Global Risks of Highest Concern in 2014

some really good ones here imo. hard to choose between them.

the choices were grouped into broader categories of Economic, Environmental, Geopolitical, Societal and Technological concerns

As someone inclined to worry over such things, it is cruel to only be able to choose one.

feel free to rank your top 5 (or 10 as the case may be) in the space provided below

it would be interesting to try to pick the global risk of least concern and try to justify the selection

out of that list, i mean

1) Water crises (California!)
2) Food crises (Ca + 2013 beef culls + porcine epidemic diarrhea + shrimp early mortality syndrome)
3) Decline of importance of the US dollar as a major currency (the petrodollar is having legs knocked out)
4) Greater incidence of extreme weather events (fire fire fire fire)
5) Unmanageable burden of chronic disease (though fewer animal products might help)

Bubbling under:

6) Oil-price shock to the global economy (more of a 2015 issue)
7) Structurally high unemployment/underemployment (Kondratieff Winters last 18 years or so)
8) Escalation of economic and resource nationalization (personal issues with Bolivia)

Unmentioned dark horse:

9) Middle East respiratory syndrome

On the other hand, there hasn't been a year in my lifetime when a well-stocked bunker in rural Canada (or better, New Zealand) wouldn't have offerred a little peace of mind.

why choose, these options are not all mutually exclusive

highest concern: food, air, water

done

Shelter too. Whichever option affects all those things the most.

a delectable buffet of tragedy. i like that our projected reality is starting to look like a 1980s urban sci-fi dystopia flick. always wanted to live in one of those. of course we'll be more "terrified bystander #2" than snake pliskan.

what if ALL of these things happened all at once?!?

personally, in a pinch go for the most basic stuff -- pandemics, natural disasters, food shortages, weather. especially stuff that's uncontrollable or unpredictable (like natural disasters and extreme weather). i mean, if something like Krakatoa erupting and leaving the planet w/ another year w/t a summer (like in 1816) i could see something like that setting off a whole long-lasting shit storm of unpleasantness.

voted increasing corruption

i'd like to see mass riots in the streets. burning trash cans and cars on fire, smoldering debris, starving masses pushing up against riot police who are cracking people over the heads with batons. oligarchs and the super-rich walling themselves off in compounds with elite private security forces. helicopters patrolling over normally boring suburban subdivisions with search lights. a constant air of tension and danger. a bleak sense of hope for the future. radical groups conducting political assassinations. that's the future for me.

ork shamans firing bolts at deckers in the moonlight

all of the above

it's actually kind of incredible that we HAVEN'T had something like the Year w/t a Summer in our lifetimes -- considering how many volcanoes there are, and how many of the really powerful ones haven't erupted and are due to blow at any time.

xxp yeah, i probably played too much shadowrun growing up

it must have taken a lot of work to come up with the categories for this list

Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (land and ocean)
Water crises
Failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation

^no winners here

This is the most depressing poll ive ever seen.

i welcome a swathe of these

these are all totally outside my ambit so I'm not anxious about any of them

I was reading the MoD's Global Strategic Trends out to 2040 the other day. It's nowhere near as exciting as this list, but I enjoyed the way it schematically italicises 'will', 'may' , 'likely' etc to express probability. Sinister touch from the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre.

No 'hostile artificial intelligence', no credibility.

I think the risks I'm drawn to are low-ish probability, fast, effective extinction events. Space radiation blast, maybe a big asteroid, that kind of thing. The cosmos or planet just annihilating us. But

9) Middle East respiratory syndrome

Big thank you to sanpaku for giving me something concrete to research and panic about.

Sanpaku, how do you feel about the current Ebola outbreak?

Or anybody, really. I just trust Sanpaku pretty far with disaster evaluation scenarios. :)

for me, personally, the answer is Unmanageable burden of chronic disease but Water crises in particular sound really unpleasant

xp HL, until ebola evolves a more effective transmission vector, its mostly a problem for places where families and health care workers have close contact with victim's bodily fluids, in sickness or as part of burial practices. Ie, it doesn't have the potential to shut down international transport or mass transit like aerosol transmitted viruses can.

It's probably important to distinguish between existential threats, those which "only" bring widespread death and suffering, and those which are of concern to economists as potentially degrading to capital and infrastructure and therefore indirect threats to civil society.

The existential threats would seem to me to be:

• Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (land and ocean)
• Failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation

• Water crises
• Food crises
• Violent inter-state conflict with regional consequences

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ebola does sound like it's picking up some serious momentum here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/27/this-is-now-the-deadliest-ebola-outbreak-on-record-and-its-getting-worse/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/08/19/341573332/lessons-from-the-last-time-civilization-collapsed

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/8919751/global-crisis-by-geoffrey-parker-review/

no option for diseases spread entirely via handwringing

always wanted to write a novel abt the late bronze age. detective novel prob.

the dark-age greeks called the mycenean ruins around them "cyclopean": no human being could have built them.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doomsday-clock-set-at-3-minutes-to-midnight/

"We move the clock hand today to inspire action"

cool the nuclear mash needed another set of brinkmen forsure