It wasn't all over. Things quickly got back to a level of normality in Rome after the sacking of the city by the barbarians. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was a slow process that was punctuated with horrific events such as the barbarian capture of the city of Rome. There was no single event that marked the end of the Empire, although historians sometimes like to simplify things by picking an event, and calling it the end. The West isn't going to end overnight, although we may suffer very nasty events every so often as we descend into a new Dark Age of ignorance. It's not so much an end we're facing, as it is a transition into something else. Probably into something less free and less prosperous.