With the endless talk of COVID-19, many think we are facing an unprecedented threat of the collapse of our civilization. But Dan Carlin, host of Hardcore History, doesn’t believe anything we are facing is unprecedented. He’s spent years looking at apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to understand the challenges of the future.

Dan joins us on today’s episode to discuss some of the biggest questions in history. Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.

We go all over the place in this episode, from the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue, which has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles. But just as he does on his own show, Dan manages to make the most complicated stories engaging and entertaining.