A civilizational collapse (sometimes called a social collapse or a societal collapse) is a drastic decrease in human population size or in political, economic or social complexity across essentially the entire world, for an extended period of time. Civilizational resilience is humanity's capacity to resist, or recover from, civilizational collapse.
In Toby Ord's typology, unrecoverable civilizational collapse constitutes one of the three main types of existential catastrophe.[1]
80,000 Hours rates civilizational resilience a "potential highest priority area": an issue that, if more thoroughly examined, could rank as a top global challenge.[2]