Two dairy farms thousands of miles apart, Huls Farm and Gardar Farm, have been the most successful in their respective regions. Huls Farm is thriving and growing, while Gardar Farm collapsed 500 years ago in Greenland. Some of the mistakes made by its Viking settlers are being repeated in Montana, in the United States, where Huls Farm is located. Success can sometimes mask serious weaknesses in a society; collapse can occur on the heels of great prosperity.

To Diamond, collapse is not a mere decline in a society’s fortunes but “a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time” (3). Major civilizations have collapsed in the past, including the Mayans, Minoans, Angkor Wat, and Easter Island, leaving behind only monumental ruins.

One of the main causes of collapse in the past was mismanagement of the local environment, leading to ecological suicide, or “ecocide.” Eight types of damage were common: “deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems […], water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people” (6).

A successful society’s population tends to increase, which puts pressure on local resources until over-farming, over-fishing, water misuse, and related effects of overcrowding on fragile ecosystems lead to resource shortages, wars, starvation, and disease.