Click Here to Save The World

Living on an increasingly dangerous planet

Unlike Goldman Sachs CFO Denis Coleman, my 3-year-old granddaughter is not worried about geopolitical instability. At least not yet. (Full disclosure – not the little girl in the picture: she’s camera shy). “To say that there is geopolitical instability in the world,” Coleman said, “would be a gross understatement.” 

He’s not alone.

Putin’s war on Ukraine. Xi Jinping, Putin’s China ally and, apparently, global war enthusiast. Kim Jong Un, North Korea, ditto. The increasingly desperate Iranian mullahs and their proxies, ditto ditto. Violence expanding across the global south. And In case you’re not up on euphemisms, “geopolitical instability” is code for civilization’s lemming-creep toward World War Final. 

And, of course, in lock-step with this lemming-creep, there is also (take your pick), cyber-terror, climate change, severe solar storms, etc. 

Those of us over 3 might as well admit it. We’re nervous. Need proof? CostCo now markets an “Apocalypse Food Bucket”. “It’s about readiness in the face of uncertainty,” the company explains.

The Interdependency Threshold: The Core Risk to Our Survival

–   Operation of every infrastructure today depends on operation of all the others

Severe, large-scale threats are growing, worldwide, and history teaches us that growing threats will bring serious, painful consequences. But growing threats are just the beginning. Nearly all products and services today are directly connected to all the others, with split-second timing giving us the speed and capabilities needed to sustain the nearly 8 billion of us sharing this planet. 

Unfortunately, there is a downside to our new, efficient, interconnected world.

Our high-tech society has passed the “interdependency threshold:” Operation of everything depends on operation of everything else, on a global scale. In an extreme Black Sky-class disaster, cascading disruption could shut down the interconnected systems that power, feed, transport, heal and empower us. Everywhere. 

Global catastrophe.

What can we expect?

If history is any guide, if we wait to see what happens, the prognosis is not good. 

Arnold Toynbee, the author of the 12 volume masterwork, “A Study of History,” analyzed 28 previous civilizations – our predecessors.  Every one of them collapsed. Toynbee’s conclusion: “Great civilizations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.” In every case, he argues, the signs were clear, action could have been taken, they could have changed course. 

They didn’t. 

Unfortunately, there is every evidence that we won’t either.

It’s time to choose (click on one):

□ Wait for catastrophe

□ Get involved: Help sustain our civilization

The first (non-)choice is easy, if terminal.

The 2nd is hard – it means dedicating a part of your day to go beyond your routine. Collaborating with others who you may never meet; taking on a small part of the challenge to put capabilities in place so that, if the worst happens, we can recover. 

With good will, diligence, imagination and courage, we can prepare for catastrophic Black Sky events.  What does this mean for each of us? 

The first option is easy but terminal.

The second is hard – it means dedicating a part of your day to go beyond your routine. Collaborating with others; taking on a small part of the challenge to put capabilities in place so that, if the worst happens, we can recover. 

With goodwill, diligence, imagination, and courage, we can prepare for catastrophic Black Sky events.  What does this mean for each of us? 

Choosing The second Option: Human Continuity

Rising from the rubble of all the civilizations that came before, our society is sustained and enriched by the unprecedented interconnectivity that also brought us the existential risk of cascading infrastructure failure. Black Sky events. The best way to solve a problem is often to reimagine the problem, and make it the solution. Can we take the core of this problem – our society’s tech-enabled hyperconnectivity – and make it the solution?

I think we can. The same feature putting our society at risk offers us a societal collapse escape route that previous civilizations did not have. 

Global hyperconnectivity has erased the classic preconditions to influencing the course of a society. Size, wealth, and power still matter. But with today’s social media, committed people can now collaborate with others across all boundaries to create new opportunities that can go viral, firing the imagination of the world.

Do good things. Learn about the risks to our interdependent infrastructures. Learn about the critical public policy resilience gaps – and opportunities – that could make the difference between catastrophe and human continuity. Work with others to help focus the opportunities, and encourage policy makers to walk away from the gaps.

A fast-track option: HUMAN CONTINUITY PROJECT®

If you’ve gotten to this point in the article, you’re one of those people who have the imagination to understand our risk, and the motivation to get involved. For you and others like you, there is a fast track to getting involved. The foundation has already been laid.

Working with partners and colleagues around the world, the Electric Infrastructure Security (EIS) Council, a US-based, international nonprofit NGO, is now hosting Black Sky resilience working groups as the 1st phase of an ambitious Human Continuity Project that will seed collaborative, correlated Black Sky resilience research and planning, driven by centers of excellence in regions across the world. 

With one-hour monthly meetings and volunteer interim opportunities, these action-oriented Black Sky working groups are focused on catalyzing near-term progress in critical societal sectors:

• Infrastructure resilience and redundancy
• All-sector, whole-of-world emergency communication
• Electric grid resilience: blackstart
• Media initiatives
• Finance sector resilience
• Data center resilience

Pick one. Reach out and get involved. Register to one of our working groups HERE. Become a member of the EIS Council. If we work together, we can ensure human continuity, so that my children, grandchildren, and yours, and all others, can look forward to a bright future. 

___________________________________________________________________________

¹Black Sky events: Catastrophic, subcontinent-scale cascading infrastructure failures

² ibid

By: Avi Schnurr