OVERVIEW

The human species has a long history of overcoming tremendous obstacles, often coming out stronger than before. Indeed, some anthropologists argue that human intelligence emerged as the consequence of the last major ice age, a period of enormous environmental stress demanding flexibility, foresight and creativity on the part of the small numbers of early Homo sapiens. Historically, those who have prophesied doom for human civilization have been proven wrong, time and again, by the capacity of our species to both adapt to and transform our conditions.

It is in this context that the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) offers its forecast of the likely extinction of humankind within the next quarter-century.

The GEAS forecast differs from earlier doomsday predictions in three significant ways:

The first is that GEAS does not link this extinction to a single factor. No one disease or war or environmental hazard poses a sufficient danger to draw us to this conclusion. Instead, it is the combination of factors, each below the threshold necessary to put our survival at risk. These factors--which we are calling "super-threats"--reinforce each other in substantive ways, creating a set of conditions that we believe capable of ending the human experiment.

The second difference is that the GEAS forecast relies on the WorldRun simulation system. Adapted from the GEAS ecosystem simulations that successfully predicted the unexpected extinctions of red squirrels in 2015, WorldRun draws on a multi-petabyte information base and a massively-parallel computing cloud. Running for nearly 50 days, the first WorldRun simulation offered a likely human extinction date sometime in the early 2040s. Subsequent modeling and confirmation tests have narrowed that likely extinction date to 2042 --just 23 years from now.

The third difference is that GEAS does not argue or believe that this future is unavoidable. This is perhaps the most important element of our forecast. This is not fate. If we act now--and act with intelligence, flexibility, foresight and creativity--we can avoid the final threat. We may even come out of this period far stronger than we were before.

The Supersthreats

GEAS has identified five superthreats and given them memorable names as a way of encouraging discussion and awareness:

  • Quarantine covers the global response to declining health and pandemic disease, including the current Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ReDS) crisis.
  • Ravenous focuses on the imminent collapse of the global food system, as well as debates over industrial vs. ecological agricultural models, and basic issues of access, energy, and carbon.
  • Power Struggle tracks the results of energy resource peaks and the shifts in international power as nations fight for energy supremacy and the world searches for alternative energy solutions.
  • Outlaw Planet embodies the volatile mix of new forms of surveillance, transparency, civil rights, and access to information as people work out new rules for human security.
  • Generation Exile follows the massive "diaspora of diasporas" underway globally, as the number of refugees and migrants skyrockets in the face of climate change, economic disruption, and war.

At GEAS, we were surprised when the WorldRun simulation produced these five issues as key threats to our existence. It's clear that none of these threats, individually, has the capacity to drive the human species to extinction. But it has become equally clear that, in combination, these threats reinforce each other, and make the easy resolution to any one threat difficult. The models demonstrated how easily these five could have a "vicious cycle" effect, leading all too quickly into a cascading set of catastrophic collapses of key global social and resource systems.

We were also surprised to see that climate disruption was not listed among our primary threats. However, climate change sets important thresholds for all five superthreats, which should be should be considered in the light of a still degrading global environment.

CONSIDERING THE THREATS

The five superthreats divide into to two broad categories. Two of the threats--Quarantine and Ravenous--emerge from changes to the physical environment in which humanity lives. As with all of the super-threats, the key dilemmas embedded in these threats are sociopolitical, but both strongly reflect the old environmental adage that "nature bats last." Two more of the threats--Outlaw Planet and Generation Exile--come directly from problems of social cohesion and civil society. These two super-threats undermine our capacity to respond quickly and effectively to global dilemmas. The last threat--Power Struggle--straddles the two categories, with both a strong environmental component and a basis in the fragility of existing institutions.

Put simply, each of these five super-threats makes the others worse.

THE WorldRun SIMULATION

In the multiple WorldRun simulation exercises GEAS has performed, the details can vary, but the outcome has been consistent: by the decade between 2040 and 2050, typically closer to the beginning of the period, the combined drivers described here as "superthreats" have driven the global human population to collapse. The super-threats are rarely directly responsible for the result; instead, the combination has so weakened human civilization that any one new global crisis looms catastrophic: a succession of global warming-driven superstorms, regional war, or new pandemic disease--any of which would become more likely as a result of the superthreats--would be enough to trigger the wholesale collapse of the human endeavor.

SUPERTHREAT CROSS-IMPACTS

THREATS Quarantine Ravenous Power Struggle Outlaw Planet Generation Exile
Quarantine x Disrupts food distribution, workforce, health care capacity. Energy costs, infrastructure disruption limit ability to fight disease. Further social breakdown. Drives demands for monitoring. Constrains mobility. Targets minorities as scapegoats.
Ravenous Adds starvation to existing health crisis. Increases mortality rates. x Eliminates broad availability of biofuels as alternative Griefing and terror attacks on food systems. Famine and related conditions are key driver for ongoing migration
Power Struggle Reduced resources for alternative energy development. Hard to separate fight over food and fight over biofuels. Reduces resources for agriculture. x Increases money, motivation for griefing and disruption of energy. Secondary driver for migration, reduces ease of movement
Outlaw Planet Reduced access to and reliability of medicines. Increased monitoring of goods and lives. Increasing conflict over food. More food violence. Direct attacks on power infrastructure, both production and distribution. x Social conflict is a key driver for ongoing migration
Generation Exile Increased disease vectors. Harder to control spread of disease. Unpredictable demands on food infrastructures, workforce. Unpredictable demands on energy infrastructures, workforce. Easy to hide disruptive elements among diasporic populations. x