Nonlinear Irreversibility Dynamics and Structural Survival in Capital-Intensive Systems

Capital collapse in infrastructure and energy-intensive systems is rarely driven by volatility alone. Structural failure instead emerges through cumulative threshold breaches interacting with leverage amplification, liquidity compression, governance delay, and network contagion. This paper introduces a dynamic irreversibility framework in which capital systems evolve according to a bounded state variable representing structural reversibility capacity. We formalize threshold breach intensity, define a point-of-no-return boundary, and integrate governance-constrained decision gating into the capital survival domain. Using a multi-entity infrastructure simulation calibrated to energy-exposed holding structures, we demonstrate that irreversibility dynamics anticipate structural fragility significantly earlier than conventional stress testing and Value-at-Risk approaches. The framework provides a mathematically tractable survival envelope for long-horizon capital architectures and offers policy-relevant implications for governance-integrated capital stability in infrastructure and energy ecosystems.