SanDiegoAg12 said:
An EMP would absolutely break **** to a point of pure chaos.
Even an attack on very accessible telecommunications infrastructure can cut off an entire region from functioning in the digital age.
From the article, I doubt that an EMP would be classified as an existential threat. It would certainly make life difficult for a while and a lot of people would die, but we would continue.
From the article linked above:
Quote:
The term ''existential risk'' means the potential for an outcome that would result in human extinction.
An EMP or a Carrington Event would hardly result in human extinction.
Also, Global Warming would not result in that, either. If anything, up to some point well into the future, Global Warming would be beneficial to mankind. No matter what happens, we aren't going to see the Earth end up like Venus -- we simply don't have the available carbon to make that happen. The problem would, at some point, become self limiting.
Also, another event like the Younger Dryas would create enormous problems as the temperatures fall about 10 to 15 F over a handful of years, but it would not cause the extinction of mankind.
If we entered another Snowball Earth period, then mankind just have to go extinct, but that is very unlikely.
I think that the report is entirely wrong on saying that nuclear war is an existential risk. Sure, there would be plenty of deaths, but mankind would survive. The scenario in Nevil Shute's book and movie
On the Beach is not realistic. It makes for good fiction, though.
Pandemics, too. Sure, pandemics can cause a lot of deaths, but they aren't likely to result in the extinction of mankind.
About the only thing on their list that could be an existential risk would be a comet or asteroid impact, but such an impact would have to be extraordinarily large.
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