How much could refuges help us recover from a global catastrophe?
Highlights
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Global catastrophes like nuclear wars or pandemics might destroy civilization.
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Some propose building “refuges” to aid survival and recovery in such cases.
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Government/private shelters, subs, and isolated peoples serve similar goals.
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Refuges could only be crucial in a small portion of proposed catastrophe scenarios.
Abstract
Some global catastrophes (such as nuclear wars, pandemics, or an asteroid collision) might destroy civilization. Some propose building well-stocked shelters constantly staffed with people trained to rebuild civilization in such cases. These “refuges” would have an unimpressive expected cost per life saved, but could conceivably have an impressive expected cost per future generation allowed to exist. From some ethical perspectives that highly value future generations, building refuges may therefore seem like a promising idea. However, several factors significantly dilute the potential impact of refuges, even if the proposed catastrophes occur. Government/private disaster shelters, people working on submarines, and isolated peoples who prefer to be left alone serve these purposes to some extent already. Many proposed catastrophes do too much/too little damage for refuges to help, affect the environment in ways that make refuges largely irrelevant, or otherwise give relatively limited advantages to the people in refuges. In global food crises or social collapse scenarios, refuges would add little to aggregate stocks of population, resources, food, and relevant skills; but they may add something unique in terms of isolation and coordination. These potential benefits of refuges seem the most promising, and may be worthy of further analysis.
Introduction
As discussed elsewhere in this issue, a number of different global catastrophes could conceivably result in the collapse of civilization and/or the extinction of humanity in the coming century. Several authors (e.g. Hanson, 2008, Jebari, 2014, Matheny, 2007) have recommended investing in well-equipped bunkers, disaster shelters, or “refuges” specifically designed to withstand a would-be extinction event would increase the chances that humanity would recover from a global catastrophe. Refuge construction can be seen as an example of increasing civilization's overall resilience to global catastrophes, as advocated by Maher and Baum (2013).
Even though projects of this kind would probably have a high cost per life saved, they may have an exceptionally low expected “cost per future generation allowed to exist.” From some philosophical perspectives that highly value future generations (such as Beckstead, 2013; Parfit, 1984, Bostrom, 2003, Bostrom, 2013), this makes the construction of such refuges a potentially promising idea.
Section 2 offers a brief review of three papers proposing to build/improve refuges in order to increase the probability of recovery from a catastrophe. Section 3 reviews existing networks of government/private disaster shelters, people working on submarines, and isolated peoples who prefer to be left alone. These groups and infrastructure already serve the intended function of refuges to some extent. Section 4 reviews proposed global catastrophes, considering for which of them refuges could or could not be useful. Many proposed catastrophes do too much/too little damage for refuges to help, affect the environment in ways that make refuges largely irrelevant, or otherwise give relatively limited advantages to the people in refuges. In global food crises or social collapse scenarios, refuges would add little to aggregate stocks of population, resources, food, and relevant skills. However, they may add something unique in terms of isolation and coordination. These potential benefits of refuges seems the most likely, and may be worthy of further analysis.
Section snippets
Literature advocating for the creation of refuges
In “Catastrophe, Social Collapse, and Human Extinction,” Hanson (2008, p. 373) writes:
“…there may be types of disasters where variations in resistance abilities can be important. If so, there might be a substantial chance of finding a post-disaster population that is just above, or just below, a threshold for preserving humanity. In this case it is reasonable to wonder what we might do now to change the odds. The most obvious possibility would be to create refuges with sufficient resources to
Where would people be especially likely to survive a global catastrophe?
Government bunkers for private citizens, government bunkers for continuity of government, shelters purchased by private citizens, people working on submarines, and people living in remote locations would be especially likely to survive a global catastrophe. Examining these unintentional refuges will help us assess to what extent creating refuges of the type proposed above—or other types of refuges—would increase the chances of recovery from a global catastrophe.
A brief note on terminology:
Might refuges be essential for recovery from a global catastrophe?
Let us begin by getting a sense of the range of global catastrophes that have been proposed. Drawing from Bostrom (2002), Bostrom and Cirkovic (2008), Bostrom (2013), Hanson (2008), Jebari (2014), Posner (2004), and Rees (2003), I get the following list of proposed catastrophe scenarios: alien invasion, AI, asteroids and comets, climate change, cosmic rays, gamma-ray bursts, global ecophagy from nanotechnology (“gray goo”), nuclear war (including the special case of cobalt bombs1
Conclusion
Refuges may initially seem like a reliable method of ensuring that civilization will recover from a wide range of potential catastrophes. However, on closer inspection, many existing systems serve similar functions, and refuges would have limited impact for many potential catastrophes. Many proposed catastrophes render refuges of limited use simple reasons: for “overkill” catastrophes, people in refuges cannot survive anyway (these include alien invasions, runaway AI, global ecophagy from
Acknowledgements
This research was financially supported by GiveWell. I am grateful to my colleagues at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Centre for Effective Altruism for feedback on this essay, especially Robin Hanson, Anders Sandberg, and Carl Shulman.
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But this threat does not justify human space settlement due to its high risk and high costliness (Jebari, 2015). Nick Beckstead speculates on possible disasters on Earth deleterious also for humans living in shelters, e.g. scenarios that include invasion of aliens, runaway AI, or ecophagy caused by nanotechnology (Beckstead, 2015).9 Beckstead rightly adds that the big challenge is not only rate of survival immediately after catastrophe but also chances for survival in long-term scale including collapse in food production and supply chain, and associated social and political collapse.
Aquatic refuges for surviving a global catastrophe
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Torres (2016b) addressed the question of space bunkers. Beckstead (2015) provides critical analysis of catastrophes for which refuges may be helpful. But refuge creation always involves trade-offs, which Turchin listed in his “Map of Shelters and Refuges from Global Risks” (2016).
The far future argument for confronting catastrophic threats to humanity: Practical significance and alternatives
2015, Futures
The project would come with a co-benefit of geothermal energy, but this is likely not nearly enough to justify the expense. Another possibility is advanced surface-independent refuges, which could protect against a variety of GCRs, including many of the natural disasters, but again could come at great expense (Baum et al., 2014; Beckstead, 2014). I am not aware of any actions to reduce near-future GCR from physics experiments and extraterrestrial encounter that have significant cost and can only be justified with reference to far-future benefits.
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