Global Catastrophic Risks

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, and misguided ideologies and totalitarian regimes have darkened an entire era or a region. Advances in technology are adding dangers of a new kind. It could happen again.

In Global Catastrophic Risks 25 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts, Earth-based natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, and social collapse. The book also addresses over-arching issues - policy responses and methods for predicting and managing catastrophes.

This is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the big issues of our time; for students focusing on science, society, technology, and public policy; and for academics, policy-makers, and professionals working in these acutely important fields.

• Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
• Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons
• Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism
• Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning
• Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (MacSci)
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
• Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
• Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck