I did some more thinking (still not full Fermis) and now think that this is a >1B project even for just a sufficiently good MVP, possibly considerably more.
Though most of the cost is upfront cost like digging, and constructing full bunkers with individual nuclear power plants. The running cost should be considerably lower than <100M/year, unless I’m missing something important.
Not that I know of, Nick Beckstead wrote a moderately negative review of civilizational refuges 7 years ago (note that this was back when longtermist EA had a lot less $s than we currently do).
One reason I’d like to write out a moderately detailed MVP is that then we can have a clear picture for others to critique concrete details of, suggest clear empirical or conceptual lines for further work, etc, rather than have most of this conversation a) be overly high-level or b) too tied in with/anchored to existing (non-longtermist) versions of what’s currently going on in adjacent spaces.
You can maybe make very good civilizational refuges for 100M/year, though this is probably considerably more capital than MVPs I’d like to consider.
I did some more thinking (still not full Fermis) and now think that this is a >1B project even for just a sufficiently good MVP, possibly considerably more.
Though most of the cost is upfront cost like digging, and constructing full bunkers with individual nuclear power plants. The running cost should be considerably lower than <100M/year, unless I’m missing something important.
Is there a good writeup anywhere on cost estimates for this kind of refuge? Or what it would require?
Not that I know of, Nick Beckstead wrote a moderately negative review of civilizational refuges 7 years ago (note that this was back when longtermist EA had a lot less $s than we currently do).
One reason I’d like to write out a moderately detailed MVP is that then we can have a clear picture for others to critique concrete details of, suggest clear empirical or conceptual lines for further work, etc, rather than have most of this conversation a) be overly high-level or b) too tied in with/anchored to existing (non-longtermist) versions of what’s currently going on in adjacent spaces.