What could bring down an Interstellar Empire?

[Elven Doritos]

It depends on your level of space-travel. With travel advanced to the limits of possibility as it is currently, it might take hundreds of years to travel from one end of the empire to another, even if it was small. Imagine how stagnant they would be?

That would be a very loose-- and difficult to maintain-- Empire.

[Higgs Boson]

I am very suprised no one has mentioned the obvious*: Black hole





*this only works you are okay with the destruction happening by chance, or if a super-powerful alien race that self-destructed already by now has the power to control black holes.

[KeshFerrar]

What could bring down an empire?

Its been said in bits and pieces, but for a high tech empire the most crippling thing would be the loss of quick communication, transport, or trade.

What would happen to the US if suddenly all the cell phones stopped working?
How about if we couldn't fly but had to drive everywhere?
What would happen if we only had access to food grown in our local region?

The strong and independent (food, construction, knowledge) communities would survive, the dependent ones crumble.

The trick is to determining how to bring about these catastrophes.

The "space pollution" idea could create this dilemma. Most regions of space become unstable for FTL and communication. So now you have brash, young, and foolhardy new adventurers out there plotting new courses to keep society limping along. But the disturbances constantly shift, and other societies may just want to see everything crumble (ultimate independence).

[Raelifin]

I am very suprised no one has mentioned the obvious*: Black hole

Astrophysics. A point in space-time at which gravitational forces cause matter to have infinite density and infinitesimal volume, and space and time to become infinitely distorted. (a.k.a. Black Hole)

[Higgs Boson]

oops, musta not read that, i was only skimming through the posts btw. i musta skipped those two.

[Piphtrip]

Interestingly enough, all of these things are present in Warhammer 40,000 (warp storms making planets into hellscapes, a galaxy spanning empire with parts all but cut off from the rest, etc.)

[Ravenspath]

Nobody has stated the most obvious thing that can bring down an empire.

The Schwartz.

[XXsiriusXX]

Nobody has stated the most obvious thing that can bring down an empire.

The Schwartz.

lol nice reference.

[Wensleydale]

What could bring down an empire?

Its been said in bits and pieces, but for a high tech empire the most crippling thing would be the loss of quick communication, transport, or trade.

What would happen to the US if suddenly all the cell phones stopped working?
How about if we couldn't fly but had to drive everywhere?
What would happen if we only had access to food grown in our local region?

The strong and independent (food, construction, knowledge) communities would survive, the dependent ones crumble.

The trick is to determining how to bring about these catastrophes.

The "space pollution" idea could create this dilemma. Most regions of space become unstable for FTL and communication. So now you have brash, young, and foolhardy new adventurers out there plotting new courses to keep society limping along. But the disturbances constantly shift, and other societies may just want to see everything crumble (ultimate independence).

Exactly what I was meaning (although I was looking at it from a perspective of them conquering, but not being capable of holding it together properly).

[Polycarp]

Pick up Azimov's "Foundation" series.

You have a single world (Trantor) which is specialized for administration.  It's one big city - as the business of government becomes bigger and more complicated, the capitol world becomes more and more specialized in doing just that.  It takes hundreds of agricultural worlds just to maintain this one administrative hub, essentially a planet-wide office building.  This specialization, however, leads to stagnation, as the bureaucrats are increasingly isolated and disconnected from the rest of the empire.  Furthermore, the specialization of the capitol is a weakness - as with Rome, if the exterior granaries and support worlds fall, the capitol is unsustainable.  As corruption, inefficiency, and bureaucratic bloat grow, faraway worlds see the empire as more and more irrelevant to them, and eventually a contagious separatism spreads, which cripples the ability of the capitol to sustain itself.  Without an empire to sustain it and give it relevance, the capitol dies and the Empire breathes its last.

[Sarandosil]

Bad monetary policy :p

[Stargate525]

Bad monetary policy :p

you can take down ANYTHING with bad money policy.*

*see also Enron, Roman Empire, the Spanish Main in the 16th-17th century.

[DeeL]

Honestly, I have always thought that the idea of 'agricultural worlds' sustaining the populations of worlds that couldn't survive without imports was unrealistic.  It would make sense if FTL transit were easy to do in bulk, but not much.  I mean, you've got a *planet* and the technology to get there from a different one.  You would have a hard time convincing me that you wouldn't also have the climate control and population management techniques to make the planet involved self-sustaining.

But of course that leads to an idea - what if the technique used to make the bulk food - grain, say - was almost universal, like a single genegeneering prion used to adapt the grain to its local environment.  Now what if a virus adapted to eating not the prion itself but certain organic compounds associated with it?  If this virus were to spread before it was identified, the entire empires food supply would abruptly start to dwindle.  And if it was identified before it was universal, that would open up the prospect of the occasional shooting war as one world after another strove to enforce a quarantine of their own planet.

So - you got famine, disease and war all hitting a space empire of whatever size you find dramatically convenient.  

Another idea is that the universe changes.  What if, in the course of time, the laws of physics changed such that electricity altered in its propogation through non-organic conductors?  Neurons and living creatures would be virtually unaffected while everyone within the region of effect - eventually everywhere - would have to relearn how to do everything from build a functioning light bulb to construct a computer...

Or, if you really want to harken back to the old fun sci-fi movies - Space Herpes.

[LordVreeg]

Well, how have real empires gone the way of all things?

Going back the foundation comments, an Empire rarely gets destroyed or obliviated, it just dissolves and downsizes.  This generally can be traced to the lack of investment in infrastructure, mainy administrative.

In an interstellar-variation, the large population, given time, has less and less people actually learning how things are done, and less and less people investing time and capitol in the Empire, and more people making money and enjoying what they feel is rightfully theirs.  After all, they have all these stories from the distant past when the Empire was being forged, and the Empire has ben around so long, it will always be there.
Rome was supposed brought down by barbarians sacking the city, and by the cruel and strange behavior of her twisted citizens.  But we all know Rome was really brought down by Emperors who didn't want to rule and no one with the understandthing of keeping up the governmental and physical infrastructure.
We also all hear constantly how 'darkness fell' in terms of science, at least in Eurpoe, afterwards.  That infrastructure we speak of also is an educational one.


Now, armed with this, I can easily see an interstellar society doing the same thing, a populace gone soft assuming the Empire will always be there, a beuocracy trying to run not just many countries, or many worlds, but tryig to keep track of whole systems, and making sure the housing prices on none of them get to high, etc.  If the people stop learning how to do things, and depend on the mechanized government to do it for them, all it will take then is a little war, a bit of the aformentioned jihad, to overstress the government and administrative mechanisms.  Then everything comes tumbling down, entire systems are left to fend for themselves without understanding how to replicate the items of everyday conveniece...

and darkness falls agin.

[DeeL]

LordVreeg, nicely done.  Eloquent and poignant.  Beats space herpes.