Americans..."five times likelier to die during a human-extinction event than in a car crash"
Nuclear war. Climate change. Pandemics that kill tens of millions.
These are the most viable threats to globally organized civilization. Theyre the stuff of nightmares and blockbustersbut unlike sea monsters or zombie viruses, theyre real, part of the calculus that political leaders consider everyday. And according to a new report from the U.K.-based Global Challenges Foundation, theyre much more likely than we might think.
In its annual report on global catastrophic risk, the nonprofit debuted a startling statistic: Across the span of their lives, the average American is more than five times likelier to die during a human-extinction event than in a car crash.
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The risk of human extinction due to climate changeor an accidental nuclear waris much higher than that. The Stern Review, the U.K. governments premier report on the economics of climate change, estimated a 0.1 percent risk of human extinction every year. That may sound low, but it also adds up when extrapolated to century-scale. The Global Challenges Foundation estimates a 9.5 percent chance of human extinction within the next hundred years.
Full article at The Atlantic