Threats to the very existence of a dominant species on Earth are nothing new: as the extinction of the dinosaurs by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago testifies.…
Fortunately, humanity has survived numerous risks and natural threats over millennia. What is new is that we, ourselves, now have the ability to destroy human civilisation.
Around the world, academics and entrepreneurs are trying to wake us up to self-inflicted potential disasters that could lead to human extinction or civilisational collapse. Chief among these hidden heroes are members of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), who are dedicated to promoting investigation and a better understanding of these threats.
Both these research centres are in the United Kingdom: the CSER within the University of Cambridge and the FHI at the University of Oxford. The CSER founded in 2012 has 12 full-time staff and can number among its supporters Jaan Tallinn the co-founder of Skype and Elon Musk—founder and Chief Executive of both Tesla and Space X.
PANDEMICS
Professor Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, was a founding member of the CSER and his latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity discusses these threats. In an exclusive interview he told Reader’s Digest: “The kind of existential threat with the potential to wipe out every human, is most unlikely. But I do worry about devastating setbacks to our civilisation that could cascade globally. In the short run I worry most about pandemics, bio-terror, or cyber attacks. I worry particularly about these because our society is fragile, and there could be a breakdown in our order of life if it were disrupted or hospitals were overwhelmed.”
Cyber sabotage—for example, the malicious software virus dubbed "Stuxnet" that crippled Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2010—if applied to critical infrastructure, such as an electricity grid, has the potential to bring an entire country to a standstill.
This story is from the February 2019 edition of Reader's Digest UK.
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This story is from the February 2019 edition of Reader's Digest UK.
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