[JKCalhoun]

I get the way Burke tied together all ten episodes of the first season and put a bow on it.

I'm not convinced though as to how terrified I ought to be. I understand that there is a complexity and inter-connect-edness in our present day society, but the fear of nuclear, mutual annihilation is the part of the original series that seems the most dated.

I suppose I choose to feel a little more optimistic. I consider the people in the first episode, when all of greater Manhattan lost power, that gathered, celebrated, and ate a birthday cake by candlelight.

Civilization won't break down. Though there may be momentary, brief interruptions.

[ThrowawayR2]

This is just my opinion but, as I said, people don't want to think about it or believe it. The pandemic should be a wake up call, both in terms of demonstrating supply chain disruptions and in terms of people refusing to wear masks and those ignoring shelter-in-place directives.

Let's just take one more non-war example: Another Carrington level solar storm is an inevitability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event). Imagine a global power and network outage for an indeterminate period of time and what it's effects would be.

[Sargos]

I would use the Pandemic to argue the exact opposite really. It's the worst disaster most people have seen in their lifetimes but it hasn't caused civilization to break down. For a lot of people life hasn't even changed that much. We are more resilient than many people think.

[lostcolony]

Oh, I think for most people it's changed quite a bit. It accelerated WFH adoption by at least two decades. The knock on effects of transportation, city planning, and the demographic effects of people moving due to no longer needing to be so close to their jobs, we've only begun to see.

That said, I agree that it still points to the opposite conclusion - civilization has not ended, but has changed dramatically. Same as every other time.