The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks

Re:The world should think better about catastrophic and exis... by alasdair_ on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @07:30PM (#23696026)

>any company that set aside resources to protect against a pandemic after the Spanish Flu would have been operating with increased costs for a full 100 years

It's not so much setting aside money for a certain very rare event, it's realizing that there are a LOT of low-probability events that are close to catastrophic and the chance of encountering one of these events is quite high in aggregate even if the chance of a specific event in the pool is low.

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Re:The world should think better about catastrophic and exis... by titzer on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @07:42PM (#23696128)

> and the chance of encountering one of these events is quite high

Indeed, and there are a lot of overlapping disaster preparedness steps that make sense no matter what the triggering event happened to be, so it makes sense to establish, e.g.: robust command and control infrastructure that doesn't rely on primary infrastructure, including communications and chains of command; stockpiles of strategic durable goods like medical equipment, rations, batteries, etc.

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Re:The world should think better about catastrophic and exis... by int_19h on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @11:08PM (#23697355)

Unfortunately, long term, people tend to abandon them. US had many stockpiles before that it no longer does, because they were all sold off as "unneeded".

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