Governing Boring Apocalypses: A new typology of existential vulnerabilities and exposures for existential risk research

Liu, Hin-Yan; Lauta, Kristian Cedervall; Maas, Matthijs M.

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2018.04.009

Cited by 49 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Our classification also overlaps with the one by Liu et al (), for example when they distinguish intended from other vulnerabilities or emphasise the importance of resilience. While the classifications otherwise differ, we believe ours contributes to their goal to dig ‘beyond hazards’ and surface a variety of intervention points.…”

Section: Our Framework For Discussing Extinction Risksmentioning

confidence: 74%

Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter

2020

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We look at classifying extinction risks in three different ways, which affect how we can intervene to reduce risk. First, how does it start causing damage? Second, how does it reach the scale of a global catastrophe? Third, how does it reach everyone? In all of these three phases there is a defence layer that blocks most risks: First, we can prevent catastrophes from occurring. Second, we can respond to catastrophes before they reach a global scale. Third, humanity is resilient against extinction even in the face of global catastrophes. The largest probability of extinction is posed when all of these defences are weak, that is, by risks we are unlikely to prevent, unlikely to successfully respond to, and unlikely to be resilient against. We find that it's usually best to invest significantly into strengthening all three defence layers. We also suggest ways to do so tailored to the classes of risk we identify. Lastly, we discuss the importance of underlying risk factorsevents or structural conditions that may weaken the defence layers even without posing a risk of immediate extinction themselves. Policy implications• We can usually best reduce extinction risk by splitting our budget between all defence layers.• We should include measures that reduce whole classes of risks, such as research uncovering currently unseen risk. We should also address risk factors that would not cause extinction themselves but weaken our defences, for example, bad global governance.

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Section: Our Framework For Discussing Extinction Risksmentioning

confidence: 74%

Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter

2020

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“…Richard Posner (, p. 6) defines ‘catastrophe’ as ‘an event that is believed to have a very low probability of materializing but that if it does materialize will produce a harm so great and sudden as to seem discontinuous with the flow of events that preceded it’. The GCR framework is concerned with low‐probability, high‐consequence scenarios that threaten humankind as a whole (Avin et al, ; Beck, ; Kuhlemann, ; Liu, ).…”

Section: Anthropogenic Existential Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The threats to humanity are exacerbated by the complexity of social, technological, and natural systems, which create lethal combinations (e.g. nuclear war and ‘winter’) (Baum et al, ; Ehrlich and Sagan, ; Liu et al, ), feedback loops (e.g. ‘runaway’ climate change) (Steffen et al, , ), small triggers (e.g.…”

Section: Anthropogenic Existential Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Existential Security: Towards a Security Framework for the Survival of Humanity

Sears

2020

Global Policy

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Humankind faces a growing spectrum of anthropogenic existential threats to human civilization and survival. This article therefore aims to develop a new framework for security policy -'existential security'that puts the survival of humanity at its core. It begins with a discussion of the definition and spectrum of 'anthropogenic existential threats', or those threats that have their origins in human agency and could cause, minimally, civilizational collapse, or maximally, human extinction. It argues that anthropogenic existential threats should be conceptualized as a matter of 'security', which follows a logic of protection from threats to the survival of some referent object. However, the existing frameworks for security policy -'human security' and 'national security'have serious limitations for addressing anthropogenic existential threats; application of the 'national security' frame could even exacerbate existential threats to humanity. Thus, the existential security frame is developed as an alternative for security policy, which takes 'humankind' as its referent object against anthropogenic existential threats to human civilization and survival. Policy Implications• 'Anthropogenic existential threats' refer to a class of threats that have their origins in human agency and could bring about, at the minimum, the collapse of civilization, or, at the maximum, human extinction. The spectrum of anthropogenic existential threats is broad and growing.

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“…If undertaken, such a Macro-engineering project must, of necessity, surpass all currently contemplated linear "restoration", "reclamation" or "stop further deterioration" misaligned mega-schemes -all of which are fabulously hyper-costly to taxpayers as well as so poorly conceived structurally as to be obviously inappropriate financial and mega-engineering binational reactions when considered in the full 21st Century world civilization context -in short, too many proposed schemes are simply the effusions of resigned and uncaring politicians and the faithful news-media's hallucinations ceremoniously dumped onto the otherwise uninformed publics, some of whom are irked knowledgeable voters! Could it be that the commonly employed deterministic "landscape developmental" scenarios, in fact the equivalent to virtual resignations to existential risks [15], used until ow for evaluating environmental outcomes should be substituted by stochastic scenarios after AD 2018?…”

Section: Abandoning All Previous Generations' Infrastructure Developmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteorological Macro-Imagineering: A Re-plumbed Freshwater Supply System for the USA’s Southwest? (Macro-Imagenharia Meteorológica: Um Sistema de Abastecimento de Água Doce para o Sudoeste dos EUA?)

Cathcart¹

2019

CALIBRE

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Governing Boring Apocalypses: A new typology of existential vulnerabilities and exposures for existential risk research

Cited by 49 publications

References 24 publications

Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter

Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter

Existential Security: Towards a Security Framework for the Survival of Humanity

Meteorological Macro-Imagineering: A Re-plumbed Freshwater Supply System for the USA’s Southwest? (Macro-Imagenharia Meteorológica: Um Sistema de Abastecimento de Água Doce para o Sudoeste dos EUA?)

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