Not that an apocalypse doesn't have great dramatic appeal, of course…

During the apocalypse, all things degenerate fall, all secrets are exposed, the truth is no longer hidden, and we're proven right in the end. Like I say, it's a fine dramatic movie plot, but it won't happen that way in the modern world.

None of this is to say that the present status quo will remain, because it won't. Like mighty Pharaoh and Eternal Rome, it will pass into history, mourned for a season at best.

Reasons And Proofs
The reasons we won't have a full-spectrum crash (beyond active war zones) are simply that…

There are far too many productive people.
There is far too much literature on how to do everything from digging holes to manufacturing trucks to tailoring space suits.
There are far too many fully developed systems and processes, ready to be operated by anyone with will.
We have multiple and redundant communication systems: Mail, email, messengers (car and bike) text messages, several phone networks, ham radio, CB radio, pager networks and more.
We have an incredibly widespread belief that all the things we need are possible. More than that, we know that they've been supplied, for multiple decades, by regular people: by our friends, family and neighbors. We have no doubt that anything we need can be rebuilt.
If I pulled out a map and drew a thirty mile arc around my childhood home, that area would contain literally millions of people who collectively knew how to do almost anything and everything that needs to be done: making refrigerators, running electrical generators, stringing power lines, winding transformers, refining oil, mixing metal alloys, fabricating everything from steel to Styrofoam, growing crops, building silos, and so on.

I'm not saying that nothing bad will ever happen, but I am saying this, emphatically:

Once things go bad, we'll know precisely how to make them good again.

Now, let's go to some real-world proof. And we can begin with the Covid disaster: Huge swaths of the world's economic activity were simply stopped. This held across entire continents, and in fact over all inhabited continents. I'm not sure precisely how may of the world's producers were held under house arrest, but it was billions for sure.

As I say, entire continents were shut down, in a moment. Churches, schools, parks, a huge number of businesses, and much more. That matches the level of many apocalypse scenarios. And yet…