Whoops apocalypse in the 21st century…

Some readers may be old enough to remember both a TV series and movie from the 1980’s called Whoops Apocalypse. These were satirical fictions about global catastrophe caused by human carelessness. The narratives concerned chains of events which lead to the detonation of nuclear weapons. In the real world that has always been a possibility. In 1983 a wise and brave man called Stanislav Petrov averted such an accidental catastrophe during the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. However there seem to be two more significant, newer threats of accidental destruction of humanity in the 21st century. Recently I listened to a podcast interview with Annie Jacobsen, the author of a book called Biological War: A Scenario. She outlined the current state of bioengineering research around the world and the fact that there are thousands of labs engaged in bacterial and viral research.Research sometimes involves engineered gain-of-function which refers to genetic changes that give a bacterium or virus a new or enhanced ability it did not previously possess, such as antibiotic resistance, toxin production, or altered transmissibility. Such research is not necessarily a quest for new bioweapons. It is just scientists doing what they have always done – experimenting for the sake of experimenting in order to develop and publish something new.

Jacobsen referred to the controversy that the source of COVID-19 could have been the lab in Wuhan. Scientific opinion still maintains that the source was zoonotic spillover. Labs engaged in microbiological research are assigned biosafety levels depending on the danger posed by the microbes being researched. The levels are BSL-1, 2, 3 and 4 with BSL-1 being the least dangerous and BSL-4 being the most dangerous and supposedly most secure. The Wuhan lab is one of only two BSL-4 labs in China. There are approximately 110 BSL-4 and 3,515 BSL-3 laboratories worldwide, while BSL-1 and BSL-2 labs exist in the hundreds of thousands globally without a central registry. Some of them are tinkering with more dangerous pathogens than COVID which had a global overall case fatality rate of approximately 1.0% to 1.5%.

The other potential 21st century threat is of course the risks posed by AI. The jury is still out on this one. It seems certain that AI is going to devastate many fields of employment but does it have the potential to threaten humanity? AI proponents argue that governments can impose restrictions but that assumes that governments will be motivated to do so. China and the US are engaged in an AI dominance race right now and the motivation to put the brakes on development is bound to be outweighed by the determination to win. Some argue that if AI gets very dangerous the plug in the wall can always be pulled but what if the superintelligence of AI is able to mask the danger and persuade controllers to continue? AI allied to the current, rapid development of drone and robotics technology could be lethally formidable.

Both these threats are scarier than the 20th century fears of nuclear catastrophe. The development, delivery and detonation of a nuclear weapon requires levels of expense and technology which are only available to substantial nation states. A devastating plague or AI disaster just requires the carelessness or hubris of a few scientists, programmers or technicians.

Was the poet TS Eliot prophetic when he wrote The Hollow Men?

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.