[Mick]

This is the best perspective piece I think I have ever read. It focuses on global issues mostly, but it speaks to Abraham Lincoln's seminal quote: A House divided against itself cannot stand.

https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/coronavi...-kill-you/

Billy Bob Thornton's quote in Armageddon on government funding for rare but existential events...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhbF7C317Yg

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On a slightly more serious note, perhaps it's time to assess our collective ability to face global catastrophic risks.  Obviously, it includes pandemic, whether natural or man-made.  Should probably include failure of antibiotics, super bugs, failure of other classes of medicines.  There are weather based risks like global warming, global freezing, climate change, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, and the odd asteroid impact -- which is what concerned Billy Bob Thornton in the prior post.

There are other risks.  Cosmic threats.  Radiation (unforeseen).  Nuclear wars, nuclear accidents.  Extraterristrial invasion.  Artificial intelligence.  Bioweapons.  Terrorism.  Manmade environmental disasters.  Warfare.  Weaponized nanotech.  Drone delivery of weapons over distance.  Superintelligent hostlie artificial intelligence, cyberattack (more successful and unforeseen than usual), experimental technology accident, mineral resource exhaustion, and that old favorite, plain old vanilla warfare.  Perhaps we throw in roving gangs overthrowing towns, cities and states when enough people are out of work for long enough.  Long-term massive unemployment.  Unsustainable population growth.  Mass crop failure.

And there are a few wacky ones.  Cataclysmic Magnetic Pole Shift, sunspots, stellar degeneration, abiogenesis.

Shouldn't we make massive investments to prepare for each of these?

[Mick]

This is the best perspective piece I think I have ever read. It focuses on global issues mostly, but it speaks to Abraham Lincoln's seminal quote: A House divided against itself cannot stand.

https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/coronavi...-kill-you/

Billy Bob Thornton's quote in Armageddon on government funding for rare but existential events...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhbF7C317Yg

---

On a slightly more serious note, perhaps it's time to assess our collective ability to face global catastrophic risks.  Obviously, it includes pandemic, whether natural or man-made.  Should probably include failure of antibiotics, super bugs, failure of other classes of medicines.  There are weather based risks like global warming, global freezing, climate change, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, and the odd asteroid impact -- which is what concerned Billy Bob Thornton in the prior post.

There are other risks.  Cosmic threats.  Radiation (unforeseen).  Nuclear wars, nuclear accidents.  Extraterristrial invasion.  Artificial intelligence.  Bioweapons.  Terrorism.  Manmade environmental disasters.  Warfare.  Weaponized nanotech.  Drone delivery of weapons over distance.  Superintelligent hostlie artificial intelligence, cyberattack (more successful and unforeseen than usual), experimental technology accident, mineral resource exhaustion, and that old favorite, plain old vanilla warfare.  Perhaps we throw in roving gangs overthrowing towns, cities and states when enough people are out of work for long enough.  Long-term massive unemployment.  Unsustainable population growth.  Mass crop failure.

And there are a few wacky ones.  Cataclysmic Magnetic Pole Shift, sunspots, stellar degeneration, abiogenesis.

Shouldn't we make massive investments to prepare for each of these?