For those who have an interest in science fiction, the Neal Stephenson novel "Anathem" may provide some enjoyment. A central concept is that civilizations suffer horrendous collapses every few thousand years or so. In the book, there are monastery-like structures scattered around the world in which virtually no technology is allowed, but within which, enormous learning is encouraged and preserved. Mankind, thus, never loses basic knowledge and a recovery from a catastrophe can be managed in a shortened amount of time.
The book has some interesting ideas.
not without a precedent in history, I’m told.
Don’t forget Asimov’s classic short story “Nightfall.”
Our electronification, our material flagrancy, and our sense of rightful endowment likely render us more, not less, vulnerable than ancient peoples to sudden unforeseen catastrophes whose occasion might simply lie in a power failure but whose form (or rather formlessness) will be greed and rapacity at their rawest and whose story will be one of the precipitous collapse of those institutions that, despite our delinquency or our contempt, formerly protected us from “evil things.”
There is no debate that there are those among us who relish the work of destruction. This author renews my contention that what's at stake here is nothing less than our own civilization. We either rise up and rid ourselves of the monsters who mean to destroy our Republic and rule what's left of us in a flame-shot hell of slaughter and atrocity or face a thousand years of darkness and cruelty.