Global Catastrophic Risks
One in Six: The Odds We Don't Survive
One philosopher's estimate puts the odds of civilization ending this century at one in six, worse than the entire 20th century combined.
Estimated existential risk this century (Toby Ord estimate)
The evidence
Six Times Worse Than the Last Century
Philosopher Toby Ord estimates total existential risk this century at 1 in 6, compared with roughly 1 in 100 for the entire 20th century (The Precipice, 2020). Natural threats combined, he estimates, are only about 1 in 10,000.
Unaligned AI Is the Single Largest Risk
Ord's central estimate for existential catastrophe from unaligned AI this century is 1 in 10. In a 2023 survey of 2,778 published AI researchers, the median respondent gave a 5 percent chance that AI causes human extinction or similarly severe outcomes (AI Impacts, 2023).
Engineered Pandemics
Ord puts the risk of existential catastrophe from engineered pandemics this century at 1 in 30, thirty times his estimate for nuclear war. The Biological Weapons Convention runs on a staff of four and an annual budget of about $1.4 million.
Nuclear War
Nine countries hold roughly 12,200 nuclear warheads, with the US and Russia controlling about 86 percent (Federation of American Scientists, 2025). Nuclear states spent a record $118.8 billion modernizing arsenals in 2025 alone.
A Crisis of Neglect
Ord calculates that humanity spends more money each year on ice cream than on every effort to research and reduce existential risk combined. Open Philanthropy directed just over $100 million across its entire Global Catastrophic Risks portfolio in 2022.
One Bad Century Forecloses All the Rest
An existential catastrophe cannot be learned from or recovered from the way other disasters can, it would foreclose humanity's entire future, not just harm the people alive today (Toby Ord, The Precipice).
What we can do
Phase 1 is funding what already exists but is starved of resources, fully staffing the Biological Weapons Convention, nuclear arms control verification, and AI safety institutes. Phase 2 is mandating safeguards before deployment rather than after, DNA synthesis screening, frontier AI safety testing, and compute governance. Phase 3 is treating civilizational survival as permanent infrastructure, committing roughly 1 percent of global GDP to existential risk reduction.
Sources: Toby Ord (The Precipice, 2020), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Federation of American Scientists, AI Impacts, Center for AI Safety, Open Philanthropy, Global Health Security Index
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