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gwern comments on Open Thread, June 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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The risk of supervolcanos looks higher than previously thought, though none are imminent.
Is there anything conceivable which can be done to ameliorate the risk?
The only suggestion I've heard is self-sustaining space colonies, which obviously is not doable anytime soon. Depending on the specifics, buried bunkers might work, as long as they're not on the same continent to be buried in the ash or lava.
How long will it actually take for a self-sustaining colony in LEO to be plausible? We have the ISS and Biosphere 2, and have for quite some time. Zero G poses some problems, but certainly not insurmountable ones. It looks like we have at least a few hundred years of advance notice, which would likely be enough time to set up an orbital colony even with only current technology.
Besides, it looks like past a couple hundred miles, the eruption would be survivable without any special, though agriculture would be negatively impacted.
Sounds like something best left for the future, which I hope will have much better tech. Tectonic engineering? Forcefields? Everyone uploaded?
Some existential risks simply may be intractable and the bullet bitten. It's not like we can do anything about a vacuum collapse either.