"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." ~ Orson Welles WHAT'S HAPPENING? We take for granted the conditions that make the workings of everyday life possible – from clean water to the food in our supermarkets, and from healthcare to the ability of our economy and government to function. The increasing complexity, interdependence and global integration of systems that support the operation of modern society have also increased our vulnerability to large-scale failure. Meanwhile, there is an array of threats that could cause such a failure now. The risk will continue to grow as resource, environmental and socioeconomic stresses accumulate and interact. The likelihood of systemic failure – from localized and reversible, to global and irreversible – is growing, and the impacts would be catastrophic. The physical growth of our societies will end in a near future where we reach peaks of almost all our physical resources...