Global Catastrophic Biological Risks

Assessing the Threat of Global Catastrophic Biological Risks

• Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) threaten worldwide damage to human welfare and the long-term trajectory of humankind.
• Global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs) are biological risks that could cause severe and global damage to human welfare.
• A long-termist perspective argues that making humanity's future better is a key objective in decision-making.
• The threshold for when a biological event starts to threaten human civilization is high, around a death toll of 10% of the human population.
• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) causes great human suffering worldwide and could become a bigger problem, but it is not a plausible GCBR.
• A pandemic that kills less than 10% of the human population could still be among the worst events in human history.
• Biological GCBRs are controversial, and opinions vary on what events pose a credible threat to human civilization.
• Evidence for the plausibility of GCBRs comes from expert opinion, historical events, worrying features of advancing biotechnology, and numerical estimates.
• Expert communities have highlighted the danger of very large-scale biological catastrophes, but not all large-scale events would constitute a GCBR.
• The balance of expert opinion on the likelihood of GCBRs is hard to assess, but there is substantial skepticism.
• A 2008 global catastrophic risks survey offers median estimates of the likelihood of a given event occurring before 2100.
• Mitigating GCBRs is important because they could cause vastly greater damage than other disasters and potentially have even more long-lasting effects.

Test your knowledge on the threat of Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs) with this quiz. Explore the concept of GCBRs and their potential impact on human welfare and civilization. From the threshold for a biological event to be considered a threat to the plausibility of GCBRs, this quiz covers important topics related to assessing and mitigating global biological risks. Think you know enough about GCBRs? Take the quiz and put your knowledge to the test!