Except that didn't happen, Sichr. Large parts of the Matrix were damaged, yes, but there were major portions that were not, such as most of Europe, thanks to Lofwyr. Moreover, the Wireless Matrix Initiative was already gearing up to go before the Crash even hit. Afterall, that's why Horizon came off relatively unscathed, they just happened to be changing over to the new system when the Crash hit. In major sprawls, the new WMI protocols were going up within a couple weeks after the Crash, shortening a process that likely would have happened gradually over months or a year or two. The economy was disrupted severely, and there was a lot of chaos, including many people losing their SINs, but the basic structure of the economy remained, so there was no economic collapse (thanks in no small part to the megas snapping up smaller firms to shore up their accounts). Even the fall of Cross was not enough to start a chain reaction of collapse. There were isolated cases of social unrest (the New Revolution, etc.), but other than Tir Tairngir, not much changed, and there was no collapse of law and order.
To get to apocalyptic levels, you have to have an event that is able to overcome the world's natural bias to not go apocalyptic. Nuclear war, a plague that treats the first world like VITAS treated Africa, a cataclysmic, long-lasting economic crash, etc. We've had wars, plagues, and economic crashes before, even in the real world, and haven't gotten to apocalyptic levels yet. For instance, the Great Depression was part of a world-wide economic downturn that caused massive civil unrest. However, despite lasting for years before World War II ended it, there was no apocalyptic change. World War II was a big deal, involving a global war with all the first world countries, devastating large portions of Europe and Asia. But it did not spiral out into an apocalypse. Even the US Civil War, where there were battles that had casualties of over 20,000 men in a single afternoon, and utterly decimated the economy of the South did not drive the Southern states into an apocalyptic state.
To achieve an apocalyptic state, you need something like what happened with VITAS in Africa, where 80+ percent of the people died, forcing a complete halt to any kind of social order, but affecting first world countries to that degree. And that simply hasn't happened in the Shadowrun universe, despite the best efforts of Winternight and others.
