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Abstract
We evaluate the total probability of human extinction from naturally occurring processes. Such processes include risks that are well characterized such as asteroid impacts and supervolcanic eruptions, as well as risks that remain unknown. Using only the information that Homo sapiens has existed at least 200,000 years, we conclude that the probability that humanity goes extinct from natural causes in any given year is almost guaranteed to be less than one in 14,000, and likely to be less than one in 87,000. Using the longer track record of survival for our entire genus Homo produces even tighter bounds, with an annual probability of natural extinction likely below one in 870,000. These bounds are unlikely to be affected by possible survivorship bias in the data, and are consistent with mammalian extinction rates, typical hominin species lifespans, the frequency of well-characterized risks, and the frequency of mass extinctions. No similar guarantee can be made for risks that our ancestors did not face, such as anthropogenic climate change or nuclear/biological warfare.
Highlights
We evaluate the total probability of human extinction from naturally occurring processes
Using the fact that humans have survived at least 200 kyr, we can infer that the annual probability of human extinction from natural causes is less than 1 in 87,000 with modest confidence (0.1 relative likelihood) and less than 1 in 14,000 with near certainty (10−6 relative likelihood)
Estimates based on older fossils such as the ones found in Morocco dated to 315 kya result in annual extinction probabilities of less than 1 in 137,000 or 1 in 23,000
Summary
We evaluate the total probability of human extinction from naturally occurring processes. We evaluate the natural ‘background’ extinction rate for Homo sapiens This means considerations of anthropogenic risks such as climate change and nuclear weapons are excluded from our estimates, these clearly pose existential threats to our own species as well as others. An alternative approach would be to enumerate the different types of naturally occurring hazards (e.g. asteroids, supervolcanoes), estimate their independent probability of causing extinction, and use these probabilities to derive an aggregate extinction rate This survival time can be used to estimate an upper bound on the extinction rate from all natural sources combined, including from sources for which we remain unaware This approach could be subject to a particular form of sample bias known as an observation selection bias. Inferring a rate based on those 10 Myr could be misleading, and methods must to be used to correct for this bias[12]
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