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A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, [2] even endangering or destroying modern civilization. [3] An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's existence or potential is known as an " existential risk ".
Scenarios in which a global catastrophic risk creates harm have been widely discussed. Some sources of catastrophic risk are anthropogenic (caused by humans), such as global warming, [1] environmental degradation, and nuclear war. [2] Others are non-anthropogenic or natural, such as meteor impacts or supervolcanoes.
The risks covered by the book include both anthropogenic (man made) risks and non-anthropogenic risks. Anthropogenic: artificial general intelligence, biological warfare, nuclear warfare, nanotechnology, anthropogenic climate change, global warming, stable global totalitarianism; Non-anthropogenic: asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts
A plausible and significant contributor to global catastrophic risk; the potential for climate change to be a global catastrophic threat can be referred to as "catastrophic climate change". Global decimation risk: The probability of a loss of 10% (or more) of global population and the severe disruption of global critical systems (such as food ...
Normalcy bias can cause people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster. Therefore, people think that they will be safe even though information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reasons to believe there is a risk. The normalcy bias causes a cognitive dissonance that people then must work to eliminate. Some ...
The historical precursors of existential risks studies can be found in early 19th-century thought around human extinction and the more recent models and theories of global catastrophic risk that date mainly to the Cold War period, especially the thinking around a hypothetical nuclear holocaust. [7]
Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass (and perhaps also everything else) on Earth while building many more of themselves, [1] [2] a scenario that has been called ecophagy (the literal consumption of the ecosystem). [3]
Nuclear war is an often-predicted cause of the extinction of humankind. [1]Human extinction or omnicide is the hypothetical end of the human species, either by population decline due to extraneous natural causes, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction), for example by sub-replacement fertility.