Perhaps it's because of seeing James Burke's "Connections" when younger, but that series gives you the feeling that advances like the Haber-Bosch process are mo

Perhaps it's because of seeing James Burke's "Connections" when younger, but that series gives you the feeling that advances like the Haber-Bosch process are more or less required for us to continue as a species. This casts our role as that of innovator, and if the innovation stops, then to an extent, so do we. This causes me to have to work to understand Apocalyptic stories. The counterexample is the influence of the Mandarins on China, which created a very stable, unchanging culture that lasted for centuries.