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Nuclear War
Among current global risks, a large-scale nuclear exchange remains the single most probable pathway to civilizational collapse. Multiple nuclear-armed states are entangled in active or near-active conflicts—U.S.–China tensions over Taiwan, Russia's war in Ukraine, India–Pakistan volatility, and North Korean provocations—while arms control frameworks (New START, INF) continue to erode. Modernization programs are lowering tactical nuclear thresholds and introducing AI into command-and-control systems, compressing decision-making timelines and increasing the risk of miscalculation or accidental launch.
Concurrently, multipolar competition, resource scarcity, and climate-driven migration are fueling nationalist, zero-sum politics that undermine diplomatic restraint. A single escalation spiral—perhaps triggered by a crisis over Taiwan, the Baltic states, or the Korean Peninsula—could rapidly overwhelm de-escalation mechanisms. A full exchange involving even a few hundred warheads would trigger nuclear winter, collapsing global agriculture and supply chains, and rendering most of the planet uninhabitable for sustained habitation within months to years.
Unlike slow-onset threats such as climate change, nuclear war delivers abrupt, irreversible devastation at civilization scale with historically demonstrated human willingness to use these weapons once before—raising the baseline probability that we use them again, this time extensively enough to end the world as we know it.
Concurrently, multipolar competition, resource scarcity, and climate-driven migration are fueling nationalist, zero-sum politics that undermine diplomatic restraint. A single escalation spiral—perhaps triggered by a crisis over Taiwan, the Baltic states, or the Korean Peninsula—could rapidly overwhelm de-escalation mechanisms. A full exchange involving even a few hundred warheads would trigger nuclear winter, collapsing global agriculture and supply chains, and rendering most of the planet uninhabitable for sustained habitation within months to years.
Unlike slow-onset threats such as climate change, nuclear war delivers abrupt, irreversible devastation at civilization scale with historically demonstrated human willingness to use these weapons once before—raising the baseline probability that we use them again, this time extensively enough to end the world as we know it.