Double scenarios of a global catastrophe.
Download pdf here:
http://immortality-roadmap.com/doublecat.pdf

It is not uncommon to find organisations working, directly or indirectly, on a single Global Catastrophic Risk (GCR). For instance, the World Health Organization does much work to prevent pandemics, as part of its remit.

It is rarer for organisations to focus on multiple GCRs - for a start, this involves them having the concept akin to GCR, which is not often the case. In a report I'm preparing with Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenges Foundation, here is a list of organisations focusing on multiple GCRs (note that it is not necessarily an endorsement of their quality). Let me know if there are any organisations missing, and I'll add them:

This post is inspired by a recent comment thread on my Facebook. I asked people to respond with whether or not they kept fire/lock boxes in their homes for their important documents (mainly to prove to a friend that this is a Thing People Do). It was pretty evenly divided, with slightly more people having them, than not. The interesting pattern I noticed was that almost ALL of my non-rationality community friends DID have them, and almost NONE of my rationality community friends did, and some hadn't even considered it.

This could be because getting a lock box is not an optimal use of time or money, OR it could be because rationalists often overlook the mundane household-y things more than the average person. I'm actually not certain which it is, so am writing this post presenting the case of why you should keep certain emergency items in the hope that either I'll get some interesting points for why you shouldn't prep that I haven't thought of yet, OR will get even better ideas in the comments.

General Case

Many LWers are concerned about x-risks that have a small chance of causing massive damage. We may or may not see this occur in our lifetime. However, there are small problems that occur every 2-3 years or so (extended blackout, being snowed in, etc), and there are mid-sized catastrophes that you might see a couple times in your life (blizzards, hurricanes, etc). It is likely that at least once in your life you will be snowed in your house and the pipes will burst or freeze (or whatever the local equivalent is, if you live in a warmer climate). Having the basic preparations ready for these occurrences is low cost (many minor emergencies require a similar set of preparations), and high payoff. 

Medicine and Hospitality

This category is so minor, you probably don't consider it to be "emergency", but it's still A Thing To Prepare For. It really sucks having to go to the store when you're sick because you don't already have the medicine you need at hand. It's better to keep the basics always available, just in case. You, or a guest, are likely to be grateful that you have these on hand. Even if you personally never get sick, I consider a well-stocked medicine cabinet to be a point of hospitality. If you have people over to your place with any frequency, it is nice to have:

Medicine

• Pain Reliever (ibuprofen, NSAID)
• Zyrtec (Especially if you have cats. Guests might be allergic!)
• Antacids, Chewable Pepto, Gas-X (Especially if you have people over for food)
• Multipurpose contact solution (getting something in your contact without any solution nearby is both rare and awful)
• Neosporin/bandaids (esp. if your cats scratch :P)

Toiletries

• Spare toothbrush (esp. if you might have a multi-day guest)
• Single use disposable toothbrushes (such as Wisp). These are also good to carry with you in your backpack or purse.)
• Pads/tampons (Yes, even if you're a guy. They should be somewhere obvious such as under the sink, so that your guest doesn't need to ask)

Minor Catastrophe Preparation

These are somewhat geography dependent. Adjust for whatever catastrophes are common in your area. There are places where if you don't have 4 wheel drive, you're just not going to be able to leave your house during a snowstorm. There are places where tornadoes or earthquakes are common. There are places where a bad hurricane rolls through every couple years. If you're new to an area, make sure you know what the local "regular" emergency is.

Some of these are a bit of a harder sell, I think. 

• Flashlights (that you can find in the dark)
• Spare batteries
• Candles/Lighter
• Water (ready.gov says one gallon per person per day, and have enough for 3 days)
• Non perishable food (ideally that doesn't need to be cooked, e.g. canned goods)
• Manual can opener
• Fire Extinguisher
• Action: check out ready.gov for the emergencies that are most common for your area, and read their recommendations

The chanses of prevention of the global catastrophe are growing if humans have the goal of it. This is semi-trivial conclusion. But the main question is who should have such goal?

Of course, if we have global government, its main goal should be prevention of global catastrophe. But we do not have global government and most people hate the idea. I find it irrational. But discussion about global goverment is pure theoretical one, because I do not see peaceful ways of its creation. 

If friendly AI take over the world ve will became global government de facto.

Or if imminent global risk will be recognized (asteroid is near), UN could temporaly transform in some kind of global government. 
But some people think that global government itself will be or will soon lead to the global catastrophe - because it could easily implement global measures - and predicate "global" is nessesary to global catastrophes, as I am going to show in one of next posts. For example it could implement global total vaccination that lately will have dangerous consciences.

So we see that idea of global government is very closely connected with idea of global catastrophe. One could lead to another and back.

But as we do not have global government we could only speak about goals of separate people and separate organizations.

People do not have goals. The only think that they have goals, but these are only declarations, which rarely regulate real people's behavior. This is because human beings are not born as rational subjects and their behavior is mostly regulated by unconscious programs known as instincts. 

These instincts are culturally adapted as values. Values are the real reasons of human behavior. "Goals" are what people say about their reasons to others and to themselves.

The problem of how human values influent the course of human history is difficult one. Last year I wrote a book "Futurology. 21 century: immortality or global catastrophe" in Russian together with M.Batin. And the chapter about values was the most difficult one. 

Values are always based on instincts , pleasure and collective behavior (values help to form groups of people who share them). Value is always emotion, it has energy to move a person.

But self-preservation is basic human instinct and so prevention of death and global catastrophe could be human value.

Each value need a group of supporters to exist (value of soccer needs group of fans). Religious values exist only because they have large group of supporters.

In 1960th fight for peace existed and was mass movement. It finally won and lead to limitation of nuclear arsenals in 80th and later. This is good example of how human values prevented global risk without creation of global government.

Now value of "being green" has been created and many people fight CO2.

The problems with such values is that they need very bright picture of risk to attract attention of people. It is not easy to create value to fight global risks in general. But the value of infinite existence of the civilization is much easily imaginable.
So promoting a vision of future galactic super civilization with immortal people could motivate people now to fight global risks in all forms.