> AI is an existential threat

So is nuclear annihilation. Yet, here we are.

> "I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world." -- Ronald Reagan at the United Nations [0]

We are going to be fine as long as we remember to be nice to each other, starting towards the people who are adjacent to us.

[0] https://youtu.be/dYiUI6y1nKg?si=agkJpCEZj3m_WZz0&t=915

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mapBasketWand an hour ago | parent [-]

Having recently read both of Annie Jacobsen’s books — _Nuclear War_ and _Biological War_ — I’m much more concerned about a bioweapon than a nuclear one.

Her conclusion to the latter book comes out and says it, paraphrasing here:

> Nuclear war is terrifying in its destruction, but the chain of command limits the risk of a rogue actor. Whereas bio weapons can be designed and manufactured in relatively low tech environments with equal or greater magnitudes of impact.

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baggy_trough an hour ago | parent [-]

The good news is that bioweapons can’t kill everyone. A handful of percent will remain to repopulate the Earth.

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fooblaster an hour ago | parent [-]

Nukes also cannot kill everyone. Nuclear winter was proven to not be based on solid evidence, the earth remains very habitable after all nukes have gone off.

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Gud 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Show me that proof please. So far the counter evidence has not been convincing. FWIW I don’t think nuclear war will annihilate us. But it won’t be pleasant.

	▲	piloto_ciego 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Actually, I've seen the take that the previous poster has made too. The wikipedia page is pretty good IMO. Proof of a hypothetical future event is pretty hard to get, but here's the wiki rabbit hole (if you're anything like me you'll find this fascinating and spend the next couple hours clicking links - you're welcome!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust#Likelihood_o... Annie Jacobsen is awesome, her book about Area 51 was riveting, but I also cannot unsee "Capitalist Realism" and the idea that we keep picturing civilization-ending catastrophes because we don't want to go to work in the morning, and walking/biking everywhere and living in a small community is amazingly appealing to us at a base level. We yearn for the lifestyle of the apocalypse survivor, but none of us want to go through the apocalypse. Generally, I think we kind of say, "oh, it'll be the end of the world" because most of us (myself included) lack the imagination to really look beyond linear extrapolations of the status quo most of the time.