Every empire falls. There’s no way to stop it. The only we thing can control is how it happens—whether it’ll be a quiet, dignified passing of a torch or the flaming destruction of a nation torn down by barbarians.

SEE ALSO: 10 Truly Disgusting Facts About Ancient Roman Life

That’s more or less what happened to Rome, and the aftermath was pure chaos. The fall of their empire sent the European world spiraling into a dark age that took centuries to escape.

If we take them time to learn from their history, we’ll see some eerie parallels with our own. And if history really does repeat itself, we’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s to come next.

10 Oversea Slave Laborers Won’t Make Your Goods Forever

At its peak, money was rushing into the Roman Empire. The emperors and the government were basking in an absolute avalanche of wealth that helped them control the better part of the known world. But just because the nations had money didn’t mean the Roman people were getting rich.

Instead of hiring their own people, the Romans got foreign slaves to do most of their work. A massive part of their production was being done by foreign slaves, which left the actual citizens with nothing to do. A lot of Romans were unemployed, relying on government subsidies and handouts just to survive.^[1]

Modern companies can’t get away with literally hiring slaves these days, but they can come pretty close. Like Rome, the modern Western countries outsource the vast majority of the things they buy to sweatshops that sometimes pay as little as 64 cents an hour.

Approximately 60 percent of the things Americans buy are made overseas, but it’s not just the US that does this. China currently makes about 50 percent of the world’s clothes and 70 percent of its mobile phones.

The real lesson from Rome, though, is what might happen next—because Rome’s setup didn’t last forever. The slaves started to demand more and revolted. Meanwhile, the people of Rome, influenced by Christian morality, started feeling bad about using slaves.

Their labor system started to collapse. Since slave labor was the backbone of their entire economy, everything else went down with it.

9 Obesity Epidemics Don’t Get A Lot Of Sympathy

The average Roman probably wasn’t obese. A lot of Roman civilians struggled just to get food, but the emperors were a different story.

The rich of Rome spent so much time having feasts and orgies that it actually became common practice to throw up mid-meal to keep it going. After watching Emperor Nero and his friends have a feast, the philosopher Seneca wrote that the wealthy of Rome “vomit that they may eat; and eat that they may vomit.”

But it wasn’t just Nero. Julius Caesar once escaped an assassination attempt because he’d stepped out to vomit up his meal. Emperor Vitellius had a reputation for starting the day by belching his breakfast in the faces of his soldiers.^[2]

In the modern world, poor people in wealthy countries usually become obese—especially in the American South. In some states, type 2 diabetes rates are twice as high as they were 20 years ago. In fact, one-third of the population is obese now.

The real lesson from Rome, though, is that having too much turns people against you. The reason these stories about lascivious Roman emperors have been passed on for so long is because their people wanted to make them look bad. One group of people was gorging themselves while another starved. All that was won by the wealthy was resentment, wars, and a lot of health problems.

8 The Nouveau Riche Never Remember Where They Came From

When Rome was a republic, one of its biggest internal problems was the fight between the patricians and the plebeians. The patricians were aristocrats who got their status by birth, while the plebeians were the common people who had no way of making a better life at the time.

Like our modern societies, the plebeians fought for the right to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They won equal rights, got the opportunity to play a role in Roman politics, and had the chance to make it rich. They helped each other get wealthy, voted their fellow plebeians into power, and then sat back and waited for their friends to make a new utopia of equality.

It didn’t pan out. The newly rich plebeians didn’t do much to help out their old friends.^[3] They just splurged with all their money and enjoyed life as rich people. The plebeians didn’t realize that right away, though.

For a while, things were actually better and they thought their new government was working. But it turned out to be an economic boom brought on by a war. When the nation dipped back into a recession, they were poorer than ever.

The poor stayed poor, the rich stayed rich, and the rare few who broke the mold didn’t do a thing to help out their fellow man.

7 People Who Are In Debt Can Be Controlled

After Rome was sacked by the Gauls, the republic had to funnel a fortune into defense. Taxes went up, the poor went bankrupt, and the people of Rome were soon overwhelmed with so much debt that they couldn’t see any way out of it.

It’s something that ought to sound familiar to a lot of us. For example, the average American leaves college with more than $37,000 in debt from student loans alone, and that’s not even the worse case. In Australia, Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark, the average person’s debt is more than twice their annual income. In fact, the average Australian owes $250,000.^[4]

Like a lot of us today, the plebeians of Rome lobbied their government for debt forgiveness. And the government listened. Now that the lower classes were politically equal, the politicians started pandering to them. Populist leaders promised “bread and circuses”—in other words, entertainment, food, and debt relief.

The plebeians were so desperate to feed their families that they didn’t care what a politician did as long as he canceled their debt. So they started voting for populist leaders like Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus. Since the bread and circuses kept coming, the plebeians didn’t get too worried when the elections stopped.

6 Printing Money Isn’t A Good Way To Save The Economy

A Chinese official once warned the US that its national debt was getting out of control. America, the official complained, was selling too many Treasury bonds. It was increasing the national debt in a way that could collapse the entire economy. America wasn’t just selling bonds. In the official’s words, the country was “printing money.”^[5]

That’s a move that ruined Rome. As the empire got bigger and its expenses got higher, Emperor Nero came up with the bright idea of using less silver in Roman coins. That way, he could print more money. And if Nero could print more money, he figured that he would have enough to make that Scrooge McDuck money pool he’d been dreaming of.

The idea didn’t ruin everything overnight. But Nero’s successors copied him, and of course, inflation went wild. Over the next 200 years, the price of wheat increased 200-fold and Roman coins became almost completely worthless.

Whether America is really “printing money” is up for debate. But they’re definitely putting off money problems for later. Despite having the highest GDP in the world, the US also has the highest debt in the world. They owe a staggering $18 trillion dollars, a lot of which comes from Treasury bonds.

The country in second place for “most debt” is the European Union. That’s right—the entire European Union, which is 28 countries combined, has less debt than the United States has on its own.

5 Don’t Underestimate The Barbarians

Rome managed to stand its ground against massive empires. The Romans fought against Greece and Egypt and won. The greatest and most advanced societies fell at their feet, but Rome still got crushed—by barbarians.

Everything started to go wrong when Attila the Hun rampaged through the Western Roman Empire. To the Romans, this was a primitive culture. One Roman wrote that the Huns were “so little advanced in civilization that they [made] no use of fire, nor any kind of relish, in the preparation of their food.” To the Romans, this was like a battle against cavemen.^[6]

It was a little like the modern war on terrorism. On one side was the most advanced and powerful country in the world, and on the other was a group of vicious men who didn’t care if they lived or died.

The Romans lost. Attila demanded half their empire. When they refused, he rampaged through their country, stealing their siege weapons and advanced technology as he went. By the end, the Romans had to meet all his demands. From then on, they were regularly paying the Huns massive tributes just to beg the Huns not to finish Rome off.

4 Definitely Don’t Train The Barbarians In Advanced Warfare

Attila the Hun didn’t make it to Rome, but the Visigoths did. The Visigoth leader Alaric managed to lead a horde of barbarian warriors all the way to the Roman capital, take everything they had, and call himself merciful for letting them keep their lives. The Roman army was powerless to stop the barbarian hordes because, for the most part, the Roman army was the barbarian hordes.

Alaric and the men who sacked Rome were armed and trained by the Romans. Years ago, Rome started hiring Visigoths and Gauls to fill up their legions. Eventually, there were so many barbarians in the Roman army that the Roman people just called their army “the barbarians” to save time.^[7]

During the Soviet-Afghan War, the US Army called Islamic fighters from around the Middle East to come to Afghanistan so the Americans could arm and train these Islamic fighters. Just as Rome trained Alaric and the Visigoths and gave them siege weapons, the US trained Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and gave them Stinger missiles.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that it turned out the same way.

3 Big Military Budgets Bankrupt Big Countries

The problem with being the world’s superpower is that it makes you the world’s biggest target. That’s something Rome learned. As they got bigger, their threats got bigger and they had to pour everything they had into the army.

It’s something that America has learned, too. Even though military spending has skyrocketed since September 11, 2001, America isn’t safe. Today, Americans funnel $598.5 billion per year into their military. To put that in perspective, more than one-third of the whole world’s military spending is done by the US.^[8]

The Romans dealt with their ever-growing army by cranking up the taxes. But it didn’t really make things better. With massive taxes weighing down the people, unemployment and poverty ran rampant.

The people started rioting in the streets against the government. For a lot of Romans, it became hard to understand what made living in Rome worth giving up everything to defend it?

2 Watch Out For Rising Eastern Empires

Perhaps the biggest threat wasn’t the people who were trying to burn Rome to the ground. In a way, the most dangerous problem may have been the people who were letting Rome be: Parthia, the Eastern empire than the Romans could never defeat.

Early on, the Romans and the Parthians tried to destroy each other but they couldn’t pull it off.^[9] The two nations were too powerful, and it just wasn’t worth it. So, in the end, they called for a peace treaty and agreed to leave side by side in relative peace.

They entered a weird relationship as trade partners that didn’t trust each other and that tried to beat each other in every deal—a little like the United States and modern China. And that ended up changing everything.

When a peaceful Han Chinese diplomat tried to reach Rome, the Parthians stopped him and turned him away. The diplomat found out that the Parthians had been deliberately keeping the two nations apart so that they could control Roman trade.

If he’d made it through, though, Rome might have had an ally and an insight into the Huns before Attila invaded. And everything could have changed.

1 The Fall Of An Empire Doesn’t Happen Overnight

Rome didn’t collapse in a pile of fire and ashes. Just getting sacked by barbarians didn’t spell the end of Rome. It died out peacefully over hundreds of years from dozens of decisions that probably seemed like great ideas at the time.

As the different parts of Rome started feuding over religious changes and economic problems, it got split up into parts a few times before it officially became two different empires in AD 364. A little over 100 years later, the Western empire completely fell to the hands of the barbarians and the lines of Europe started looking like crude early versions of a modern map.^[10]

Even that, though, wasn’t the real end of Rome. The Eastern empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, lived on for more than 1,000 years after the split. As the Byzantine Empire, Rome survived the Sasanian War, the Muslim conquests, and even the Crusades before they were finally absorbed by the Ottoman Empire.

It took 1,000 years, though, for Rome to die. It wasn’t over the second they stopped being the world’s biggest superpower. They lingered on for centuries. Their quality of life slowly changed, and most of their people were probably unaware that they were living through the fall of an empire.

Odds are, the same thing will happen to us. We won’t go out in a big explosion. We’ll just slowly start fighting wars we can’t win and struggling with an economy we can’t handle. And slowly, we’ll become nothing more than a chapter in a history book.

The 20th century was a time of immense global achievement but also of global unrest. It saw the fall and rise of empires, borders redivided, and nations created. It was a time when the world had a better standard of living then all human civilizations across all eras of time, but it was on the tip of a nuclear apocalypse.

You all knew this, but what about the lessons that you didn’t know? From one man’s attempt to create better human beings through DNA to the vote of a single man deciding the fate of the entire human race, these are the history lessons that you did not know but have left their mark on the entire world.

10 The Curse Of Timur

Timur (aka Tamerlane) declared himself a great khan in the year 1369 and made it his mission to rebuild the Mongol Empire into what it was at the time of Genghis Khan. After his death, he was buried with an alleged curse on his tomb stating that whoever shall disturb it will face an invader far worse than himself. According to local lore, the curse was said to take three days to affect the cursed.

In 1941, under the command of Joseph Stalin, Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov excavated the tomb for the purpose of recreating Timur’s face. Three days after the excavation, the Nazis executed Operation Barbarossa, invading the Soviet Union without warning. This resulted in some of the deadliest battles in human history and many Soviet defeats. Only after Joseph Stalin ordered the reburial of Timur did the tides of war change in favor of the Soviets, allowing them to gain the upper hand against Nazi Germany, push their forces west, and turn the tide of the war in favor of the allies.^[1]

9 South African Nuclear Disarmament

In a session of the South African parliament in 1993, President F.W. de Klerk revealed that at one point, the nation had developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons. This confirmed the fears of many other African nations that the South African government had done so. However, in 1990, all South African nuclear warheads were dismantled in order to create “international cooperation and trust,” in the words of President de Klerk.

This was the first time in history that a nation voluntarily dismantled its nuclear arms and one of only four instances in history. The other nations dismantled theirs because they could no longer keep up with the maintenance after the collapse of the Soviet Union. South Africa’s decision, however, was made in order to extend an olive branch to the global community and show the nation’s devotion to peace.^[2]

8 The Carnation Revolution

The Carnation Revolution took place on April 25, 1974, when the Armed Forces Movement, led by General Antonio Spinola and backed by many Portuguese military members and prominent civilians, ended the Estado Novo regime in Portugal.^[3] The regime was replaced with a democratic system which restored many civil rights in Portugal. Over the course of the next ten years, a constitution was established, and a stable two-party system was formed.

One of the revolution’s main triggers was a large portion of Portugal’s budget being spent on fighting wars in the African colonies. After many years of fighting, the Portuguese military had become fed up with the large loss of life in an unwinnable war, thus motivating the coup. After the revolution, the new government gave independence to Portugal’s colonies.

7 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis

Not since the 1917 Communist revolution had Russia seen the level of political violence that it did during this crisis. It began due to the growing tensions between Russia’s parliament and President Boris Yeltsin. The peak of the crisis came on September 21, 1993, when President Yeltsin attempted to dissolve the parliament despite not having the authority to do so. As a direct response, the parliament impeached Yeltsin and named Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoy as the acting president.

The situation escalated on October 3, when demonstrators attacked Russian police surrounding the parliament, invaded mayors’ offices, and attempted to invade a Russian television network. The conflict ended on October 4, when the previously neutral army stormed Moscow’s White House (where the members of parliament were holed up) and arrested the leaders of the resistance under the orders of Yeltsin.^[4]

6 George Wallace And Arthur Bremer

George Wallace was the 45th governor of Alabama and the final independent presidential candidate to win promised electoral college votes. George Wallace was also one of the most controversial politicians in US history due to his extreme segregationist views. During his third presidential campaign in 1972, he was shot by Arthur Bremer during a campaign rally.^[5] At the time of the assassination attempt, Wallace was showing positive support numbers due to his more moderate platform, but the shooting derailed his campaign.

Bremer served 35 years in prison before being released on parole in 2007. Wallace returned to Alabama and served out his remaining term as governor, despite being paralyzed from the waist down. He later tried unsuccessfully to run for president again. Wallace was later elected as Alabama’s governor for a final term before retiring from politics.

5 Rhodesian Bush War

Founded as a British colony in 1890 by South African entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes, Rhodesia was nicknamed “The Breadbasket of Africa,” due to the extremely fertile farmland and hospitable climate. These features attracted many European settlers, primarily from Britain, during the 20th century. Rhodesia developed quickly into one of the most prosperous and developed regions in Africa and produced large amounts of natural resources, such as chrome and nickel. Rhodesians served Britain in both World Wars, and many Rhodesian men served as mercenaries during the Congo Crisis.

In spite of the development in Rhodesia, much of the native population felt disenfranchised by the white minority government, which largely excluded them from the political process. This gave rise to communist black nationalist groups, which waged guerrilla war on Rhodesia. During the conflict, Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965, resulting in heavy international sanctions.^[6] The rebel government, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, received aid from South Africa as well as the Portuguese colonies in the region, allowing the Rhodesian forces to fight for as long as they did. After the Portuguese colonies fell and the US government successfully pressured South Africa to stop aiding Ian Smith and his government, Rhodesia was left on its own.

The war lasted from 1965 to 1980, when the Lancaster Agreement gave the African natives control of the government, resulting in Rhodesia being renamed Zimbabwe and President Robert Mugabe coming into power, never to step down.

4 B-59 Submarine Incident

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Russian B-59 submarine was operating in the Caribbean while US military forces were dropping depth charges as part of their Cuban blockade. Panicked, the captain and senior officers debated what to do. On board this B-59 was a nuclear warhead, and as the bombs fell, the submarine’s captain felt it was necessary to launch the warhead.

Thankfully, according to Soviet protocol, all senior officers aboard must approve any launch of a nuclear warhead. Two of the officers voted in favor of a launch, but one senior officer named Vasili Arkhipov voted against it, thus saving the world from nuclear destruction.^[7]

3 Genius Babies

From 1980 to 1999, over 200 babies were born using the sperm of Nobel Prize winners, high-IQ individuals, and athletes. The project was founded by a Southern California tycoon named Robert K. Graham. Graham’s goal was to create a better generation through the use of positive eugenics. At the time, the project was controversial, with opinions ranging from it being elitist to straight-up genocidal. Nevertheless, the effort lasted for almost 20 years, with many babies being born.

Although no evidence has been brought forward to suggest that the children are above average in any way, shape, or form, largely due to the secrecy of the project, the families who have spoken about their children have described them as “wonderful.”^[8]

2 Attack Of The Dead Men

In 1915, World War I was in full rage, with never-before-seen weapons and tactics being employed by both sides of the conflict. According to one story, during a German offensive on the Russian Fort of Osowiec, located in modern-day Poland, the German forces employed chemical weapons on the Russians. The effects of the deadly gas on the Russian soldiers were catastrophic, causing them to cough up blood onto their uniforms.

When the Russians launched a counteroffensive, the invading German forces were horrified when they saw what appeared to be zombie-like soldiers. This resulted in the terrified German army retreating, despite having superior numbers against the Russian forces.^[9] This story, although virtually unknown in the West, is a symbol of Russian military power and is commonly told and taught in Russia.

1 The Wall Street Putsch

The months between the election and inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a time when American democracy hung in the balance. This was the Great Depression, and President Roosevelt’s plan to minimize its effects angered legislators on both the left and the right. The left argued that he hadn’t gone far enough, while the right believed that the new president’s policies were evidence that he was a socialist or communist, with some even going so far as to say that due to his Dutch descent, Roosevelt was a Jew and a part of a larger Jewish plot. This led to many calling for an end to American democracy and the institution of a communist or fascist regime.

These calls were taken a step further by a group of right-wing financiers. They hoped to convince President Roosevelt to step down and leave a military-led fascist government in his place. This group was able to gather millions in funds and also stockpile weapons in preparation for their new government. Their plan was derailed when they approached former Marine general Smedley Darlington Butler to lead their forces. Instead of joining the conspiracy, Butler reported the conspirators to Congress, recognizing them as traitors, thus putting an end to their plot.^[10]

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