Global catastrophic risk

Global catastrophic risk is the possibility of an event causing severe damage or disruption worldwide, potentially threatening humanity or civilization.

Nuclear war: A conflict in which nuclear weapons are used by opposing forces. Nuclear exchange could cause immediate devastation and worldwide climatic and economic disruption.
Risk assessment: The systematic identification and evaluation of potential harms and their likelihood. Comparing uncertain hazards requires explicit judgments about likelihood, severity, and evidence.
Global catastrophic risk research: An interdisciplinary field studying events capable of causing worldwide catastrophe or threatening civilization. This research agenda organizes diverse hazards around their scale and consequences.
Disaster risk: The potential for disasters to cause loss of life, injury, or damage to assets and livelihoods. Disaster risk includes local and regional harms that need not threaten global systems.
Human extinction: The permanent disappearance of every living human being. Extinction is the most severe possible outcome within this risk landscape.
Pandemic: An epidemic that spreads across multiple countries or continents and affects many people. A highly transmissible, severe disease could overwhelm health systems and disrupt global society.
Existential risk: A risk that could permanently curtail humanity’s long-term potential or cause human extinction. It marks the subset of global catastrophes with civilization-ending or extinction-level consequences.
Future of Humanity Institute: An interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Oxford focused on humanity’s long-term future. Its work helped establish academic research on existential and global catastrophic risks.
Existential threat: A danger capable of causing human extinction or permanently destroying humanity’s potential. A global catastrophe can be severe without becoming existential.
Civilizational collapse: The breakdown of complex social, political, and economic institutions across a society or region. A global catastrophe could dismantle institutions without eliminating humanity.

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Nick BostromRelated: Bostrom co-edited this collection, which helped establish a research agenda for catastrophic risks.