Custodes Futurifor the advancement of humanity

Societal factor, barrier 6 of 6

Global and existential risks

Ord (2020) argues humanity underinvests in reducing risks such as pandemics, nuclear war, climate change, and emerging technologies. His probability estimates are his own judgments, not measurements.

Evidence

  • COVID-19 deaths. WHO estimated 14.83 million excess deaths worldwide in 2020 and 2021, 2.74 times the 5.42 million reported as caused by COVID-19. Only about half of countries had complete death data, so many estimates are modeled (Msemburi et al., 2023).
  • Pandemic preparedness. A model estimated expected global losses from future pandemics at over $700 billion a year and found that spending $60 billion up front and $5 billion a year on vaccine production capacity would yield an expected net gain of more than $500 billion (Glennerster, Snyder, and Tan, 2022).
  • Uncertainty. A University of Leeds policy brief argues that preparedness return-on-investment claims rest on unreliable assumptions, so the size of the underinvestment is uncertain.

Proposed and experimental methods

Methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places, or tried and then failed. Each shows a stage label and an evidence rating. A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works. The stage labels are explained on the societal factor page.

  • Kinetic deflection of asteroids, DART (Early trial, B). NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test deliberately crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, the small moon of the asteroid Didymos, as the first full-scale test of deflecting an asteroid by impact (Daly et al., 2023). The impact shortened Dimorphos's orbit by 33.0 minutes (plus or minus 1.0 minute), far more than the roughly 7 minutes expected from the spacecraft's momentum alone, because ejected debris added push (Thomas et al., 2023). It is one test on one small asteroid.
  • WHO Pandemic Agreement (Approved but not scaled, B). The World Health Assembly adopted the agreement on May 20, 2025, after a committee vote of 124 in favor, none against, and 11 abstentions. It includes a planned pathogen access and benefit-sharing system under which participating manufacturers would give WHO rapid access to 20% of their real-time production of pandemic products, it opens for signature only after an annex on that system is adopted, and it enters into force after 60 ratifications (WHO, 2025).
  • 100 Days Mission for pandemic vaccines (Theoretical, C). The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) aims to have safe vaccines ready for initial authorization and large-scale manufacturing within 100 days of identifying a new pandemic threat, compared with 326 days for COVID-19 vaccines, and cites modeling that meeting the target could have averted 8.3 million excess deaths (CEPI, n.d.). The target has not yet been met for a new pathogen.
  • Far-UVC light to disinfect indoor air (Early trial, C). Far-UVC lamps emit 222 nm ultraviolet light that kills airborne microbes and is thought to be relatively safe for skin and eyes. In a room-sized chamber, five filtered lamps at exposure limits allowed for 8 hours reduced airborne Staphylococcus aureus by 98.4% (Eadie et al., 2022). In a conference room, one lamp did not significantly change ozone or fine particles, but four lamps raised ozone by 5 to 10 ppb and particle counts by 16% (Narouei et al., 2025). No trial measuring infections in people was found.
  • Government AI safety and security institutes (Approved but not scaled, C). Governments have set up institutes to test advanced AI models for dangerous capabilities. On February 14, 2025, the UK renamed its AI Safety Institute the AI Security Institute, focused on risks such as AI misuse for chemical and biological weapons, cyber-attacks, and crime, and said it would not focus on bias or freedom of speech (UK Government, 2025). No evaluation of whether such institutes reduce risk was found.
  • Reversed: U.S.-Russia strategic arms limits, New START (Failed or reversed, B). New START capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed missiles and heavy bombers. Russia suspended implementation in February 2023, the United States did not respond to a September 2025 Russian proposal to keep observing the central limits for a year, and the treaty expired on February 5, 2026 (Arms Control Association, 2026).

Sources cited on this page

  1. Glennerster, R., Snyder, C. M., & Tan, B. J. (2022). Calculating the costs and benefits of advance preparations for future pandemics. NBER Working Paper 30565. Published 2023 in IMF Economic Review, 71(3), 611-648. DOI C Limited
  2. Ord, T. (2020). The Precipice. London: Bloomsbury. New York: Hachette. C Limited
  3. Msemburi, W., Karlinsky, A., Knutson, V., Aleshin-Guendel, S., Chatterji, S., & Wakefield, J. (2023). The WHO estimates of excess mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature, 613, 130-137. DOI B Moderate
  4. Daly, R. T., Ernst, C. M., Barnouin, O. S., Chabot, N. L., Rivkin, A. S., Cheng, A. F., et al. (2023). Successful kinetic impact into an asteroid for planetary defence. Nature, 616(7957), 443-447. link B Moderate
  5. Eadie, E., Hiwar, W., Fletcher, L., Tidswell, E., O'Mahoney, P., Buonanno, M., et al. (2022). Far-UVC (222 nm) efficiently inactivates an airborne pathogen in a room-sized chamber. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 4373. link C Limited
  6. Narouei, F. H., Tang, Z., Wang, S. I., Hashmi, R. H., Welch, D., Sethuraman, S., et al. (2025). Effects of germicidal far-UVC on ozone and particulate matter in a conference room. PLOS ONE, 20(8), e0328224. link C Limited
  7. Thomas, C. A., Naidu, S. P., Scheirich, P., Moskovitz, N. A., Pravec, P., Chesley, S. R., et al. (2023). Orbital period change of Dimorphos due to the DART kinetic impact. Nature, 616, 448-451. link B Moderate

Every source for this factor is listed on the societal factor page.