A little bit ago, I wrote a post called On the Possible Scenarios and their Likelihood, in which I described a hierarchy of disasterous scenarios. This post contains an image which illustrates said hierarchy.
The gradients between different states represent the transitions between them. Their height in the pyramid and their color represents the relative severity of them. Note that this severity is an overall look at it, a population-level view. The severity of any of these scenarios might be anywhere from safe to extremely deadly for any given individual. You might be murdered during a ROW scenario (though you can be relatively sure that your murderer will be caught and punished), or you might be living in safe and secure conditions during a systemic collapse.
As you can see, some scenarios are capable of skipping over others. One example is the SOW, which can emerge from a stable, ROL scenario. What might be less obvious is that it might also arise from a COL scenario, and does not require a transition through it to a local or regional disruption. Local and regional disruptions can also arise directly from a ROL scenario, because they are more often than not caused by environmental factors. However, even socio-politically-driven disruptions can arise from a stable ROL scenario. One example of this is the Tulsa Massacre (though that might also be considered a limited SOW scenario).
The gradients are the most important part, because they help to convey that there are no hard, dividing lines between these different scenarios. Realistically, any scenario could rapidly transition into any other one, however it is either extremely uncommon or has never happened for transitions that are not outlined here. There has never been a known example of an SC scenario rapidly becoming an ROL scenario, for example. But it is not impossible.
The dominant colors help convey information, as well. The pure yellow of the local and regional disruptions distinguishes them from the green-dominated ROL and COL scenarios, and the red-dominated SD, SOW and SC scenarios. In this chart, where there is green, it is possible to live a safe, normal life without putting effort into securing one’s safety. Where there is red, one must expend effort on survival, effort which comes at the cost of revenue-generating activities, such as working a job or selling one’s creations or services.
As a final note, I considered putting this image in that post, and I likely will edit it to include this image, but I will make sure there is a link to this post, as this contains too much information to fit into a simple caption.