The Olduvai Theory:
Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age

My Odyssey with the Olduvai theory began thirty-two years ago during a lecture series titled, Of Men and Galaxies, given at the University of Washington by cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle.

It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only. (Hoyle, 1964; emphasis added)

I was fascinated—and stunned. His soft-spoken proposal seemed incredulous, bizarre, preposterous—and possibly inevitable. A return to the Stone Age? Deep cultural and material impoverishment? However nobody else in the audience seemed the least concerned. Perhaps Hoyle was just giving a lead-in to his next science fiction thriller. So for the next decade I went about my way: raising kids, building airplanes and teaching engineers. Haunted by Hoyle's hypothesis.
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