As others have said, great piece! Well argued and evidenced and on an important and neglected topic. I broadly agree with your point estimates for the three cases.
I think it might be worth saying a bit more (perhaps in a seperate section near the top) about why your estimates of survival are not higher. What explains the remaining 0.01-0.3 uncertainty? How could it lead ‘directly’ to extinction? In different sections you talk about WMD, food availability etc, but I would have found it useful to have all that together. That would allow you to address general reasons for uncertainty too. The most compelling single reason for me, for example, is the unprecedented nature of a global, post-industrial collapse.
On your suggestions for other research directions:
I’d be super interested in someone going through the old Cold War RAND reports from the 1950s+1960s looking at collapse/recovery after nuclear war, and the wider literature on civil defence. Did the Soviets produce anything similar? I don’t know! Going through the ‘prepper’ literature might also maybe be useful? Perhaps as useful as scifi.
“For example, I think I’ve heard somewhere that places with higher levels of social trust have lower levels of looting, hoarding, and other antisocial disaster behavior.” You’re thinking of Aldrich, D. P. (2012). Building Resilience. University of Chicago Press. The wider field is disaster risk reduction (DRR).
As others have said, great piece! Well argued and evidenced and on an important and neglected topic. I broadly agree with your point estimates for the three cases.
I think it might be worth saying a bit more (perhaps in a seperate section near the top) about why your estimates of survival are not higher. What explains the remaining 0.01-0.3 uncertainty? How could it lead ‘directly’ to extinction? In different sections you talk about WMD, food availability etc, but I would have found it useful to have all that together. That would allow you to address general reasons for uncertainty too. The most compelling single reason for me, for example, is the unprecedented nature of a global, post-industrial collapse.
On your suggestions for other research directions:
I’d be super interested in someone going through the old Cold War RAND reports from the 1950s+1960s looking at collapse/recovery after nuclear war, and the wider literature on civil defence. Did the Soviets produce anything similar? I don’t know! Going through the ‘prepper’ literature might also maybe be useful? Perhaps as useful as scifi.
“For example, I think I’ve heard somewhere that places with higher levels of social trust have lower levels of looting, hoarding, and other antisocial disaster behavior.” You’re thinking of Aldrich, D. P. (2012). Building Resilience. University of Chicago Press. The wider field is disaster risk reduction (DRR).