The Organic Prepper By Dagny Taggart
Humans are incredibly resilient, but we are not impervious to total annihilation. In fact, researchers from the University of Oxford recently determined that the probability of our entire species going extinct due to natural risks (not man-created ones!) in any given year is as high as one in 14,000.
The end of humanity may result from natural or man-made (anthropogenic) causes, including pandemics, nuclear war and the resulting nuclear winter, biological warfare, Artificial Intelligence, ecological collapse, and geological or cosmological disasters such as an impact event of a near-Earth object. All of these have the potential to entirely wipe all of us out.
Scientists and philosophers often explore the concept of existential risks – that is, threats with the potential to destroy the entire human race.
Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford and director of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), was the first to define “existential risk” in a 2002 paper:
One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. An existential risk is one where humankind as a whole is imperiled.
Existential disasters have major adverse consequences for the course of human civilization for all time to come. (source)
Researchers asked people how they feel about human extinction.
Recently, a team of researchers at the University of Oxford conducted a study to find out how people feel about the possibility of human extinction.
They first asked participants to compare three outcomes for humanity, ranking them from best to worst:
(1) There is no catastrophe.