What are Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs)? Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs) are pandemics so severe that they have the potential not only to cause mass suffering and death across the world, but also to permanently damage or even eliminate humanity’s long-term future. The most severe of these scenarios might result in human extinction. Other scenarios might not result in human extinction but could nonetheless limit human civilization’s long-term potential for flourishing as a result of the collapse of functional political and social institutions, economic catastrophe, and the loss of scientific knowledge and capabilities necessary for a successful industrialized society. It remains a subject of active debate and inquiry as to just how severe a pandemic would have to be in order to have such destructive second-order consequences, and potential answers are necessarily speculative given both the dearth of historical data and the difficulty of forecasting the interactions between complex nonlinear systems.
Thanks for this bit of interesting history on and introduction to GCBRs. Seems like at least compared to nuclear catastrophe, GCBRs should be given some more weight in our humanity-preserving efforts.
Thanks for this bit of interesting history on and introduction to GCBRs. Seems like at least compared to nuclear catastrophe, GCBRs should be given some more weight in our humanity-preserving efforts.