Near-Destroying Civilisations

[Laurence]

Methods of Destroying Civilisations

What cool ways of nearly destroying empires have guys thought of in the past?

I want to remove a civilisation from one half of an island but not the other civilisation. The two have a mountain range between them.

I'm particularly interested in the possibility of a localised deep freeze.

 

[Queshire]

Plague would be my disaster of choice. You would lose a portion of the non-destroyed civilization, true, but the mountains would provide a good bottle neck to set up a quarantine until the plague runs its course. For bonus points the plague could resurrect those it kills as horrible necromantic monstrosities.

 

[Laurence]

That's a great plan, one side dies; the other side flees the island and ends up on the continent of my story!

 

[Pythagoras]

How big is the island? A civil war could do the trick.
And I'm not sure I understand what you mean by a "localised deep freeze".

 

[Saigonnus]

I have a short story (thus far) that is set in a post-apocalyptic period of my world. Basically, the scorched earth tactics of the enemy caused a famine among the people. Couple that with a lack of basic sanitation and you have the perfect breeding ground for a health crisis. Millions die and leave the rest to fight over what little bit remains.

 

[WooHooMan]

The one I got now is a giant that broke a moon and is now in the process of destroying the planet, one nation at a time. In fact, there's only one real empire left in the setting. Everyone else has been reduced to nomadic tribes

I like it when the disaster is a tangible antagonist. Plagues are good but any other natural disaster doesn't sit well with me.
My favorite empire-destroyer is internal political conflicts: the greatest enemy any nation could ever know.

 

[Philster401]

Two words: Random meteor.

 

[ChasingSuns]

Floods, volcanic activity, and earthquakes could all do the job. Or perhaps you have a situation like Atlantis where technology brings their end in some way. Depending on what kind of world this is, there could be several possibilities.

 

[Laurence]

I'd love to use some kind of political conflict, but not sure in what way...

It is an island so floods may work! Anything that would make the land unusable-it doesn't necessarily have to hurt anyone.

Oh and by localised deep freeze I mean basically an ice age, destroying land and most livestock, that would only effect an area the size of half of France for some reason.

 

[Chilari]

Are you trying to remove all the people of the unwanted civilisation, or just the civilisation itself?

If you want to remove the whole population, you need something a lot bigger, and probably a natural disaster rather than a human one - tsunami, volcanic eruption paired with a pyroclastic flow (or a volcanic eruption so powerful that their part of the island is pulverised; think Krakatoa), a really really bad famine combined with a plague or something as well. Something big. Bear in mind, if you want ruins left over afterwards the volcano approach won't be suitable as a pyroclastic flow will bury them under metres of ash and rock, and the Krakatoa-level explosion will will pulverise any structures just as surely as it pulverises the rock beneath them.

If you want to remove the civilisation without killing all its people, you can bring in human problems. Civil war, military coup, uprising. These things are often triggered by climate change, but you don't need much of that to justify a change in rule. In a civilisation where the rulers are expected to be able to control natural forces and be very powerful indeed, a famine, plague, or military loss, or even a bad omen, could prompt a change in rulership. Then it just takes some escalation and instead of there being a simple change in who's at the top, you can have the people totally abandon the whole system - possibly including the gods that go with it. Number of people who actually die in the process, including starvation, disease, in war, and in the coup or uprising that ends it all, could be as little as 10% of the population, but if you want it to be a bit more dramatic/convincing than that, you could reasonably take it to 30%, maybe even 40% of people dead.

 

[Laurence]

Are you trying to remove all the people of the unwanted civilisation, or just the civilisation itself?

If you want to remove the whole population, you need something a lot bigger, and probably a natural disaster rather than a human one - tsunami, volcanic eruption paired with a pyroclastic flow (or a volcanic eruption so powerful that their part of the island is pulverised; think Krakatoa), a really really bad famine combined with a plague or something as well. Something big. Bear in mind, if you want ruins left over afterwards the volcano approach won't be suitable as a pyroclastic flow will bury them under metres of ash and rock, and the Krakatoa-level explosion will will pulverise any structures just as surely as it pulverises the rock beneath them.

If you want to remove the civilisation without killing all its people, you can bring in human problems. Civil war, military coup, uprising. These things are often triggered by climate change, but you don't need much of that to justify a change in rule. In a civilisation where the rulers are expected to be able to control natural forces and be very powerful indeed, a famine, plague, or military loss, or even a bad omen, could prompt a change in rulership. Then it just takes some escalation and instead of there being a simple change in who's at the top, you can have the people totally abandon the whole system - possibly including the gods that go with it. Number of people who actually die in the process, including starvation, disease, in war, and in the coup or uprising that ends it all, could be as little as 10% of the population, but if you want it to be a bit more dramatic/convincing than that, you could reasonably take it to 30%, maybe even 40% of people dead.

There is a volcano in this area but I feel it'd be cliché to have it go off ha. Soo as volcanoes are usually on the edge of tectonic plates and it's an island I think I'll have an off-shore earthquake causing a Tsunami. This would ruin the land and force them to flee the island, as the civilisation on the other side of the island won't share their land/resources.

EDIT: Would a Tsunami ruin the land permanently if it was bad enough? Bare in mind this is quite far North and therefore pretty chilly.

 

[Terry Greer]

Something waterborne - a parasite or disease carried by water living creatures?
That would tend to affect the water catchment area - so if there was a mountain o (or even low hills splitting the island - all the rivers one side would be affected - but not the other.

Lots of fish and other aquatic species are split geographically this way.

 

[TWErvin2]

Consider a tsunami (or tidal wave) which would wash up on one side of the island.

Also, one side could release a frost or ice dragon (if it's a fantasy), or work magic to bring about a horrible snow storm, or extended blizzard creeping down from the mountains into the lowlands.

 

[Jabrosky]

I've thought about this kind of question many times in the past.

I have a soft spot for overgrown ruins of ancient civilizations in the jungle, especially if there's fearsome wildlife lurking among them. However, in a lot of older stories featuring those settings, any indigenous people living near those ruins never receive credit for the original civilizations. This is especially true for stories set in Africa (think those with Allan Quartermain, Tarzan, Solomon Kane, or Conan the Barbarian). There may be stereotypical African tribespeople guarding a lost city, but the city itself always turns out to be the work of foreign colonists like Phoenicians, Atlanteans, aliens, or any other race the author wouldn't classify as Black African. It reeks of the old racist "Hamitic Hypothesis" that credited any cultural complexity or technological advancement in pre-colonial Africa to back-migrating "Caucasoids" from Eurasia instead of the native African people.

I'd prefer to have indigenous people living near ancient ruins which their own ancestors built, but then there's the question of how those cities got abandoned in the first place if their population didn't disappear. Climate change might be one option, or maybe the ruins represent a capital city that was abandoned following political changes. Any other ideas?

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Tsumanis could work but they usually don't roll that far along land. They run out of water so to speak. Which means that unless your civilisation was basically coastal it would survive.

Volcanic eruptions on the other hand can be devestating over a wider area, and if you examine Mt St Helen's eruption where essentially one side of the volcano fell away the eruption can be lateral. As to civilisation destroying they can do that in a number of ways. Ash clouds can destroy buildings - the ash settles gets wet, turns to concrete and collapses buildings. If its mineral content is bad it can poison soils too. Then of course you have lava flows, lava bombs and poisonous gasses.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Laurence]

Hi,

Tsumanis could work but they usually don't roll that far along land. They run out of water so to speak. Which means that unless your civilisation was basically coastal it would survive.

Volcanic eruptions on the other hand can be devestating over a wider area, and if you examine Mt St Helen's eruption where essentially one side of the volcano fell away the eruption can be lateral. As to civilisation destroying they can do that in a number of ways. Ash clouds can destroy buildings - the ash settles gets wet, turns to concrete and collapses buildings. If its mineral content is bad it can poison soils too. Then of course you have lava flows, lava bombs and poisonous gasses.

Cheers, Greg.

I'm interested, however I don't fancy a full blown eruption - do volcanoes ever just emit a ridiculous amount of poisonous gases and nothing else?

 

[Ayaka Di'rutia]

A strange wind hits that side of the island that starts to turn everything, living and non-living, to salt that blows away.

My random 2 cents.

 

[RedAndy]

Depending on whether your story requires the abandoned side of the island to still be accessible, a big enough earthquake could conceivably tilt the island, forcing half of it underwater. Read up on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea (fascinating for all sorts of reasons) - in the 2004 earthquake/tsunami in that part of the world, the island was actually tilted, exposing a lot of formerly submerged coral reefs to the surface.

 

[CupofJoe]

I'm interested, however I don't fancy a full blown eruption - do volcanoes ever just emit a ridiculous amount of poisonous gases and nothing else?

Volcanos could and do emit Carbon dioxide [and Monoxide?] in large amounts. the gas is heavier than air so will flow down hill and "pool" in low lieing area. It is odourless, colourless and anyone and any thing in the region will feel sleepy/breathless and then fall asleep... I don't know about areas covered but I don't think the "river" of gas would travel a long way [maybe 10s of miles]. Lake Nyos

 

[Laurence]

Volcanos could and do emit Carbon dioxide [and Monoxide?] in large amounts. the gas is heavier than air so will flow down hill and "pool" in low lieing area. It is odourless, colourless and anyone and any thing in the region will feel sleepy/breathless and then fall asleep... I don't know about areas covered but I don't think the "river" of gas would travel a long way [maybe 10s of miles]. Lake Nyos

That sounds interesting - a carbon monoxide 'flood' ruining the land but not the people. Not overly dramatic magma which is nice. I'd like this half of the island to be around 40 miles in diameter; I wonder if that's a reasonable area for this pool to spread...

Depending on whether your story requires the abandoned side of the island to still be accessible, a big enough earthquake could conceivably tilt the island, forcing half of it underwater. Read up on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea (fascinating for all sorts of reasons) - in the 2004 earthquake/tsunami in that part of the world, the island was actually tilted, exposing a lot of formerly submerged coral reefs to the surface.

This is really cool too; I'd never heard of this happening before.