Responsible attention to the long-term future would not be complete without considering global catastrophic risk (GCR).
Scenarios of anthropogenic GCR include:
- misuse or abuse of AI
- nuclear war
- runaway technologies
- ecosystem breakdown
Scenarios of non-anthropogenic GCR include:
- plagues / pandemics
- calderas / supervolcanoes
- comets / asteroids
- solar flares / coronal mass ejections
- gamma ray burst
- contact with extraterrestrial life
In the event of a GCR occurring amid BAU, BAU2, CT, or SW, significant fallout would follow in the aftermath and setback civilization on multiple levels, unless otherwise planned to withstand by design.
