How Engineers can Contribute to Civilisation Resilience

[Jessica Wen]

Cross-posted from the High Impact Engineers Resource Portal. You can view the most up-to-date version on the Portal.

Summary

Civilisation resilience is concerned with both reducing the risk of civilisation collapse and increasing the capability for humanity to recover from such a collapse. A collapse of civilisation would likely cause a great deal of suffering and may jeopardise the future of the human race. We can defend against such risks by reducing the chances that a localised catastrophe starts, that it scales up to a global catastrophe, or that it triggers irreversible civilisation collapse. Many facets of our defence layers are physical, meaning there are many opportunities for engineers to contribute to improving humanity’s resilience.

Uncertainty

The content of this article is largely based on research by 80,000 Hours, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and ALLFED. We feel somewhat confident in the recommendations in this article.

What is civilisation resilience?

The industrial revolution gave humanity access to unprecedented amounts of valuable and lifesaving technologies and improved the lives we are able to live immensely. However, a global catastrophe could put unprecedented strain on the infrastructure — global agriculture, energy, industry, intercontinental shipping, communications, etc. — that enables civilisation as we know it today. If these systems were to collapse, would we be able to recover and return to the state of civilisation we have today?

Could we re-industrialise? Would this be possible without easy access to fossil fuels, minerals, and chemicals? Could we rebuild flourishing global societies and infrastructure if there was a breakdown of international relations? Questions such as these fall under the purview of civilisation resilience.

Civilisation resilience focuses on how we can buttress civilisation against collapse and increase our ability to recover from a collapse if it did occur.

A framework for thinking about civilisation resilience

Having a framework with which to analyse the risks and prioritise the strengthening of our defences is useful to sharpen our focus and direct our efforts to bolstering civilisation resilience. The paper Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter
(Cotton-Barratt, Daniel and Sandberg) introduces a framework that breaks down protection against extinction risk into three layers of defence (figure 1). This framework is equally applicable to civilisation collapse given civilisation collapse is a precursor to human extinction.

In evaluating extinction risk, the defence layers protect against an event becoming a catastrophe, scaling to a global catastrophe, and then wiping out the human race. When considering a given catastrophe, the following three defence layers are proposed:

• Prevention — how can we stop a catastrophe from starting?

• Response — how do we stop it from scaling up to a global catastrophe?

• Resilience — how does a global catastrophe get everyone?

Figure 1: The three layers of defence against extinction risk (Cotton-Barratt, Daniel, Sandberg)

One advantage of this characterisation framework is that it can be used to evaluate where the weaknesses are in humanity’s defence against a given catastrophe. If we consider a given catastrophic risk,

, we can define an extinction probability,

,

where:

• is the probability that risk
  is not prevented.

• is the probability that the risk
  gets past the response stage, given that it was not prevented.

• is the probability that the risk
  causes human extinction, given that it got past the response stage and became a global catastrophe.

Within this framework, the risk of human extinction can be reduced by reducing the likelihood that it starts, isn’t controlled, or can kill off humanity. A 50 % reduction in the risk in any layer of defence reduces the overall extinction risk by 50 %.

While this framework was created for extinction risk, it can be directly adapted to evaluate the risk of civilisation collapse by reframing the Resilience layer as either ‘how does a global catastrophe collapse civilisation?’ or ‘how does a global catastrophe prevent civilisation recovery after a collapse?’. By analogy, a 50 % risk reduction in any layer of defence reduces the overall civilisation collapse risk by 50 %.

This paper uses the term “resilience” for only one of the 3 defence layers against extinction, but when we refer to “civilisation resilience” in this article we include interventions that span all 3 defence layers. This is because, in our view, stopping civilisation collapse requires improvements in all 3 defence layers against existential risks.

Most other organisations view “resilience” as everything “right-of-boom” (a term originating from the military), as illustrated in Figure 2 for nuclear weapons use. However, HI-Eng believe that building up civilisation’s resilience against these threats requires attention to both “left-of-boom” and “right-of-boom” interventions.

Figure 2: The ‘Boom’ analogy for nuclear weapon use.

This framework enables us to compare different interventions designed to defend against a given risk. If we’re trying to decide between interventions in a particular defence layer, we can ask ‘which of these interventions achieves the highest percentage reduction of risk in that defence layer for the lowest cost?’. All else being equal, when prioritising between defence layers, prevention is most important (before loss of life), followed by response (to contain the catastrophe), and then finally resilience (the last resort to make sure humanity and civilisation survive). However, the resilience defence layer is often the most neglected of these, which may mean that working in this area could enable you to have an outsized impact.

The following section provides an example of how this framework can be applied to coronal mass ejections.

How could we defend against a coronal mass ejection?

The defence layer framework lends itself to evaluating the most effective ways to reduce the risk of extinction or civilisation collapse. To illustrate this, let’s consider the risk to civilisation of a coronal mass ejection (CME): an ejection of particles and electromagnetic radiation from the sun towards Earth’s atmosphere. Such an event could disrupt satellite communications and destroy power grid transformers, leading to long-term power outages.

Like many civilisation risks, this sounds like the plot to a good (or scientifically inaccurate) doomsday movie:

Our brave, and smart solar physicists are looking at live data streaming from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a multi-instrument telescope sitting between the Earth and the Sun. They see an expanding bubble growing well beyond the disk of the Sun. An alert is sent out to the authorities; a CME is coming… and it’s headed straight for us… it will hit in a few hours. Cue the countdown to CME impact (the suspense will be tangible, you won’t be moving from your seat). But wait! Communications are patchy, the ionosphere just blocked the satellite link to the US President… time is running out! Bruce Willis, our hero heliospheric expert, steps in and volunteers to notify the president himself (with a gun in his pocket, as there’s bound to be an assassin or terrorist out there to shoot at).

~ Ian O’Neill, Astroengine.com

Without the electricity we rely on to power fossil fuel extraction, food production, national security and other essential services, how can we best defend against a CME causing civilisation collapse?

For illustrative purposes, we’ll assume that the CME affects the whole of North America and that the effects last for weeks. To collapse civilisation it would need to first start a local catastrophe, scale to a global catastrophe, and then trigger civilisation collapse. A local catastrophe, in the context of a CME, could be mass power outages across the North American continent for weeks.

The following are examples of how one might think through the risk of civilisation collapse in this context, and the best ways to mitigate it. They are purely for illustrative purposes and shouldn’t be taken as necessarily likely risks or good defences.

Prevention

Some options to prevent catastrophic power loss could be:

• Shielding essential power grid infrastructure.

• Backup food supply infrastructure, and increased national security coordination.

Response

Assuming mass power outages weren’t able to be prevented, how could this become a global catastrophe? Perhaps supply chains could grind to a halt causing food and medicine shortages globally, or other unforeseen events could propagate across the world.

We could potentially defend against these through:

• International cooperation treaties — countries could agree to provide essential resources, services and replacement parts to each other in the case of such a catastrophe.

• Supply chain buttressing — countries could cultivate strategically important domestic industries that would allow them to absorb supply chain shocks.

• Contingency planning — by preparing for the event of extreme disasters, countries can improve their surge capabilities to quickly and efficiently deploy resources and technology. Contingency planning tackles extreme risks, and is different from the usual preparations for recurring risks such as fires and floods.

Resilience

If the response is unsuccessful, perhaps a total breakdown of international relations occurs. This could be precipitated by supply chain shocks, starvation or opportunistic bad actors.

Cooperation treaties may also help provide resilience against civilisation collapse, so too might:

• Emergency stockpiles of essential resources (e.g. transformers).

• Robust emergency shelters.

• Backup communications systems.

What to focus on?

Considering the cost, or ease, of implementing any of the above interventions allows us to select the most cost-effective ones to implement. For example, you could harden the electrical grids across the globe against CME and other threats for $100 billion (Denkenberger et al., 2021), or you could prepare to meet basic needs after loss of electricity (having a back-up communications system, planning for shelter, water and food without industry, negotiations and pre-commitments), which could cost up to $50 million. Looking at this simplistically, if both of these interventions reduced the total long-term risk of civilisation collapse by 10%, then arguably, we should first focus on preparing to meet basic needs after loss of electricity as this provides the highest return on investment. Even if the prevention (hardening the global electrical grid) were 100% effective at preventing collapse of civilisation, there is a bigger bang for your buck for meeting basic needs, so that should be done first.

By applying the same method of comparative evaluation between the different interventions across the defence layers a ranking can be produced to allow the most effective defences to be prioritised.

How can engineers contribute to Civilisation Resilience?

Engineers can intervene across all three defence layers to increase civilisation resilience. In many scenarios, methods to prevent, respond to, or provide resilience against a catastrophe are inherently physical. This means there is scope for a broad range of engineering disciplines to contribute, some examples of which are provided in Table 1.

Our Biorisk and Biosecurity page (coming soon!) covers more detail on how biorisks — a vector for civilisation collapse — can be addressed by engineers.

Table 1: Interventions to protect against catastrophes

Catastrophy	Prevention	Response	Resilience
Meteor strike	Deflection technology Identifying and tracking Near-Earth Objects	Early warning systems Coordinated impact mitigation measures Evacuation, e.g. away from coasts if a tsunami is expected	Low-sunlight resilient foods Respirators Air filtration for buildings
Pandemic (see Biorisk and Biosecurity )	Research facility design and procedures Technologies to prevent lab leaks Verification technologies to strengthen the BWC	Super PPE Early detection systems Vaccines creation and mass distribution	Shelters and hardened facilities Vaccine supply chain resilience Air filtration for buildings
Large volcanic eruption	Monitoring technologies (e.g. hyperspectral imaging, gas measuring equipment, infrasound sensors, etc.) Adding water dams or soil to delay eruption Venting magma Draining heat from the magma chamber	Coordinated satellite monitoring Early/​advanced warning systems Data-sharing systems Containing the erupted material in a bubble Plume disruption e.g. directing it over the ocean	Building design to withstand volcanic eruptions Resilient food systems PPE against ash
Coronal mass ejection and cosmic rays	Shielding essential power grid infrastructure Backup power generation for hospitals, food supply infrastructure, and national security Grounding systems to protect against induced current and voltage spikes	International cooperation treaties Supply chain buttressing Communication systems resistant to geomagnetic storms Early warning systems	Emergency stockpiles Robust emergency shelters
Nuclear winter	Enhancing security of nuclear weapons Securing nuclear materials Detection technologies to reduce nuclear material theft Image analysis of rocket components Satellite image analysis of facilities	Early warning systems Detection technology for missile launches	Resilient food systems Emergency stockpiles Robust emergency shelters
Runaway greenhouse effect (see Climate Change )	Understanding of climate tipping points and cascades Study of ecosystem collapse Reduce risk of triggering other catastrophic risks, e.g. infectious disease, international conflict	Early warning of climate tipping points Better modelling of extreme climate dynamics and catastrophes	Reduce chance of “synchronous failures” of systems and societies Resilient food systems

NASA’s Planetary Defence Coordination Office.

On September 26 2022 NASA crashed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into an asteroid as a first test of an asteroid deflection strategy. This mission, which was a success, relates to a broader objective to find, track, and characterise at least 90 % of near-earth objects that are larger than 140 meters in size to defend the earth against potentially catastrophic asteroid impact.

When considering interventions, defensive interventions are often better than offensive interventions as offensive interventions can have both upside and downside potentials (see dual use technologies). As an example, the technology to deflect asteroids away from Earth can also be used to move asteroids towards Earth.

There are interventions that can strengthen multiple layers of defence. For example, early detection systems for new pathogens can deter bad actors from engineering a pandemic, increasing defence through both the response and prevention defence layers.

It’s worth noting that physical defences are far from the only tools we have to increase civilisation resilience. Government policy work and efforts to improve international relations and cooperation are valuable tools to guard against the worst possible outcomes for human civilisation. These areas are often in need of technically skilled and knowledgeable experts, so they could be an impactful way for engineers to contribute to civilisation resilience.

References

• Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter. Future of Humanity Institute

• What is the likelihood that civilizational collapse would directly lead to human extinction (within decades)?. EA Forum

• Classifying Global Catastrophic Risks

• The Last Human – A Glimpse Into The Far Future. Kurzgesagt

• NASA Tried To Knock an Asteroid Off Course—And Succeeded Wildly Beyond Expectations. Time Magazine

• Planetary Defence Coodination Office. NASA

• What are resilient foods?. ALLFED

We are grateful to DD and JGM for their input and feedback. Any remaining mistakes are our own.

[Denis]

Thanks Jessica and Sean for this powerful and inspiring post.

I would add one more, perhaps even more important, way in which engineers can contribute here—which is more or less what you have just done!

As engineers, you probably don’t even consciously realise this anymore, but the type of analysis you’ve shared here is pure engineering, it’s a way of thinking that we get so drilled into us that we don’t realise we didn’t always think that way.

For example, the three layer model (prevention, response, resilience) is almost perfectly analogous to how chemical engineers study explosion safety when handling solvents. First, you ask how to prevent an explosion (safe procedures, no ignition sources, nitrogen-blanketing, …). Second, you ask how to minimise the risk of harm if there is an explosion (safe enclosures, PPE, minimum people present, etc. …), and third, you study how to minimise the extent of harm (fire-evacuation procedures, emergency-help, first-aid training, …).

From this perspective, I’d also add one comment, which is that the assumption that each reduction of 50% in one means to total reduction of 50% is only true if they are independent. One of the most difficult challenges in a safety analysis is to identify cases where one accident can break two barriers at once. The stereotypical example of this (from my youth) was the nuclear war scenario in which the electromagnetic wave from the explosion destroyed the communication structure and so a lot of the response capability. We know about that now and can design around it, but there are probably other factors, like the viral infection that makes it impossible for the vaccine designers to do their work.

I look forward to seeing more and more engineers working on civilisation resilience! Thanks for getting the ball rolling with Hi-Eng!

[Vasco Grilo]

Great post, Jessica and Sean! To be honest, if I had read through this post around the time I graduated from my engineering degree, I would have thought harder before going into consulting (although I did not plan to stay in consulting for long, and ended up leaving after a year or so).

All else being equal, when prioritising between defence layers, prevention is most important (before loss of life), followed by response (to contain the catastrophe), and then finally resilience (the last resort to make sure humanity and civilisation survive). However, the resilience defence layer is often the most neglected of these, which may mean that working in this area could enable you to have an outsized impact.

To me it is unclear which layer is the most important or neglected.

I would say the most important layer is the one which is harder to break. For example, if p(“civilisation collapse”|”global catastrophe”) is lower than both p(“catastrophe”) and p(“global catastrophe”|”catastrophe”), I suppose it is reasonable to say that resilience is the most important.

In terms of neglectedness, I think we should also take into account the resources that would be invested in the event of a catastrophe. Ignoring these will tend to overestimate the neglectedness of resilience. After the catastrophe happens, lots of resources can be directed towards response and resilience, but not to prevention. So we have something like, “resources going to resilience/​response” = “resources going to resilience/​response now” + p(“catastrophe”)*”resources which would go to resilience/​response in the event of a catastrophe”. I tried to make a similar point here.

[Jessica Wen]

Thanks for your comment Vasco! There are definitely lots of factors at play here, and the “all else being equal” bit in the part you quoted is doing a lot of heavy lifting and masking multiple assumptions that we could perhaps have laid out more clearly, including the assumption that p(“civilisation collapse”) << p(“global catastrophe”) << p(“catastrophe”), and that equal amounts of resources are going into prevention, response, and resilience.

This is of course not the case, but analysis of this landscape is out of scope for this iteration of the Resources Portal. This page was designed as an introduction for engineers looking into high-impact areas to do work in/​start projects in, and hopefully future iterations of our Resources Portal will be able to deep dive these intricacies. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, as it’s something we will look into in the future!