Well, obviously there's no point hiding in the woods from something that's going to wipe out the whole species. We were talking about disasters that could make hiding out in the woods a serious survival strategy.
A global
economic collapse could caused by a very localized catastrophe, if the local were in the Middle East, or Europe, or East Asia or...well, you get the idea. Heck, this Venezualan strike has
OPEC worrying about the price of oil (I'm betting that they're thinking of the European economy more than the US).
In any case, civilization as
I know it would continue
