Nations Must Plan for 'Black Swan' Catastrophes, Scientists Warn

Across human history, civilizations have fallen not from the blow itself, but from what followed — the hunger, the darkness, the unraveling of systems built for ordinary times. Environmental scientist Florian Ulrich Jehn now asks governments to reckon honestly with a category of catastrophe they have long avoided: the rare but civilization-altering event that breaks the global food system entirely. His argument, grounded in the convergent logic of volcanic winters, solar storms, and nuclear exchanges, is not a counsel of despair but a call to the oldest form of wisdom — preparing for what we h