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Great read - snuck enough time to finish it. Between this and something else you wrote I'm getting the sense that being caught in a city will get incredibly nasty within perhaps a week, and that's not enough time to prepare an exit. If you're ready, maybe a 50/50 chance of getting out. Brr.

Civilizations have fallen this hard before, naturally, including Babylon itself a couple of times. One of the reasons entire populations are put to the sword is that there isn't anything else to do with them. Assyria collapsed into its two principal cities which themselves fell and what was left was a bunch of Mesopotamian farmers looking over their shoulders for raiders and starving when the crops failed. Knossos never did bounce back.

But the tower of Babel was a nearly perfect metaphor for a society dedicated to a utopian aim that collapsed under its own weight when that aim proved to be illusory. Our own progressive aims are grander, taller, and their fall is likely to be even more catastrophic. You captured this nicely. Well done.