Thanks for posting this. I’ll comment on the bit about New Zealand’s food production in nuclear winter conditions. Although the paper cited concludes there is potential for production to feed NZ’s population, this depends on there being sufficient liquid fuel to run agricultural equipment and NZ imports 100% of it’s refined fuels. Trade in fuel would almost certainly collapse in a major nuclear war. Without diesel, or imported fertiliser and agrichemicals, yield would be much lower. Distribution would be difficult too. See this paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/risa.14297 Ideally, places like NZ would establish the potential to produce fuel locally, eg biofuels, in case of this scenario. If restricted to use in agriculture and food transport, with optimised cropping, surprisingly little biofuel would be needed. This kind of contingency planning could avert famine, and any associated disease and potential conflict. I agree that the existential risk is very low. But it is probably slightly higher when considering these factors.
Thanks for posting this. I’ll comment on the bit about New Zealand’s food production in nuclear winter conditions. Although the paper cited concludes there is potential for production to feed NZ’s population, this depends on there being sufficient liquid fuel to run agricultural equipment and NZ imports 100% of it’s refined fuels. Trade in fuel would almost certainly collapse in a major nuclear war. Without diesel, or imported fertiliser and agrichemicals, yield would be much lower. Distribution would be difficult too. See this paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/risa.14297 Ideally, places like NZ would establish the potential to produce fuel locally, eg biofuels, in case of this scenario. If restricted to use in agriculture and food transport, with optimised cropping, surprisingly little biofuel would be needed. This kind of contingency planning could avert famine, and any associated disease and potential conflict. I agree that the existential risk is very low. But it is probably slightly higher when considering these factors.