Optimizing Island Refuges against global Catastrophic and Existential Biological Threats: Priorities and Preparations

Abstract

Human civilization is vulnerable to global catastrophic biological threats and existential threats. Policy to mitigate the impact of major biological threats should consider worst‐case scenarios. We aimed to strengthen existing research on island refuges as a mitigating mechanism against such threats by considering five additional factors as well as recent literature on catastrophic risks and resilience. We also analyzed the performance of potential refuge islands during early phases the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using a composite indicator (scored from 0–1) based on 14 global macroindices, we present analysis supporting Australia (0.71), New Zealand (0.64), and Iceland (0.58) as the leading candidate island nation refuges to safeguard the survival of humanity and a flourishing technological civilization from the threat of a catastrophic pandemic. Data from the COVID‐19 pandemic supports this finding where islands have performed relatively well. We discuss the persisting weaknesses of even the best candidate refuges and the growing literature describing what preparations such a refuge should ensure to enhance resilience. Refuge preparations by Australia and New Zealand, in particular, may additionally provide some immunity against winter‐inducing catastrophes such as global nuclear war. Existing disaster resilience frameworks such as the Sendai framework could be worded to mandate preventive measures against global catastrophic and existential threats. The issue of island refuges against certain global catastrophic risks should be raised at relevant international political summits.

Pandemic refuges: Lessons from 2 years of COVID‐19

“…Proposed locations include outer space (Shapiro, 2009 ), underground or in ice (Baum et al., 2015 ), underwater (e.g. submarines, Turchin & Green, 2017 ), and islands (Boyd & Wilson, 2019 , 2021 ; Boyd et al., 2020 ; Turchin & Green, 2019 ). Emphasis is often placed on ensuring the survival of some human population even in the face of the most extreme global catastrophe scenarios.…”

“…Island nations are favored for their geographic remoteness and political cohesion. Boyd and Wilson ( 2021 ) find Australia, Iceland, and New Zealand to be the most promising candidates for island refuges.…”

Factors that most expose countries to COVID-19: a composite indicators-based approach

“… In the topic Others, Boyd and Wilson ( 2021 ) employed composite indicators to identify countries of refuge to safeguard humanity’s survival from the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaiser et al ( 2021 ) discussed the pitfalls of employing composite indicators such as the Global Health Security Index in policy formation.…”

Anticipatory Governance for Preventing and Mitigating Catastrophic and Existential Risks

“…threats, the process will affect every last human. Actions by New Zealand would be wise to focus on risks that may originate locally (such as biological or agricultural threats), on mechanisms for resilience against scale-up once threats emerge, and on surviving threats where New Zealand has a relative advantage in ensuring humanity survives -for example, catastrophic pandemics, biological weapon use, nuclear and volcanic winter (Boyd and Wilson, 2021;King and Jones, 2021). Particular priority areas of activity in New Zealand might include: • resilience building, in general terms, as well as specific preparations for threats where New Zealand has a relative survival advantage; • determining which global catastrophic risks might plausibly originate in New Zealand, and associated prevention steps; • collaborative efforts with Australia, especially where the value of cooperation may be greater than the sum of individual mitigation efforts; • research into imagining realistic worst case scenarios and problem finding that can be shared with the world; • contributions to fostering a global workforce of extreme risk expertise; and • increasing overseas development assistance to the agreed 0.7% of GDP to help neighbouring countries build resilience.…”