaminating the Earth’s rivers, oceans and atmosphere, says Rachel Nuwer. Is there anywhere pristine left on the planet?","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Humans appear to have done a thorough job of contaminating the Earth’s rivers, oceans and atmosphere, says Rachel Nuwer. So, is there anywhere pristine left?","SummaryShort":"Quest for the last unpolluted places","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"167875d2-2a86-48db-b220-9eedb251d9d0","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141104-is-anywhere-free-from-pollution","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141104-is-anywhere-free-from-pollution"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20141104-is-anywhere-free-from-pollution","_id":"5984d37d543960df95e14d91"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":[],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>On July 1, <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/about/funai\">Funai</a>, the Brazilian governmental agency in charge of indigenous Indian affairs, <a href=\"http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/2884-nota-da-funai\">quietly posted a short press release</a> on its website: two days earlier, they said, seven members of an isolated Indian tribe emerged from the Amazon and made peaceful contact with people in a village near the Peruvian border.</p><p>As the first official contact with such a tribe since 1996, the event was out of the ordinary. But the event itself could have been anticipated. For weeks, local villagers in Brazil’s Acre state had reported sightings of the tribesman, who supposedly came to steal crops, axes and machetes, and who “<a href=\"http://www.ac24horas.com/2014/04/16/presenca-de-indios-isolados-cria-panico-na-fronteira-do-acre/\">mimicked monkey cries</a>” that frightened women and children.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246bz6\"}}</p><p>The Indians’ decision to make contact was not driven by a desire for material goods, however, but by fear. With the help of translators who spoke a closely related indigenous Panoan language, the Acre Indians explained that “<a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10361\">violent attacks</a>” by outsiders had driven them from the forest. Later, details emerged that their <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10374\">elder relatives were massacred</a>, and their houses set on fire. Illegal loggers and cocaine traffickers in Peru, where the Indians are thought to come from, are likely to blame, according to the Brazilian government. Indeed, Funai’s own nearby monitoring post was shut down in 2011 due to increasing escalations with drug traffickers.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04f5qb5\"}}</p><p><em>Early contact with the Acre tribe, recorded by Funai</em></p><p>After they decided the situation called for drastic measures, the Indians did not just stumble upon the Brazilian village by chance – they probably knew exactly where to go. “They know far more about the outside world than most people think,” says Fiona Watson, research director for the non-profit organisation <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/\">Survival International</a>. “They are experts at living in the forest and are well aware of the presence of outsiders.” </p><p>This gets to the heart of a common misconception surrounding isolated tribes such as the one in Acre: that they live in a bubble of wilderness, somehow missing the fact that their small corner of the world is in fact part of a much greater whole – and one that is dominated by other humans. “Almost all human communities have been in some contact with one another for as long as we have historical or archaeological records,” says Alex Golub, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Human prehistory is not like that game <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(video_game)\">Civilization</a> where you start with a little hut and the whole map is black.”</p><p><strong>Fear factor</strong></p><p>Today’s so-called uncontacted people all have a history of contact, whether from past exploitation or simply seeing a plane flying overhead. The vast majority of an estimated 100 or more isolated tribes live in Brazil, but others can be found in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and northern Paraguay. Outside of the Americas, isolated groups live in Papua New Guinea and on North Sentinel Island of India’s Andaman Islands, the latter of which is home to what experts think is the most isolated tribe in the world, <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/campaigns/mostisolated\">the Sentinelese</a>. Nothing is known about their language, and Indian authorities have only rough estimates of how many of them exist today. But even the Sentinelese have had occasional brushes with other societies; members of their tribe have been kidnapped, helicopters sometimes fly over their island and they have <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1509987/Stone-Age-tribe-kills-fishermen-who-strayed-on-to-island.html\">killed fishermen</a> who have ventured too close.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246f3w\"}}</p><p>It is almost always fear that motivates such hostilities and keeps isolated groups from making contact. In past centuries and even decades, isolated tribes were often murdered and enslaved by outsiders. From the time white Europeans first arrived in the Americas, indigenous peoples learned to fear them, and passed that message down generations through oral histories. “People have this romanticised view that isolated tribes have chosen to keep away from the modern, evil world,” says Kim Hill, an anthropologist at Arizona State University. But when Hill and others interview people who recently came out of isolation, the same story emerges time and time again: they were interested in making contact with the outside world, but they were too afraid to do so. As Hill puts it: “There is no such thing as a group that remains in isolation because they think it’s cool to not have contact with anyone else on the planet.”</p><p>Some have personal memories of traumatic encounters with outsiders. In the 1960s and 70s, Brazil largely viewed the Amazon as an empty place in need of development. Indigenous people who stood in the way of that progress were given little or no warning before their homes were bulldozed over – <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/akuntsu\">or they were simply killed</a>. In one case in Brazil’s Rondônia state, a single man, often referred to as “<a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3105-the-last-of-his-tribe\">the Last of His Tribe</a>,” remains in a patch of forest surrounded by cattle ranches. His people were likely killed by ranchers years ago. When he was discovered in 1996, he shot arrows at anyone who dared to approach his home. Funai officials sometimes check up on his house and garden, and, as far as anyone knows, he’s still living there today. “It’s a really sad story of this one little pocket of forest left where this one lone guy lives,” says Robert Walker, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri. “He’s probably completely terrified of the outside world.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246cbp\"}}</p><p>In some cases in the 70s and 80s, the Brazilian government did try to establish peaceful contact with indigenous people, often with the aim of forced assimilation or relocation. They set up “attraction posts” – offerings of metal tools and other things indigenous Indians might find to be valuable – to try and lure them out of hiding. This sometimes led to violent altercations, or, more often than not, disease outbreaks. Isolated people have no immunity to some bugs, which have been known to wipe out <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/about/shell\">up to half</a> of a village’s population in a matter of weeks or months. During those years, missionaries traipsing into the jungle also <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/zoe\">delivered viruses and bacteria</a> along with Bibles, killing the people they meant to save.</p><p>In 1987, Sydney Possuelo – then head of Funai’s Department of Unknown Tribes – decided that the current way of doing things was unacceptable. After seeing tribe after tribe demolished by disease, he concluded that isolated people should not be contacted at all. Instead, natural reserves should be placed aside for them to live on, and any contact attempts should be left up to them to initiate. “Isolated people do not manifest among us – they don’t ask anything of us – they live and die mostly without our knowledge,” he says. When we do contact them, he says, they too often share a common fate: “desecration, disease and death.” </p><p><strong>Viral event</strong></p><p>Unfortunately, history seems to be repeating itself. Three weeks after the Indians in Acre made contact, <a href=\"http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/2903-indios-isolados-que-estabeleceram-contato-recebem-atendimento-medico-no-acre\">Funai announced</a> that several of them had contracted the flu. All of them subsequently received treatment and vaccinations, but they soon returned to the forest. The fear, now, is that they will carry the foreign virus back with them to their home, spreading it to others who have no natural immunity. </p><p>“It’s hard to say what’s going to happen, other than to make doomsday predictions,” Hill says. “So far, things are looking just like they looked in the past.”</p><p>Possuelo – who <a href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0126/p04s01-woam.html\">was fired from Funai</a> in 2006 after a disagreement with his boss over some of these concerns – issues a more direct warning: “What they do in Acre is very worrying: they are going to kill the isolated people,” he says. “The president of Funai and the Head of the Isolated Indians Department should be held accountable for not meeting established standards.” (Funai did not respond to interview requests for this story.)</p><p>Surprisingly, no international protocol exists that outlines how to avoid this predicament. “Every government and group involved in making contact just wings it according to their own resources and experiences,” Hill says.</p><p>The common problem is a lack of institutional memory. Even in places like Brazil with decades of experience, Hill says, “each new government official takes on the task without knowing much about what happened in the past.” Some officials, he adds, have minimal expertise. “Quasi-amateur is what I’d call them: government officials who come in with no medical, anthropological or epidemiological training.”</p><p><strong>Total denial</strong></p><p>The situation in Peru, Watson points out, is even worse. “At one stage, the Peruvian government denied that uncontacted people even exist,” she says. And now major oil and gas operations are allowed to operate on reserves containing their villages. Added to that is the presence of illegal loggers and drug traffickers – making for a very crowded forest.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246966\"}}</p><p>Native people living there seem to be well aware of these encroachments. Google Earth satellite images that Walker recently analysed reveal that one large isolated village in Peru seems to be migrating, year by year, further afield from outside encroachment on their land, including a planned road project. “Most people argue that what’s going on here is that they’re potentially being forced out of Peru,” he says. “It seems like they are running away.”</p><p>When accidental harm from the outside world seems inevitable, Hill argues it would be better if we initiated contact. Slowly building up a long-distance friendship, he explains, and then carrying out a controlled contact meeting with medical personnel on site would be preferable. After that initial contact is made, anthropologists should be prepared to go back into the forest with the group and stay on site to monitor the situation for several months, as well as build up trust and communication. That way, if an epidemic should break out, help can be called for. “You can’t just tell them after 15 minutes, ‘Oh, by the way, if your whole village gets sick, send everyone out to this spot to get medical treatment,’” Hill says. “They won’t comply with that.”</p><p>It’s unclear whether or not such a plan is being carried out in Acre, however. “Funai is not the most transparent organisation, and they have complete monopoly on what happens to remote people in Brazil,” Hill says. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t work in the best interest of native peoples.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246c2h\"}}</p><p>To ensure isolated groups have a future, <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/emails/uncontacted\">both Brazil and Peru</a> might need to become more transparent as well as more proactive about protecting them. No matter how remote the Amazon might seem, unlike the Sentinelese, South America’s isolated groups do not live on an island cut off from the forces of mainstream society. “Everywhere you look, there are these pressures from mining, logging, narcotrafficking and other external threats,” Walker says. “My worry is that if we have this ‘leave-them-alone’ strategy, at the end of the day the external threats will win. People will just go extinct.”</p><p><em>Thanks to </em><em>João Victor Geronasso for translation help for this story. <br /> </em><br /> <em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-08-04T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes","HeadlineShort":"Sad truth of uncontacted tribes","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"One of the world’s last isolated tribes has apparently emerged from the forest. Rachel Nuwer investigates whether there is anyone left who has never seen the outside world, and discovers that ‘first contacts’ are often cursed by death and disease.","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"One of the world’s last isolated tribes has ‘emerged’ from the forest. Is it to make contact, or have darker reasons forced them out? Rachel Nuwer investigates.","SummaryShort":"The darker causes forcing them out","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:50Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"9b128e28-f7ea-4974-b5c7-8ecb8149aa2d","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-08T16:22:54.848668Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes","_id":"5983d772543960df95e0c8ce"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Tom Belt, a native of Oklahoma, didn’t encounter the English language until he began kindergarten. In his home, conversations took place in Cherokee.</p><p>Belt grew up riding horses, and after college bounced around the country doing the rodeo circuit. Eventually, he wound up in North Carolina in pursuit of a woman he met at school 20 years earlier. “All those years ago, she said the thing that attracted her to me was that I was the youngest Cherokee she’d ever met who could speak Cherokee,” he says. “I bought a roundtrip ticket to visit her, but I never used the other end of the ticket.”</p><p>The couple married. Yet his wife – also Cherokee – did not speak the language. He soon realised that he was a minority among his own people. At that time, just 400 or so Cherokee speakers were left in the <a href=\"http://nc-cherokee.com/\">Eastern Band</a>, the tribe located in the Cherokee's historic homeland and the one that his wife belongs to. Children were no longer learning the language either. “I began to realise the urgency of the situation,” Belt says. So he decided to do something about it.</p><p>Cherokee is far from the only minority language threatened with demise. Over the past century alone, around 400 languages – about one every three months – have gone extinct, and most linguists estimate that <a href=\"http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/50-percent-of-the-worlds-languages-in-danger-of-extinction-83098/\">50%</a> of the world’s remaining 6,500 languages will be gone by the end of this century (some put that figure as high as <a href=\"http://io9.com/5442321/90-percent-of-languages-will-be-extinct-next-century---and-thats-good\">90%</a>, however). Today, the top ten languages in the world claim around half of the world’s population. Can language diversity be preserved, or are we on a path to becoming a monolingual species?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxpy\"}}</p><p>Since there are so many imperilled languages, it’s impossible to label just one as the rarest or most endangered, but at least 100 around the world have only a handful of speakers – from <a href=\"http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/ain\">Ainu in Japan</a> to <a href=\"http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/yag\">Yagan in Chile</a>. It can be difficult to find these people too. There are some famous cases – <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/28/usa.features11\">Marie Smith Jones</a> passed away in Alaska in 2008, taking the <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqxGB0lR2Gc\">Eyak language</a> with her – but usually they are older individuals (often in failing health) who don’t advertise their language skills. “The smaller the number of speakers, the harder it is to get an accurate headcount,” says David Harrison, chair of the linguistics department at Swarthmore College, and co-founder of the non-profit <a href=\"http://www.livingtongues.org/\">Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages</a>.</p><p>Even if a number of people still speak it, they might live far apart and so not converse with one other – or in the case of the pre-Columbian Mexican language Ayapaneco, the <a href=\"http://mashable.com/2014/05/19/friends-save-dying-language/\">last two surviving speakers</a> refused to talk to each other for years. Without practice, even a native language will begin to degrade in the speaker’s mind. Salikoko Mufwene, a linguist at the University of Chicago, grew up speaking <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwVKVvDavE\">Kiyansi</a>, spoken by a small ethnic group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 40 years living away from the DRC, Mufwene has only come across only two people who speak the language. On a recent trip to his home village, he found himself searching for words and struggling to keep up with the conversation. “I realised Kiyansi exists more in my imagination than in practice,” he says. “This is how languages die.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxrs\"}}</p><p>Languages usually reach the point of crisis after being displaced by a socially, politically and economically dominant one, as linguists put it. In this scenario, the majority speaks another language – English, Mandarin, Swahili – so speaking that language is key to accessing jobs, education and opportunities. Sometimes, especially in immigrant communities, parents will decide not to teach their children their heritage language, perceiving it as a potential hindrance to their success in life.</p><p>Speakers of minority languages have suffered a long history of persecution. Well into the 20th Century, many Native American children in Canada and the US were sent to boarding schools, where they were often forbidden to speak their native language. Today, many English-speaking Americans are still <a href=\"http://7online.com/archive/9237741/\">hostile towards non-English speakers</a>, <a href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/19/houston-teacher-who-reportedly-told-students-not-to-speak-spanish-will-likely/\">especially Spanish ones</a>. Extreme persecution still happens as well. Last August, a linguist in China was <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/world/asia/a-devotion-to-language-proves-risky.html?_r=0\">arrested for trying to open schools</a> that taught his native language, Uighur. He has not been heard from since.</p><p><strong>Endangered tongues</strong></p><p>For these reasons and others, languages are <a href=\"http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/index.php\">dying all over the world</a>. Unesco’s <a href=\"http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/atlas-of-languages-in-danger/\">Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger</a> lists 576 as critically endangered, with thousands more categorised as endangered or threatened. The highest numbers occur in the Americas. “I would say that virtually all the [minority] languages in the US and Canada are endangered,” says Peter Austin, a professor of field linguistics at the University of London. “Even a language like Navajo, with thousands of speakers, falls into that category because very few children are learning it.” If measured in proportion to population, however, then Australia holds the world record for endangered languages. When Europeans first arrived there, 300 aboriginal languages were spoken around the country. Since then, 100 or so have gone extinct, and linguists regard 95% of the remaining ones as being on their last legs. Just a dozen of the original 300 are still being taught to children.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gzyv\"}}</p><p>But does it matter whether a seemingly obscure language spoken by a few people in one isolated corner of the world goes out of existence?</p><p>Some people argue that language loss, like species loss, is simply a fact of life on an ever-evolving planet. But counter arguments are abundant. “A lot of people invoke social Darwinism to say ‘who cares’,” says Mark Turin, an anthropologist and linguist at Yale University. “But we spend huge amounts of money protecting species and biodiversity, so why should it be that the one thing that makes us singularly human shouldn’t be similarly nourished and protected?”</p><p>What’s more, languages are conduits of human heritage. Writing is a relatively recent development in our history (written systems currently exist for only about one-third of the world’s languages), so language itself is often the only way to convey a community’s songs, stories and poems. The Iliad was an oral story before it was written, as was The Odyssey. “How many other traditions are out there in the world that we’ll never know about because no-one recorded them before the language disappeared?” Austin says. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxsz\"}}</p><p>Languages also convey unique cultures. Cherokee, for example, has no word for goodbye, only “I will see you again”. Likewise, no phrase exists for “I’m sorry”. On the other hand, it has special expressions all its own. One word – oo-kah-huh-sdee –represents the mouth-watering, cheek-pinching delight experienced when seeing an adorable baby or a kitten. “All of these things convey a culture, a way of interpreting human behaviour and emotion that’s not conveyed the same way as in the English language,” Belt says. Without the language, the culture itself might teeter, or even disappear. “If we are to survive, to continue on and to exist as a people with a distinct and unique culture,” he continues, “then we have to have a language.”</p><p>“It’s very hard as an English speaker to understand that,” adds Lenore Grenoble, a linguist at the University of Chicago. “But you just hear that time and time again: that people feel the loss of their language in a very personal way.”</p><p><strong>Wealth of wisdom</strong></p><p>Another argument mirrors that of biodiversity conservation. Just as ecosystems provide a wealth of services for humanity – some known, others unacknowledged or yet to be discovered – languages, too, are ripe with possibility. They contain an <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/When-Languages-Die-Extinction-Knowledge/dp/0195372069\">accumulated body of knowledge</a>, including about geography, zoology, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, pharmacology, botany, meteorology and more. In the case of Cherokee, that language was born of thousands of years spent inhabiting the southern Appalachia Mountains. Cherokee words exist for every last berry, stem, frond and toadstool in the region, and those names also convey what kind of properties that object might have – whether it’s edible, poisonous or has some medicinal value. “No culture has a monopoly on human genius, and we never know where the next brilliant idea may come from,” Harrison says. “We lose ancient knowledge if we lose languages.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxv2\"}}</p><p>Finally, languages are ways of interpreting the world, and no two are the same. As such, they can provide insight into neurology, psychology and the linguistic capacities of our species. “Different languages provide distinct pathways of thought and frameworks for thinking and solving problems,” Harrison says. Returning to Cherokee, unlike English it is verb rather than noun-based, and those verbs can be conjugated in a multitude of ways based on who they are acting upon. And depending on the suffix, speakers can indicate whether a noun is toward or away from them; uphill or downhill; or upstream or down stream. It’s a much more precise way of dealing with the world than English. “There’s a misconception that these languages are simple just because many are unwritten,” Turin says. “But most have incredibly complex grammatical systems that far exceed that of English.”</p><p><strong>Scramble to save</strong></p><p>For all of these reasons, linguists are scrambling to document and archive the diversity of quickly disappearing languages. Their efforts include making dictionaries, recording histories and traditions, and translating oral stories. “If there’s really good documentation, then there’s a chance that these languages could be revitalised in the future even after they cease to be spoken,” Turin says.</p><p>Without speakers or persons interested in revitalising them, however, these efforts are like “preserving languages as museum artefacts”, Mufwene says.</p><p>After learning that his language was poised to disappear, Belt and other concerned Cherokee speakers in the Eastern Band began discussing how to save the language. Belt volunteered to teach Cherokee lessons at a local school, for example, and eventually the tribe decided to create a language immersion school for children, where core classes –including science and math – are taught in Cherokee. Cherokee language is now also offered at the local university, where Belt teaches.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxvr\"}}</p><p>“The Eastern Cherokee are one of the ones really quietly working on their own language revitalisation programs,” says Bernard Perley, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “But no-one ever hears about the work they’re doing.”</p><p>There are also a few examples of languages being revived even after actually going extinct. By the 1960s, the last fluent Miami language speakers living in the American Midwest passed away. Thanks largely to the efforts of <a href=\"http://www.endangered-languages.com/miami.php\">one interested member of the Miami Nation</a> tribe, however, <a href=\"http://myaamiacenter.org/\">the language is now taught</a> at Miami University in Ohio. “The Miami Nation asked, what if the experts are wrong? What if the language is only sleeping, and we can awaken it?” Perley says. “They changed the rhetoric from death to life.”</p><p><strong>Tech support</strong></p><p>To an extent, technology can help these efforts. “Many speakers are using technology to do really interesting things that were not imaginable a generation back,” says Turin. For example, a version of <a href=\"http://www.cherokee.org/languagetech/en-us/windows8cherokee.aspx\">Windows 8 is available in Cherokee</a>, and a <a href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cherokeelessons.syllabary.one\">Cherokee app</a> allows speakers to text in the language’s 85 letters. A multitude of sites devoted to single languages or languages of a specific region unite speakers and provide multimedia teaching tools, too, including the <a href=\"http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/\">Digital Himalayas project</a>, the <a href=\"http://dieriyawarra.wordpress.com/\">Diyari blog</a>, the <a href=\"http://www.arcticlanguages.com/the-project.php#self\">Arctic Languages Vitality project</a> and the <a href=\"http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/enduring-voices/\">Enduring Voices Project</a>.</p><p>Thanks to the Eastern Band’s efforts, today around 60 of their children can speak Cherokee – a much better statistic than when Belt moved to North Carolina in 1991. Belt, along with countless other speakers of rare and endangered languages, is not ready to let his language fade into history – even if the journey toward revitalisation is an uphill one. As an elder told Belt years ago: “It’s all well and good that y’all want to do this, but remember, they didn’t take it away overnight, and you’re not going to get it back overnight.” </p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-06-06T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Languages: Why we must save dying tongues","HeadlineShort":"Why we must save dying languages","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Hundreds of our languages are teetering on the brink of extinction, and as Rachel Nuwer discovers, we may lose more than just words if we allow them to die out.","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Hundreds of our languages are teetering on the brink of extinction, and as Rachel Nuwer discovers, we may lose more than just words if we allow them to die out","SummaryShort":"When tongues die, we lose more than words","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:11:45Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"02f4b2fb-1489-41c7-ace4-b7d9f0966168","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:11:45Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages","_id":"5981e863543960df95dfc2fd"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":[],"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"gallery","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>In the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, it looks as if nothing could ever survive. It is one of the driest places in the world, and some sections of the Mars-like expanse can go 50 years without feeling a drop of rain. As poet Alonso de Ercilla put it in 1569: “Towards Atacama, near the deserted coast, you see a land without men, where there is not a bird, not a beast, nor a tree, nor any vegetation.”</p><p>Yet Atacama is not devoid of life. Microorganisms called endoliths have found a way to cling on, by hiding themselves inside the pores of rocks, where there’s just enough water to survive. “They support a whole community of organisms that eat the byproducts of their metabolism,” says Jocelyne DiRuggiero, a microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University. “And they’re all just sitting right there in the rocks – it’s quite fascinating.”</p><p>Life, it seems, has an incredible knack for finding ways to persist. Indeed, microorganisms have been around for nearly four billion years, giving them ample time to adapt to some of the most extreme conditions in the natural world. But are there places left on Earth so harsh that they are rendered sterile?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01t23kc\"}}</p><p>Heat is a good starting point for answering this question. The record for heat tolerance is currently held by a group of organisms called hyperthermophile methanogens, which thrive around the edges of hydrothermal vents in the deep sea. Some of these organisms can grow at <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10949.full.pdf\">temperatures of up to 122C</a> (252F). </p><p>Most researchers believe that around 150C (302F) is the theoretical cut-off point for life, however. At that temperature proteins fall apart and chemical reactions cannot occur – a quirk of the biochemistry that life on Earth (so far as we know) abides by. This means that microorganisms can thrive around hydrothermal vents, but not directly within them, where temperatures can reach up to 464C (867F). The same is true for the interior of an active volcano on land. “I really think temperature is the most hostile parameter,” says Helena Santos, a microbial physiologist at the New University of Lisbon and president of the <a href=\"http://extremophiles.org/\">International Society for Extremophiles</a>. When things get hot enough, she says, “It’s impossible – everything is destroyed.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01t23bt\"}}</p><p>High pressure, by contrast, appears to be less of a problem for life. This means that heat rather than depth probably limits how far below the surface of the Earth life occurs. The centre of the Earth’s 6,000C (10,800F) temperature certainly precludes all life, although the depth at which the cut-off occurs is still under investigation. One microorganism called <em><a href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5899/275\">Desulforudis audaxviator</a></em> was discovered nearly two miles (3.2km) below the Earth’s surface, in a South African gold mine. It has not been in contact with the surface for potentially millions of years, and survives by siphoning nutrients from rocks undergoing radioactive decay.</p><p>Life exists at the other extreme, too, in subfreezing conditions. Bacteria in the genus <em>Psychrobacter </em>can happily live below -10C (14F) in Siberian permafrost and Antarctic glacier mud. <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/science/living-bacteria-found-deep-under-antarctic-ice-scientists-say.html?_r=0\">Living cells recently turned up</a> in a subglacial lake below the Antarctic ice. And Antarctica’s hypersaline Deep Lake hosts unique <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/25/1307090110.abstract\">salt-loving species</a>, even at -20C (-4F). To survive in these environments, microrganisms possess features such as specially adapted membranes and protein structures, and anti-freeze molecules within their cells. Given that the Earth has been covered in ice multiple times since life first evolved, “an ice-covered lake in Antarctica does not seem all that extreme,” says Jill Mikucki, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p01t23nt\"}}</p><p>Radiation typically does not deter microorganisms, either. So long as they are not in the direct pathway of an atomic blast – which would likely burn them up – they can thrive in containers of radioactive waste or near the epicentre of the Chernobyl disaster, for example. <em>Deinococcus radiodurans</em>, one of the hardiest of the radio-resistant microorganisms, has <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378109702009539\">survived trips into space</a> and can endure radiation doses of up to 15,000 gray (the standard measure of the absorbed dose of radiation). For humans, just 5 gray causes death.</p><p>Likewise, what we register as deadly chemical environments, some extremophiles call home sweet home. Various organisms depend on arsenic, mercury or other heavy metals for their growth and survival, while others prefer cyanide. In <a href=\"http://www.exploratorium.edu/kamchatka/\">the hot springs of Kamchatka in Russia</a>, menageries of microorganisms metabolise using sulphur or carbon monoxide. “It’s hard to find a chemical that can kill all life,” says Frank Robb, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland.</p><p>There might be isolated exceptions, however. Don Juan Pond in Antarctica is the saltiest known body of water on the planet, with salinity levels topping 40%. (The Dead Sea is around 33%). Researchers have recovered traces of microbial life from the pond, but they are still trying to determine whether it is actively growing and replicating there, or just blowing in from other locations. Don Juan counts as “an example of a place on the surface of Earth where we might expect life, but cannot verify the presence of active life,” says Corien Bakermans, a microbiologist at Penn State University.</p><p>For now, extreme heat and some synthetic laboratory environments might be the only sterile conditions on the planet’s surface that it’s possible to find zero traces of life. New organisms are regularly discovered that push the boundaries of life as we understand it, although where that line will ultimately be drawn remains unknown. As Santos says, “What does not exist is more difficult to prove than what does exist.”</p><p>Even if there are some lone holdouts of sterility in the natural world, however, the environment exists in a constant state of flux – and if extremophiles teach us anything, it is that organisms are always capable of adapting. “Give them enough time and they will find a way,” says DiRuggiero.</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-03-03T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The last place on Earth… without life","HeadlineShort":"Last place on Earth… without life","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Weird and wonderful creatures can thrive in the most hostile parts on the planet, but there are a few places too harsh for even the hardiest, discovers Rachel Nuwer. ","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"slideshow","SummaryLong":"Weird and wonderful creatures thrive in the planet’s most hostile places, but there are a few spots too harsh for even the hardiest, discovers Rachel Nuwer","SummaryShort":"Where even the hardiest creatures perish","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:29Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"84ebbff6-bef6-488c-8664-566a2fd8f89e","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140303-last-place-on-earth-without-life","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:29Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140303-last-place-on-earth-without-life"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140303-last-place-on-earth-without-life","_id":"5984cd67543960df95e14a76"}],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Atheism is on the rise around the world, so does that mean spirituality will soon be a thing of the past? Rachel Nuwer investigates.","SummaryShort":"How belief will change in the future","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Anthropology tag","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/569","Name":"Anthropology","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"c7a61ada-72fe-4372-9025-1bdb170ceaab","Id":"tag/anthropology","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Project":"","Slug":"anthropology"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"c7a61ada-72fe-4372-9025-1bdb170ceaab","Id":"tag/anthropology","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Project":"","Slug":"anthropology"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/anthropology","_id":"5981d40e543960df95dfa78f"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"","LinkUrl":"","Name":"Evolution","CreationDateTime":"2015-03-06T17:28:03Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"d94fdef3-925a-4533-8f15-dfed06a5bcb6","Id":"tag/evolution","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-09-03T09:17:30.181217Z","Project":"","Slug":"evolution"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-03-06T17:28:03Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"d94fdef3-925a-4533-8f15-dfed06a5bcb6","Id":"tag/evolution","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-09-03T09:17:30.181217Z","Project":"","Slug":"evolution"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/evolution","_id":"5981d40b543960df95dfa5aa"}],"CreationDateTime":"2014-12-19T11:16:55Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"816382cd-1f1a-45ba-8952-d0350aedd9b8","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-04-20T14:51:46.871905Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-12-19T11:16:55Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"816382cd-1f1a-45ba-8952-d0350aedd9b8","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-04-20T14:51:46.871905Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear","_id":"5984b30c543960df95e13c58"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":70754,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvmm.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Manmade islands require redrawn maps (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"Manmade islands require redrawn maps (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Manmade islands require redrawn maps (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvmm.jpg","Title":"manmade_islands_108472381.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvmm","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvmm","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxvmm","_id":"598372ef543960df95e09409"}],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":221865,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xw/p02cxw4n.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"How Africa was seen in the 1700s (Thinkstock)","SynopsisMedium":"How Africa was seen in the 1700s (Thinkstock)","SynopsisShort":"How Africa was seen in the 1700s (Thinkstock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xw/p02cxw4n.jpg","Title":"africa_thinkstock_486732243.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxw4n","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxw4n","_id":"59848854543960df95e126e1"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":71585,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvmc.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Missed a bit?","SynopsisMedium":"Missed a bit?","SynopsisShort":"Missed a bit?","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvmc.jpg","Title":"earth.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvmc","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxvmc","_id":"59848eba543960df95e12a1c"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":152404,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvvx.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"(Google)","SynopsisMedium":"(Google)","SynopsisShort":"(Google)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvvx.jpg","Title":"Google-Earth-download.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvvx","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxvvx","_id":"59848855543960df95e126e4"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":281074,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvjj.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Favelas may be close to well-known cities, but they are not well-mapped (Thinkstock)","SynopsisMedium":"Favelas may be close to well-known cities, but they are not well-mapped (Thinkstock)","SynopsisShort":"Favelas may be close to well-known cities, but they are not well-mapped (Thinkstock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvjj.jpg","Title":"favela_thinkstock_477193287.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvjj","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxvjj","_id":"59848856543960df95e126e6"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":106765,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/yq/p02cyqky.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Coastlines often change faster than maps can track them (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"Coastlines often change faster than maps can track them (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Coastlines often change faster than maps can track them (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/yq/p02cyqky.jpg","Title":"erode_getty_78473318.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cyqky","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cyqky","_id":"59848855543960df95e126e5"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":175366,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvdf.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"The Essential Geography of the United States - for a zoomable version, visit imusgeographics.com/usa-maps (Dave Imus)","SynopsisMedium":"The Essential Geography of the United States - for a zoomable version, visit imusgeographics.com/usa-maps (Dave Imus)","SynopsisShort":"(Dave Imus)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvdf.jpg","Title":"usmap1.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvdf","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxvdf","_id":"59848853543960df95e126e0"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":148289,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":549,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://deltaorigin.bbc.co.uk/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvhy.jpg","SourceWidth":976,"SynopsisLong":"Shifting climates change the shape of the land, rendering maps outdated (Getty Images)","SynopsisMedium":"Shifting climates change the shape of the land, rendering maps outdated (Getty Images)","SynopsisShort":"Shifting climates change the shape of the land, rendering maps outdated (Getty Images)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/2c/xv/p02cxvhy.jpg","Title":"icefloe_getty_461575535.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p02cxvhy","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p02cxvhy","_id":"59848854543960df95e126e2"}],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Description":"<p>Rachel Nuwer is a science journalist who contributes to\nvenues such as The New York Times, Scientific American and Smithsonian. Her\nwebsite is <a href=\"http://rachelnuwer.com/\">rachelnuwer.com</a> and you can\nfollow her on twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/rachelnuwer\">@rachelnuwer</a>.\nShe lives in Brooklyn.</p>","Email":[],"Links":null,"Name":"Rachel Nuwer","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"c575dd82-8272-4f0b-9c80-40e01bb0a58e","Id":"wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"rachel-nuwer"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:author:wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","_id":"5981d0d8543960df95dde185"}],"BodyHtml":"<p>In 1504, an anonymous mapmaker – most likely an Italian – carved a meticulous depiction of the known world into two halves of <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oldest-globe-to-depict-the-new-world-may-have-been-discovered/2013/08/19/503b2b4a-06b4-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?hpid=z1\">conjoined ostrich eggs</a>. The grapefruit-sized globe included recent breaking discoveries of mysterious distant lands, including Japan, Brazil and the Arabic peninsula. But blanks remained. In a patch of ocean near Southeast Asia, that long-forgotten mapmaker carefully etched the Latin phrase Hic Sunt Dracones – “Here are the dragons.”</p><p>Today it is safe to say there are no unknown territories with dragons. However, it’s not quite true to say that every corner of the planet is charted. We may seem to have a map for everywhere, but that doesn’t mean they are complete, accurate or even trustworthy.</p><p>For starters, all maps are biased toward their creator’s subjective view of the world. As <a href=\"https://web.duke.edu/isis/gessler/topics/lewis-carroll.htm\">Lewis Carroll famously pointed out</a>, a perfectly objective and faithful 1:1 representation of the world would literally have to be the same size as the place it depicted. Therefore, mapmakers must make sensible design decisions in order to compress the physical world into a much smaller, flatter depiction. Those decisions inevitably introduce personal biases, however, such as our tendency to place ourselves at the centre of the world. “We always want to put ourselves on the map,” says Jerry Brotton, a professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary University London, and author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/A-History-World-12-Maps/dp/0670023396\">A History of the World in 12 Maps</a>. “Maps address an existential question as much as one that’s about orientation and coordinates.</p><p>“We want to find ourselves on the map, but at the same time, we are also outside of the map, rising above the world and looking down as if we were god,” he continues. “It’s a transcendental experience.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxw4n\"}}</p><p>Which is why, he says, the first thing most new Google Earth users do is to look up their own address. Modern technology enables this exercise in ego, but the tendency itself is nothing new. It dates back to the oldest known world map, a 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablet discovered near Baghdad that puts Babylon at its centre. Mapmakers throughout history adopted a similar bias toward their own homeland, and little seems to have changed since then. Today, American maps still tend to centre on America; <a href=\"http://i.imgur.com/9RVtPrn.png\">Japanese maps</a> on Japan; and <a href=\"http://xiaoyanwangblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/blog-9-east-vs-west-south-vs-north.html\">Chinese ones</a> on China. Some <a href=\"http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/\">Australian maps</a> are even rotated so that the southern hemisphere is on top. It’s such an ego-centric approach that the United Nations sought to avoid it when they created <a href=\"http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/maplib/flag.htm\">their emblem</a> – a map of the world neutrally centered on the North Pole.</p><p>Similarly, maps can overestimate their creators’ geographic worth, or reveal bias against certain places. Africa’s true size, for example, has been <a href=\"http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/maps/page10.html\">chronically downplayed</a> throughout the history of mapmaking, and even now, non-Africans <a href=\"http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg\">tend to underestimate</a> the size of that truly massive continent – which is large enough to cover China, the US and much of Europe.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvmc\"}}</p><p>Religious, political and economic agendas also come into play, adulterating a map’s objectivity. The maps of World War II, for example, were incredibly propagandist, depicting “dreadful red bears and red perils,” Brotton says. “The maps were distorted to tell a political message.</p><p>“A map,” he continues, “will always have an agenda, an argument, a proposal about what the world looks like from a particular perspective.”</p><p><strong>Skewed view</strong></p><p>Even today’s digital maps adhere to this rule, he says. Google and other digital mapmakers turn the world into “<a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10091089/Jerry-Brotton-lets-take-maps-back-from-Google.html\">one enormous web browser</a>”, he explains, driven by commercial interests.</p><p>But Manik Gupta, the group product manager at Google Maps, counters that Google Maps’ primary goal mirrors that of its company: to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Commerce is just one part of that. “At the end of the day, technology is a tool,” Gupta says. “Our job is to make sure it’s super accurate and works. Users then decide how they want to use it.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvvx\"}}</p><p>Nevertheless, even digital maps skew toward the things that their users deem most important. Those areas that the majority sees as unworthy of attention – poor neighbourhoods like the Orangi shanty town in Karachi, Pakistan, or the Neza-Chalco-Itza slum in Mexico city – as well as those places that mapmakers do not often go – war-torn regions, North Korea – remain grossly undermapped.</p><p>This neglect means maps of remote regions can contain errors that go unnoticed for years. Scientists paying a visit to <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20442487\">Sandy Island</a>, a speck of land in the Coral Sea near New Caledonia, recently discovered that the island simply did not exist. The “phantom island” had found its way onto Australian maps and Google Earth at least a decade ago, probably due to human error.</p><p>Google has two approaches to addressing these problems: <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20141031-google-street-view-maps-south-georgia-for-the-first-time\">sending mapmakers out into the wilderness</a> with Street View cameras attached to backpacks, bikes, boats or snowmobiles, and launching <a href=\"http://www.google.com/mapmaker\">Map Maker</a>, a tool created in 2008 that allows anyone anywhere to enhance existing Google maps. “If it’s important, then most likely the users will put it on the map,” Gupta says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvjj\"}}</p><p>But while many communities have literally put themselves on the map, others have not. (Most likely, mapping Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or the floating slum of Makoko in Lagos isn’t a top priority for those living there.) Traditional paper maps tend to neglect these areas as well. “They’re places that the state denies or doesn’t want to portray as part of its landscape,” says Alexander Kent, a senior lecturer in geography and GIS at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. “Far from being something objective that just reflects what’s on the ground, the person behind the map has the power to determine what goes on it or not.”  </p><p>In recognition of this problem, a new effort called the <a href=\"http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Missing_Maps_Project\">Missing Maps Project</a> – organised by the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team – recruits volunteers to fill in the cartographical blanks in the developing world. It’s <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/06/missing-maps-human-genome-project-unmapped-cities\">too early to tell</a> whether the project will make a substantial dent, but launch parties are scheduled in London and Jakarta to try and drum up interest among potential volunteers.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cyqky\"}}</p><p>The ocean, likewise, is one of the most poorly mapped areas of the planet, despite the fact that it occupies the most space. “The great terra incognita is the ocean bed,” Brotton says. In light of increasing interest in underwater mining and drilling, certain countries – especially Russia – are looking to lay claim on large tracts of ocean floor. Additionally, with sea ice quickly receding, more and more territory will come up for grabs. “As the landscape changes, it becomes possible to exploit more mineral resources, so mapping becomes extremely powerful and important,” Brotton says. To draw attention to this gap of knowledge, Brotton and artist Adam Lowe are creating <a href=\"http://www.factum-arte.com/pag/261/Terra-Forming---Engineering-the-Sublime\">a 3D map of the ocean floor</a> without water. “I think geographers are beginning to understand that mapping the oceans is one of the great untold stories,” he says.</p><p><strong>Low quality</strong></p><p>For others, though, untold stories abound even in some of the most prolifically mapped places in the world. <a href=\"https://imusgeographics.com/\">Dave Imus</a>, an award-winning mapmaker based in Oregon, acknowledges that much of the world has been mapped in a basic sense, but believes that the vast majority of maps are not good enough.</p><p>“So many maps are difficult to understand, forcing the eye and mind to work overtime trying to perceive what it’s looking at,” he says. And a digital map, with spoken directions, “is good for helping you find a restaurant, but you’re no more connected with your surroundings than looking for the next turn”.</p><p>Frustrated with the maps on offer for the US, he set out to make his own, turning to the “really exquisite, expressive” mapping style of Swiss cartographers as inspiration. “It’s my hypothesis that the reason Europeans are so much more geographically aware than we Americans is that they have these maps that make their surroundings understandable and we don’t,” he says.</p><p><a href=\"http://www.imusgeographics.com/listitems_63/usa-maps\">{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvdf\"}}</a></p><p>The fruit of his labour is the <a href=\"http://www.imusgeographics.com/listitems_63/usa-maps\">Essential Geography of the United States of America</a>, a highly informative map that does away with the muddle of rainbow-coloured states of traditional US maps, instead delineating boundaries in green and allowing each state’s actual features – mountains, forests, lakes, urban centres, highways – to characterise those places. City populations are indicated in yellow patches, and rather than cram in as many towns as possible, Imus uses census data to standardise rural places in terms of what counts as a hub in that particular area – whether that means 500 or 5,000 people. Major landmarks and transportation centres like airports are marked; Native American reserves are included (something lacking on many maps); and elevation of not only of mountains but also cities is noted. “The National Geographic map of the US has some elevations of mountain peaks but doesn’t even tell you the elevation of Denver, Colorado,” Imus says. “As a consequence, it doesn’t communicate anything meaningful about what that place is like if you’ve never been there.”</p><p><strong>High standard</strong></p><p>Such maps are incredibly time consuming and expensive to produce, however. Imus spent 6,000 hours on his. As a result, as far as Imus knows, only Europe, Japan, New Zealand and now the US have maps available that meet these high standards. “We think we’re living in this modern age and everything’s been done, but for people who look at mapping at a slightly different angle, they’ll see things that still need to be done virtually everywhere,” he says. Still, Imus dreams of a day when such maps will be widely available everywhere and at increasingly fine scales, such as at the state and city level. Ultimately, he hopes this would foster a more geographically literate society. “I’ve felt misunderstood at times,” Imus says, “but I’ve gotten so much great feedback on this project that I feel like people now get it and it’ll continue on.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvhy\"}}</p><p>But even the most detailed maps cannot get around one fundamental problem in the way of creating a near-perfect cartographic representation for any place in the world: the incredible pace of change, both human and nature-made, that characterises life on the planet. Some cities in Asia and Africa, Gupta says, are undergoing so much construction that Google Maps have been unable to keep up. At the same time, natural landscapes are constantly in a state of flux – now, more so than ever. Islands are being devoured by the sea, ice floes are disappearing, shorelines are eroding and forests are being cleared. “The very moment you build a perfect map of the world is the moment it goes out of date,” Gupta says. “The real world will always be a little bit ahead of how we represent it, because change is constant.”</p><p>In that sense, the entire world is undermapped, and it will always remain that way. A birds-eye view of a city tells you it’s there, but not how to navigate through all corners of it. A foldout map is a relic of the time it went to print, unable to take into account earthquake destruction, new roads or renegotiated borders. And Google Maps can provide turn-by-turn instructions for biking from London to Brighton, but fails utterly when asked to do the same for traversing a Brazilian favela or the Gobi desert’s dunes.</p><p>Even our best maps, then, are merely more up to date and truer to place than others. Our age-old quest to capture uncharted land and space will never end.</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"A grand tour of our planet’s last outposts. In a rapidly changing world, writer Rachel Nuwer sets out to find the last remaining places, people, technologies and resources of their kind.","Name":"Last Place on Earth","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Last Place on Earth","CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"98c431f6-a141-4d77-883c-be660f7c0c98","Id":"wwfuture/column/last-place-on-earth","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/last-place-on-earth"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"98c431f6-a141-4d77-883c-be660f7c0c98","Id":"wwfuture/column/last-place-on-earth","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:18:34.168332Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/last-place-on-earth"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/last-place-on-earth","_id":"5981d0dc543960df95dde667"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":[],"CollectionType":"section","Description":"Science & Environment","Name":"Science & Environment","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Science & Environment"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T10:51:45.984509Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"1aa4ccec-87b5-44b8-b5af-c553debaf6f6","Id":"wwfuture/section/science-environment","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T13:51:20.083392Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"section/science-environment"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/section/science-environment","_id":"5981d0e2543960df95dde9c8"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":[],"CollectionType":"section","Description":"Technology","Name":"Technology","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Technology"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T11:42:22.339015Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"fadfa439-a201-46b6-a8fd-d8813cac4bbf","Id":"wwfuture/section/technology","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T13:49:02.740858Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"section/technology"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/section/technology","_id":"5981d0e2543960df95dde9cf"}],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-11-28T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The last unmapped places on Earth","HeadlineShort":"The last unmapped places","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Have we mapped the whole planet? As Rachel Nuwer discovers, there are mysterious, poorly charted places everywhere, but not for the reasons you might think. ","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":[],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Somewhere between 1.8 million and 12,000 years ago, our ancestors mastered the <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/who_invented_fire_when_did_people_start_cooking_.html\">craft of fire building</a>. Anthropologists often cite this event as the spark that truly allowed us to become human, giving us the means to cook, keep warm and forge tools. But fire also marked another important first for us: the invention of man-made pollution.</p><p>Pollution, by definition, is something introduced into the environment that harmfully disrupts it. While nature sometimes produces its own damaging contaminants – wildfires send up billows of smoke and ash, volcanoes belch noxious gases – humans are responsibile for the lion’s share of the pollution plaguing the planet today.</p><p>Wherever we go, we seem to have a knack for leaving our rubbish and waste behind. Visit even the most remote outpost on the planet and you will witness this first hand. Shredded tyres and plastic bottles punctuate the vast expanse of the Gobi desert; plastic bags ride the currents in the middle of the Pacific; and spent oxygen canisters and raw sewage mar the snows of Mount Everest.</p><p>Still, the world is a big place. Might there be some last holdouts free from the taint of our pollution? Answering that question works best if we break down the environment into four realms – the sky, land, freshwater and ocean.</p><p><strong>Sky and land</p><p></strong>Air pollution comes in many forms. Smog is mostly composed of <a href=\"http://www.epa.gov/pm/basic.html\">particulate matter</a> and ozone – a greenhouse gas that forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds produced by cars and industrial plants react together in the presence of sunlight. And its impact on human health and the environment can be severe. In India alone, ozone pollution causes crop losses equivalent to <a href=\"http://news.agu.org/press-release/ozone-pollution-in-india-kills-enough-crops-to-feed-94-million-in-poverty/\">$1.2 billion per year</a>. In terms of <a href=\"http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/documents/GAW-2013-Heather.pdf\">human health</a>, outdoor air pollution costs an estimated one million lives per year, while air pollution produced in homes – usually a by-product of cooking fires – kills around two million people annually. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z3tq\"}}</p><p>When carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and other primary pollutants (those that are injected directly into the atmosphere) find their way high into the atmosphere, they often get transformed through chemical reactions into what scientists refer to as secondary pollutants. Some of these pollutants can linger for months. Others, like methane, are less reactive and may circulate the globe for years until they are eventually broken down or find their way to the ground via snow or rain. As Helen ApSimon, a professor of air pollution studies at Imperial College London, points out, this means “you don’t necessarily get away from air pollution by being further from the sources”.</p><p>Pollution expelled into the air gets transported vast distances by winds and atmospheric currents. “One thing we see very often is that pollution starts off in one place but ends up somewhere very far afield,” says David Edwards, director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research Earth System Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029zdjj\"}}</p><p>For instance, Indonesia has recently been clearing large tracts of forest with fire to create new palm oil plantations – and Singapore now contends with significant haze problems due to its neighbour’s slash-and-burn tendencies. Smoke pollution can travel even further than that, however: fires used for farming in South America and southern Africa are a major source of air pollution for the entire southern hemisphere. On occasions, says Edwards, “pollution emitted from one source region can find its way around the globe more than once.”</p><p>So based on what we know about atmospheric currents and pollution distribution, it’s safe to say that there are no places on the planet guaranteed to be fully free from air pollution. And therefore that goes for the land surface too.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z3f4\"}}</p><p>That said, however, there are places where the air is cleaner. In general, the Southern Hemisphere’s air is better than the Northern Hemisphere’s, just by virtue of the fact that fewer people live there. While pollution does move around the world, there is less mixing between the hemispheres due to barrier-like wind patterns. The South Pole, therefore, probably contains the cleanest air on Earth given its remoteness.</p><p>But as ApSimon points out, there’s still a massive pollution-caused hole in the ozone layer hovering over Antarctica, and deposits of black carbon can be readily spotted on that continent’s snow. So even if the air there is likely the cleanest, it’s by no means pristine.</p><p>Deep caves, too, could contain relatively pollution-free air, so long as they didn’t have much circulation with the outside world. “I can imagine there could be deep caves where there’s been very little air exchange for a long time,” ApSimon says. “Mind you, you don’t know what else is in that deep cave – I’m thinking there could be lots of guano.” Bat poo, in other words.</p><p><strong>Water</p><p></strong>Air pollution, unfortunately, also affects water, and therefore cancels out hope that perfectly clean freshwater bodies exist. “If one looks at pollution broadly, then it’s unlikely that there is a pristine catchment anywhere that hasn’t been polluted, because anthropogenic influences like air pollution have really gone all over the world,” says Thomas Chiramba, chief of the freshwater ecosystem unit at the United Nations Environment Program, based in Nairobi, Kenya.</p><p>But while pollution from the air does settle in water, it’s actually pollution from land that acts as the primary contaminant for freshwater resources. Chemicals, fertilisers and waste seep into groundwater and wash into lakes, streams and rivers, often winding up in the ocean. The result is dead zones – swathes of fresh or saltwater devoid of life. Dead zones occur when nutrient loads from land cause massive microbial blooms, which in turn deplete the water of oxygen. These tubs of death are found all over the world, but the Gulf of Mexico’s <a href=\"http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/named/msbasin/zone.cfm\">Mississippi River Delta</a> is perhaps the most infamous example.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2qy\"}}</p><p>Raw sewage and industrial waste are primary culprits wreaking havoc on freshwater. In many countries, “sanitation” refers only to removing waste from homes – not treating it before returning it to the environment. By some estimates, 80% of wastewater generated in developing countries is discharged directly into local waterways. That figure can be worse on a case-to-case basis: New Delhi dumps 99% of its wastewater into the Yamuna River, for example, while Mexico City pumps all of its liquid refuse into the Mezquital Valley. “That is the main source of pollution all over the world,” says Asit Biswas, founder of the Third World Centre for Water Management in Mexico, and a distinguished visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. “As a result, the rivers become polluted, and people living downstream are forced to drink that water.”</p><p><a href=\"http://www.thirdworldcentre.org/drinkingwaterrisk.pdf\">According to Biswas’s research</a>, none of South Asia’s 1.65 billion people have access to clean, safe tap water; more than half of China’s rivers and lakes are too polluted to drink; and 72% of samples collected from Pakistan’s water supply system were found to be unfit for human consumption. What’s bad for humans is also bad for the environment. According to <a href=\"http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/\">a report</a> recently issued by the WWF, animal populations living in freshwater have declined by 75% over the last 40 years, thanks largely to pollution.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2t9\"}}</p><p>As with the air, freshwater bodies furthest from humans are probably also the cleanest. Canada’s far northern lakes and rivers, along with the Arctic and Antarctic’s freshwater are likely candidates for least-polluted bodies of water. Glacial layers that formed prior to the Industrial Revolution as well as sub-glacier lakes trapped far below the surface could in fact be pristine. Antarctica’s Lake Vostok, for instance, is buried under ice that is 400,000 years old. But these water bodies are clean because humans cannot physically get to them – other than by using drills. When it comes to more accessible areas, remote corners of the Congo Basin and the Amazon rainforest could be close contenders for second place. “Where you have the smallest human populations, you’ll also find increasingly pristine freshwater resources,” Chiramba says.</p><p><strong>Ocean</p><p></strong>Even the oceans, which remain largely unexplored and occupy a whopping 70% of the Earth’s surface, has not escaped our pollution’s reaches. Today, an estimated 60-80% of marine pollution originates from land, reaching the water through harbours, dirty beaches and polluted waterways that drain into the sea. Of that pollution, plastic is the most pervasive. That’s because most plastic takes centuries – perhaps even longer – to completely disappear. Paper, on the other hand, disintegrates quickly, and glass isn’t nearly as common as it used to be.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2xn\"}}</p><p>Surprisingly, some of the remotest places in the ocean are also some of the most polluted, thanks to the patterns of the currents. Midway Atoll, a speck of land in the middle of the North Pacific, for example, is uninhabited save for scientists who visit for a few weeks at a time. But it’s covered in washed up debris, which often fatally finds its way into the digestive system of seabirds living there.</p><p>Likewise, the deep sea was once thought to be largely cut off from the human world, but the more we explore, the more we are coming to terms with the fact that that is not the case. “I’ve done a lot of work on the bottom of the ocean with submarines and ROVs [remote operated vehicles], and there’s human debris everywhere,” says Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. “It brings home the fact that human beings are an integral part of marine ecosystems now.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2v2\"}}</p><p>On the deep-sea floor, the most readily identifiable pollution tends to be cans and bottles, though discarded fishing gear, ropes, metal objects, military ammunition and even old shoes regularly turn up, too. The diversity of garbage represents the fact that, historically, “people used the ocean as a dumping ground”, Levin says. In addition to the things we can see, much more is likely buried under the sediment, she adds, while other forms of pollution cannot be spotted by the human eye, such as microplastic – former bottles and bags that have broken down into ever smaller particles. Those tiny plastic pieces fill the ocean and “are probably impossible to ever clean up”, says Jenni Brandon, a graduate student in biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution, who specialises in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. “A lot of people think those particles can really be around forever.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z2lc\"}}</p><p>Plastic pollution is not the only man-made waste contaminating the ocean, however. Oil spills regularly occur all over the world, even if the majority of them escape the notice of Western media. Persistent chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also leach into the water from land, and then travel up the marine food chain.</p><p>And not all marine pollution is physical. Noise pollution caused by things like ship engine noise and sonar is becoming an increasing problem that has been implicated in whale, dolphin and squid deaths. “There are some places that don’t have physical debris – or at least where we haven’t found physical debris,” Brandon says. “But it would be hard to find anywhere that hasn’t had any human impacts.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p029z3md\"}}</p><p>Some human impacts on the marine realm can also be completely unexpected. In 2007, for example, several amphipod crustaceans scooped up from water 11km (6.8 miles) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean <a href=\"http://www.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_52/issue_4/1685.html\">turned out to have cow DNA within their guts</a>. “How do you get cow to the bottom of the Kermadec Trench?” Levin says. “I’m sure it was just a ship dumping its leftovers.”</p><p>While a burger for lunch may or may not harm those trench-dwelling creatures, it does demonstrate just how deeply our influence on the planet reaches. Whether our contaminants take the form of a discarded lunch, human excrement or billions of metric tonnes of airborne pollutants, we’re left with an unfortunate but clear answer: there probably is no place on Earth without pollution. In other words, as Biswas says, “We human beings have done a wonderful job of contaminating the environment around us.”</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a>.</p><p><em>Update:</em> <em>The forest-clearance behind Singapore's</em> <em>haze</em> <em>problem is predominantly in Indonesia, not Malaysia.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-11-04T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Are there any pollution-free places left on Earth? ","HeadlineShort":"Is anywhere free from pollution?","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Humans appear to have done a thorough job of contaminating the Earth’s rivers, oceans and atmosphere, says Rachel Nuwer. Is there anywhere pristine left on the planet?","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Humans appear to have done a thorough job of contaminating the Earth’s rivers, oceans and atmosphere, says Rachel Nuwer. So, is there anywhere pristine left?","SummaryShort":"Quest for the last unpolluted places","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"167875d2-2a86-48db-b220-9eedb251d9d0","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141104-is-anywhere-free-from-pollution","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141104-is-anywhere-free-from-pollution"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20141104-is-anywhere-free-from-pollution","_id":"5984d37d543960df95e14d91"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>When Piero Genovesi received my email, his interest was piqued. Is there anywhere left, I asked, free from invasive species? Genovesi chairs the <a href=\"http://www.issg.org/index.html\">Invasive Species Specialist Group</a> at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, so he spends much of his time fretting about animal alien invaders. Whether it’s voracious cane toads or pesky squirrels, these creatures cause havoc by invading a place they don’t belong, outcompeting other animals, eating up resources and becoming pests.</p><p>So, if there are any pristine ecosystems remaining, where would they be? “This is not an easy question, and one I’ve never asked myself,” Genovesi says. Still, he was intrigued enough to investigate.</p><p>The reason it’s a tricky question is because invaded lands vastly outnumber the places still untouched. Where humans go, invasive species tend to follow, Genovesi says, and “there is literally no island in the world that has had no contact with humans in the last century”.</p><p>We’ve taxied invasive species around the globe for millennia. Some of the <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-4877.2012.00309.x/abstract\">earliest mammal invasions</a> occurred 8,000 to 9,000 years ago, when Neolithic humans introduced wild boars to Sicily and shrews to Cyprus, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. In AD77, Pliny the Elder penned the oldest written evidence of invasive species’ impacts, <a href=\"http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=384\">writing in his Naturalis Historia</a> that rabbits were causing famines on the Balearic Islands, which forced desperate residents to start throwing ferrets into the rabbit burrows as a means of controlling those insatiable pests.</p><p><strong>Passenger aliens</strong></p><p>Far from something confined to history, however, detrimental species introductions continue to happen frequently today, from egg-hungry <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/science/a-lizard-interloper-presents-challenge-in-florida.html?_r=0\">Argentine black and white tegus</a> taking up residence in Florida, to a sudden influx of <a href=\"http://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/ants/rasberry.html\">exotic crazy ants</a> in Texas. Invasive species have been implicated in <a href=\"http://200.46.218.171/bds-cbc/sites/default/files/TREE05.pdf\">more than half</a> of recent extinctions and they ring up more than <a href=\"http://www.fws.gov/verobeach/PythonPDF/CostofInvasivesFactSheet.pdf\">$120bn</a> in annual damages in the US alone.</p><p>Some of these stowaways are inadvertent passengers – the rats, roaches and other pests that we ourselves cannot manage to contain. Others are intentionally introduced, whether for food, as pets or in an ill-devised attempt to control another species that we want to get rid of.</p><p>Despite their ubiquity, however, Genovesi figured that places free from invasive species must exist, even if he was not aware of them himself. So he submitted the question to the “Aliens-list,” a professional listserve whose 1,000-plus members make up the world’s invasive species management frontline. Putting their collective knowledge to use, they came up with a few examples of places that are most likely free of invasive species.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p026btqp\"}}</p><p>Not surprisingly, only the most remote and extreme ecosystems have managed to exclude invaders. <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140303-last-place-on-earth-without-life\">Thermophilic bacteria</a> – the kinds that flourish in environments subjected to excessive heat – likely live free from invaders. Such spots include the hot springs of Yellowstone and Iceland, the edges of deep sea geothermal vents and some volcanic soil. Extremely dry areas, such as the Arabian Desert, also have few if any non-native species. The open ocean’s pelagic zone – the layer of water located between the surface and the sea floor – is usually alien-free as well, as is the deep sea. Caves also tend to escape invasion, although the fungus that causes the deadly white-nose disease in bats is increasingly turning up in those habitats, especially in the US.</p><p>Historically, the polar areas largely escaped the presence of invasive species. But concerns are growing that the situation is already beginning to change thanks to an increasing number of tourists, scientists and adventurers visiting those regions, as well as the lessening extremity of those environments, because of climate change. Researchers in Svalbard, an archipelago located in the Arctic Circle, found <a href=\"http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10530-011-0098-4\">more than 1,000 seeds from 53 species</a> of alien plants stuck to the shoes of visitors arriving over a single summer, for example, and <a href=\"http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/environment/wildlife/non_native_species.php\">dozens of non-native species</a> ranging from moths to flies have been spotted buzzing around research stations in Antarctica. So far, none of the invertebrates seem to have permanently established itself on the Antarctic continent, but scientists fear it’s only a matter of time. The nearby South Georgia Island, for example, has already succumbed to that fate: invasive beetles are chomping their way through native ones, and <a href=\"http://news.wildlife.org/wpn/invasive-species-control-programs-underway-on-south-georgia-island/\">rats and introduced reindeer</a> threaten seabird populations there.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p026btzw\"}}</p><p>One notable exception to the where-there’s-humans-there’s-invasive-species rule are remote tracts of rainforest. Few if any alien species live deep within the Amazon or in Borneo, despite the <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes\">presence of people living there</a>. But that’s because those isolated tribes don’t come into contact with potential invaders themselves. Typically, even the remotest places – Gough Island in the South Atlantic, Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific – contain the living relics of humans’ time there. <a href=\"http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10530-005-0421-z\">Rats alone have reached at least 90% of the world’s islands</a> thanks to our movements.</p><p><strong>Sign of hope</strong></p><p>Yet could any invaded ecosystems eventually rejoin this list of pristine places? If what’s been happening over the past few years in New Zealand offers any clues, then there’s some cause for optimism. </p><p>As a country largely free from endemic mammals, New Zealand – the last large islands in the world to be settled by humans – is particularly vulnerable to the effects of warm-blooded creatures. It started with the first Polynesian settlers, and later with Europeans. “New Zealand was a place of birds,” says Nick Holmes, director of science at Island Conservation, a non-profit organisation that specialises in invasive species eradication. “The only native mammals there were bats and marine mammals.”</p><p>Today, however, New Zealand’s fauna is about evenly divided between native and alien species. Of the country’s approximately 800 islands, less than 1% escaped the arrival of more than 30 alien mammals, including rats, weasels, mice, goats, pigs and brushtail possums. “In just a few hundred years, the environment has undergone a nearly complete transformation,” says Mick Clout, a conservation biologist at the University of Auckland, and former chair of the IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p026btrt\"}}</p><p>Around 1960, the problems caused by the invaders could no longer be ignored. Species such as the <a href=\"http://kakaporecovery.org.nz/\">kakapo parrot</a> were quickly disappearing, and possums turned out to be vectors of bovine tuberculosis, causing considerable impacts to the country’s beef industry. At first, New Zealand experts thought that management, not eradication, was the only option available to them. But the late ornithologist <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2011/05/13/the-man-who-loved-birds-don-merton-1939-2011/\">Don Merton</a> stumbled upon the discovery that rats could indeed be poisoned out of existence after he distributed Warfarin baits around <a href=\"http://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap/nz8624/Maria-Island-(Ruapuke-Island)/Auckland\">Maria Island</a>.</p><p>For the first time, New Zealanders realised that getting rid of rodent pests for good was a plausible reality. “Basically, no one else could really help because clearing these pests from islands had never been done before,” Clout says. “Conservationists here, as opposed to many other places in the world, became very aware that preserving native wildlife and forests unfortunately involved killing things rather than just protecting what we have.”</p><p><strong>Blunt tool</strong></p><p>Efforts began crudely. Acute toxins delivered via ground-based operations did an acceptable job of getting rid of rodents, but the delivery was inefficient and the poisons led to an inhumane end for those creatures. Additionally, some animals received a sub-lethal dose and then learned to avoid the hazardous baits. But the country’s tactics have evolved over time, to the point that other nations began hiring New Zealand contractors to carry out foreign eradications. “We figured it out by trial and error,” says John Parkes, a retired scientist who freelances as an invasive species consultant. “The breakthrough for rodents came in the 1980s, when New Zealanders began using brodifacoum baits sown from the air.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p026btrm\"}}</p><p>Today, anticoagulant toxins delivered by air are the weapons of choice against island rodents because they take days or even weeks to take effect. That way, all of the rodents receive a toxic dose before realizing that something is amiss. Baits often have up to a 100% success rate for rodents, but other animals such as possums, cats and rabbits usually require on-the-ground teams to eliminate stragglers. Larger animals such as goats and deer, on the other hand, are typically shot, sometimes out of a helicopter. Success rates hover at <a href=\"http://diise.islandconservation.org/\">around 85%</a>.</p><p>Thanks to these efforts, around 150 New Zealand islands are now free from invasive mammals. This September, the country <a href=\"http://newzealandecology.org/events/other-events\">celebrates its 50-year anniversary</a> of rodent eradications. As New Zealand gradually works its way up to bigger islands, it even envisions becoming a <a href=\"http://predatorfreenz.org/\">predator-free country</a> someday. “At the moment we don’t have the money, strategy or technology to do that, but we shall see,” says Parkes.</p><p>Invasive species eradication teams can now be found in numerous countries around the world (although many still do have some New Zealand involvement). The British recently undertook a massive reindeer, mice and rat eradication effort <a href=\"http://www.sght.org/sght-habitat-restoration-project\">in South Georgia Island</a>, while the Ecuadorians did the same for goats, pigs and donkeys on <a href=\"http://www.galapagos.org/conservation/project-isabela/\">two of the islands</a> that make up the Galapagos. More than 1,000 invasive species removals have been carried out to date on islands around the world, and the benefits they deliver to the local environment are usually readily apparent.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p026btrv\"}}</p><p>On California’s Anacapa Island, for example, invasive rats – probably stranded there by a 19th Century shipwreck – were eating their way through vulnerable <a href=\"http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/62101249/0\">Scripps’s Murrelet</a> eggs and chicks. In 2002, wildlife managers called in <a href=\"http://www.islandconservation.org/\">Island Conservation</a>, which has carried out removal operations on 52 islands over the past 20 years, to get rid of the rats. With the vermin soon gone, birds almost immediately began to rebound. The Scripps’s Murrelet population enjoyed a <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320713000931\">nearly three-fold increase</a> in hatching success, and Anacapa saw its <a href=\"http://www.montroserestoration.noaa.gov/2012/12/17/anacapa-island-rat-removal-boosts-seabird-populations/\">first confirmed endangered Ashy storm-petrel nest</a>. “The Ashy storm-petrel is this little nocturnal seabird with this beautiful musty smell, but it’s very vulnerable to rats because it breeds on the ground,” Holmes says. “Now that the rats are gone, we’re starting to see the island return back to what it once might have been.”</p><p>To date, Australia’s <a href=\"http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/?base=13013\">Macquarie Island</a> stands as the largest successful rodent eradication, with an area of about 13,000 hectares cleared of rats and mice, not to mention rabbits. But experts believe that there is an upper limit of the geographic size of an area that can be purged of all invasive species – even if they haven’t hit that limit yet. Additionally, these extreme undertakings are also very expensive.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p026btpj\"}}</p><p>So while eradication does often work, experts agree that the most effective means of controlling invasive species is preventing them from arriving in the first place. Some countries do a better job at this than others. The US contains a line on its customs form asking whether visitors have spent time on farms or are bringing any plant or animal materials with them, for example, while New Zealand takes biosecurity to an extreme. “When you arrive in the US, they ask you where you’ve been,” Holmes says. “In New Zealand, they want to see the soles of your boots.”</p><p>The more we travel though, the harder it gets to stem the flow. Wherever humans go – by foot, ship, train, plane, car, bus or bike – we tote other species along with us. So while there are uninvaded lands left – and some, like New Zealand, may soon even be reclaimed – it’s near-impossible to preserve every ecosystem. “I don’t think we can stop the problem or get rid of invasive species entirely,” Genovesi says. “But we can mitigate their impacts and slow down the pattern of invasions that at the moment is really quite alarming.”</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this article, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a>.</p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-09-09T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The last places on Earth with no invasive species","HeadlineShort":"Are ‘alien species’ everywhere?","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Pockets of land and water that are free from ‘alien’ species are few and far between, finds Rachel Nuwer. Yet could we reverse the tide of these pests? ","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Pockets of land and water that are free from ‘alien’ species are few and far between, finds Rachel Nuwer. Yet could we reverse the tide of these pests? ","SummaryShort":"Last places on Earth without invaders","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:15Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"7694353e-5146-42d7-86c2-d23006922dcf","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140909-are-alien-species-everywhere","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:15Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140909-are-alien-species-everywhere"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140909-are-alien-species-everywhere","_id":"59844de5543960df95e107ef"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":[],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>On July 1, <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/about/funai\">Funai</a>, the Brazilian governmental agency in charge of indigenous Indian affairs, <a href=\"http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/2884-nota-da-funai\">quietly posted a short press release</a> on its website: two days earlier, they said, seven members of an isolated Indian tribe emerged from the Amazon and made peaceful contact with people in a village near the Peruvian border.</p><p>As the first official contact with such a tribe since 1996, the event was out of the ordinary. But the event itself could have been anticipated. For weeks, local villagers in Brazil’s Acre state had reported sightings of the tribesman, who supposedly came to steal crops, axes and machetes, and who “<a href=\"http://www.ac24horas.com/2014/04/16/presenca-de-indios-isolados-cria-panico-na-fronteira-do-acre/\">mimicked monkey cries</a>” that frightened women and children.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246bz6\"}}</p><p>The Indians’ decision to make contact was not driven by a desire for material goods, however, but by fear. With the help of translators who spoke a closely related indigenous Panoan language, the Acre Indians explained that “<a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10361\">violent attacks</a>” by outsiders had driven them from the forest. Later, details emerged that their <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10374\">elder relatives were massacred</a>, and their houses set on fire. Illegal loggers and cocaine traffickers in Peru, where the Indians are thought to come from, are likely to blame, according to the Brazilian government. Indeed, Funai’s own nearby monitoring post was shut down in 2011 due to increasing escalations with drug traffickers.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04f5qb5\"}}</p><p><em>Early contact with the Acre tribe, recorded by Funai</em></p><p>After they decided the situation called for drastic measures, the Indians did not just stumble upon the Brazilian village by chance – they probably knew exactly where to go. “They know far more about the outside world than most people think,” says Fiona Watson, research director for the non-profit organisation <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/\">Survival International</a>. “They are experts at living in the forest and are well aware of the presence of outsiders.” </p><p>This gets to the heart of a common misconception surrounding isolated tribes such as the one in Acre: that they live in a bubble of wilderness, somehow missing the fact that their small corner of the world is in fact part of a much greater whole – and one that is dominated by other humans. “Almost all human communities have been in some contact with one another for as long as we have historical or archaeological records,” says Alex Golub, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Human prehistory is not like that game <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(video_game)\">Civilization</a> where you start with a little hut and the whole map is black.”</p><p><strong>Fear factor</strong></p><p>Today’s so-called uncontacted people all have a history of contact, whether from past exploitation or simply seeing a plane flying overhead. The vast majority of an estimated 100 or more isolated tribes live in Brazil, but others can be found in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and northern Paraguay. Outside of the Americas, isolated groups live in Papua New Guinea and on North Sentinel Island of India’s Andaman Islands, the latter of which is home to what experts think is the most isolated tribe in the world, <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/campaigns/mostisolated\">the Sentinelese</a>. Nothing is known about their language, and Indian authorities have only rough estimates of how many of them exist today. But even the Sentinelese have had occasional brushes with other societies; members of their tribe have been kidnapped, helicopters sometimes fly over their island and they have <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1509987/Stone-Age-tribe-kills-fishermen-who-strayed-on-to-island.html\">killed fishermen</a> who have ventured too close.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246f3w\"}}</p><p>It is almost always fear that motivates such hostilities and keeps isolated groups from making contact. In past centuries and even decades, isolated tribes were often murdered and enslaved by outsiders. From the time white Europeans first arrived in the Americas, indigenous peoples learned to fear them, and passed that message down generations through oral histories. “People have this romanticised view that isolated tribes have chosen to keep away from the modern, evil world,” says Kim Hill, an anthropologist at Arizona State University. But when Hill and others interview people who recently came out of isolation, the same story emerges time and time again: they were interested in making contact with the outside world, but they were too afraid to do so. As Hill puts it: “There is no such thing as a group that remains in isolation because they think it’s cool to not have contact with anyone else on the planet.”</p><p>Some have personal memories of traumatic encounters with outsiders. In the 1960s and 70s, Brazil largely viewed the Amazon as an empty place in need of development. Indigenous people who stood in the way of that progress were given little or no warning before their homes were bulldozed over – <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/akuntsu\">or they were simply killed</a>. In one case in Brazil’s Rondônia state, a single man, often referred to as “<a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3105-the-last-of-his-tribe\">the Last of His Tribe</a>,” remains in a patch of forest surrounded by cattle ranches. His people were likely killed by ranchers years ago. When he was discovered in 1996, he shot arrows at anyone who dared to approach his home. Funai officials sometimes check up on his house and garden, and, as far as anyone knows, he’s still living there today. “It’s a really sad story of this one little pocket of forest left where this one lone guy lives,” says Robert Walker, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri. “He’s probably completely terrified of the outside world.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246cbp\"}}</p><p>In some cases in the 70s and 80s, the Brazilian government did try to establish peaceful contact with indigenous people, often with the aim of forced assimilation or relocation. They set up “attraction posts” – offerings of metal tools and other things indigenous Indians might find to be valuable – to try and lure them out of hiding. This sometimes led to violent altercations, or, more often than not, disease outbreaks. Isolated people have no immunity to some bugs, which have been known to wipe out <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/about/shell\">up to half</a> of a village’s population in a matter of weeks or months. During those years, missionaries traipsing into the jungle also <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/zoe\">delivered viruses and bacteria</a> along with Bibles, killing the people they meant to save.</p><p>In 1987, Sydney Possuelo – then head of Funai’s Department of Unknown Tribes – decided that the current way of doing things was unacceptable. After seeing tribe after tribe demolished by disease, he concluded that isolated people should not be contacted at all. Instead, natural reserves should be placed aside for them to live on, and any contact attempts should be left up to them to initiate. “Isolated people do not manifest among us – they don’t ask anything of us – they live and die mostly without our knowledge,” he says. When we do contact them, he says, they too often share a common fate: “desecration, disease and death.” </p><p><strong>Viral event</strong></p><p>Unfortunately, history seems to be repeating itself. Three weeks after the Indians in Acre made contact, <a href=\"http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/2903-indios-isolados-que-estabeleceram-contato-recebem-atendimento-medico-no-acre\">Funai announced</a> that several of them had contracted the flu. All of them subsequently received treatment and vaccinations, but they soon returned to the forest. The fear, now, is that they will carry the foreign virus back with them to their home, spreading it to others who have no natural immunity. </p><p>“It’s hard to say what’s going to happen, other than to make doomsday predictions,” Hill says. “So far, things are looking just like they looked in the past.”</p><p>Possuelo – who <a href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0126/p04s01-woam.html\">was fired from Funai</a> in 2006 after a disagreement with his boss over some of these concerns – issues a more direct warning: “What they do in Acre is very worrying: they are going to kill the isolated people,” he says. “The president of Funai and the Head of the Isolated Indians Department should be held accountable for not meeting established standards.” (Funai did not respond to interview requests for this story.)</p><p>Surprisingly, no international protocol exists that outlines how to avoid this predicament. “Every government and group involved in making contact just wings it according to their own resources and experiences,” Hill says.</p><p>The common problem is a lack of institutional memory. Even in places like Brazil with decades of experience, Hill says, “each new government official takes on the task without knowing much about what happened in the past.” Some officials, he adds, have minimal expertise. “Quasi-amateur is what I’d call them: government officials who come in with no medical, anthropological or epidemiological training.”</p><p><strong>Total denial</strong></p><p>The situation in Peru, Watson points out, is even worse. “At one stage, the Peruvian government denied that uncontacted people even exist,” she says. And now major oil and gas operations are allowed to operate on reserves containing their villages. Added to that is the presence of illegal loggers and drug traffickers – making for a very crowded forest.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246966\"}}</p><p>Native people living there seem to be well aware of these encroachments. Google Earth satellite images that Walker recently analysed reveal that one large isolated village in Peru seems to be migrating, year by year, further afield from outside encroachment on their land, including a planned road project. “Most people argue that what’s going on here is that they’re potentially being forced out of Peru,” he says. “It seems like they are running away.”</p><p>When accidental harm from the outside world seems inevitable, Hill argues it would be better if we initiated contact. Slowly building up a long-distance friendship, he explains, and then carrying out a controlled contact meeting with medical personnel on site would be preferable. After that initial contact is made, anthropologists should be prepared to go back into the forest with the group and stay on site to monitor the situation for several months, as well as build up trust and communication. That way, if an epidemic should break out, help can be called for. “You can’t just tell them after 15 minutes, ‘Oh, by the way, if your whole village gets sick, send everyone out to this spot to get medical treatment,’” Hill says. “They won’t comply with that.”</p><p>It’s unclear whether or not such a plan is being carried out in Acre, however. “Funai is not the most transparent organisation, and they have complete monopoly on what happens to remote people in Brazil,” Hill says. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t work in the best interest of native peoples.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0246c2h\"}}</p><p>To ensure isolated groups have a future, <a href=\"http://www.survivalinternational.org/emails/uncontacted\">both Brazil and Peru</a> might need to become more transparent as well as more proactive about protecting them. No matter how remote the Amazon might seem, unlike the Sentinelese, South America’s isolated groups do not live on an island cut off from the forces of mainstream society. “Everywhere you look, there are these pressures from mining, logging, narcotrafficking and other external threats,” Walker says. “My worry is that if we have this ‘leave-them-alone’ strategy, at the end of the day the external threats will win. People will just go extinct.”</p><p><em>Thanks to </em><em>João Victor Geronasso for translation help for this story. <br /> </em><br /> <em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-08-04T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes","HeadlineShort":"Sad truth of uncontacted tribes","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"One of the world’s last isolated tribes has apparently emerged from the forest. Rachel Nuwer investigates whether there is anyone left who has never seen the outside world, and discovers that ‘first contacts’ are often cursed by death and disease.","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"One of the world’s last isolated tribes has ‘emerged’ from the forest. Is it to make contact, or have darker reasons forced them out? Rachel Nuwer investigates.","SummaryShort":"The darker causes forcing them out","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:50Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"9b128e28-f7ea-4974-b5c7-8ecb8149aa2d","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-11-08T16:22:54.848668Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes","_id":"5983d772543960df95e0c8ce"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Since mountaineering became a popular sport in the 1850s, members of its community have often spoken of the “<a href=\"https://www.mountainproject.com/v/last-great-alpine-problems/108212932\">last great problems</a>” in climbing: a peak that has yet to be summitted, a route that has yet to be conquered, an obstacle that has yet to be cleared.</p><p>Over the years, however, that list has steadily dwindled as all of the big firsts were gradually crossed off. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s historic 1953 ascent of Mount Everest, for example, quickly gave way to increasingly meticulous claims to have tamed the world’s tallest peak, from the <a href=\"http://www.people.com/article/13-year-old-indian-girl-climbs-mount-everest-youngest-ever-malavath-poorna\">youngest female climber</a> (just 13) to the <a href=\"http://markinglis.co.nz/speaking-and-trekking/marks-story-so-far/\">first double amputee</a> to the <a href=\"http://www.crawleynews.co.uk/Mountain-man-ultimate-challenge/story-21213047-detail/story.html\">first man from Crawley</a>.</p><p>For mountaineers who don’t happen to be 13-year-old girls, finding a way to stand out requires a little more creativity. Strategies have included being the first to blaze a new route up a <a href=\"http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1011890\">difficult face of an already-summitted mountain</a>; the first to <a href=\"http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/first-look/Partly-Crazy-With-a-Chance-of-Frostbite.html\">climb an existing route in winter</a>; the first <a href=\"http://lhotseskichallenge.com/\">to ski down a mountain</a>; and the first to reach the summit of a difficult <a href=\"http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Article/Best-of-2012-David-Lama-free-climbs-Cerro-Torre-021243299708250\">peak without the assistance of ropes, anchors or bolts</a>. Others have achieved fame <a href=\"http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/mountaineering/everest-2012/Speed-Climbing-to-Stand-Still.html\">by breaking a record speed</a> for getting up and down a particular route. Being the first to climb a previously unclimbed mountain works, too.</p><p><strong>Challenging list</strong></p><p>“Unclimbed mountains or unclimbed routes are far and away the aspiration of all serious mountaineers,” says <a href=\"http://www.hilareeoneill.com/\">Hilaree O’Neill</a>, a skier, mountaineer and athlete, and the first woman ever to scale two 8,000m (26,400ft) peaks in 24 hours. “Mountaineers – at least the ones I know – are all adventurers at heart, and an unclimbed mountain, route or inventive technique epitomises that basic adventurer ideal.”</p><p>Plus, she adds, “Without a doubt, we are also a very egomaniacal group and an unclimbed anything helps separate a climber from the herd.”</p><p>No one knows how many unclimbed mountains remain in the world, but they number at least in the hundreds, if not the thousands. They can be found all over, with multitudes in former Soviet countries and in Russia; in Antarctica; in northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan; in Myanmar, Bhutan, Tibet and beyond. “There are infinitely more unclimbed peaks than there are climbed ones,” says Lindsay Griffin, chairman of the <a href=\"http://www.mef.org.uk/\">Mount Everest Foundation</a> screening committee, who has climbed at least 65 previously unclimbed mountains himself, mostly in Central Asia and the Himalayas. “It’s a vast place, the world.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0222kdp\"}}</p><p>Identifying those peaks and then verifying that they are indeed unclimbed, however, is a challenge unto itself. There is no definitive database for the climbing history of every mountain in the world, and decades-old records – when they exist – might not be digitised. “Young people today are used to getting everything off the internet, so they think if it’s not online, then it doesn’t exist,” Griffin says. “They forget that people climbed really well back in the 1970s.”</p><p>In other cases, records of first ascents might not be translated into English. This is a significant problem for historic Japanese records, and even today it can be difficult to find current reports in English about South Korean expeditions, Griffin says.</p><p>Even when records do exist, that does not mean they are legitimate. Before digital cameras and GPS trackers, verifying someone’s claim was challenging, as was investigating the possibility that a deceased climber had reached the summit before losing his or her life. “Did George Mallory and Andrew Irvine summit Everest in 1924? That’s a perfect example,” O’Neill says. “If you look at mountaineering history through the late 1990s, there are a lot of disputed first ascents.”</p><p>“Part of the nature of this is that you can never be too sure that you’re the first,” adds Tim Moss, founder of <a href=\"http://thenextchallenge.org/\">The Next Challenge</a> and author of <a href=\"http://thenextchallenge.org/books/\">How to Get to the North Pole</a><em>.</p><p></em><strong>Political problems</strong><em></p><p></em>Today, it’s much easier to provide evidence a peak was climbed. But to achieve that success, climbers first have to gain access to the mountain. Many unclimbed mountains have yet to be scaled not because the ascent itself is challenging, but because of logistics. Many are incredibly remote, while others occur in areas engulfed in political turmoil, or they are simply forbidden to climbers.</p><p>At 7,570m (24,981ft), for example, Gangkhar Puensum – the 40th highest mountain in the world – counts as the world’s highest unclimbed mountain. Located in Bhutan near the Tibetan border, the “awful but fascinating” mountain eluded several mountaineering teams who tried to climb it over the course of a decade. In 1994, the unconquered Ganghkar Puensum was closed to climbers, along with all other peaks in Bhutan higher than 6,000m (19,800ft) – reportedly out of respect for local spiritual beliefs. “The Bhutanese are very keen on protecting their own people,” Griffin says. “They just looked at what was going on in Nepal with Everest and decided that they’re not going to be part of that.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p022350s\"}}</p><p>Not ready to let Gangkhar Puensum get away, in 1998, a Japanese team attempted to climb the mountain by approaching it from Tibet (China claims that half the peak falls within its territory). But Bhutan protested, and the team had to abandon its bid under somewhat mysterious circumstances. As mountaineer <a href=\"http://jac.or.jp/english/images/JAPANESE%20ALPINE%20NEWS%20Vol13-2.pdf\">Tamotsu Nakamura later wrote</a>: “As I cannot disclose an inside story behind the sudden cancellation, I write only that the reason why the permit was withdrawn was because of a political issue with [the] Bhutan government.” Rather than go home empty-handed, Nakamura and his climbing partners turned to Liangkang Kangri (also known as Gangkhar Puensum North), a 7,441m (24,555ft) unclimbed peak that is firmly planted in Tibet. Although that effort was a success, it was a disappointing end to the trip. As Nakamura later wrote, “I regret that Liangkang Kangri is not an outstanding summit.”</p><p>The world’s second highest unclimbed mountain – Muchu Chhish, a 7,452m (24,591ft) peak in Pakistan – however, might be scaled this summer. Peter Thompson, a mountaineer based in Derbyshire, England, will depart for Muchu Chhish on 4 August. Thompson and his team, learning from others’ unsuccessful attempts at the mountain, have decided to tackle it by spending the night at 5,700m (18,810ft)  rather than making one day-long push for the summit. “I don’t know what our chances of success are, though they’re probably not hugely great,” Thompson says. “But we’re going to try.”</p><p>Thompson, who has climbed eight previously unclimbed peaks in Pakistan, values the exploratory aspect. As such, he readily admits that he seeks the easiest, most direct route to the summit. This doesn’t mean unclimbed mountains can’t be dangerous or challenging, however. Accidents can happen on any mountain, but at least on heavily climbed peaks detailed information is available about potential hazards, such as Everest’s <a href=\"http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_25617232/khumbu-icefall-unsteady-amp-deadly\">Khumbu icefall</a> or Mount Washington’s <a href=\"http://www.outdoors.org/recreation/hiking/hiking-mtwashington.cfm\">unpredictable weather and hurricane-force winds</a>. Knowing about these dangers ahead of time can help prepare for them. For first ascents, on the other hand, the risks are uncertain and can sometimes prove deadly. “You have to step into the unknown,” Griffin says. “So you never know what you’re going to come up against.”</p><p><strong>Improving technology</strong></p><p>Consider <a href=\"http://www.joepuryearimages.com/\">Joe Puryear</a>, a top climber from Washington who built a reputation for making first ascents of difficult routes in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. In 2010, Puryear died while attempting to scale Labuche Kang – a mountain in Tibet that had only ever been climbed once before. He was attempting a new route, and broke through a cornice, fatally plummeting some 450m (1,500ft) to the glacier below.</p><p>Unlike previously climbed mountains, virgin peaks have no pre-laid route. No ladders or ropes exist to help guide the way, and dead ends and unexpected obstacles can stall progress. While fatalities do sometimes occur on these vertical labyrinths, more often the expeditions simply end in failure. In 2003, for example, Moss attempted to scale an unclimbed peak in Kyrgyzstan with a few university buddies and “failed miserably.” Half way up the mountain, the team couldn’t find anywhere to put their tents so they had to dig a nine-inch platform into the snow and wait out the night “sitting bolt upright on that steep step, terrified of falling down.” To make matters worse, the situation was so precarious that they couldn’t safely melt snow for drinking water. When the sun finally came up, the dehydrated, exhausted climbers decided to call it a day.</p><p>When things do work out, however, the victory is something to be especially savoured. “It’s obviously a great feeling to reach the top of any mountain, whether there’s 1,000 people there or whether you’re the first,” says Moss, who has climbed two previously unclimbed peaks in the <a href=\"http://www.waytorussia.net/Altay/\">Russian Altai Mountains</a>. “But for me, the idea of being the first person to put foot on a bit of land was quite special.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0222j8w\"}}</p><p>As climbing gear improves, more and more people have the chance to enjoy that special sense of accomplishment. Gear has become lighter, stronger, warmer and more efficient, which allows climbers to quickly traverse terrain that might have taken double or triple the time years earlier. Teams in the 1920s used hemp ropes and climbed in wool clothing and leather boots, and as recently as the 1970s, mountaineers still had to sew their own down coats because commercial versions did not exist. Today, companies like <a href=\"https://www.gore-tex.com/remote/Satellite/home\">Gore-Tex</a> provide waterproof, windproof clothes for any occasion, while leather boots have been replaced by triple-layered plastic ones that are half the weight. “Climbers did incredibly well in the 1920s,” says Eric Johnson, a medical consulting physician for <a href=\"https://www.globalrescue.com/index.cfm\">Global Rescue</a>, and an avid climber. “But all of these things have dramatically improved our ability to approach bigger peaks with less gear.”</p><p>Improvements in travel and navigation, too, have been a boon for opening up previously unclimbed mountains. The speed of travel is “paramount,” Johnson says, allowing mountaineers travelling from London or Seattle to reach the Himalayas in just a few days, compared to the three-to-four months that journey entailed just a century ago. Before the mountaineers undertake that journey, Google Earth allows them to zoom into unmapped valleys and along ridges, plotting a route ahead of time and getting an idea of what they might be in for. (Some mountaineers, however, might consider this cheating, Moss points out.) More accurate weather forecasts have also made a significant difference in improving safety and success rates. “Using a sat phone, you can call some weather guru in Switzerland and know extremely detailed weather for a mountain in the Hindu Kush, and therefore plan your summit attempt accordingly,” O’Neill says.  </p><p><strong>Reducing the risks</strong></p><p>In addition to weather forecasts, communications has added a new layer of safety to climbing both familiar and unclimbed peaks. Cell signals are now available at Everest Base Camp, and satellite phones are increasingly affordable and dependable. Just 15 years ago, mountaineers who encountered a problem on Everest, for example, had to radio down to someone at base camp, who would then try to place a call on a satellite phone to seek help. Today, thanks to the Iridium satellite constellation and several others, satellite phones can connect from almost anywhere in the world, including on unclimbed mountains hundreds of miles from the nearest city. Those phones are also becoming more durable and able to resist problems caused by freezing temperatures and moisture.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0222kwj\"}}</p><p>Mountaineers’ safety will never be guaranteed, but these advances are reducing the risks and upping the odds that help can quickly be summoned should something go awry. And with the world becoming an increasingly small place, more people can stake out their own small claim to fame by climbing one of the hundreds of mountains currently awaiting exploration. Many in the 6,000-to-7,000m (19,800ft-to-23,100ft) range in the Himalayas, for example, haven’t been climbed yet simply because people tend to focus on the 8,000m (26,400ft) peaks. In addition, more and more mountains that were once off limits are now reachable, including <a href=\"http://theadventureblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/nepal-opens-104-more-peaks-for-climbing.html\">104 peaks recently opened in Nepal</a>. It’s probably only a matter of time until those last unclimbed peaks are scaled.</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-07-04T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The mountains we have never climbed","HeadlineShort":"The mountains we’ve never climbed","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Hundreds of mountains have yet to be explored, finds Rachel Nuwer. Why are these peaks so difficult to scale? ","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Hundreds of mountains have yet to be explored, finds Rachel Nuwer. Why are these peaks so difficult to scale? ","SummaryShort":"Why are some peaks still unconquered?","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:17Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"54f2cef5-70d7-4cad-96db-299281282d7a","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140703-the-last-mountains-to-climb","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:17Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140703-the-last-mountains-to-climb"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140703-the-last-mountains-to-climb","_id":"598484d7543960df95e1251f"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Tom Belt, a native of Oklahoma, didn’t encounter the English language until he began kindergarten. In his home, conversations took place in Cherokee.</p><p>Belt grew up riding horses, and after college bounced around the country doing the rodeo circuit. Eventually, he wound up in North Carolina in pursuit of a woman he met at school 20 years earlier. “All those years ago, she said the thing that attracted her to me was that I was the youngest Cherokee she’d ever met who could speak Cherokee,” he says. “I bought a roundtrip ticket to visit her, but I never used the other end of the ticket.”</p><p>The couple married. Yet his wife – also Cherokee – did not speak the language. He soon realised that he was a minority among his own people. At that time, just 400 or so Cherokee speakers were left in the <a href=\"http://nc-cherokee.com/\">Eastern Band</a>, the tribe located in the Cherokee's historic homeland and the one that his wife belongs to. Children were no longer learning the language either. “I began to realise the urgency of the situation,” Belt says. So he decided to do something about it.</p><p>Cherokee is far from the only minority language threatened with demise. Over the past century alone, around 400 languages – about one every three months – have gone extinct, and most linguists estimate that <a href=\"http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/50-percent-of-the-worlds-languages-in-danger-of-extinction-83098/\">50%</a> of the world’s remaining 6,500 languages will be gone by the end of this century (some put that figure as high as <a href=\"http://io9.com/5442321/90-percent-of-languages-will-be-extinct-next-century---and-thats-good\">90%</a>, however). Today, the top ten languages in the world claim around half of the world’s population. Can language diversity be preserved, or are we on a path to becoming a monolingual species?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxpy\"}}</p><p>Since there are so many imperilled languages, it’s impossible to label just one as the rarest or most endangered, but at least 100 around the world have only a handful of speakers – from <a href=\"http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/ain\">Ainu in Japan</a> to <a href=\"http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/yag\">Yagan in Chile</a>. It can be difficult to find these people too. There are some famous cases – <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/28/usa.features11\">Marie Smith Jones</a> passed away in Alaska in 2008, taking the <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqxGB0lR2Gc\">Eyak language</a> with her – but usually they are older individuals (often in failing health) who don’t advertise their language skills. “The smaller the number of speakers, the harder it is to get an accurate headcount,” says David Harrison, chair of the linguistics department at Swarthmore College, and co-founder of the non-profit <a href=\"http://www.livingtongues.org/\">Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages</a>.</p><p>Even if a number of people still speak it, they might live far apart and so not converse with one other – or in the case of the pre-Columbian Mexican language Ayapaneco, the <a href=\"http://mashable.com/2014/05/19/friends-save-dying-language/\">last two surviving speakers</a> refused to talk to each other for years. Without practice, even a native language will begin to degrade in the speaker’s mind. Salikoko Mufwene, a linguist at the University of Chicago, grew up speaking <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwVKVvDavE\">Kiyansi</a>, spoken by a small ethnic group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 40 years living away from the DRC, Mufwene has only come across only two people who speak the language. On a recent trip to his home village, he found himself searching for words and struggling to keep up with the conversation. “I realised Kiyansi exists more in my imagination than in practice,” he says. “This is how languages die.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxrs\"}}</p><p>Languages usually reach the point of crisis after being displaced by a socially, politically and economically dominant one, as linguists put it. In this scenario, the majority speaks another language – English, Mandarin, Swahili – so speaking that language is key to accessing jobs, education and opportunities. Sometimes, especially in immigrant communities, parents will decide not to teach their children their heritage language, perceiving it as a potential hindrance to their success in life.</p><p>Speakers of minority languages have suffered a long history of persecution. Well into the 20th Century, many Native American children in Canada and the US were sent to boarding schools, where they were often forbidden to speak their native language. Today, many English-speaking Americans are still <a href=\"http://7online.com/archive/9237741/\">hostile towards non-English speakers</a>, <a href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/19/houston-teacher-who-reportedly-told-students-not-to-speak-spanish-will-likely/\">especially Spanish ones</a>. Extreme persecution still happens as well. Last August, a linguist in China was <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/world/asia/a-devotion-to-language-proves-risky.html?_r=0\">arrested for trying to open schools</a> that taught his native language, Uighur. He has not been heard from since.</p><p><strong>Endangered tongues</strong></p><p>For these reasons and others, languages are <a href=\"http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/index.php\">dying all over the world</a>. Unesco’s <a href=\"http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/atlas-of-languages-in-danger/\">Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger</a> lists 576 as critically endangered, with thousands more categorised as endangered or threatened. The highest numbers occur in the Americas. “I would say that virtually all the [minority] languages in the US and Canada are endangered,” says Peter Austin, a professor of field linguistics at the University of London. “Even a language like Navajo, with thousands of speakers, falls into that category because very few children are learning it.” If measured in proportion to population, however, then Australia holds the world record for endangered languages. When Europeans first arrived there, 300 aboriginal languages were spoken around the country. Since then, 100 or so have gone extinct, and linguists regard 95% of the remaining ones as being on their last legs. Just a dozen of the original 300 are still being taught to children.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gzyv\"}}</p><p>But does it matter whether a seemingly obscure language spoken by a few people in one isolated corner of the world goes out of existence?</p><p>Some people argue that language loss, like species loss, is simply a fact of life on an ever-evolving planet. But counter arguments are abundant. “A lot of people invoke social Darwinism to say ‘who cares’,” says Mark Turin, an anthropologist and linguist at Yale University. “But we spend huge amounts of money protecting species and biodiversity, so why should it be that the one thing that makes us singularly human shouldn’t be similarly nourished and protected?”</p><p>What’s more, languages are conduits of human heritage. Writing is a relatively recent development in our history (written systems currently exist for only about one-third of the world’s languages), so language itself is often the only way to convey a community’s songs, stories and poems. The Iliad was an oral story before it was written, as was The Odyssey. “How many other traditions are out there in the world that we’ll never know about because no-one recorded them before the language disappeared?” Austin says. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxsz\"}}</p><p>Languages also convey unique cultures. Cherokee, for example, has no word for goodbye, only “I will see you again”. Likewise, no phrase exists for “I’m sorry”. On the other hand, it has special expressions all its own. One word – oo-kah-huh-sdee –represents the mouth-watering, cheek-pinching delight experienced when seeing an adorable baby or a kitten. “All of these things convey a culture, a way of interpreting human behaviour and emotion that’s not conveyed the same way as in the English language,” Belt says. Without the language, the culture itself might teeter, or even disappear. “If we are to survive, to continue on and to exist as a people with a distinct and unique culture,” he continues, “then we have to have a language.”</p><p>“It’s very hard as an English speaker to understand that,” adds Lenore Grenoble, a linguist at the University of Chicago. “But you just hear that time and time again: that people feel the loss of their language in a very personal way.”</p><p><strong>Wealth of wisdom</strong></p><p>Another argument mirrors that of biodiversity conservation. Just as ecosystems provide a wealth of services for humanity – some known, others unacknowledged or yet to be discovered – languages, too, are ripe with possibility. They contain an <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/When-Languages-Die-Extinction-Knowledge/dp/0195372069\">accumulated body of knowledge</a>, including about geography, zoology, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, pharmacology, botany, meteorology and more. In the case of Cherokee, that language was born of thousands of years spent inhabiting the southern Appalachia Mountains. Cherokee words exist for every last berry, stem, frond and toadstool in the region, and those names also convey what kind of properties that object might have – whether it’s edible, poisonous or has some medicinal value. “No culture has a monopoly on human genius, and we never know where the next brilliant idea may come from,” Harrison says. “We lose ancient knowledge if we lose languages.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxv2\"}}</p><p>Finally, languages are ways of interpreting the world, and no two are the same. As such, they can provide insight into neurology, psychology and the linguistic capacities of our species. “Different languages provide distinct pathways of thought and frameworks for thinking and solving problems,” Harrison says. Returning to Cherokee, unlike English it is verb rather than noun-based, and those verbs can be conjugated in a multitude of ways based on who they are acting upon. And depending on the suffix, speakers can indicate whether a noun is toward or away from them; uphill or downhill; or upstream or down stream. It’s a much more precise way of dealing with the world than English. “There’s a misconception that these languages are simple just because many are unwritten,” Turin says. “But most have incredibly complex grammatical systems that far exceed that of English.”</p><p><strong>Scramble to save</strong></p><p>For all of these reasons, linguists are scrambling to document and archive the diversity of quickly disappearing languages. Their efforts include making dictionaries, recording histories and traditions, and translating oral stories. “If there’s really good documentation, then there’s a chance that these languages could be revitalised in the future even after they cease to be spoken,” Turin says.</p><p>Without speakers or persons interested in revitalising them, however, these efforts are like “preserving languages as museum artefacts”, Mufwene says.</p><p>After learning that his language was poised to disappear, Belt and other concerned Cherokee speakers in the Eastern Band began discussing how to save the language. Belt volunteered to teach Cherokee lessons at a local school, for example, and eventually the tribe decided to create a language immersion school for children, where core classes –including science and math – are taught in Cherokee. Cherokee language is now also offered at the local university, where Belt teaches.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p020gxvr\"}}</p><p>“The Eastern Cherokee are one of the ones really quietly working on their own language revitalisation programs,” says Bernard Perley, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “But no-one ever hears about the work they’re doing.”</p><p>There are also a few examples of languages being revived even after actually going extinct. By the 1960s, the last fluent Miami language speakers living in the American Midwest passed away. Thanks largely to the efforts of <a href=\"http://www.endangered-languages.com/miami.php\">one interested member of the Miami Nation</a> tribe, however, <a href=\"http://myaamiacenter.org/\">the language is now taught</a> at Miami University in Ohio. “The Miami Nation asked, what if the experts are wrong? What if the language is only sleeping, and we can awaken it?” Perley says. “They changed the rhetoric from death to life.”</p><p><strong>Tech support</strong></p><p>To an extent, technology can help these efforts. “Many speakers are using technology to do really interesting things that were not imaginable a generation back,” says Turin. For example, a version of <a href=\"http://www.cherokee.org/languagetech/en-us/windows8cherokee.aspx\">Windows 8 is available in Cherokee</a>, and a <a href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cherokeelessons.syllabary.one\">Cherokee app</a> allows speakers to text in the language’s 85 letters. A multitude of sites devoted to single languages or languages of a specific region unite speakers and provide multimedia teaching tools, too, including the <a href=\"http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/\">Digital Himalayas project</a>, the <a href=\"http://dieriyawarra.wordpress.com/\">Diyari blog</a>, the <a href=\"http://www.arcticlanguages.com/the-project.php#self\">Arctic Languages Vitality project</a> and the <a href=\"http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/enduring-voices/\">Enduring Voices Project</a>.</p><p>Thanks to the Eastern Band’s efforts, today around 60 of their children can speak Cherokee – a much better statistic than when Belt moved to North Carolina in 1991. Belt, along with countless other speakers of rare and endangered languages, is not ready to let his language fade into history – even if the journey toward revitalisation is an uphill one. As an elder told Belt years ago: “It’s all well and good that y’all want to do this, but remember, they didn’t take it away overnight, and you’re not going to get it back overnight.” </p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-06-06T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Languages: Why we must save dying tongues","HeadlineShort":"Why we must save dying languages","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Hundreds of our languages are teetering on the brink of extinction, and as Rachel Nuwer discovers, we may lose more than just words if we allow them to die out.","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Hundreds of our languages are teetering on the brink of extinction, and as Rachel Nuwer discovers, we may lose more than just words if we allow them to die out","SummaryShort":"When tongues die, we lose more than words","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:11:45Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"02f4b2fb-1489-41c7-ace4-b7d9f0966168","Id":"wwfuture/story/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:11:45Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages","_id":"5981e863543960df95dfc2fd"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30191584","Name":"Map traces ocean circulation","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","SummaryLong":"Scientists have produced what they say is the most accurate space view yet of global ocean currents and the speed at which they move","SummaryShort":"Map traces ocean circulation","Tag":null},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-05-20T08:07:41+01:00","Entity":"external","Guid":"9e43c311-36d1-4b1f-9bd1-4d9741c52737","Id":"wwfuture/external/map-traces-ocean-circulation","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-05-20T08:07:41+01:00","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"map-traces-ocean-circulation"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:external:wwfuture/external/map-traces-ocean-circulation","_id":"5981d0ea543960df95ddf39d"}],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Have we mapped the whole planet? As Rachel Nuwer discovers, there are mysterious, poorly charted places everywhere, but not for the reasons you might think. ","SummaryShort":"Uncharted regions closer than you think","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Earth tag","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/9228","Name":"Earth","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:15Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"68301dbe-bb76-4f81-a96c-895c105b3df7","Id":"tag/earth","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:15Z","Project":"","Slug":"earth"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:15Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"68301dbe-bb76-4f81-a96c-895c105b3df7","Id":"tag/earth","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:15:15Z","Project":"","Slug":"earth"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/earth","_id":"5981d40a543960df95dfa4a7"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Internet","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/14539","Name":"Internet","CreationDateTime":"2014-10-21T08:10:15Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"65b61fb4-93de-4ddf-8fa9-9b919ccfe295","Id":"tag/internet","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-08-18T09:08:34.193954Z","Project":"","Slug":"internet"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-10-21T08:10:15Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"65b61fb4-93de-4ddf-8fa9-9b919ccfe295","Id":"tag/internet","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-08-18T09:08:34.193954Z","Project":"","Slug":"internet"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/internet","_id":"5981d40d543960df95dfa6c9"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Ocean tag","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/18842359","Name":"Ocean","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:17Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"209aebb6-7348-46b7-b8cd-2535fa6c0764","Id":"tag/ocean","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:17Z","Project":"","Slug":"ocean"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:17Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"209aebb6-7348-46b7-b8cd-2535fa6c0764","Id":"tag/ocean","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:12:17Z","Project":"","Slug":"ocean"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/ocean","_id":"5981d40f543960df95dfa89f"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Anthropology tag","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/569","Name":"Anthropology","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"c7a61ada-72fe-4372-9025-1bdb170ceaab","Id":"tag/anthropology","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Project":"","Slug":"anthropology"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"c7a61ada-72fe-4372-9025-1bdb170ceaab","Id":"tag/anthropology","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:13:32Z","Project":"","Slug":"anthropology"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/anthropology","_id":"5981d40e543960df95dfa78f"}],"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-28T02:13:06Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"cc715c69-d11d-4110-ad2c-7d7e8cc0f50b","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-08T10:22:35.06575Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141127-the-last-unmapped-places"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-28T02:13:06Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"cc715c69-d11d-4110-ad2c-7d7e8cc0f50b","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-08T10:22:35.06575Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141127-the-last-unmapped-places"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","_id":"59848856543960df95e126e7"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":498660,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":955,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/49/4g/p0494gy5.jpg","SourceWidth":1697,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"What if the world went vegetarian? (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"What if the world went vegetarian? (Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/49/4g/p0494gy5.jpg","Title":"iStock_71344523_MEDIUM.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494gy5","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p0494gy5","_id":"59824108543960df95dff273"}],"AssetImagePromo":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":220378,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1009,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/49/4g/p0494gk5.jpg","SourceWidth":1794,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"If vegetarianism was adopted by 2050, it would stave off about 7 million deaths per year, while veganism would knock that estimate up to 8 million (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/49/4g/p0494gk5.jpg","Title":"iStock_6393350_MEDIUM.jpg","CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494gk5","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494gk5","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p0494gk5","_id":"59849bc3543960df95e13068"}],"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":220378,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":1009,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/49/4g/p0494gk5.jpg","SourceWidth":1794,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"If vegetarianism was adopted by 2050, it would stave off about 7 million deaths per year, while veganism would knock that estimate up to 8 million (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/49/4g/p0494gk5.jpg","Title":"iStock_6393350_MEDIUM.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494gk5","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p0494gk5","_id":"59849bc3543960df95e13068"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":683997,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":956,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/49/4f/p0494f26.jpg","SourceWidth":1698,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Global vegetarianism might impact farmers in the developing world hardest (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/49/4f/p0494f26.jpg","Title":"iStock_17522929_MEDIUM.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494f26","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p0494f26","_id":"598471b1543960df95e11a8b"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":443349,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":953,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/49/4g/p0494gw6.jpg","SourceWidth":1695,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"If meat dropped from menus, the economic effects worldwide would be profound (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/49/4g/p0494gw6.jpg","Title":"iStock_76721379_MEDIUM.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494gw6","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p0494gw6","_id":"598471b1543960df95e11a8c"},{"Content":{"FileSizeBytes":429504,"MimeType":"image/jpeg","SourceHeight":955,"SourceUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/live-galileo-interface-mt-resources-imagebucket-1a92e5tj3b5d6/p0/49/4h/p0494h40.jpg","SourceWidth":1697,"SynopsisLong":"","SynopsisMedium":"Even the best-laid plans probably wouldn’t be able to offer alternative livelihoods for everyone (Credit: iStock)","SynopsisShort":"(Credit: iStock)","TemplateUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/$recipe/images/live/p0/49/4h/p0494h40.jpg","Title":"iStock_46334658_MEDIUM.jpg"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Entity":"","Guid":"","Id":"p0494h40","ModifiedDateTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","Project":"","Slug":""},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:image:p0494h40","_id":"598471b3543960df95e11a8d"}],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Description":"<p>Rachel Nuwer is a science journalist who contributes to\nvenues such as The New York Times, Scientific American and Smithsonian. Her\nwebsite is <a href=\"http://rachelnuwer.com/\">rachelnuwer.com</a> and you can\nfollow her on twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/rachelnuwer\">@rachelnuwer</a>.\nShe lives in Brooklyn.</p>","Email":[],"Links":null,"Name":"Rachel Nuwer","PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Entity":"author","Guid":"c575dd82-8272-4f0b-9c80-40e01bb0a58e","Id":"wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:14:40Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"rachel-nuwer"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:author:wwfuture/author/rachel-nuwer","_id":"5981d0d8543960df95dde185"}],"BodyHtml":"<p>People become vegetarians for a variety of reasons. Some do it to alleviate animal suffering, others because they want to pursue a healthier lifestyle. Still others are fans of sustainability or wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.</p><p>No matter how much their carnivorous friends might deny it, vegetarians have a point: cutting out meat delivers multiple benefits. And the more who make the switch, the more those perks would manifest on a global scale.</p><p>But if everyone became a committed vegetarian, there would be serious drawbacks for millions, if not billions, of people.</p><p>“It’s a tale of two worlds, really,” says <a href=\"https://ccafs.cgiar.org/about/who-we-are/our-staff/researchers/theme-leader/andrew-jarvis#.V6n_wJMrLow\">Andrew Jarvis</a> of Colombia’s International Centre for Tropical Agriculture. “In developed countries, vegetarianism would bring all sorts of environmental and health benefits. But in developing countries there would be negative effects in terms of poverty.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0494gk5\"}}</p><p>Jarvis and other experts at the centre hypothesised what might happen if meat dropped off the planet’s menu overnight.</p><p>First, they examined climate change. Food production accounts for one-quarter to <a href=\"http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/7/47/2015/\">one-third</a> of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and the brunt of responsibility for those numbers falls to the livestock industry. Despite this, how our dietary choices affect climate change is often underestimated. In the US, for example, an average family of four emits <a href=\"http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/2014/10/cars-cows-and-carbon/\">more greenhouse gases</a> because of the meat they eat than from driving two cars – but it is cars, not steaks, that regularly come up in discussions about global warming.</p><blockquote><p> Most people don’t think of the consequences of food on climate change – Tim Benton </p></blockquote><p>“Most people don’t think of the consequences of food on climate change,” says <a href=\"http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/staff/profile.php?tag=Benton_T\">Tim Benton</a>, a food security expert at the University of Leeds. “But just eating a little less meat right now might make things a whole lot better for our children and grandchildren.”</p><p><a href=\"http://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/people/marco-springmann\">Marco Springmann</a>, a research fellow at the Oxford Martin School’s Future of Food programme, tried to quantify just how much better: he and his colleagues built computer models that predicted what would happen if everyone became vegetarian by 2050. <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/113/15/4146.full\">The results</a> indicate that – largely thanks to the elimination of red meat – food-related emissions would drop by about 60%. If the world went vegan instead, emissions declines would be around 70%.</p><p>“When looking at what would be in line with avoiding dangerous levels of climate change, we found that you could only stabilise the ratio of food-related emissions to all emissions if everyone adopted a plant-based diet,” Springmann says. “That scenario is not very realistic – but it highlights the importance that food-related emissions will play in the future.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0494f26\"}}</p><p>Food, especially livestock, also takes up a lot of room – a source of both greenhouse gas emissions due to land conversion and of biodiversity loss. Of the world’s approximately five billion hectares (12 billion acres) of agricultural land, <a href=\"http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM\">68% is used for livestock</a>.</p><blockquote><p> If everyone became vegetarian by 2050, food-related emissions would drop by 60% </p></blockquote><p>Should we all go vegetarian, ideally we would dedicate at least 80% of that pastureland to the restoration of grasslands and forests, which would capture carbon and further alleviate climate change. Converting former pastures to native habitats would likely also be a boon to biodiversity, including for large herbivores such as buffalo that were pushed out for cattle, as well as for predators like wolves that are often killed in retaliation for attacking livestock.</p><p>The remaining 10 to 20% of former pastureland could be used for growing more crops to fill gaps in the food supply. Though a relatively small increase in agricultural land, this would more than make up for the loss of meat because one-third of the land currently used for crops is dedicated to producing food for livestock – not for humans.</p><p>Both environmental restoration and conversion to plant-based agriculture would require planning and investment, however, given than pasturelands tend to be highly degraded. “You couldn’t just take cows off the land and expect it to become a primary forest again on its own,” Jarvis says.</p><p><strong>Carnivorous careers</strong></p><p>People formerly engaged in the livestock industry would also need assistance transitioning to a new career, whether in agriculture, helping with reforestation or producing bioenergy from crop byproducts currently used as livestock feed.</p><p>Some farmers could also be paid to keep livestock for environmental purposes. “I’m sitting here in Scotland where the Highlands environment is very manmade and based largely on grazing by sheep,” says <a href=\"http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/peter-alexander(53951c2f-6d8f-403a-b683-b04fdb553ac1).html\">Peter Alexander</a>, a researcher in socio-ecological systems modelling at the University of Edinburgh. “If we took all the sheep away, the environment would look different and there would be a potential negative impact on biodiversity.”</p><p>Should we fail to provide clear career alternatives and subsidies for former livestock-related employees, meanwhile, we would probably face significant unemployment and social upheaval – especially in rural communities with close ties to the industry.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0494gw6\"}}</p><p>“There are over 3.5 billion domestic ruminants on earth, and tens of billions of chickens produced and killed each year for food,” says <a href=\"http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/directory/ben-phalan\">Ben Phalan</a>, who researches the balance between food demand and biodiversity at the University of Cambridge. “We’d be talking about a huge amount of economic disruption.”</p><p>But even the best-laid plans probably wouldn’t be able to offer alternative livelihoods for everyone. Around one-third of the world’s land is composed of arid and semi-arid rangeland that can only support animal agriculture. In the past, when people have attempted to convert parts of the Sahel – a massive east-to-west strip of Africa located south of the Sahara and north of the equator – from livestock pasture to croplands, desertification and loss of productivity have ensued. “Without livestock, life in certain environments would likely become impossible for some people,” Phalan says. That especially includes nomadic groups such as the Mongols and Berbers who, stripped of their livestock, would have to settle permanently in cities or towns – likely losing their cultural identity in the process.</p><p>Plus, even those whose entire livelihoods do not depend on livestock would stand to suffer. Meat is an important part of history, tradition and cultural identity. Numerous groups around the world give livestock gifts at weddings, celebratory dinners such as Christmas centre around turkey or roast beef, and meat-based dishes are emblematic of certain regions and people. “The cultural impact of completely giving up meat would be very big, which is why efforts to reduce meat consumption have often faltered,” Phalan says.</p><blockquote><p> Worldwide vegetarianism by 2050 would lead to a global mortality reduction of up to 10% </p></blockquote><p>The effect on health is mixed, too. Springmann’s computer model study showed that, should everyone go vegetarian by 2050, we would see a global mortality reduction of 6-10%, thanks to a lessening of coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and some cancers. Eliminating red meat accounts for half of that decline, while the remaining benefits are thanks to scaling back the number of calories people consume and increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables they eat. A worldwide vegan diet would further amplify these benefits: global vegetarianism would stave off about 7 million deaths per year, while total veganism would knock that estimate up to 8 million. Fewer people suffering from food-related chronic illnesses would also mean a reduction in medical bills, saving about 2-3% of global gross domestic product. </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p0494h40\"}}</p><p>But realising these projected benefits would require replacing meat with nutritionally appropriate substitutes. Animal products contain more nutrients per calorie than vegetarian staples like grains and rice, so choosing the right replacement would be important, especially for the world’s estimated <a href=\"http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12571-008-0002-y\">two billion-plus</a> undernourished people. “Going vegetarian globally could create a health crisis in the developing world, because where would the micronutrients come from?” Benton says.</p><p><strong>All in moderation</strong></p><p>But fortunately, the entire world doesn’t need to convert to vegetarianism or veganism to reap many of the benefits while limiting the repercussions.</p><p>Instead, moderation in meat-eating’s frequency and portion size is key. <a href=\"http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1329-y\">One study</a> found that simply conforming to the World Health Organization’s dietary recommendations would bring the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions down by 17% – a figure that would drop by an additional 40% should citizens further avoid animal products and processed snacks. “These are dietary changes that consumers would barely notice, like having a just-slightly-smaller piece of meat,” Jarvis says. “It’s not this either-or, vegetarian-or-carnivore scenario.”</p><p>Certain changes to the food system also would encourage us all to make healthier and more environmentally-friendly dietary decisions, says Springmann – like putting a higher price tag on meat and making fresh fruits and vegetables cheaper and more widely available. Addressing inefficiency would also help: thanks to food loss, waste and overeating, fewer than 50% of the calories currently produced are actually used effectively.</p><p>“There is a way to have low productivity systems that are high in animal and environmental welfare – as well as profitable – because they’re producing meat as a treat rather than a daily staple,” Benton says. “In this situation, farmers get the exact same income. They’re just growing animals in a completely different way.”</p><p>In fact, <a href=\"http://www.fao.org/3/i3437e.pdf\">clear solutions</a> already exist for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock industry. What is lacking is the will to implement those changes.</p><p><em>Join 700,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em>LinkedIn</em></a><em> and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em>Instagram</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em> </p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"","Name":"What If","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"What If...","CreationDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"d4482238-5ef4-4bf6-b8ce-6d7a2f4f2f1a","Id":"wwfuture/column/what-if","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/what-if"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"d4482238-5ef4-4bf6-b8ce-6d7a2f4f2f1a","Id":"wwfuture/column/what-if","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-04-24T17:41:50.681812Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/what-if"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/what-if","_id":"5981d0e1543960df95dde80c"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":[],"Campaign":null,"CollectionOverrides":null,"CollectionType":"column","Description":"Stories that inspire, intrigue and enlighten","Name":"Best of BBC Future","Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Title":"Best of BBC Future"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-05-02T06:56:30.095016Z","Entity":"collection","Guid":"e6539848-9854-4af2-b3c8-a95e2d9060f3","Id":"wwfuture/column/best-of-bbc-future","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-05-02T06:56:30.095016Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"column/best-of-bbc-future"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:collection:wwfuture/column/best-of-bbc-future","_id":"5981d0e5543960df95dded4e"}],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-09-27T00:31:15Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"What would happen if the world suddenly went vegetarian?","HeadlineShort":"What if the world went vegetarian? ","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Eliminating meat from our diets would bring a bounty of benefits to both our own health and the planet’s – but it could also harm millions of people.","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[{"Content":{"Description":"Apple News Publish: Select to publish, remove to unpublish. (Do not just delete or unpublish the story)","Name":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Entity":"option","Guid":"13f4bc85-ae27-4a34-9397-0e6ad3619619","Id":"option/publish-applenews-system-1","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-05T14:32:31.186819Z","Project":"","Slug":"publish-applenews-system-1"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:option:option/publish-applenews-system-1","_id":"5981d336543960df95df2a6f"}],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>In Planet of the Apes, a man finds himself in a world governed by hyper-intelligent primates that lord over enslaved human underlings. Pierre Boulle, author of the 1963 book on which the film series was based, said his now-classic story fell under the genre of “social fantasy”.</p><p>What if that fantasy was expanded, however, to include not only apes with human-like intelligence, but all species on Earth? What if every animal on the planet has suddenly woken up a rational, self-aware being? Would one creature come to rule all others, much as we humans have done, or would our varied kind arrive at some sort of peaceful, enlightened coexistence? It might seem like an absurd thought experiment – it’s certainly not possible – however, exploring the question can reveal intriguing (and depressing) truths about human nature, and our place as the planet’s dominant species.</p><p>Unfortunately, the hypothetical answer isn’t pretty: “Chaos would be the simple word for what would happen,” says <a href=\"http://www.bristol.ac.uk/biology/people/innes-c-cuthill/index.html\">Innes Cuthill</a>, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Bristol. “We should definitely not assume that intelligence is a good thing.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p045s2wy\"}}</p><blockquote><p> Chaos would be the simple word for what would happen </p></blockquote><p>“We’d all kill each other,” continues <a href=\"https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/social-and-evolutionary-neuroscience-research-group-senrg\">Robin Dunbar</a>, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford. “Humans are not noted for their curiosity and peace in the context of meeting new people.” </p><p><a href=\"http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/staff/josep-call/index.html\">Josep Call</a>, a comparative psychologist at the University of St. Andrews, agrees. “If you look at human history, I am very pessimistic about just wanting to be friends,” he says. “Maybe now we’re a little better than we were in the past, but look around the world and tell me if you think that is really the case.”</p><p>Given our long track record of exterminating other species as well as our own kind, there’s no reason to think that either we or the now self-aware animals would behave any differently. Essentially, World War Three would likely break out. “We react very negatively and aggressively to strangers and to threats,” Cuthill says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p045s2tq\"}}</p><p>Given that, who would win? Many species, of course, would not stand a chance. Herbivores, for example, need to spend most of their time eating grass in order to acquire enough energy to function. This limits the time they could invest in communication, tool making, culture-building or engaging in combat. Protein-eaters would thus have an edge. Sharks, dolphins and killer whales would be out, since they are confined to the ocean – although oceanic creatures may engage in their own underwater struggles for power. Likewise, animals that cannot survive outside of their particular niche – the swamp, the rainforest canopy, the desert – would not be able to conquer the world, tethered as they are to their environments.</p><blockquote><p> In the short term, large predators would likely pose the biggest threat to our dominion </p></blockquote><p>Large predators like lions, tigers, bears, wolves and even non-predators like elephants and rhinos, however, could have a go at it, á la Jurassic Park. In the short term, they would likely pose the biggest threat to our dominion. Should we be stripped naked and thrown into the savannah or forest, they would most definitely beat us. But given our possession of modern weapons and the fact that humans are far more numerous than other large predators, those creatures’ newfound smarts would likely only allow them to outmanoeuvre us for a brief time before we obliterated them (which, incidentally, we are currently already in the process of doing for many). As <a href=\"http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/people/alexkacelnik.shtml\">Alex Kacelnik</a>, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Oxford, says: “Ultimately, I think we’d beat them to the ground. We would win.”</p><p>But with the most formidable carnivores out of the picture, a new competitor would emerge: our closest primate relatives. As Cuthill points out, our technology has largely enabled us to come as far as we have as a species, and primates share much of the same physiology that allows us to use that technology. Chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos and gorillas could access our computers and wield our guns while also enjoying the benefits of stronger and more agile bodies than the human form. They could also quickly set about creating unique technologies by coopting human tools for their own use.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p045s2xv\"}}</p><p>But our primate cousins’ abilities to do all of this would likely hinge on whether they can somehow hack into our accumulated knowledge, including how to use technologies, how to engage in effective warfare, how to understand us – the enemy – and much, much more. Harnessing that knowledge for their own use would be key to domination, but it is something they likely would not be able to achieve before we took them out as well. “If they were given all this knowledge then we’d have a tie between humans and primates,” Call says. “If not, even though they’d be a strong contender, they would not become the dominant species.”</p><blockquote><p> Humans would be in deep trouble if they had to fight intelligent bacteria </p></blockquote><p>With enough time, though, the ability to quickly adapt to changing environments and circumstances would likely be the strongest weapon in the quest for world domination. Indeed, this is one of the skills at the heart of humanity’s ability to conquer the Earth. Though we evolved in warm grasslands, we soon found ways to inhabit environments that varied drastically compared to our primordial origins, from mountain tops to the tundra. Numbers would also count, as would the ability to evade detection.</p><p>In other words, all evidence points to bacteria and other microbes inheriting the Earth – even more so than they already do today. No, bacteria do not have nervous systems, so the idea of them becoming intelligent is even more far-fetched than that of other multi-cellular species suddenly developing smarts to rival our own. But that impossibility is likely a blessing, given their ubiquity. “Bacteria are already everywhere, including inside us,” Call says. “They would be a very, very strong contender.”</p><p>“It wouldn’t surprise me if something small wins,” agrees Dunbar. “My guess is we’re likely to become prey to much more primitive forms of life, to bacteria and viruses.”</p><p>“Humans would be in deep trouble if they had to fight intelligent bacteria, especially the really bad ones,” Call says. “The problem is we could not get rid of them all, because they are essential for our own survival.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p045s31x\"}}</p><p>Even if humanity is killed off, however, conflicts would likely continue to rage on. There’s no reason to believe any animal with <em>Homo sapiens</em>-level intelligence would behave any differently than we ourselves have in terms of exploitation of other species and resources. Likewise, intra-species conflict would also break out. “Remember that animals don’t solve problems for the good of their species,” Kacelnik says. “They compete within the species for the advantage of their own kind, their own cultural or family group.”</p><p>All told, the situation would probably end badly for almost everyone. As species fell, ecosystems would collapse, leaving only the heartiest survivors – the bacteria, cockroaches and perhaps rats – to inherit the Earth. Even then, though, the world likely wouldn’t revert to some sort of post-apocalyptic state of peaceful utopia. As Cuthill says, whichever species were left would “probably screw up the planet just like we’re doing”.</p><p>“I don’t see any reason to think that other species would be any more altruistic than we are,” he says. “The balance of nature that we see is only there because of a balance of power.”</p><p><em>This story is part of a series called <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/what-if\">‘What If…’</a>, which explores thought experiments and hypothetical scenarios.</em></p><p><em>Join 600,000+ Future fans by liking us on</em> <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em><strong>Facebook</strong></em></a><em>, or follow us on</em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em><strong>Twitter</strong></em></a><em>,</em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em><strong>Google+</strong></em></a><em>,</em><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em><strong>LinkedIn</strong></em></a><em>and</em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em><strong>Instagram</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-08-25T00:09:11Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"What would happen if all animals were as smart as us","HeadlineShort":"What would happen if animals were smart","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"If every species on the planet were suddenly equally intelligent, would we cooperate or fight? Rachel Nuwer explores this hypothetical survival of the fittest scenario. ","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"If every species on the planet were suddenly equally intelligent, would we cooperate or fight? Rachel Nuwer explores this hypothetical survival of the fittest scenario. ","SummaryShort":"The depressing consequences of an intriguing thought experiment","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-08-25T02:09:21.483727Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"3c7db970-e2d5-4e7e-b858-fb61521f4ec4","Id":"wwfuture/story/20160824-what-would-happen-if-all-animals-were-as-smart-as-us","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-08-25T15:39:11.23229Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20160824-what-would-happen-if-all-animals-were-as-smart-as-us"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20160824-what-would-happen-if-all-animals-were-as-smart-as-us","_id":"59836965543960df95e08efc"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Right now, in three facilities in the US and Russia, there are around 300 people teetering on the cusp of oblivion. They exist in a state of deep cooling called cryopreservation, and entered their chilly slumber after their hearts had stopped beating. Before undergoing true cell death, the tissues of their brains were suspended using an ice-free process called <a href=\"http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/vitrification.html\">vitrification</a>. All are legally deceased, but if they could speak, they would likely argue that their remains do not constitute dead bodies at all. Instead, in a sense, they are just unconscious.</p><p>No-one knows if it’s possible to revive these people, but more and more of the living seem to believe that uncertainty is better than the alternative. Around 1,250 people who are still legally alive are on cryonics waiting lists, and new facilities are opening in Oregon, Australia and Europe soon.</p><blockquote><p> We have a saying in cryonics: being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to you – Dennis Kowalski, Cryonics Institute </p></blockquote><p>“We have a saying in cryonics: being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to you,” says Dennis Kowalski, president of the <a href=\"http://www.cryonics.org/\">Cryonics Institute</a> in Michigan, the largest cryonics organization in the world. “There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to be brought back, but there is a guarantee that if you get buried or cremated, you’ll never find out.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s222w\"}}</p><p>To the uninitiated, cryonics might seem the stuff of “Vanilla Sky,” “Demolition Man,” and other purely science fiction works. But <a href=\"http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-cryonics/\">many researchers</a> believe that it is a credible field of inquiry, and cryobiologists are slowly chipping away at the possibility of revival. Most recently, a team <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401500245X\">succeeded at</a> thawing a previously vitrified rabbit brain. Even after several weeks of storage, the synapses that are thought to be crucial for brain function were intact. The rabbit was still dead, though – the researchers did not attempt to resuscitate the animal afterwards.</p><p>While a thawed out rabbit brain does not a fully revitalised person make, some believe that cryogenic revival might someday be as commonplace as treating a case of the flu or mending a broken arm. “This is really not so earth-shattering or philosophically weird as you might think,” says Aubrey de Grey, co-founder and chief science officer at the <a href=\"http://www.sens.org/\">Sens Research Foundation</a> in California, a non-profit organisation dedicated to changing the way we research and treat age-related ill health. “It’s just medicine – another form of healthcare that helps people who are seriously sick. Once you get your head around that, it’s much less scary.” </p><blockquote><p> They would immediately face the challenge of rebuilding their lives as strangers in a strange land </p></blockquote><p>But assuming cryonics does wind up working, for the newly reborn citizens of the past there would be more to their stories than simply opening their eyes and declaring a happy ending. Instead, they would immediately face the challenge of rebuilding their lives as strangers in a strange land. How that would play out depends on a host of factors, including how long they were gone, what kind of society they returned to, whether they know anyone when they are brought back and in what form they return. Answering these questions is a matter of pure speculation, but experts have spent time turning them over – not the least so some can better prepare for their own potential return.</p><p>Much of a cryogenically preserved person’s experience in coming back would depend on the time scale involved. Some enthusiasts are optimistic, using the law of accelerating returns to justify predictions that within the next 30 to 40 years we could develop medical technologies capable of enhancing biological systems, preventing disease and even reverse-engineering aging. If that comes to pass, then there’s a chance that those frozen today would actually be welcomed back by people they knew in their first phase of life – their grown grandchildren, for example.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s2255\"}}</p><blockquote><p> Lifetime members of the Cryonics Institute can enroll their spouse for half price, and underage children are free </p></blockquote><p>If such advances take longer, on the order of 100 or more years, however, patients would not have such immediate social support in the contemporary world. Some, like Kowalski, are getting around this by simply sticking together: he, his wife and their children have all signed up for cryogenic suspension. Indeed, lifetime members of the Cryonics Institute can enroll their spouse for half price, and underage children are free. “We do that to encourage the family unit to stay together,” Kowalski says.</p><p>But even if a cryogenically preserved person was on his or her own, Kowalaski does not think that would necessarily be a deal breaker for eventually attaining happiness. As he puts it: “If you were on an airplane today with all your family and friends and it crashed and you’re the only survivor, would you commit suicide? Or would you go out and put your life back together, and make new family and friends?”</p><p>Other cryogenically revived people would be a good starting point for replacing lost connections. Like refugees arriving in a new country, communities of formerly vitrified persons would likely bond around their shared experience and temporal origins.</p><p>Where members of those communities would live or how they would support themselves are other unanswered questions. “If they arrive and don’t know much and don’t have any income, they’re going to have to be cared for,” says Daniel Callahan, co-founder and senior research scholar at the <a href=\"http://www.thehastingscenter.org/\">Hastings Center</a>, a research institution dedicated to bioethics and health policy. “Who’s going to do that?”</p><p>In an attempt to anticipate these needs, the Cryonics Institute invests a fraction of patient fees – currently $28,000 with life insurance – into stocks and bonds. The hope is that future returns can help revived persons get back on their feet, so to speak.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s21ss\"}}</p><p>It is possible, however, that money will no longer exist by the time cryonics pays off, and that people will not have to work for a living. A society that has achieved the medical breakthroughs necessary to cure disease and end aging, Kowalski and others believe, may also be one bereft of poverty and material want. In such a scenario, clothing, food and homes, fabricated with 3D printers or some other advanced means, would be abundant and freely available. “It doesn’t make sense that they’d take the time to revive people into some dystopian, backward future,” Kowalski says. “You can’t have the technology to wake people up and not have the technology to do a bunch of other great things, like provide abundance to the population.” </p><blockquote><p> They would be dislocated, alienated and coming to grips with the certainty that everyone they had ever known is lost </p></blockquote><p>Still, even if cryogenically revived persons come back to a more equitable and advanced future, the mental flip-flops required to adjust to that new world would be substantial. Dislocated in time, alienated from society and coming to grips with the certainty that everyone and everything they had ever known is irretrievably lost, they would likely suffer symptoms of intense trauma. And that’s not to mention the fact that some may have to deal with a whole new body because only their head was preserved.</p><p>“Even for someone extremely resilient, the need to adapt themselves to a new body, culture and environment seems extremely challenging,” says <a href=\"file:///web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://c/Users/fisherw1/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/OVHW3350/jeffreykauffmanpsychotherapy.com\">Jeffry Kauffman</a>, a psychotherapist based outside of Philadelphia. “These people would be forced to ask themselves, ‘Just who am I, really?’”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s228s\"}}</p><p>Others, however, believe that cryonics’ psychological repercussions will prove trivial road bumps for those brought back, thanks to superior forms of future therapy as well as the resilience of the human spirit. “We’re born without consent into a strange world, that’s the human condition,” says <a href=\"http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4e54-5931-4d54-5530\">Abou Farman</a>, an anthropologist at the New School in New York City. “We tend to adapt to strange situations all the time.”</p><p>Kowalski agrees, pointing out that people who move from developing countries to more industrialised ones often do well in their new environment. Likewise, those whose bodies are altered by an accident or in combat are able to carry on.</p><p>There’s no doubt though that the intensity of this transition would likely be something completely new to psychologists. Trauma, like depression, can play out in a variety of forms, so the trauma cryonics may trigger could be unlike any iteration we’ve seen before, Kauffman says. “There are a diversity of phenomenologies based in part on differences in what happened, so we can only guess based on other trauma what some aspects of this new one may be.”</p><p>There is also the question of how those from the distant past would go about creating relationships with those from the present. Forging genuine connections might prove challenging, Kauffman says, because contemporary persons would likely view antiquated arrivals “as spectacles.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03s21m0\"}}</p><p>Although de Grey counters that “people treat other people as oddities all the time,” in this case, the social isolation would likely be more staggering than anything comparable today. “In even 100 years the world can change enormously,” Callahan says. “If you add another 100 years to that, my god, it’s going to be very different indeed. Those from that time would be almost alien creatures.”</p><p><strong>Still human? </strong></p><p>These scenarios are still based in the realm of the imaginable, but there is an additional, wildcard option for how all of this could turn out. Should only a person’s consciousness be salvaged and uploaded into some sort of virtual state of being – think Johnny Depp in “Transcendence” – then all bets are off for making predictions on how they would respond. As Kauffman points out, the brain functions in conjunction with sensory organs and other bodily sensations, and even those cut off from their bodies, such as quadriplegic persons, still have self-images. To be bodiless but aware is a ghost-like state completely foreign to what any human has ever experienced before. “What that would be is really just hard to imagine,” Callahan says.</p><blockquote><p> Immortality could also be cause for alarm. An uploaded brain will have beaten death </p></blockquote><p>Immortality could also be cause for alarm. An uploaded brain, in a sense, will have beaten death, which raises basic psychological and philosophical questions. “We can say that death is at the root of consciousness, normative law and human existence,” Kauffman says. “The loss of death is likely to radically alter who or what the being or creature is.”</p><p>There’s no guarantee that this ‘being’ would be the same one who first entered into the cryogenic process, either. As de Grey says, the question remains of “whether scanning the brain and uploading it into a different substrate is revival at all, or if you’d be creating a new individual with the same characteristics.”</p><p>Regardless of who or what that ghost in the machine turned out to be, programming in a digital suicide option would likely be necessary – just in case the experience proved too overwhelming or oppressive. “I think they’d have to decide in advance what the escape hatch would be if it didn’t work out,” Callahan says. “Is it that the company is authorised to kill you, or are you left to do it yourself?”  </p><p>Despite the unknowns, some would still be willing to give such an existence a shot. “If the option was complete oblivion and nothingness or uploading my mind into a computer, I’d like to at least try it,” Kowalski says. “It could be pretty cool.”</p><p>--</p><p><em>Join 500,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em>, </em><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em>LinkedIn</em></a><em> and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em>Instagram</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-04-25T00:20:35Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"If cryonics suddenly worked, we’d need to face the fallout","HeadlineShort":"The unsettling side of cryopreservation","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"If we could actually cryogenically preserve people for years – or even centuries – what would it feel like for those individuals to wake up? Rachel Nuwer explores the question in a new BBC Future series called 'What If…’","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"If we could actually cryogenically preserve people for years – or even centuries – what would it feel like for those individuals to wake up?","SummaryShort":"If cryonics suddenly worked, we’d need to face the fallout","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-04-25T03:22:17.044536Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"e3abbb61-82cd-4026-bebb-6d219c809797","Id":"wwfuture/story/20160424-if-cryonics-suddenly-worked-wed-need-to-face-the-fallout","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-04-29T05:38:55.848542Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20160424-if-cryonics-suddenly-worked-wed-need-to-face-the-fallout"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20160424-if-cryonics-suddenly-worked-wed-need-to-face-the-fallout","_id":"5983ce4a543960df95e0c3cf"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>You may have heard that Coca-Cola once contained an ingredient capable of sparking particular devotion in consumers: cocaine. The “coca” in the name referred to the extracts of coca leaf that the drink's originator, Atlanta chemist John Pemberton, mixed with his sugary syrup.</p><p>At the time, in the late 19th Century, coca leaf extract mixed with wine was a common tonic, and Pemberton's sweet brew was a way to get around local laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol. But the other half of the name represents another ingredient, less infamous, perhaps, but also strangely potent: the kola nut.  </p><p>The pod of the kola nut, if you've never had the pleasure of seeing one yourself, is about two inches long, and green. Inside the shell are knobs of fleshy meat like you might find inside a chestnut, but reddish or white in colour. In West Africa, the kola nut's native habitat, people have long chewed them as stimulants. That's because the nuts contain caffeine and theobromine, substances that also occur naturally tea, coffee, and chocolate. They also have sugar and kolanin, said to be a heart stimulant.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p048nvn8\"}}</p><p>There's plenty of pick-me-up in them, and their cultivation in West Africa is hundreds and hundreds of years old. Historian Paul Lovejoy <a href=\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/4391682?\">relates</a> that for many years the leafy, spreading trees were planted on graves and as part of puberty rituals. Even though the nuts, which need to stay moist, can be somewhat delicate to transport, traders carried them hundreds of miles throughout the forests and savannas. Their value can be understood by the company they kept: In 1581, the ruler of the Songhai Empire in the western Sahel sent to Timbuktu on the occasion of a mosque's construction a sumptuous gift of gold, cowrie shells – and kola nuts.</p><blockquote><p> By the late 19th Century, kola nuts were being shipped by the tonne to Europe and the United States   </p></blockquote><p>Europeans did not know of them until the 1500s, when Portuguese ships arrived on the coast of what is now Sierra Leone, Lovejoy relates. And while the Portuguese took part in the trade, ferrying nuts down the coast along with other goods, by 1620, when English explorer Richard Jobson made his way up the Gambia, the nuts were still peculiar to his eyes.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p048nryv\"}}</p><p>“When we were at the highest part of the river, people brought them abundantly unto us, and did wonder much, we made no more esteeme or care to buy them,” <a href=\"#gola\">he wrote</a>. But: “Ten is a present for a king.” Given six of the nuts himself, Robson hoped to bring them back to England, but they withered or were eaten by worms before he made it home.</p><p>Of course, this ignorance did not last. By the late 19th Century, kola nuts were being shipped by the tonne to Europe and the United States. Many made their way into tonic medicines like Burroughs Wellcome and Co's <a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:\">“Forced March” tablets</a>, intended as a kind of energy boost. “Containing the combined active principles of Kola Nut and Coca Leaves,” their label trumpeted. “Allays hunger and prolongs the power of endurance.” Users were to take one an hour “when undergoing continued mental strain or physical exertion.”</p><p>One extremely popular medicinal drink was Vin Mariani, a French product consisting of coca extract mixed with red wine. It was created by a French chemist, Angelo Mariani, in 1863, and <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/\">Pope Leo XIII was a devotee</a>, appearing on Vin Mariani posters; Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison, and Arthur Conan Doyle were also said to be fans. But this was just one stimulating tonic among many, in an era when such nerve potions claimed positively glorious effects.</p><p>So when Pemberton, the American chemist, created his concoction, it was the latest incarnation in an ongoing trend. And while cocaine eventually fell from grace as a beverage ingredient, kola-extract sodas – also known as “colas” – proliferated, of course.</p><blockquote><p> These days, the Coca-Cola recipe is a closely guarded secret, but it's said to no longer contain kola nut extract   </p></blockquote><p>The first year it was available, Coca-Cola averaged about nine servings a day across all the Atlanta soda fountains where it was sold, <a href=\"https://www.worldofcoca-cola.com/about-us/coca-cola-history/\">according to the company</a>. As it grew more popular, the company sold rights to bottle the soda, so it could travel easily. Today something like 1.9 billion Cokes are purchased daily.</p><p>It’s become so iconic that attempts to change its taste in 1985 – sweetening it in a move projected to boost sales –  proved disastrous, with widespread backlash and anger from consumers. “Coca-Cola Classic” returned to store shelves just three months after the “New Coke” was released.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p048nv77\"}}</p><p>These days, the Coca-Cola recipe is a closely guarded secret. But it's said to no longer contain kola nut extract, relying instead on artificial imitations to achieve the flavour. Recipes for making kola soda abound, however, and if you want to taste what a real cola might have been like, <a href=\"#26\">you can take a crack at it</a>.</p><p>Mixed with oil of neroli, orange essence, caramel, and vanilla, among other tinctures, the striking bite of the kola nut – in Jobson's words, “the tast of him, when he is bitten, is extreame bitter” – may be masked. But its caffeine kick will certainly be present, and you may get a sense of what has attracted people in West Africa, in Atlanta, all over the world, to this distinctive nut.</p><p><em>Join 700,000+ Future fans by liking us on</em> <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, or follow us on</em> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em>LinkedIn</em></a> <em>and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em>Instagram</em></a></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week</em><em>”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-09-23T11:55:27Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The little-known nut that gave Coca-Cola its name","HeadlineShort":"How Coca-Cola got its name","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"The kola nut has always been popular in West Africa – but more than a hundred years ago it came to Europe and the US. BBC Future looks at how it helped create one of the world’s biggest products. \n\n","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"The kola nut has always been popular in West Africa – but more than a hundred years ago it came to Europe and the US. Veronique Greenwood reports on how it helped create a huge brand.\n","SummaryShort":"What exactly is the ingredient 'cola'?","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-09-23T12:04:58.071227Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"d55a3955-1c66-444e-a826-be9313db8954","Id":"wwfuture/story/20160922-the-nut-that-helped-to-build-a-global-empire","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-02-01T10:31:38.426799Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20160922-the-nut-that-helped-to-build-a-global-empire"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20160922-the-nut-that-helped-to-build-a-global-empire","_id":"5982d884543960df95e04114"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>In 1504, an anonymous mapmaker – most likely an Italian – carved a meticulous depiction of the known world into two halves of <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oldest-globe-to-depict-the-new-world-may-have-been-discovered/2013/08/19/503b2b4a-06b4-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?hpid=z1\">conjoined ostrich eggs</a>. The grapefruit-sized globe included recent breaking discoveries of mysterious distant lands, including Japan, Brazil and the Arabic peninsula. But blanks remained. In a patch of ocean near Southeast Asia, that long-forgotten mapmaker carefully etched the Latin phrase Hic Sunt Dracones – “Here are the dragons.”</p><p>Today it is safe to say there are no unknown territories with dragons. However, it’s not quite true to say that every corner of the planet is charted. We may seem to have a map for everywhere, but that doesn’t mean they are complete, accurate or even trustworthy.</p><p>For starters, all maps are biased toward their creator’s subjective view of the world. As <a href=\"https://web.duke.edu/isis/gessler/topics/lewis-carroll.htm\">Lewis Carroll famously pointed out</a>, a perfectly objective and faithful 1:1 representation of the world would literally have to be the same size as the place it depicted. Therefore, mapmakers must make sensible design decisions in order to compress the physical world into a much smaller, flatter depiction. Those decisions inevitably introduce personal biases, however, such as our tendency to place ourselves at the centre of the world. “We always want to put ourselves on the map,” says Jerry Brotton, a professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary University London, and author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/A-History-World-12-Maps/dp/0670023396\">A History of the World in 12 Maps</a>. “Maps address an existential question as much as one that’s about orientation and coordinates.</p><p>“We want to find ourselves on the map, but at the same time, we are also outside of the map, rising above the world and looking down as if we were god,” he continues. “It’s a transcendental experience.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxw4n\"}}</p><p>Which is why, he says, the first thing most new Google Earth users do is to look up their own address. Modern technology enables this exercise in ego, but the tendency itself is nothing new. It dates back to the oldest known world map, a 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablet discovered near Baghdad that puts Babylon at its centre. Mapmakers throughout history adopted a similar bias toward their own homeland, and little seems to have changed since then. Today, American maps still tend to centre on America; <a href=\"http://i.imgur.com/9RVtPrn.png\">Japanese maps</a> on Japan; and <a href=\"http://xiaoyanwangblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/blog-9-east-vs-west-south-vs-north.html\">Chinese ones</a> on China. Some <a href=\"http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/\">Australian maps</a> are even rotated so that the southern hemisphere is on top. It’s such an ego-centric approach that the United Nations sought to avoid it when they created <a href=\"http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/maplib/flag.htm\">their emblem</a> – a map of the world neutrally centered on the North Pole.</p><p>Similarly, maps can overestimate their creators’ geographic worth, or reveal bias against certain places. Africa’s true size, for example, has been <a href=\"http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/maps/page10.html\">chronically downplayed</a> throughout the history of mapmaking, and even now, non-Africans <a href=\"http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg\">tend to underestimate</a> the size of that truly massive continent – which is large enough to cover China, the US and much of Europe.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvmc\"}}</p><p>Religious, political and economic agendas also come into play, adulterating a map’s objectivity. The maps of World War II, for example, were incredibly propagandist, depicting “dreadful red bears and red perils,” Brotton says. “The maps were distorted to tell a political message.</p><p>“A map,” he continues, “will always have an agenda, an argument, a proposal about what the world looks like from a particular perspective.”</p><p><strong>Skewed view</strong></p><p>Even today’s digital maps adhere to this rule, he says. Google and other digital mapmakers turn the world into “<a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10091089/Jerry-Brotton-lets-take-maps-back-from-Google.html\">one enormous web browser</a>”, he explains, driven by commercial interests.</p><p>But Manik Gupta, the group product manager at Google Maps, counters that Google Maps’ primary goal mirrors that of its company: to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Commerce is just one part of that. “At the end of the day, technology is a tool,” Gupta says. “Our job is to make sure it’s super accurate and works. Users then decide how they want to use it.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvvx\"}}</p><p>Nevertheless, even digital maps skew toward the things that their users deem most important. Those areas that the majority sees as unworthy of attention – poor neighbourhoods like the Orangi shanty town in Karachi, Pakistan, or the Neza-Chalco-Itza slum in Mexico city – as well as those places that mapmakers do not often go – war-torn regions, North Korea – remain grossly undermapped.</p><p>This neglect means maps of remote regions can contain errors that go unnoticed for years. Scientists paying a visit to <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20442487\">Sandy Island</a>, a speck of land in the Coral Sea near New Caledonia, recently discovered that the island simply did not exist. The “phantom island” had found its way onto Australian maps and Google Earth at least a decade ago, probably due to human error.</p><p>Google has two approaches to addressing these problems: <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20141031-google-street-view-maps-south-georgia-for-the-first-time\">sending mapmakers out into the wilderness</a> with Street View cameras attached to backpacks, bikes, boats or snowmobiles, and launching <a href=\"http://www.google.com/mapmaker\">Map Maker</a>, a tool created in 2008 that allows anyone anywhere to enhance existing Google maps. “If it’s important, then most likely the users will put it on the map,” Gupta says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvjj\"}}</p><p>But while many communities have literally put themselves on the map, others have not. (Most likely, mapping Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or the floating slum of Makoko in Lagos isn’t a top priority for those living there.) Traditional paper maps tend to neglect these areas as well. “They’re places that the state denies or doesn’t want to portray as part of its landscape,” says Alexander Kent, a senior lecturer in geography and GIS at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. “Far from being something objective that just reflects what’s on the ground, the person behind the map has the power to determine what goes on it or not.”  </p><p>In recognition of this problem, a new effort called the <a href=\"http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Missing_Maps_Project\">Missing Maps Project</a> – organised by the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team – recruits volunteers to fill in the cartographical blanks in the developing world. It’s <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/06/missing-maps-human-genome-project-unmapped-cities\">too early to tell</a> whether the project will make a substantial dent, but launch parties are scheduled in London and Jakarta to try and drum up interest among potential volunteers.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cyqky\"}}</p><p>The ocean, likewise, is one of the most poorly mapped areas of the planet, despite the fact that it occupies the most space. “The great terra incognita is the ocean bed,” Brotton says. In light of increasing interest in underwater mining and drilling, certain countries – especially Russia – are looking to lay claim on large tracts of ocean floor. Additionally, with sea ice quickly receding, more and more territory will come up for grabs. “As the landscape changes, it becomes possible to exploit more mineral resources, so mapping becomes extremely powerful and important,” Brotton says. To draw attention to this gap of knowledge, Brotton and artist Adam Lowe are creating <a href=\"http://www.factum-arte.com/pag/261/Terra-Forming---Engineering-the-Sublime\">a 3D map of the ocean floor</a> without water. “I think geographers are beginning to understand that mapping the oceans is one of the great untold stories,” he says.</p><p><strong>Low quality</strong></p><p>For others, though, untold stories abound even in some of the most prolifically mapped places in the world. <a href=\"https://imusgeographics.com/\">Dave Imus</a>, an award-winning mapmaker based in Oregon, acknowledges that much of the world has been mapped in a basic sense, but believes that the vast majority of maps are not good enough.</p><p>“So many maps are difficult to understand, forcing the eye and mind to work overtime trying to perceive what it’s looking at,” he says. And a digital map, with spoken directions, “is good for helping you find a restaurant, but you’re no more connected with your surroundings than looking for the next turn”.</p><p>Frustrated with the maps on offer for the US, he set out to make his own, turning to the “really exquisite, expressive” mapping style of Swiss cartographers as inspiration. “It’s my hypothesis that the reason Europeans are so much more geographically aware than we Americans is that they have these maps that make their surroundings understandable and we don’t,” he says.</p><p><a href=\"http://www.imusgeographics.com/listitems_63/usa-maps\">{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvdf\"}}</a></p><p>The fruit of his labour is the <a href=\"http://www.imusgeographics.com/listitems_63/usa-maps\">Essential Geography of the United States of America</a>, a highly informative map that does away with the muddle of rainbow-coloured states of traditional US maps, instead delineating boundaries in green and allowing each state’s actual features – mountains, forests, lakes, urban centres, highways – to characterise those places. City populations are indicated in yellow patches, and rather than cram in as many towns as possible, Imus uses census data to standardise rural places in terms of what counts as a hub in that particular area – whether that means 500 or 5,000 people. Major landmarks and transportation centres like airports are marked; Native American reserves are included (something lacking on many maps); and elevation of not only of mountains but also cities is noted. “The National Geographic map of the US has some elevations of mountain peaks but doesn’t even tell you the elevation of Denver, Colorado,” Imus says. “As a consequence, it doesn’t communicate anything meaningful about what that place is like if you’ve never been there.”</p><p><strong>High standard</strong></p><p>Such maps are incredibly time consuming and expensive to produce, however. Imus spent 6,000 hours on his. As a result, as far as Imus knows, only Europe, Japan, New Zealand and now the US have maps available that meet these high standards. “We think we’re living in this modern age and everything’s been done, but for people who look at mapping at a slightly different angle, they’ll see things that still need to be done virtually everywhere,” he says. Still, Imus dreams of a day when such maps will be widely available everywhere and at increasingly fine scales, such as at the state and city level. Ultimately, he hopes this would foster a more geographically literate society. “I’ve felt misunderstood at times,” Imus says, “but I’ve gotten so much great feedback on this project that I feel like people now get it and it’ll continue on.”</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02cxvhy\"}}</p><p>But even the most detailed maps cannot get around one fundamental problem in the way of creating a near-perfect cartographic representation for any place in the world: the incredible pace of change, both human and nature-made, that characterises life on the planet. Some cities in Asia and Africa, Gupta says, are undergoing so much construction that Google Maps have been unable to keep up. At the same time, natural landscapes are constantly in a state of flux – now, more so than ever. Islands are being devoured by the sea, ice floes are disappearing, shorelines are eroding and forests are being cleared. “The very moment you build a perfect map of the world is the moment it goes out of date,” Gupta says. “The real world will always be a little bit ahead of how we represent it, because change is constant.”</p><p>In that sense, the entire world is undermapped, and it will always remain that way. A birds-eye view of a city tells you it’s there, but not how to navigate through all corners of it. A foldout map is a relic of the time it went to print, unable to take into account earthquake destruction, new roads or renegotiated borders. And Google Maps can provide turn-by-turn instructions for biking from London to Brighton, but fails utterly when asked to do the same for traversing a Brazilian favela or the Gobi desert’s dunes.</p><p>Even our best maps, then, are merely more up to date and truer to place than others. Our age-old quest to capture uncharted land and space will never end.</p><p><em>If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em> or </em><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107828172298602173375/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a><em> page, or message us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BBC_Future\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2014-11-28T00:00:00Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"The last unmapped places on Earth","HeadlineShort":"The last unmapped places","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Have we mapped the whole planet? As Rachel Nuwer discovers, there are mysterious, poorly charted places everywhere, but not for the reasons you might think. ","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Have we mapped the whole planet? As Rachel Nuwer discovers, there are mysterious, poorly charted places everywhere, but not for the reasons you might think. ","SummaryShort":"Uncharted regions closer than you think","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-28T02:13:06Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"cc715c69-d11d-4110-ad2c-7d7e8cc0f50b","Id":"wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-02-08T10:22:35.06575Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20141127-the-last-unmapped-places"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20141127-the-last-unmapped-places","_id":"59848856543960df95e126e7"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>Earlier this year, <a href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6234/571.short\">scientists warned</a> that one in six animal species could go extinct due to climate change. Could the same thing happen to our crops and other foodstuffs too?</p><p>It’s clear that farmers in many parts of the world are going to find things harder in the coming decades. Last week, BBC Future explored one scientist’s efforts to help crops cope with the increased likelihood of droughts. By using the genes from <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151220-could-resurrection-plants-be-the-future-of-food\">“resurrection plants”</a>, Jill Farrant of the University of Cape Town is exploring whether she can design crops to survive for much longer periods without water.</p><p>Watch the video below to see how resurrection plants can come back from the dead, after months or even years:</p><p>{\"video\":{ \"pid\": \"p03chg6k\",\"encoding\": \"ib2\" }}</p><p>But if we can’t find ways to protect other foods, will they survive climate change? Fortunately, there is some good news on this front. Despite <a href=\"http://www.takepart.com/photos/6-foods-are-going-extinct-because-climate-change/fish\">alarmist headlines</a> about “foods that are going extinct,” there is no evidence that major food types like beans, chocolate, wine, corn or wheat will cease to exist.</p><p>“A crop itself, no, it won't go extinct,” says <a href=\"https://ccafs.cgiar.org/about/who-we-are/our-staff/researchers/theme-leader/andrew-jarvis#.VnmxCxqDGko\">Andrew Jarvis</a>, a flagship leader on the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. “Somewhere in the world, it will grow.”</p><blockquote><p> Foods are unlikely to disappear under climate change, but that’s not the whole story </p></blockquote><p>But that doesn’t mean it’s all good news for future food. We will probably have to change where we grow certain crops, as some regions get too hot. The downside, obviously, is that local farmers will suffer under this scenario. And some people may struggle to get the same access to certain foods. “Even if overall food production may be unaffected, food security can still be impacted,” says Margaret Walsh, an ecologist at the US Department of Agriculture’s Climate Change Program Office. In other words, even if a certain food is still grown on some corner of the Earth, it doesn’t mean that everyone will continue to have the same degree of access as today.</p><p>Overall, the yields of many foods, from staples to life-enhancing extras such as coffee and chocolate, will likely be impacted by climate change too. How those diminishments will be felt will depend on the degree of warming and the crop in question, but in general, “anything over about 30C is very bad for crops,” says <a href=\"https://sipa.columbia.edu/faculty/wolfram-schlenker\">Wolfram Schlenker</a>, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. For example, statistical studies that he and a colleague built of corn and soybean production in the US show a <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15594.full\">steep decline</a> after crossing the 30C temperature threshold.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03d3p46\"}}</p><p>In the US – the world’s largest producer of corn and soybeans – farms can move north to some degree, Schlenker says. But eventually, yields will likely suffer because the soil north of Iowa declines in quality – a legacy of glacial expansion. Other studies, including of <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n3/full/nclimate1356.html\">wheat in India</a> and <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n1/full/nclimate1043.html\">maize in Africa</a>, also found that there is a threshold above which yields sharply decline: crops can adapt and move, but only to a point. “What’s common to all studies is the finding that extreme heat is detrimental to crop growth, although exact cutoffs vary by crop,” Schlenker says. “If predictions for the end of the century are true, though, I think a lot of agricultural areas in the US will see significant hits.”</p><blockquote><p> 80% of coffee-growing zones in Central America and Brazil could become unsuitable by 2050  </p></blockquote><p>Under current conditions, about 4% of the world’s croplands experience drought in any given year, but by the end of the century <a href=\"http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00363.1\">those conditions are projected</a> to jump to about 18% per year. <a href=\"http://www.usda.gov/oce/climate_change/effects_2012/effects_agriculture.htm\">Some studies</a> indicate that horticulture crops – generally, everything besides staples – may be impacted most severely, largely because they tend to be constrained to a smaller geographic area. Jarvis and his colleagues found that <a href=\"http://www.ciatnews.cgiar.org/2015/10/27/climate-change-scientists-pinpoint-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-coffee-zones/\">80% of coffee-growing zones</a> in Central America and Brazil could become unsuitable by 2050, for example, while climate change will likely have “profound impacts” on <a href=\"http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/?appid=eb683a0093974045b6d7c1b8fa7750fd\">cocoa production in West Africa</a>. “High quality chocolate will be less available in the future, and if you want it, you’ll have to pay a lot more for it,” Jarvis says.  </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03d3p65\"}}</p><p>This means that, for those who can afford it, some foods will simply cost them more in the future. But for poorer people, those same price jumps will likely cause certain foods to go extinct from their diets. “The more you reduce, the shorter the supply, and the higher the price will jump,” Schlenker says.</p><blockquote><p> High quality chocolate will be less available in the future, and if you want it, you’ll have to pay a lot more for it </p></blockquote><p>Another potential climate change-induced hitch is our dependence on commodity crops – wheat, soybeans, maize and rice – which currently provide humanity with 75% of its calories, either directly or indirectly through the animals we raise on those crops. Jarvis and his colleagues also found that, over the past five decades, the world has seen <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/4001\">an increasing standardisation of diets</a>; the foods we eat globally today are 36% more similar than they were in 1961. While this can be good news for the world’s poorest people who now consume more calories, protein and fat than in the past, homogeneity and over-dependence on a handful of staples leaves us vulnerable to threats such as drought, disease and pests – all of which are predicted to worsen in many parts of the world as a result of climate change.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03d3p9w\"}}</p><p>There are ways we could soften the coming blow to the global food supply, however. Like Farrant’s work with resurrection crops (see video at the top of this story), a number of companies, organisations and researchers, including the <a href=\"http://dtma.cimmyt.org/index.php/component/content/article/113-news-release/154-climate-ready-maize-gets-a-boost-phase-iii-of-the-drought-tolerant-maize-in-africa-project-to-reach-more-farmers\">Gates Foundation</a> and <a href=\"http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/droughtgard-hybrids.aspx\">Monsanto</a>, are aiming to create drought- and temperature-resistant crops through genetic engineering and conventional breeding. For now, the jury is still out as to how successful those endeavours will be. “The people at Monsanto who I’ve talked to are much more optimistic that they’ll be able to engineer heat-tolerant crops,” Schlenker says. “On the other hand, scientists at the USDA who I’ve spoken with are much more cautious.”</p><p>“Genetic engineering is one solution that we should keep developing, but it’s not necessarily a panacea that will solve everything,” Jarvis adds. “The evidence gathered over the last 10 years is that it hasn’t totally revolutionised agriculture.”   </p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p03d3pfx\"}}</p><p>Until genetic engineering comes to fruition, other strategies might also help in some places, including applying more fertiliser, implementing better irrigation, using machinery that gets crops out of the field faster or installing storage facilities to stave off spoilage. “Many places could benefit a great deal just by using technologies that already exist,” Walsh says. “General agronomic management can go a long way toward mitigating changes.”</p><p>Finally, diversifying our diet away from heat-sensitive wheat, corn, rice and other crops could also help. “We’ve seen profound changes in the last decades in what we eat largely as a result of international trade, and I think that trend toward more diversification will continue,” Jarvis says. “Depending on a greater number of plant species creates a more resilient, less risky food system – and one that provides a broader range of nutritional requirements.”  </p><p><em>Follow us</em> <em>on</em> <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>,</em> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbc_future\"><em>Twitter</em></a>, <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107828172298602173375/posts\"><em>Google+</em></a>, <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbc-com\"><em>LinkedIn</em></a> <em>and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcfuture_official/\"><em>Instagram</em></a><strong>.</strong></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"<p>This is part of a series called <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/the-genius-behind\">The Genius Behind</a>, about amazing and sometimes little-known technological breakthroughs, and the innovative minds behind them.</p>","CalloutPosition":"bottom","CalloutSubtitle":"Be inspired by great minds and ideas","CalloutTitle":"The Genius Behind","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2015-12-28T08:12:46.431Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"Here’s how climate change will affect what you eat","HeadlineShort":"Will climate change make foods extinct?","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"Could some foods go extinct, or is the threat exaggerated? BBC Future investigates the myths and the reality.","IsSyndicated":false,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwfuture","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Could some foods go extinct, or is the threat exaggerated? Rachel Nuwer investigates the myths and the reality.","SummaryShort":"The myths and reality about coffee, chocolate and other crops","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2015-12-28T08:45:00.122074Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"ab6ef3f9-a4af-4849-b2ab-8ecf9a78055a","Id":"wwfuture/story/20151228-heres-how-climate-change-will-affect-what-you-eat","ModifiedDateTime":"2015-12-28T08:45:00.122074Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20151228-heres-how-climate-change-will-affect-what-you-eat"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20151228-heres-how-climate-change-will-affect-what-you-eat","_id":"5984bd4e543960df95e141b2"}],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Eliminating meat from our diets would bring a bounty of benefits to both our own health and the planet’s – but it could also harm millions of people. Rachel Nuwer investigates.","SummaryShort":"The unanticipated consequences if everyone gave up meat","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Food tag","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/10646","Name":"Food","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:00Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"008f74c0-b17b-4954-b5a1-8df55b6dadc4","Id":"tag/food","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:00Z","Project":"","Slug":"food"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:00Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"008f74c0-b17b-4954-b5a1-8df55b6dadc4","Id":"tag/food","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:00Z","Project":"","Slug":"food"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/food","_id":"5981d40e543960df95dfa773"}],"CreationDateTime":"2016-09-27T01:52:29.545167Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"e50d7f80-0ef2-4e1c-af24-8ec122f85aaf","Id":"wwfuture/story/20160926-what-would-happen-if-the-world-suddenly-went-vegetarian","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-10-05T13:11:01.58128Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20160926-what-would-happen-if-the-world-suddenly-went-vegetarian"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-09-27T01:52:29.545167Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"e50d7f80-0ef2-4e1c-af24-8ec122f85aaf","Id":"wwfuture/story/20160926-what-would-happen-if-the-world-suddenly-went-vegetarian","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-10-05T13:11:01.58128Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20160926-what-would-happen-if-the-world-suddenly-went-vegetarian"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20160926-what-would-happen-if-the-world-suddenly-went-vegetarian","_id":"598471b3543960df95e11a8e"}],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future.","SummaryShort":"The precipitating factors are already in place","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"","LinkUrl":"","Name":"Comment & Analysis","CreationDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"8a3da437-6c7a-4d2f-9b1f-c0b5da873a2f","Id":"tag/comment-analysis","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Project":"","Slug":"comment-analysis"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"8a3da437-6c7a-4d2f-9b1f-c0b5da873a2f","Id":"tag/comment-analysis","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-03-30T09:12:23.588726Z","Project":"","Slug":"comment-analysis"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/comment-analysis","_id":"5981d40d543960df95dfa6e6"},{"Content":{"AssetImage":null,"Description":"Prediction tag","LinkUrl":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://dbpedialite.org/things/246066","Name":"Prediction","CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:19Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"c9ef71ec-17e7-49da-b4f9-b4d3a079f800","Id":"tag/prediction","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:19Z","Project":"","Slug":"prediction"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:19Z","Entity":"tag","Guid":"c9ef71ec-17e7-49da-b4f9-b4d3a079f800","Id":"tag/prediction","ModifiedDateTime":"2014-11-18T09:16:19Z","Project":"","Slug":"prediction"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:tag:tag/prediction","_id":"5981d40c543960df95dfa5f0"}],"CreationDateTime":"2017-04-18T08:38:21.432185Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"4a8c0961-dbf9-4f57-8e7b-6acd15be4e7b","Id":"wwfuture/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-05-02T06:39:37.248131Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2017-04-18T08:38:21.432185Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"4a8c0961-dbf9-4f57-8e7b-6acd15be4e7b","Id":"wwfuture/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","ModifiedDateTime":"2017-05-02T06:39:37.248131Z","Project":"wwfuture","Slug":"20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwfuture/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","_id":"59826f9e543960df95e00abf"}}, _routes={"column-index":{"route":"/future/columns/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/collection/column","rules":{"page":"isNumeric"}},"column-results":{"route":"/future/columns/{id}/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/column/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId","page":"isNumeric"}},"story":{"route":"/future/story/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"story-preview":{"route":"/future/preview/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"tag-index":{"route":"/future/tags/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/tag-index","rules":{"page":"isNumeric"}},"tag":{"route":"/future/tags/{id}/:page:","entity-mapping":"tag/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId","page":"isNumeric"}},"native-story":{"route":"/future/sponsored/story/{id}","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/native-story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"native-story-preview":{"route":"/future/preview/sponsored/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/native-story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"native-column":{"route":"/future/sponsored/{id}/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/native-column/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId","page":"isNumeric"}},"search":{"route":"/future/search/:keywords:/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/search/{keywords}","rules":{"page":"isNumeric"}},"slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/future/gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"slideshow-gallery-alt":{"route":"/future/slideshow-gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"future-now":{"route":"/future/now","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/supersection/future-now","cross-domain":true},"untold-world":{"route":"/future/untold-world","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/supersection/untold-world","cross-domain":true},"article-third-party-content":{"route":"/future/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/thirdpartycontent/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"article-story":{"route":"/future/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"article-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/future/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"section-index":{"route":"/future/sections/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/collection/section","rules":{"page":"isNumeric"}},"section-results":{"route":"/future/sections/{id}/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/section/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId","page":"isNumeric"}},"front-page":{"route":"/future/:page:","entity-mapping":"wwfuture/front-page","rules":{"page":"isNumeric"}},"wwculture-story":{"route":"/culture/story/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-story":{"route":"/travel/story/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-story":{"route":"/autos/story/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-story":{"route":"/earth/story/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-story":{"route":"/capital/story/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwculture-story-preview":{"route":"/culture/preview/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-story-preview":{"route":"/travel/preview/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwautos-story-preview":{"route":"/autos/preview/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwearth-story-preview":{"route":"/earth/preview/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-story-preview":{"route":"/capital/preview/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwculture-native-story":{"route":"/culture/sponsored/story/{id}","entity-mapping":"wwculture/native-story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-native-story":{"route":"/travel/sponsored/story/{id}","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/native-story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-native-story":{"route":"/autos/sponsored/story/{id}","entity-mapping":"wwautos/native-story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-native-story":{"route":"/earth/sponsored/story/{id}","entity-mapping":"wwearth/native-story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-native-story":{"route":"/capital/sponsored/story/{id}","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/native-story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwculture-native-story-preview":{"route":"/culture/preview/sponsored/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/native-story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-native-story-preview":{"route":"/travel/preview/sponsored/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/native-story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwautos-native-story-preview":{"route":"/autos/preview/sponsored/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/native-story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwearth-native-story-preview":{"route":"/earth/preview/sponsored/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/native-story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-native-story-preview":{"route":"/capital/preview/sponsored/story/{guid}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/native-story-preview/{guid}","cross-domain":true},"wwculture-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/culture/gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/travel/gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/autos/gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/earth/gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/capital/gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwculture-slideshow-gallery-alt":{"route":"/culture/slideshow-gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-slideshow-gallery-alt":{"route":"/travel/slideshow-gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-slideshow-gallery-alt":{"route":"/autos/slideshow-gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-slideshow-gallery-alt":{"route":"/earth/slideshow-gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-slideshow-gallery-alt":{"route":"/capital/slideshow-gallery/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwculture-future-now":{"route":"/culture/now","entity-mapping":"wwculture/supersection/future-now","cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-future-now":{"route":"/travel/now","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/supersection/future-now","cross-domain":true},"wwautos-future-now":{"route":"/autos/now","entity-mapping":"wwautos/supersection/future-now","cross-domain":true},"wwearth-future-now":{"route":"/earth/now","entity-mapping":"wwearth/supersection/future-now","cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-future-now":{"route":"/capital/now","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/supersection/future-now","cross-domain":true},"wwculture-untold-world":{"route":"/culture/untold-world","entity-mapping":"wwculture/supersection/untold-world","cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-untold-world":{"route":"/travel/untold-world","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/supersection/untold-world","cross-domain":true},"wwautos-untold-world":{"route":"/autos/untold-world","entity-mapping":"wwautos/supersection/untold-world","cross-domain":true},"wwearth-untold-world":{"route":"/earth/untold-world","entity-mapping":"wwearth/supersection/untold-world","cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-untold-world":{"route":"/capital/untold-world","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/supersection/untold-world","cross-domain":true},"wwculture-article-third-party-content":{"route":"/culture/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/thirdpartycontent/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-article-third-party-content":{"route":"/travel/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/thirdpartycontent/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-article-third-party-content":{"route":"/autos/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/thirdpartycontent/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-article-third-party-content":{"route":"/earth/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/thirdpartycontent/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-article-third-party-content":{"route":"/capital/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/thirdpartycontent/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwculture-article-story":{"route":"/culture/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-article-story":{"route":"/travel/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-article-story":{"route":"/autos/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-article-story":{"route":"/earth/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-article-story":{"route":"/capital/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/story/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwculture-article-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/culture/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwculture/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwtravel-article-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/travel/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwtravel/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwautos-article-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/autos/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwautos/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwearth-article-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/earth/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwearth/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true},"wwcapital-article-slideshow-gallery":{"route":"/capital/article/{id}:?query:","entity-mapping":"wwcapital/slideshow-gallery/{id}","rules":{"id":"isValidId"},"cross-domain":true}}, _comscoreKeyValues=false, isMobileDevice=function(){ var user_agent = navigator.userAgent, mobile=/Mobile|iP(hone|od|ad)|Android|BlackBerry|IEMobile|Kindle|NetFront|Silk-Accelerated|(hpw|web)OS|Fennec|Minimo|Opera M(obi|ini)|Blazer|Dolfin|Dolphin|Skyfire|Zune/; return mobile.test(user_agent); }, loadCss = function (url) { var link = document.createElement("link"); link.type = "text/css"; link.rel = "stylesheet"; link.href = url; document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(link); }, hasTheMustard = function (){ if(('querySelector' in document && 'localStorage' in window && 'addEventListener' in window)) { return true; } return false; }, isWebKit =function(){ if(RegExp(" AppleWebKit/").test(navigator.userAgent)){ return true; } return false; }, hasFixedWidthLayout= function (){ return isIE8; }, removeNoJsClass = function(){ var bodyTag = document.getElementsByTagName('body'); var container; if (bodyTag.length > 0) { bodyTag[0].className = bodyTag[0].className.replace(new RegExp('no-js', 'g'), ''); } if(container=document.getElementById('wwfeatures-container')){ container.className =""; } }, requireConfig; requireConfig={ baseUrl: 'https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40/scripts/requirejs/', paths:{ 'mapboxgl-supported': '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://api.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/plugins/mapbox-gl-supported/v1.2.0/mapbox-gl-supported', mapboxgl: '../../components/mapboxgl/mapbox-gl', mapboxjs: '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://api.mapbox.com/mapbox.js/v3.0.1/mapbox', 'requestLoader':'service/client-request-loader', 'templates':'wwfuture/templates' }, shim: { mapboxjs: { exports: 'L' } } }; _comscoreKeyValues = {"c2":"19774467","ns_site":"bbc","name":"bbc_-_future_-_how_western_civilisation_could_collapse","b_vs_un":"bc","c7":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","b_c7":"https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","c8":"bbc_-_future_-_how_western_civilisation_could_collapse","b_app_type":"web","b_app_name":"future|rc43","b_code_ver":"rc43","b_imp_ver":"rc43","b_imp_src":"wwf","b_site_section":"column.what-if","b_site_channel":"future","b_site_subsec1":"what-if","b_edition":"international","b_column":"what-if","b_page_type":"sty|img","b_article_title":"how western civilisation could collapse","b_article_id":"wwfuture/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse","b_article_author":"rachel nuwer","b_article_theme":"comment_analysis|prediction","b_article_date":"1492504701432","b_article_update":"1492504701432","b_article_length":"11200"}; require(requireConfig); </script>  <script> window.onload = removeNoJsClass; var availableStyles = [ 'responsive-core', 'sol-core', 'video-playlist-player', 'cultural-calender', 'weather', 'slideshow-gallery', 'tpc', 'super-section', 'maps' ]; if(hasTheMustard()){ for(var ctr=0;ctr<availableStyles.length;ctr++){ loadCss('https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40/css/wwfuture/'+availableStyles[ctr]+'.css'); } } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var Logger={ debug: function () { }, info: function () { }, warn: function () { }, error: function () { } } require(['util/logger'],function(logger){ logger.useDefaults(); if((typeof digitalData !=="undefined")&& (digitalData.environment=="sandbox")){ logger.setLevel(logger.DEBUG); } else { logger.setLevel(logger.INFO); } window.Logger=logger; }); if (Function.prototype.bind && window.console && typeof console.log == "object"){ [ "log","info","warn","error","assert","dir","clear","profile","profileEnd" ].forEach(function (method) { console[method] = this.bind(console[method], console); }, Function.prototype.call); } </script><script type="text/javascript"> if ((typeof bbcdotcom != "undefined") && (typeof bbcdotcom.setConfig != 'undefined')){ bbcdotcom.setConfig({ siteCatalystEnabled: false, comScoreEnabled: false }); } window.advertising={"adsDisabled":false,"keywords":{"pageType":"story","STORY":"1","asset_type":"story","media":"image","tags":"comment_analysis,prediction","destination":"","column":"what_if","sectn":"what_if"},"adUnit":"bbccom.live.site.future/future_column_what_if_tags_comment_analysis_content","adSlots":{"parallax":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"parallax","async":true},"leaderboard":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"leaderboard","async":true},"leaderboard-1_2_3":{"id":"leaderboard","groups":"1_2_3","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3]","async":true},"leaderboard-4":{"id":"leaderboard","groups":"4","jsonGroups":"[4]","async":true},"mpu-1_2_3":{"id":"mpu","groups":"1_2_3","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3]","async":true},"mpu-4":{"id":"mpu","groups":"4","jsonGroups":"[4]","async":true},"mpu-1_2":{"id":"mpu","groups":"1_2","jsonGroups":"[1,2]","async":true},"mpu-3_4":{"id":"mpu","groups":"3_4","jsonGroups":"[3,4]","async":true},"mpu_bottom":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"mpu_bottom","async":true},"native_side":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"native_side","async":true},"native_responsive":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"native_responsive","async":true},"ad_feature_rc":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"ad_feature_rc","async":true},"promo_feature_responsive":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"promo_feature_responsive","async":true},"promo_feature_1":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"promo_feature_1","async":true},"promo_feature_2":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"promo_feature_2","async":true},"promo_feature_3":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"promo_feature_3","async":true},"responsive_box_1":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"responsive_box_1","async":true},"responsive_box_2":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"responsive_box_2","async":true,"deferred":true},"verticalnavbar":{"groups":"1_2_3_4","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3,4]","id":"verticalnavbar","async":true},"sponsor-section-content":{"id":"sponsor_section","groups":"1_2_3","text":"IN ASSOCIATION WITH","jsonGroups":"[1,2,3]","async":true},"sponsor-section-hero":{"id":"sponsor_section","groups":"4","text":"IN ASSOCIATION WITH","jsonGroups":"[4]","async":true}},"async":true,"adsToDisplay":["parallax","leaderboard","mpu","mpu_bottom","native_side","native_responsive","ad_feature_rc","promo_feature_responsive","promo_feature_1","promo_feature_2","promo_feature_3","responsive_box_1","verticalnavbar","sponsor_section"]}; try{ if((typeof window.bbcdotcom != 'undefined') && (typeof bbcdotcom.setAdUnit != 'undefined') && (typeof bbcdotcom.init != 'undefined') && (typeof bbcdotcom.setAdKeyValue != 'undefined')){ for(var keyword in window.advertising.keywords) { bbcdotcom.setAdKeyValue(keyword,window.advertising.keywords[keyword]); } bbcdotcom.setAdUnit(window.advertising.adUnit); bbcdotcom.init({ asyncEnabled: true, "adsToDisplay":window.advertising.adsToDisplay }); } } catch (err) { Logger.error(err); } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var _sf_startpt=(new Date()).getTime(); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> window.optimizely = window.optimizely || []; window.optimizely.push({ type: 'cookieExpiration', cookieExpirationDays: 1095 }); </script> <script src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/https://cdn.optimizely.com/public/4621041136/s/features_prod.js"></script>  </head> <body class="no-js"> <div id="bbccom_interstitial_ad" class="bbccom_display_none"></div><div id="bbccom_interstitial" class="bbccom_display_none"><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function() { if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.config.isActive('ads')) { googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('bbccom_interstitial'); }); } }()); /*]]>*/ </script></div><div id="bbccom_wallpaper_ad" class="bbccom_display_none"></div><div id="bbccom_wallpaper" class="bbccom_display_none"><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function() { var wallpaper; if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.config.isActive('ads')) { if (bbcdotcom.config.isAsync()) { googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('bbccom_wallpaper'); }); } else { googletag.display("wallpaper"); } wallpaper = bbcdotcom.adverts.adRegister.getAd('wallpaper'); } }()); /*]]>*/ </script></div><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function() { if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.config.isActive('ads')) { document.write(unescape('%3Cscript id="gnlAdsEnabled" class="bbccom_display_none"%3E%3C/script%3E')); } if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.config.isActive('analytics')) { document.write(unescape('%3Cscript id="gnlAnalyticsEnabled" class="bbccom_display_none"%3E%3C/script%3E')); } }()); /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function() { window.bbcdotcom.bodyFirst = true; }()); /*]]>*/ </script> <div id="blq-global"> <div id="blq-pre-mast"> </div> </div> <script type="text/html" id="blq-bbccookies-tmpl"><![CDATA[ <section> <div id="bbccookies" class="bbccookies-banner orb-banner-wrapper bbccookies-d"> <div id="bbccookies-prompt" class="orb-banner b-g-p b-r b-f"> <h2 class="orb-banner-title"> Cookies on the BBC website </h2> <p class="orb-banner-content" dir="ltr"> The BBC has updated its cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. This includes cookies from third party social media websites if you visit a page which contains embedded content from social media. Such third party cookies may track your use of the BBC website.<span class="bbccookies-international-message"> We and our partners also use cookies to ensure we show you advertising that is relevant to you.</span> If you continue without changing your settings, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the BBC website. However, you can change your cookie settings at any time. </p> <ul class="orb-banner-options"> <li id="bbccookies-continue"> <button type="button" id="bbccookies-continue-button">Continue</button> </li> <li id="bbccookies-settings"> <a href="/privacy/cookies/managing/cookie-settings.html">Change settings</a> </li> <li id="bbccookies-more"><a href="/privacy/cookies/bbc">Find out more</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </section> ]]></script> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/ (function(){if(bbccookies._showPrompt()){var g=document,b=g.getElementById("blq-pre-mast"),e=g.getElementById("blq-bbccookies-tmpl"),a,f;if(b&&g.createElement){a=g.createElement("div");f=e.innerHTML;f=f.replace("<"+"![CDATA[","").replace("]]"+">","");a.innerHTML=f;b.appendChild(a);blqCookieContinueButton=g.getElementById("bbccookies-continue-button");blqCookieContinueButton.onclick=function(){a.parentNode.removeChild(a);return false};bbccookies._setPolicy(bbccookies.readPolicy())}var c=g.getElementById("bbccookies");if(c&&!window.orb.fig("uk")){c.className=c.className.replace(/\bbbccookies-d\b/,"");c.className=c.className+(" bbccookies-w")}}})(); /*]]>*/</script> <noscript><p style="position: absolute; top: -999em"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227im_/https://sa.bbc.co.uk/bbc/bbc/s?name=future.story.20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse.page&ml_name=webmodule&ml_version=72&blq_js_enabled=0&blq_s=4d&blq_r=2.7&blq_v=default&blq_e=pal&pal_route=webserviceapi&app_type=responsive&language=en-GB&pal_webapp=barlesque&prod_name=frameworks&app_name=frameworks" height="1" width="1" alt=""></p></noscript>  <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/ if (typeof bbccookies !== 'undefined' && bbccookies.isAllowed('s1')) { (function () { require(['istats-1'], function (istats) { istatsTrackingUrl = istats.getDefaultURL(); if (istats.isEnabled() && bbcFlagpoles_istats === 'ON') { sitestat(istatsTrackingUrl); } else { window.ns_pixelUrl = istatsTrackingUrl; /* used by Flash library to track */ } function sitestat(n) { var j = document, f = j.location, b = ""; if (j.cookie.indexOf("st_ux=") != -1) { var k = j.cookie.split(";"); var e = "st_ux", h = document.domain, a = "/"; if (typeof ns_ != "undefined" && typeof ns_.ux != "undefined") { e = ns_.ux.cName || e; h = ns_.ux.cDomain || h; a = ns_.ux.cPath || a } for (var g = 0, f = k.length; g < f; g++) { var m = k[g].indexOf("st_ux="); if (m != -1) { b = "&" + decodeURI(k[g].substring(m + 6)) } } bbccookies.set(e + "=; expires=" + new Date(new Date().getTime() - 60).toGMTString() + "; path=" + a + "; domain=" + h); } window.ns_pixelUrl = n; } }); })(); } else { window.istats = {enabled: false}; } /*]]>*/</script>   <header id="orb-banner" role="banner">   <div id="orb-header" class="orb-nav-pri orb-nav-pri-white b-header--white--black orb-nav-empty"> <div class="orb-nav-pri-container b-r b-g-p"> <div class="orb-nav-section orb-nav-blocks"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/"> <img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227im_/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/img/bbc-blocks-dark.png" width="84" height="24" alt="BBC"/> </a> </div> <section> <div class="orb-skip-links"> <h2>Accessibility links</h2> <ul> <li><a id="orb-accessibility-help" href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/accessibility/">Accessibility Help</a></li> </ul> </div> </section> <div id="mybbc-wrapper" class="orb-nav-section orb-nav-id orb-nav-focus"> <div id="idcta-statusbar" class="orb-nav-section orb-nav-focus"> <a id="idcta-link" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://account.bbc.com/account"> <span id="idcta-username">BBC iD</span> </a> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> require(['idcta/statusbar'], function(statusbar) { new statusbar.Statusbar({"id":"idcta-statusbar","publiclyCacheable":true}); }); </script> <a id="notification-link" class="js-notification-link animated three" href="#"> <span class="hidden-span">Notifications</span> <div class="notification-link--triangle"></div> <div class="notification-link--triangle"></div> <span id="not-num"></span> </a> </div> <nav role="navigation" class="orb-nav"> <div class="orb-nav-section orb-nav-links orb-nav-focus" id="orb-nav-links"> <h2>BBC navigation</h2> <ul> <li class="orb-nav-home orb-d"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk/">Home</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-homedotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/">Home</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-news orb-d"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news">News</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-newsdotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/news">News</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-sport"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/sport/">Sport</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-weather"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/weather/">Weather</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-shop orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://shop.bbc.com/">Shop</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-earthdotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/earth/">Earth</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-travel-dotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/travel/">Travel</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-capital orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/capital/">Capital</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-iplayer orb-d"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/iplayer/">iPlayer</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-culture orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/culture/">Culture</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-autos orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/autos/">Autos</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-future orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/">Future</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-tv"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/tv/">TV</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-radio"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/radio/">Radio</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-cbbc"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/cbbc">CBBC</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-cbeebies"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/cbeebies">CBeebies</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-food"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/food/">Food</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/iwonder">iWonder</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/education">Bitesize</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-travel orb-d"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/travel/">Travel</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-music"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/music/">Music</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-earth orb-d"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/earth/">Earth</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-arts"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/arts/">Arts</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-makeitdigital"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/makeitdigital">Make It Digital</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/taster">Taster</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-nature orb-w"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/nature/">Nature</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-local"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/local/">Local</a> </li> <li id="orb-nav-more"><a href="#orb-footer" data-alt="More">Menu<span class="orb-icon orb-icon-arrow"></span></a></li> </ul> </div> </nav> <div class="orb-nav-section orb-nav-search"> <a class="orb-search__button" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://search.bbc.co.uk/search" title="Search the BBC">Search</a> <form class="b-f" id="orb-search-form" role="search" method="get" action="//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://search.bbc.co.uk/search" accept-charset="utf-8"> <div> <label for="orb-search-q">Search the BBC</label> <input id="orb-search-q" type="text" autocomplete="off" autocorrect="off" autocapitalize="off" spellcheck="false" name="q" placeholder="Search"> <button id="orb-search-button" class="orb-search__button">Search the BBC</button> <input type="hidden" name="suggid" id="orb-search-suggid"/> </div> </form> </div> </div> <div id="orb-panels"> <script type="text/template" id="orb-panel-template"><![CDATA[ <div id="orb-panel-<%= panelname %>" class="orb-panel" aria-labelledby="orb-nav-<%= panelname %>"> <div class="orb-panel-content b-g-p b-r"> <%= panelcontent %> </div> </div> ]]></script> </div> </div> </header>  <div id="orb-modules"> <div id="content-wrapper"> <div id="wwfeatures-container">  <div id="story-page-container" class="article-page-container"> <div id="version" class=""> <div id="bbccom_leaderboard_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('leaderboard', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div>  <div id="nav-branding-wrapper"> <div id="nav-branding">  <div id="branding"> <div id="branding-top"> <div class="branding-left"></div> <div class="branding-right"></div> </div> </div> <div class="site-brand"> <div class="site-brand-lining"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future" id="brand">Future</a> <a id="sections-nav-button" href="#nav-bottom" role=".navigation" aria-label="secondary"> <span class="icon-sections"></span><span class="title-sections">Menu</span> </a> </div> </div>  <div id="nav-top"> <div class="navigation-wrapper " data-cs-module="navigation"> <ul class="navigation-list" role="navigation" aria-label=""> <li class=" first"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://bbc.in/1W276DH " class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-0" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="What is BBC Future?"> <div class="line1">What is BBC Future? </div> </a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-1" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Latest"> <div class="line1">Latest </div> </a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/now" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-2" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Future Now"> <div class="line1">Future Now </div> </a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/future-video" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-3" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Video"> <div class="line1">Video </div> </a> </li> <li class="featured featured-1"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/best-of-bbc-future" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-4" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Best of Future" data-cs-additional-data="OUR PICKS"> <div class="line1">OUR PICKS </div> <div class="line2"> <span>Best of Future</span> </div> </a> </li> <li class="featured featured-2"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/grand-challenges" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-5" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Grand Challenges" data-cs-additional-data="SPECIAL SERIES"> <div class="line1">SPECIAL SERIES </div> <div class="line2"> <span>Grand Challenges</span> </div> </a> </li> <li class="featured featured-native last"> <div id="bbccom_verticalnavbar_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('verticalnavbar', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div id="page"> <div id="page-lining">   <div id="story-page" class=" story-type-image">  <div class="hero-unit " data-hero-unit="true"> <div class="hero-unit-image-wrapper"> <div class="responsive-image-wrapper"> <img data-fixed-width-format="wwfeatures-1280-640" width="130" height="73" title="(Credit Getty Images): " alt="(Credit Getty Images): " class="responsive-hero" data-caption="A severe drought in Syria left many people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate, which may have been a factor that led to civil war (Credit Getty Images):" data-caption-title="" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227im_/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/130_73/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg" data-landscape/> </div> </div> <div class="hero-unit-overlay"> <div class="hero-unit-image-overlay-1"></div> <div class="hero-unit-image-overlay-2"></div> <div class="hero-unit-image-overlay-3"></div> </div> <div class="hero-unit-lining"> <div class="hero-unit-header-wrapper"> <div class="primary-header-wrapper"> <div class="primary-header primary-header-with-context"> <ul class="seperated-list context-heading-list"> <li class="seperated-list-item"> <span class="context-heading"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/what-if" title="View What If..."> What If...</a> </span> </li> <li class="seperated-list-item"> <span class="context-heading"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/comment-analysis" title="View Comment & Analysis"> Comment & Analysis</a> </span> </li> <li class="seperated-list-item"> <span class="context-heading"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/prediction" title="View Prediction"> Prediction</a> </span> </li> </ul> <h1 class="primary-heading" role="heading">How Western civilisation could collapse</h1> </div> </div> <div class="secondary-header-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_sponsor_section_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('sponsor_section', [4], false, 'IN ASSOCIATION WITH'); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>  <div id="story-content" class="page-component-wrapper standard article-content">  <div class="primary-content" role="main"> <div class="mpu-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_mpu_1_2_3" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('mpu', [1,2,3]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> <div class="clearfix"> <div id="bbccom_sponsor_section_1_2_3" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('sponsor_section', [1,2,3], false, 'IN ASSOCIATION WITH'); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div>  <div class="primary-content-lining">  <div class="top-unit"> <div class="introduction-wrapper"> <p class="introduction">Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. How the West reacts to them will determine the world’s future, says Rachel Nuwer. </p> </div> <div id="share-tools-top"> <ul class="share share--mobile share--article"> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button facebook" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.facebook&t=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse" data-share-destination="facebook" data-tracking-id="facebook" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--facebook"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Facebook</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button twitter" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.twitter&via=BBC_Future" data-share-destination="twitter" data-tracking-id="twitter" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--twitter"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Twitter</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button reddit" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.reddit&title=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse" data-share-destination="reddit" data-tracking-id="reddit" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--reddit"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Reddit</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button whatsapp" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/whatsapp://send/?text=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse: http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.whatsapp" data-share-destination="whatsapp" data-tracking-id="whatsapp" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--whatsapp"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on WhatsApp</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button google" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.googleplus" data-share-destination="google" data-tracking-id="google" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--google-plus"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Google+</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button email" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/mailto:/?subject=Shared from BBC:How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.email" data-share-destination="email" data-tracking-id="email" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--mail"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share by Email</span> </a> </div> </li></ul> <ul class="share share--desktop share--article"> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button facebook" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.facebook&t=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse" data-share-destination="facebook" data-tracking-id="facebook" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--facebook"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Facebook</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button twitter" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.twitter&via=BBC_Future" data-share-destination="twitter" data-tracking-id="twitter" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--twitter"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Twitter</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button reddit" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.reddit&title=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse" data-share-destination="reddit" data-tracking-id="reddit" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--reddit"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Reddit</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button linkedin" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.linkedin&title=How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse" data-share-destination="linkedin" data-tracking-id="linkedin" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--linkedin"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on LinkedIn</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button google" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.googleplus" data-share-destination="google" data-tracking-id="google" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--google-plus"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share on Google+</span> </a> </div> </li> <li class="share-item"> <div class="share-item-lining"> <a class="share-button email" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/mailto:/?subject=Shared from BBC:How%20Western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.email" data-share-destination="email" data-tracking-id="email" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--mail"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share by Email</span> </a> </div> </li></ul> </div> </div>   <div class="mid-unit"> </div>   <div class="bottom-unit"> <div class="byline"> <span class="byline-heading"></span> <div class="source-attribution-wrapper"> <div class="source-attribution-detail"> <ul class="seperated-list source-attribution"> <li class="seperated-list-item source-attribution-author"><span class="index-body">By Rachel Nuwer</span></li> </ul> <span class="publication-date index-body">18 April 2017</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="body-content"> <p>The political economist Benjamin Friedman once <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://harvardmagazine.com/2006/01/growth-is-good.html">compared</a> modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.</p><p>Such collapses have occurred many times in human history, and no civilisation, no matter how seemingly great, is immune to the vulnerabilities that may lead a society to its end. Regardless of how well things are going in the present moment, the situation can always change. Putting aside species-ending events like an asteroid strike, nuclear winter or deadly pandemic, history tells us that it’s usually a plethora of factors that contribute to collapse. What are they, and which, if any, have already begun to surface? It should come as no surprise that humanity is currently on an unsustainable and uncertain path – but just how close are we to reaching the point of no return?</p><p><div class="inline-media inline-image"> <a data-replace-url="" data-anchor-title="(Credit: Getty Images)" data-caption="A South African police van is set on fire following protests about inequality in 2016 (Credit: Getty Images)" data-caption-title="" data-replace-image="true" data-is-portrait="false" class="replace-image" title="(Credit: Getty Images)" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj7r.jpg"> View image of (Credit: Getty Images) </a></div></p><p>While it’s impossible to predict the future with certainty, mathematics, science and history can provide hints about the prospects of Western societies for long-term continuation.</p><p>Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615">findings</a> that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.</p><blockquote><p> Disaster comes when elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources   </p></blockquote><p>That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues. Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/3/4/470/2669331/Modeling-sustainability-population-inequality">top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined</a>. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day.  </p><p>For both scenarios, the models define a carrying capacity – a total population level that a given environment’s resources can sustain over the long term. If the carrying capacity is overshot by too much, collapse becomes inevitable. That fate is avoidable, however. “If we make rational choices to reduce factors such as inequality, explosive population growth, the rate at which we deplete natural resources and the rate of pollution – all perfectly doable things – then we can avoid collapse and stabilise onto a sustainable trajectory,” Motesharrei said. “But we cannot wait forever to make those decisions.”</p><p><div class="inline-media inline-image"> <a data-replace-url="" data-anchor-title="(Credit: Getty Images)" data-caption="One of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a cost (Credit: Getty Images)" data-caption-title="" data-replace-image="true" data-is-portrait="false" class="replace-image" title="(Credit: Getty Images)" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj81.jpg"> View image of (Credit: Getty Images) </a></div></p><p>Unfortunately, some experts believe such tough decisions exceed our political and psychological capabilities. “The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual,” says Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and author of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008674K64/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years</a>. “The climate problem will get worse and worse and worse because we won’t be able to live up to what we’ve promised to do in the Paris Agreement and elsewhere.”  </p><p>While we are all in this together, the world’s poorest will feel the effects of collapse first. Indeed, some nations are already serving as canaries in the coal mine for the issues that may eventually pull apart more affluent ones. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241">Syria</a>, for example, enjoyed exceptionally high fertility rates for a time, which fueled rapid population growth. A severe drought in the late 2000s, likely made worse by human-induced climate change, combined with groundwater shortages to cripple agricultural production. That crisis left large numbers of people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate. Many flooded into urban centres, overwhelming limited resources and services there. Pre-existing ethnic tensions increased, creating fertile grounds for violence and conflict. On top of that, poor governance – including neoliberal policies that eliminated water subsidies in the middle of the drought – tipped the country into civil war in 2011 and sent it careening toward collapse. </p><blockquote><p> Another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone is the increasing occurrence of ‘nonlinearities’, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order   </p></blockquote><p>In Syria’s case – as with so many other societal collapses throughout history – it was not one but a plethora of factors that contributed, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, and author of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.amazon.com/Upside-Down-Catastrophe-Creativity-Civilization/dp/1597260657">The Upside of Down</a>. Homer-Dixon calls these combined forces tectonic stresses for the way in which they quietly build up and then abruptly erupt, overloading any stabilising mechanisms that otherwise keep a society in check.</p><p>The Syrian case aside, another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone, Homer-Dixon says, is the increasing occurrence of what experts call nonlinearities, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the rise of ISIS, Brexit, or Donald Trump’s election.</p><p><div class="inline-media inline-image"> <a data-replace-url="" data-anchor-title="(Credit: iStock)" data-caption="Some civilisations simply fade out of existence - becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper (Credit: iStock)" data-caption-title="" data-replace-image="true" data-is-portrait="false" class="replace-image" title="(Credit: iStock)" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj8d.jpg"> View image of (Credit: iStock) </a></div></p><p>The past can also provide hints for how the future might play out. Take, for example, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. By the end of the 100BC the Romans had spread across the Mediterranean, to the places most easily accessed by sea. They should have stopped there, but things were going well and they felt empowered to expand to new frontiers by land. While transportation by sea was economical, however, transportation across land was slow and expensive. All the while, they were overextending themselves and running up costs. The Empire managed to remain stable in the ensuing centuries, but repercussions for spreading themselves too thin caught up with them in the 3rd Century, which was plagued by civil war and invasions. The Empire tried to maintain its core lands, even as the army ate up its budget and inflation climbed ever higher as the government debased its silver currency to try to cover its mounting expenses. While some scholars cite the beginning of collapse as the year 410, when the invading Visigoths sacked the capital, that dramatic event was made possible by a downward spiral spanning more than a century.</p><blockquote><p> Eventually, Rome could no longer afford to prop up its heightened complexities   </p></blockquote><p>According to Joseph Tainter, a professor of environment and society at Utah State University and author of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X">The Collapse of Complex Societies</a>, one of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.1057/abstract">complexity</a> has a cost. As stated in the laws of thermodynamics, it takes energy to maintain any system in a complex, ordered state – and human society is no exception. By the 3rd Century, Rome was increasingly adding new things – an army double the size, a cavalry, subdivided provinces that each needed their own bureaucracies, courts and defences – just to maintain its status quo and keep from sliding backwards. Eventually, it could no longer afford to prop up those heightened complexities. It was fiscal weakness, not war, that did the Empire in.</p><p>So far, modern Western societies have largely been able to postpone similar precipitators of collapse through fossil fuels and industrial technologies – think hydraulic fracturing coming along in 2008, just in time to offset soaring oil prices. Tainter suspects this will not always be the case, however. “Imagine the costs if we have to build a seawall around Manhattan, just to protect against storms and rising tides,” he says. Eventually, investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy reaches a point of diminishing returns, leading to fiscal weakness and vulnerability to collapse. That is, he says “unless we find a way to pay for the complexity, as our ancestors did when they increasingly ran societies on fossil fuels.”</p><p><div class="inline-media inline-image"> <a data-replace-url="" data-anchor-title="(Credit: Getty Images)" data-caption="A protest group in Argentina demonstrates against United States interference in the crises in Syria and Venezuela (Credit: Getty Images)" data-caption-title="" data-replace-image="true" data-is-portrait="false" class="replace-image" title="(Credit: Getty Images)" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050djbp.jpg"> View image of (Credit: Getty Images) </a></div></p><p>Also paralleling Rome, Homer-Dixon predicts that Western societies’ collapse will be preceded by a retraction of people and resources back to their core homelands. As poorer nations continue to disintegrate amid conflicts and natural disasters, enormous waves of migrants will stream out of failing regions, seeking refuge in more stable states. Western societies will respond with restrictions and even bans on immigration; multi-billion dollar walls and border-patrolling drones and troops; heightened security on who and what gets in; and more authoritarian, populist styles of governing. “It’s almost an immunological attempt by countries to sustain a periphery and push pressure back,” Homer-Dixon says.</p><p>Meanwhile, a widening gap between rich and poor within those already vulnerable Western nations will push society toward further instability from the inside. “By 2050, the US and UK will have evolved into two-class societies where a small elite lives a good life and there is declining well-being for the majority,” Randers says. “What will collapse is equity.”</p><p>Whether in the US, UK or elsewhere, the more dissatisfied and afraid people become, Homer-Dixon says, the more of a tendency they have to cling to their in-group identity – whether religious, racial or national. Denial, including of the emerging prospect of societal collapse itself, will be widespread, as will rejection of evidence-based fact. If people admit that problems exist at all, they will assign blame for those problems to everyone outside of their in-group, building up resentment. “You’re setting up the psychological and social prerequisites for mass violence,” Homer-Dixon says. When localised violence finally does break out, or another country or group decides to invade, collapse will be difficult to avoid.</p><p>Europe, with its close proximity to Africa, its land bridge to the Middle East and its neighbourly status with more politically volatile nations to the East, will feel these pressures first. The US will likely hold out longer, surrounded as it is by ocean buffers. </p><p><div class="inline-media inline-image"> <a data-replace-url="" data-anchor-title="(Credit Getty Images):" data-caption="A severe drought in Syria left many people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate, which may have been a factor that led to civil war (Credit Getty Images):" data-caption-title="" data-replace-image="true" data-is-portrait="false" class="replace-image" title="(Credit Getty Images): " href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/50/dj/p050dj61.jpg"> View image of (Credit Getty Images): </a></div></p><blockquote><p> As time passes, some empires simply become increasingly inconsequential   </p></blockquote><p>On the other hand, Western societies may not meet with a violent, dramatic end. In some cases, civilisations simply fade out of existence – becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper. The British Empire has been on this path since 1918, Randers says, and other Western nations might go this route as well. As time passes, they will become increasingly inconsequential and, in response to the problems driving their slow fade-out, will also starkly depart from the values they hold dear today. “Western nations are not going to collapse, but the smooth operation and friendly nature of Western society will disappear, because inequity is going to explode,” Randers argues. “Democratic, liberal society will fail, while stronger governments like China will be the winners.” </p><p>Some of these forecasts and early warning signs should sound familiar, precisely because they are already underway. While Homer-Dixon is not surprised at the world’s recent turn of events – he predicted some of them in his 2006 book – he didn’t expect these developments to occur before the mid-2020s.</p><p>Western civilisation is not a lost cause, however. Using reason and science to guide decisions, paired with extraordinary leadership and exceptional goodwill, human society can progress to higher and higher levels of well-being and development, Homer-Dixon says. Even as we weather the coming stresses of climate change, population growth and dropping energy returns, we can maintain our societies and better them. But that requires resisting the very natural urge, when confronted with such overwhelming pressures, to become less cooperative, less generous and less open to reason. “The question is, how can we manage to preserve some kind of humane world as we make our way through these changes?” Homer-Dixon says.</p><p><em>Join 800,000+ Future fans by liking us on </em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture"><strong><em>Facebook</em></strong></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://twitter.com/bbc_future"><strong><em>Twitter</em></strong></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=fut.bbc.email.we.email-signup"><strong><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></strong></a><em>, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.</em> </p> </div> </div>  <div class="clearfix"></div> <section> <div id="share-tools-bottom"></div> </section> </div>  </div>   <div class="secondary-content"> <div class="mpu-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_ad_feature_rc_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('ad_feature_rc', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> <div class="mpu-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_mpu_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('mpu', [4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> <div class="mpu-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_native_side_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('native_side', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> <div id="related-stories-secondary" class="component-placeholder related-stories"></div> <div id="weather-forecast-secondary" class="component-placeholder"></div> <div id="follow-us" class="headed-section "> <div class="headed-section-lining"> <header> <div class="section-header"> <div class="section-title-wrapper"> <h2 class="section-title">Follow BBC Future</h2> </div> </div> </header> <div class="section-body"> <div class="headed-section-content"> <ul id="follow-us-items" class="" data-cs-module="follow-us"> <li class="follow-us-item follow-us-item-facebook"> <div class="follow-us-item-lining"> <a target="_blank" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture" data-cs-id="follow-us-facebook" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Facebook"> <div class="icon-wrapper"> <span class="icon gelicon--facebook"></span> </div> <div class="follow-us-item-text">Facebook</div> </a> </div> </li> <li class="follow-us-item follow-us-item-twitter"> <div class="follow-us-item-lining"> <a target="_blank" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/https://twitter.com/BBC_FUTURE" data-cs-id="follow-us-twitter" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Twitter"> <div class="icon-wrapper"> <span class="icon gelicon--twitter"></span> </div> <div class="follow-us-item-text">Twitter</div> </a> </div> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="mpu-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_promo_feature_1_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('promo_feature_1', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> <div id="best-of-secondary" class="component-placeholder best-of-list"></div> <div class="mpu-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_mpu_bottom_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('mpu_bottom', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> </div>  </div> <div class="standalone-parallax-wrapper"> <div class="parallax-slot-wrapper"> <div id="bbccom_parallax_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('parallax', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="page-component-wrapper"> <div class="single-column"> <div class="primary-content"> <div id="best-of-primary" class="component-placeholder best-of-list"></div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="page-component-wrapper"> <div class="single-column"> <div class="primary-content"> <div id="more-amazing-stories-primary" class="component-placeholder more-amazing-stories-list"></div> </div> </div> </div> </div>  <noscript> <div id="nav-bottom"> <div class="navigation-wrapper " data-cs-module="navigation"> <ul class="navigation-list" role="navigation" aria-label=""> <li class=" first"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://bbc.in/1W276DH " class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-0" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="What is BBC Future?"> <div class="line1">What is BBC Future? </div> </a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-1" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Latest"> <div class="line1">Latest </div> </a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/now" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-2" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Future Now"> <div class="line1">Future Now </div> </a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/future-video" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-3" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Video"> <div class="line1">Video </div> </a> </li> <li class="featured featured-1"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/columns/best-of-bbc-future" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-4" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Best of Future" data-cs-additional-data="OUR PICKS"> <div class="line1">OUR PICKS </div> <div class="line2"> <span>Best of Future</span> </div> </a> </li> <li class="featured featured-2"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/tags/grand-challenges" class="navigation-link" data-cs-id="nav-5" data-cs-event="click" data-cs-element-name="Grand Challenges" data-cs-additional-data="SPECIAL SERIES"> <div class="line1">SPECIAL SERIES </div> <div class="line2"> <span>Grand Challenges</span> </div> </a> </li> <li class="featured featured-native last"> <div id="bbccom_verticalnavbar_1_2_3_4" class="bbccom_slot" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="bbccom_advert"> <script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.slotAsync('verticalnavbar', [1,2,3,4]); } /*]]>*/ </script> </div> </div> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </noscript> <div id="extra-footer" class="extra-footer" class="clearfix"> <div class="page-component-wrapper"> <div id="around-bbc" class="component-placeholder around-the-bbc"></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>  </div> </div> <script src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://static.bbcverticals.com/future/config/live/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse/config.json"></script> <script> if(hasTheMustard()|| hasFixedWidthLayout()){ var requirePaths={}; if(isWebKit()){ requirePaths.jquery="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40/components/jquery-modern/dist/jquery"; }else{ requirePaths.jquery= "https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40/components/jquery-legacy/jquery"; } require.config({ paths:requirePaths, shim: { 'selectivity': ['jquery'], 'actual': ['jquery'] } }); require(['wwfuture/main'], function(App){ var myApp = new App(); } ); } </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://www.bbc.com/future/static/80639ec75e40/scripts/vendor/comscore/comscore.js"></script> <noscript> <p> <img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227im_/http://ssc.api.bbc.com/?c1=2&c2=19774467&ns_site=bbc&name=bbc_-_future_-_how_western_civilisation_could_collapse&b_vs_un=bc&c7=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse&b_c7=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse&c8=bbc_-_future_-_how_western_civilisation_could_collapse&b_app_type=web&b_app_name=future%7Crc43&b_imp_ver=rc43&b_imp_src=wwf&b_site_section=column.what-if&b_site_channel=future&b_site_subsec1=what-if&b_edition=international&b_column=what-if&b_page_type=sty%7Cimg&b_article_title=how%20western%20civilisation%20could%20collapse&b_article_id=wwfuture%2Fstory%2F20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse&b_article_author=rachel%20nuwer&b_article_theme=comment_analysis%7Cprediction&b_article_date=1492504701432&b_article_update=1492504701432&b_article_length=11200" height="1" width="1" alt="*"/> </p> </noscript> <script> (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-47973230-2', 'bbc.com'); ga('send', 'pageview'); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var _sf_async_config={}; _sf_async_config.useCanonical = true; _sf_async_config.uid = '50924'; _sf_async_config.domain = 'bbc.co.uk'; _sf_async_config.sections = 'future,what-if,comment_analysis,prediction'; _sf_async_config.authors = 'Rachel Nuwer'; (function(){ function loadChartbeat() { window._sf_endpt=(new Date()).getTime(); var e = document.createElement("script"); e.setAttribute("language", "javascript"); e.setAttribute("type", "text/javascript"); e.setAttribute('src', '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.chartbeat.com/js/chartbeat.js'); document.body.appendChild(e); } var oldonload = window.onload; window.onload = (typeof window.onload != "function") ? loadChartbeat : function() { oldonload(); loadChartbeat(); }; })(); </script> </div> <div id="orb-footer" class="orb-footer orb-footer-grey b-footer--grey--white"> <div id="navp-orb-footer-promo" class="orb-footer-grey"></div> <aside role="complementary"> <div id="orb-aside" class="orb-nav-sec b-r b-g-p"> <div class="orb-footer-inner" role="navigation"> <h2 class="orb-footer-lead">Explore the BBC</h2> <div class="orb-footer-primary-links"> <ul> <li class="orb-nav-home orb-d"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk/">Home</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-homedotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/">Home</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-news orb-d"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news">News</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-newsdotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/news">News</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-sport"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/sport/">Sport</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-weather"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/weather/">Weather</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-shop orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://shop.bbc.com/">Shop</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-earthdotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/earth/">Earth</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-travel-dotcom orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/travel/">Travel</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-capital orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/capital/">Capital</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-iplayer orb-d"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/iplayer/">iPlayer</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-culture orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/culture/">Culture</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-autos orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/autos/">Autos</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-future orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/future/">Future</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-tv"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/tv/">TV</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-radio"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/radio/">Radio</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-cbbc"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/cbbc">CBBC</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-cbeebies"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/cbeebies">CBeebies</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-food"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/food/">Food</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/iwonder">iWonder</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/education">Bitesize</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-travel orb-d"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/travel/">Travel</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-music"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/music/">Music</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-earth orb-d"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/earth/">Earth</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-arts"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/arts/">Arts</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-makeitdigital"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/makeitdigital">Make It Digital</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/taster">Taster</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-nature orb-w"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/nature/">Nature</a> </li> <li class="orb-nav-local"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/local/">Local</a> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </aside> <footer role="contentinfo"> <div id="orb-contentinfo" class="orb-nav-sec b-r b-g-p"> <div class="orb-footer-inner"> <ul> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/terms/">Terms of Use</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/">About the BBC</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/privacy/">Privacy Policy</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/privacy/cookies/about">Cookies</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/accessibility/">Accessibility Help</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/guidance/">Parental Guidance</a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/contact/">Contact the BBC</a> </li> <li class=" orb-w"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://advertising.bbcworldwide.com/">Advertise with us</a> </li> <li class=" orb-w"> <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/privacy/cookies/international/">Ad choices</a> </li> </ul> <small> <span class="orb-hilight">Copyright © 2017 BBC.</span> The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. <a href="/web/20170805020227/http://www.bbc.com/help/web/links/" class="orb-hilight">Read about our approach to external linking.</a> </small> </div> </div> </footer> </div> <div class="bbccom_display_none"><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && window.bbcdotcom.analytics && bbcdotcom.config && !bbcdotcom.config.isSportApp()) { bbcdotcom.analytics.page(); } /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.currencyProviders) { bbcdotcom.currencyProviders.write(); } /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.currencyProviders) { bbcdotcom.currencyProviders.postWrite(); } /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.data && bbcdotcom.data.stats && bbcdotcom.data.stats === 1 && bbcdotcom.utils && window.location.pathname === '/' && window.bbccookies && bbccookies.readPolicy('performance') ) { var wwhpEdition = bbcdotcom.utils.getMetaPropertyContent('wwhp-edition'); var _sf_async_config={}; /** CONFIGURATION START **/ _sf_async_config.uid = 50924; _sf_async_config.domain = "bbc.co.uk"; _sf_async_config.title = "Homepage"+(wwhpEdition !== '' ? ' - '+wwhpEdition : ''); _sf_async_config.sections = "Homepage"+(wwhpEdition !== '' ? ', Homepage - '+wwhpEdition : ''); _sf_async_config.region = wwhpEdition; _sf_async_config.path = "/"+(wwhpEdition !== '' ? '?'+wwhpEdition : ''); /** CONFIGURATION END **/ (function(){ function loadChartbeat() { window._sf_endpt=(new Date()).getTime(); var e = document.createElement("script"); e.setAttribute("language", "javascript"); e.setAttribute("type", "text/javascript"); e.setAttribute('src', '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://static.chartbeat.com/js/chartbeat.js'); document.body.appendChild(e); } var oldonload = window.onload; window.onload = (typeof window.onload != "function") ? loadChartbeat : function() { oldonload(); loadChartbeat(); }; })(); } /*]]>*/ </script><script type="text/javascript"> /*<![CDATA[*/ (function() { window.bbcdotcom.bodyLast = true; }()); /*]]>*/ </script></div> <script type="text/javascript" id="orb-js-script" data-assetpath="http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170805020227js_/http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/3.21.24/orb/4/script/orb.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> (function() { 'use strict'; var promoManager = { url: '', promoLoaded: false, makeUrl: function (theme, site, win) { var loc = win? win.location : window.location, proto = loc.protocol, host = loc.host, url = proto + '//' + ((proto.match(/s:/i) && !host.match(/^www\.(int|test)\./i))? 'ssl.' : 'www.'), themes = ['light', 'dark']; if ( host.match(/^(?:www|ssl|m)\.(int|test|stage|live)\.bbc\./i) ) { url += RegExp.$1 + '.'; } else if ( host.match(/^pal\.sandbox\./i) ) { url += 'test.'; } theme = themes[ +(theme === themes[0]) ]; return url + 'bbc.co.uk/navpromo/card/' + site + '/' + theme; }, init: function(node) { var disabledByCookie = (document.cookie.indexOf('ckns_orb_nopromo=1') > -1), that = this; if (window.promomanagerOverride) { for (var p in promomanagerOverride) { that[p] = promomanagerOverride[p]; } } if ( window.orb.fig('uk') && !disabledByCookie ) { require(['orb/async/_footerpromo', 'istats-1'], function(promo, istats) { var virtualSite = istats.getSite() || 'default'; that.url = (window.promomanagerOverride || that).makeUrl('light', virtualSite); if (that.url) { promo.load(that.url, node, { onSuccess: function(e) { if(e.status === 'success') { node.parentNode.className = node.parentNode.className + ' orb-footer-promo-loaded'; promoManager.promoLoaded = true; promoManager.event('promo-loaded').fire(e); } }, onError: function() { istats.log('error', 'orb-footer-promo-failed'); bbccookies.set('ckns_orb_nopromo=1; expires=' + new Date(new Date().getTime() + 1000 * 60 * 10).toGMTString() + ';path=/;'); } }); } }); } } }; define('orb/promomanager', ['orb/lib/_event'], function (event) { event.mixin(promoManager); return promoManager; }); require(['orb/promomanager'], function (promoManager) { promoManager.init(document.getElementById('navp-orb-footer-promo')); }) })(); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> require.config({ paths: { "mybbc/templates": '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://mybbc.files.bbci.co.uk/notification-ui/3.8.1/templates', "mybbc/notifications": '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://mybbc.files.bbci.co.uk/notification-ui/3.8.1/js' } }); require(['mybbc/notifications/NotificationsMain', 'idcta/idcta-1'], function (NotificationsMain, idcta) { var loadNotifications = function (fig) { if (fig.geo.isUK()) { NotificationsMain.run(idcta, '//web.archive.org/web/20170805020227/http://mybbc.files.bbci.co.uk/notification-ui/3.8.1/'); } }; var orbFig = window.orb.fig; if (typeof orbFig.load === 'function') { // Use new async API from Orbit orbFig.load(loadNotifications, loadNotifications); } else { // Use old sync-only API from PAL orbfig project loadNotifications(orbFig); } }); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof require !== 'undefined') { require(['istats-1'], function(istats){ istats.track('external', { region: document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0] }); istats.track('download', { region: document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0] }); }); } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> if( window.SEARCHBOX.suppress === false && window.SEARCHBOX.locale && /^en-?.*?/.test(window.SEARCHBOX.locale) ){ require.config({ paths: { "search/searchbox": window.SEARCHBOX.searchboxAppStaticPrefix } }); require(['search/searchbox/searchboxDrawer'], function(SearchboxDrawer) { SearchboxDrawer.run(window.SEARCHBOX); }); } </script> <script type="text/javascript">require(["megavolt-client","istats-1","orb/cookies"],function(t,e,i){function o(){return"true"===l&&s&&t&&"function"==typeof t.addMVTIStatsLabels}function n(){!c&&o()?setTimeout(function(){e.invoke()},"1000"):e.invoke()}var a=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase(),s=!(a.indexOf("msie")>-1)||parseInt(a.split("msie")[1],10)>10,c=!1,l="false";if(i.isAllowed("s1"))try{if(o()&&t.addMVTIStatsLabels(function(t){e.addLabels(t),c=!0}),!require.s.contexts._.config.paths.idcta)return void n();require(["idcta/idcta-1"],function(t){t&&"function"==typeof t.getIStatsLabels&&e.addLabels(t.getIStatsLabels()),n()},function(t){throw t})}catch(t){console&&"function"==typeof console.log&&console.log("an exception occurred while adding idcta labels to istats, invoking istats without them",t),n()}});</script> </body> </html>