AHC: Second European Dark Age, at the latest possible date

How could a second Dark Age occur in Europe?

What's the latest possible date that a second Dark Age could happen?
 
The Mongols invade Europa and burn the majority of the Urban Centers (Vienna, the Italian States, Constantinople, Warsaw, if possible but a stretch a few in Germany) to the ground and stamp on the ashes.
 
The Mongols invade Europa and burn the majority of the Urban Centers (Vienna, the Italian States, Constantinople, Warsaw, if possible but a stretch a few in Germany) to the ground and stamp on the ashes.

Pretty much. The destruction of so much wealth would nip the Renaissance in the bud, destroy the very heart and soul of Christendom, and leave the remains of it (Spain, France, western Germany) a band of extremely militaristic crusading states who are vassals to the Khan.

They harness their naval expertise, should they develop that, and build ships for the Khan to travel across the ocean and destroy the Mesoamerican civilizations with far more passion than the worst Conquistador.
 
...Maybe this is crazy, but what about wars of reformation leading to European conflagration, ala Thirty Years' War on a continental scale? Then maybe the Ottomans step in for conquest and to bring some stability.
 
Mongol conquest past Germany, let alone vassalage of Western Europe is ASB. Are these Mongols riding iron steeds and firing AKs?... Because I would pay to see a movie like that :D

Seriously though, WI the Hundred Years' War lasts even longer and manages to devastate even more of Europe, perhaps including even more belligerents.
 
30 years war goes even more awry and leads to battles in France, Britain, and more of Spain, not to mention poor Italy and Germany getting practically destroyed to nothing but a rubbled mass.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
The heightened Soviet-NATO tensions in the 1980s go nuclear and Europe gets carpet bombed with atomic weapons in the crossfire. The movie Threads from Britain depicts a nuclear war between the US and USSR in the 1980s leading to a new dark age with people whoring themselves out for rats to eat, police shooting looters and people farming fields with steam engines and educating their radiation birth defect damaged children with faulty VHS tapes of BBC children's television.
 
Nuclear war is it?

inb4yellowstone...

yellowstone, the ultimate dark age... (would it be wrong to plug one of my stories pertaining to this particular subject right now.... i think i shall refrain from forthright plugging)
 
How could a second Dark Age occur in Europe?

What's the latest possible date that a second Dark Age could happen?


Do to Western Europe what the Persian/Muslim wars did to Byzantium.

Tear it in half, and leave the rest an economically ruined, depopulated wreck.

Ruin its cities and push the society that remains into a constantly besieged, socially, religiously and ethnically conservative rump.

A society that is so focused on retaining what little is left that it later becomes its own greatest barrier to innovation and reform.
 
The Mongols could have razed and vassalized Europe, but they lacked the motivation. I wonder what would have happened if the Mongols and their tactical advantages had been forced to move West, like the Huns. Say, an aggressive and powerful Song or Jin China tires of steppe invaders and pushes the Mongols out, and they migrate west and take over the Russian states. From there, they eventually seek to dominate Europe.
 
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