I am not sure what “the collapse of an empire” means. True empires bleed off colonies or satellites, often over hundreds of years; sometimes with wars, sometimes without.

Today being imprecise with language to smear one’s political opponents is in fashion; a lot of talk about “empire” and “regime” etc. is just propaganda.

The fall of a government will leave a power vacuum and people will rush to fill it; violence might be part of the fall but will almost certainly be part of the competition to be the replacement. We have dozens of examples in the last hundred years.

During all those times, people have to live their lives; things go on pretty much as normal for most people not involved in the struggle for power. However there are disruptions to utilities and financial systems; many people lose their life savings and sometimes feeding people is hard, let alone doing business like manufacturing.

The only thing that is “apocalyptic” about the fall of a government and its replacement with a new one, is when the new government is full of radical ideologues that use the force of government, and ultimately violence, against their political opponents, such as in the Russian Revolution, the Nazi rise to power, and Mao’s rise to power.

This is not a foregone conclusion; we didn’t see intentional mass starvation or genocide in Iran, for example, although there were thousands of executions as the new regime purged its opponents.