I think that global chemical contamination is underestimated. 1000 tons of dioxin could be enough to finish human race and it could be manufactured with existing technologies by a rogue state.
How would the dioxin be distributed? Decades ago, someone pointed out that there were enough pins to destroy the human race if a pin was stuck in every person’s heart.
Dioxin is very strong chemical which could exist in nature for decades.
If it were used as a doomsday weapon I think it could be made airborn on height of 10-20 kilometers from where it could slowly rain all over the world.
Or it could be put in the oceans, contaminating all marine life and people who eat fishes. Dioxin is known to slowly accumulate in living tishues. Italy still strugle from the catastrophe where 1 kilogramm of dioxin was relized in nature in 1976. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster
But the main problem in my opinion is that the aproach of the author of the post is misleading. Risks are not mutualy independent, which could be suggested when we see a list of main 5 risks. For example by the methods of syntetic biology someone could create a plant which could produce dioxin or other toxins and which could colonise the surface of the Earth killing all other species.
Or nuclear war could result in counter attack by biological weapons. So interraction of risks could be more important when pure risks themselves. But x-risks researchers are attached to the magic of creating list of risks. I could call it list-bias.
And also 6 tonnes of other crap; further, I’m not terribly impressed when I read about 0 increase in all-cause mortality decades after the disaster, countered only by a later paper that smells like datamining (‘neoplasms’? really? where’s my all-cause mortality? That’s what we care about!)
So 2 and 1 have to be runaway global warming and AI risk?
I think that global chemical contamination is underestimated. 1000 tons of dioxin could be enough to finish human race and it could be manufactured with existing technologies by a rogue state.
How would the dioxin be distributed? Decades ago, someone pointed out that there were enough pins to destroy the human race if a pin was stuck in every person’s heart.
Dioxin is very strong chemical which could exist in nature for decades. If it were used as a doomsday weapon I think it could be made airborn on height of 10-20 kilometers from where it could slowly rain all over the world. Or it could be put in the oceans, contaminating all marine life and people who eat fishes. Dioxin is known to slowly accumulate in living tishues. Italy still strugle from the catastrophe where 1 kilogramm of dioxin was relized in nature in 1976. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster
But the main problem in my opinion is that the aproach of the author of the post is misleading. Risks are not mutualy independent, which could be suggested when we see a list of main 5 risks. For example by the methods of syntetic biology someone could create a plant which could produce dioxin or other toxins and which could colonise the surface of the Earth killing all other species.
Or nuclear war could result in counter attack by biological weapons. So interraction of risks could be more important when pure risks themselves. But x-risks researchers are attached to the magic of creating list of risks. I could call it list-bias.
And also 6 tonnes of other crap; further, I’m not terribly impressed when I read about 0 increase in all-cause mortality decades after the disaster, countered only by a later paper that smells like datamining (‘neoplasms’? really? where’s my all-cause mortality? That’s what we care about!)
That’s reasonable. For example, a big war (not necessarily nuclear) could increase the risk of infrastructure disaster.
You’re half right !
The missing one is an xrisk that’s been around for a long, long time.
Giant space rocks?
Nope! Not enough of the big ones around currently.