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Which of the following keeps you up at night the most - the next major global pandemic after this one (not necessarily on the scale of the medieval Black Death), the next major Krakatoa- or Tambora-scale eruption (not necessarily on the scale of the Toba or Yellowstone super-eruptions), or the next major solar/geomagnetic storm (along the lines of the 1859 Carrington event or the 1921 so-called New York Railroad Storm) that would have an enormous effect on our entire electric/satellite/GPS systems worldwide?
I don't stay up at night worrying about these things when I have COVID and the current drought and other serious real problems to worry about.
I guess the question is which disasters are we best prepared to deal with. The effects of COVID could have been diminished significantly in the US if our leadership had been science-literate, so I think another pandemic isn't at the top of the list. I'm not sure there's much, if anything, we can do about a big volcanic eruption or that we could deal with a large-scale electromagnetic disruption in a time frame to mitigate its effects.
The results aren’t in the least bit surprising, especially in light of what’s going on. Had you asked this question at a different time, you’d probably get other answers. While we’re at it, you could also add major asteroid impact. That could easily be the most devastating one.
What makes any of these disasters truly terrifying, if you sit back and think about it, is that they are either entirely unpredictable or beyond human control.
One way to help would be to repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force. Its repeal went to the floor of the Senate in 2018 and was defeated. Originally passed in the aftermath of the 2001 Trade Center attacks, it's been conveniently used to get around the need for public debate and legal authorization for military actions. Staging of terrorism becomes a precursor to invoking the law to deploy military assets to support covert wars.
You forgot meteor strike. Nuclear war is a big one too. On a personal level, there is heart attack, cancer, stroke, dementia, car accident, unemployment and bankruptcy.
The big population collapse with billions of people a year dying is a couple generations off. We'll never see it.
I agree with you. Even if we would go into an all-out war, pockets of human populations would still survive. But acts nature (natural disasters) in succession, have the potential of killing the most people.
And yes, some pandemics have killed millions of people, but not within a year, and never reaching into the billions. AIDS have killed millions of people in Africa: https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/18...avirus-so-far/
I vote for meteor strikes and space alien invasions next. Or the dead to rise from their graves.
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