The Systemic Risk (Working Title)
The Systemic Risk is an attempt to unlock rational and unbiased research into creating effective and economically feasible protection mechanisms in order to prevent an otherwise inevitable end of civilization. A single event from various possible sources—potentially as far away as one day—can trigger a super disaster that could wipe out 75 % of the world’s unprepared population or more, over 5 billion people. This work is far from Doomsday thinking. Quite in contrary. Doomsday will come true for those that continue throwing bombs at each other on grounds of religion, resources, or power while neglecting the bigger picture of humanity. Instead, this work is to avoid Doomsday and hopefully help create a better future for our children.
For simplicity, America serves as a model society that is not only the most advanced but also happens to span almost an entire continent. Due to its geographical and economical status as well as its single language, it serves well as an example. Hence, the contributors to The Systemic Risk apologize to Americans, who may feel unfairly singled out or offended in places. In a highly complex subject matter as this, errors and false conclusions are unavoidable. The hope is that they trigger the necessary discussions and raise the awareness for all too human behaviors that ultimately put civilizations at risk. It seems that humanity is particularly good in dealing with success, growth, expansion, and conquest, but markedly poor in dealing with failures, decline, retreat, and loss. For example, while many fingers point at population growth being the foundation for all ill, it seems to be largely overlooked that civilizations have dealt fairly well with population pressure through the ages while population decline poses far greater risks, including the potential for civilizations to collapse. The economics are straight forward: infrastructures are built in anticipation of a certain population growth. Should the number of people drop below growth expectations, the infrastructure operates at a loss. If the population declines substantially, maintenance of an oversized infrastructure becomes unaffordable to the point where it may collapse.
