‘Society could end in less than a decade,’ predicts academic

Intro:

Professor blames sweeping political turmoil and social unrest for worrying prediction

Society could come to an end in less than a decade, a “mathematical historian” has predicted.

Professor Peter Turchin said sweeping political turmoil and social unrest could result in the collapse of the world as we know it in the 2020s.

The academic, from University of Connecticut’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, is a world-leading expert on cliodynamics, a research method that uses mathematics and complexity science to predict historical events, such as the growth and collapse of empires or religions.