Understanding the history of how native populations collapsed from the spread of new (to them) pathogens and challenges (to only struggle forward in a diminished capacity) can also be instructive of how human decline and survival might proceed in the remainder of this century as global heating brings “never before encountered” disruption to our global population. We will also have the added problem of massive biodiversity loss—which was not (generally) part of the native decline in the drawn out European incursion to the Americas. Bottom line: our accelerating climate emergency is a hugely disruptive problem for modern civilization. And recovery will be brutal.