A Dark Age Like Never Before

I’m sure many of us, since the dawn of the pandemic, have felt the doom and gloom of the news. Of course, plenty of global incidents and world affairs took place before 2020, but nothing seems to match the intensity and momentum of what we’ve witnessed in the past couple of years.

In my teens, when studying GCSE and A Level History, I was amazed at all the world-changing events I learned about, but which I personally never lived through. For example, my parents and grandparents witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Princess Diana, planes flying into the Twin Towers, and man landing on the moon. They have these historic moments ingrained in their memories forever. This year, I turned twenty-three; before 2020, there were never any events where I felt I could say ‘I was there when this thing happened’.

The past few years have been turbulent to say the least and I got my wish. I remember sitting down to watch that Downing Street press conference on March 23, 2020, knowing that the world was about to experience something collectively that we couldn’t even begin to imagine back then. Thinking back to that moment gives me shivers down my spine.

Fast forward to 2022, fresh from the pandemic, and we’re now in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, with soaring energy bills forcing many families in the UK over the poverty line. That UK inflation has hit a 41-year high is an issue that infiltrates headlines on a daily basis, and we know that there’s a recession on the horizon, approaching like a black rain cloud.

Every day there seems to be another blow. Doomsday-like bulletins have become the ‘new normal’, and we’re starting to get used to them. Today, I read that the world population has hit 8 billion. That’s a billion more people on this planet within just 12 years. From the origins of homo sapiens, it took 300,000 years for the world’s population to reach one billion, which occurred during the 1800s; in just over two centuries, it has increased eight-fold. It’s predicted that global food production will need to double by 2050 just to keep up.  

It was recently reported that a stray Russian missile, intended for Ukraine, landed in NATO-state Poland, killing two people. In the hours since, the story changed, and it’s now claimed that the missile was a rogue Ukrainian weapon. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year; this has been a highly sensitive topic that has appeared on the news almost every day. Questions about nuclear weapons have been on everyone’s lips, as we naturally wonder what would happen if World War III kicked off.

In this event, we wouldn’t need to worry about the population increase, that’s for sure. ‘A full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would see global food systems obliterated and over 5 billion people dying of hunger,’ says Open Access Government. ‘U.S. president, Joe Biden, has declared that the world is the closest it has come to nuclear catastrophe in 60 years, and so it comes as no surprise that many of us are worried.’

The world is facing a dark age like never before. The Romans left Britain around AD400 and took with them their equivalent of modern technology and public health systems; anything left was ravaged by the Vikings when they invaded, around AD800. That’s when the Dark Ages commenced, a liminal stage in our history that experienced little scientific or cultural development. The church ruled society and that was that.

What we’re experiencing now, in the 21st Century, is almost the exact opposite; however, we might end up with the same result. Nuclear weapons are the epitome of modern technology, but they come with catastrophic consequences. Our society could be on the brink of collapse…people can’t afford to pay their bills, hospital beds and ambulance wait times are life-threatening, and cuts to school budgets and education systems will have a huge impact on children in the future.

A Google News search of ‘dark ages’ yields dismal results: Kirkby-in-Furness residents fury at power cuts: ‘like the dark ages’; Qatar World Cup like holding tournament ‘in the Middle Ages’; predicted £12m council cuts could plunge Glasgow into ‘dark ages’; I starred in the first US TV show to address abortion. Why is my country now going backwards?

These four articles give hints to the root of the problem—which is that there isn’t just one. There are a number of issues sending our society backwards. It’s a global problem; each country has its own concerns that were likely exacerbated by the pandemic. This is all besides the issue of global warming, which, in itself, is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

So, if you had the power to change or eradicate one problem in the world, which would you choose? World hunger, global warming, childhood cancer? Unfortunately, the problems of the world don’t warrant an easy fix. Even if you had the power of God at your disposal, where would you even start?