A mathematician looked at when society is likely to collapse and the answer is sooner than you'd think

It may not have been your favourite subject in school - but we highly recommend paying attention to mathematics, just this once.

Trump's presidency marks the beginning of a peak in political violence, according to one expert.

Peter Turchin, professor of Ecology and Mathematics from the University of Connecticut, uses a maths equation to predict the rise and fall of civilisations and human behaviour.

The new discipline, called cliodynamics, treats history like a science. And what he's found using this process is terrifying.

He writes on Phys.org:

Ten years ago I started applying its tools to the society I live in: the United States. What I discovered alarmed me.

So we’re off to a good start then.

It looks like you've got around three years to build that underground bunker in your back garden, because Turchin predicts that social instability and political violence will peak in the 2020s.

He also states that the 2016 US election 'confirms his forecast'.

His predictions are informed by trends such as income inequality, declining wellbeing, and growing political dysfunction. He says he also tracks the role of “Elite overproduction”.

This term is used to describe increasing inequality propping up the most wealthy, so the “one per cent” becomes the “two per cent, which increases competition between the elite and polarises political parties.

He says this is a big driver of social instability, and it looks like Trump might make it worse - although the jury is still out on whether we needed a mathematician to tell us that.

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