Ask HN: Would a global catastrophe unite or divide nations? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would a global catastrophe unite or divide nations?

16 pointsdesertraven80 comments

If a globally coordinated project of an unprecedented scale were required for our survival, could we pull it off?

It heavily depends on the nature of catastrophe.

* meteor coming to earth in 20 years, obliterating everything - the humanity will unite

* gradual reduction of temperature by 20 degrees. Every nation for themselves.

A pandemic wasn't able to unite humanity to fix it, why would a meteor be any different?

With a pandemic the problem generally arrives in your country from another one - there's a major "blame game". Same with climate change.

Meteor is different, the problem comes from outside.

Wasn't it?

No? At times, eu-internal borders were closed, for some time the fall of the european union was a serious concern. And that's within a political union.

It was each country on their own.

EU internal borders being closed was agreed between countries in the EU though. It wasn't every country for themselves.

In a pandemic, politicians have no incentive to give up on their autonomy as their electorate doesn't demand a global solution.

If a meteor is about to wipe out everything, global interests are actually aligned. That's not the case in a pandemic.

The pandemic doesn't have a clear fix. Lockdown, vaccinations, etc. only slowed it down. Even China's extreme measures to achieve zero COVID was not able to make it happen.

Because the meteor would affect rich people.

Kung Flu was an internal threat since it was created by the chinese with american money.

A gradual rise of temperature is far more likely. And yes, it will be every nation for themselves but the refugees from the equatorial regions will swarm the northern and southern regions. And that will likely happen in such quantities that the northern and southern nations will not be able to prevent it. Not to mention the element of "we must help everybody, even at the expense of ourselves" people who will assist the invasion of refugees.

> And that will likely happen in such quantities that the northern and southern nations will not be able to prevent it.

I think it depends. US and Europe for example have quite "defensible" (against civilian migrants) southern border.

What might happen, though, are some conventional or mixed wars for cooler territory.

> Not to mention the element of "we must help everybody, even at the expense of ourselves" people who will assist the invasion of refugees.

I think the opinion would turn around. With the gradual increase in temperature, you'll get gradually more migrants, which will either shift the Overton window or increase the preferences of (far) right parties.

In the latest case it is not clear to everybody that the consequences are gonna be catastrophic. Therefore, everybody only sees that they will lose a lot when taking action.

Yes, although I think it would hold even if it was known in advance.

Another key part is that some areas on earth would remain habitable / producing food. Rich (northern) nations could try some novel approaches to mitigate the effects on a local scale (greenhouse agriculture). Yet other nations could attempt to conquer/buy better placed weak/poor countries.

Agree. It's the onset of the problem that makes it tricky to judge what will happen. Look at the response to the effects of chlorofluorocarbon gasses on the ozone layer. Relatively swift, united action to ban their use, despite having the producers like DuPont doing everything they could to avoid measures, or at least question the fact that CFC gasses were causing something catastrophic. (https://timharford.com/2022/11/cautionary-tales-the-inventor... gives a good insight in the process) I think we're witnessing a similar dynamic with global temperature rises and greenhouse gasses. In this case though, the ones who are negatively affected by preventive measures are the people instead of 1 big company, the cause-effect is disputed more and the onset before we really see the consequences is way longer. Frog, boiling pot, more room for dispute and friction.

We've got better odd's handling cooling than warming. Wet Bulb Temps are not to be stifled with.

In you're first scenario, I think there'd be a lot of 'the last of us' style horror to go around.

In the second, the north face would make a killing and we'd get really good at green houses.

I agree, but even in the 'obvious external threat' scenario, I'd expect plenty of machinations, jockeying, gaming, secret plan-Bs, etc.

There's always the question of where, exactly, the meteor is going to hit..

"Why should America pay for a meteor that's going to hit Russia?"

If the meteor is big enough, it doesn't matter where it's going to hit. We're all fucked.

Yes, as long as it is indisputable. If there is any question as to how real it is then doubtful. See climate change.

i.e. meteor on 100% collision course...yes. 5%...less confident humanity will pull together

Don't look up.

I mean... climate change isn't actually disputable. And it hasn't been for a long time.

That is unless "well, people can just make up their own version of reality" falls unter disputability for you.

>And it hasn't been for a long time.

I agree...the problem is there are some that don't...

Climate change isn't in dispute. The level of human contribution is heavily disputed, as are a lot of data points and decisions downstream from that.

Discussing it as a monolithic, binary thing that you're either on the right side of or not is counter-productive.

Even with the meteor there would be a lot of people that flat-out deny it and blame governments, scientists, secret societies, etc. conspiring to achieve an ulterior objective.

there would also be a raging debate about the fairness of who should pay for the meteor. politicians would use it to score points on opponents, and try to claim that if elected they would get country X to pay more for the meteor since they have a higher population etc

Anything can be denied if you are willing or manipulated enough.

Spoiler for The Watchmen:

The Watchmen has two examples (comic and movie) that I thought might work, if they were really pulled off.

However, even then I agree with the other comments currently posted that there would still be deniers, who would ultimately win.

Maybe humanity could pull it off, but if they could I'm not sure we'd be able to sustain it.

We're good at short term disasters, but not at preventing them, or following through with the lessons we've learned.

Why would the deniers win?

It's the path that requires the least action.

Because we have a hard time sustaining. It's easy to laugh off the deniers instead of educate. Or just not care since it doesn't immediately impact me.

The more time that passes, the less real it is, the less people that can talk about being there, the easier it is to deny.

Maybe it's different if it's a disaster from something like a meteor. Slightly harder to deny that it happened, but certainly not hard to question and doubt the long term impacts.

'Sure, it had x and y immediate impact, but even though there's general consensus among experts that we should do z, let's go slow/let's not be too hasty/no one could be sure/what do they actually know/but there's these small group of opposing experts that I like better.'

Historically, war has been something where a truly large number of people and a large fraction of world economy could be "united". It's hard to imagine a disaster that would require the same level of both world GDP focus AND individual human labor participation in the modern economy. COVID seems the best example, but the GDP impact seems to have been largely negative in the sense of needing more factories to (temporarily) close more than new production to come on line. I'm quite curious to hear brainstorms of acute disaster scenarios that would drive a big transition of production to something special...

To clarify what I mean by war - in the world wars at some point large fractions of the world population and economy were united in purpose, even though the purpose was to blow each other up. I interpret the question to ask whether there could be the same unity of purpose towards a mutual goal.

Look at the response to COVID-19.

Considering people deny it happened, we might need something more drastic.

OTOH, I’m sure if the Canary Islands blew up and a massive tsunami wiped New York out of the map, there would be people saying NYC was a fictional place that existed only in movies.

That can be read both ways. Please elaborate.

Nations outbid each other to get masks and everything. Confiscated stuff when it was moved past their borders etc. i think the message we can learn from it is clear.

But there was also some international cooperation, as well, e.g. Pfizer-BioNTech.

The cooperation happened when both parties could only benefit through cooperation, and it required trust. The vaccines were snatched (in the beginning) and the Trump wanted to "take over" BioNTech to guarantee vaccine priority.

COVID-19 showed that everyone is on its own (countries, cities, individuals, etc..)

Where BioNTech had specialist competence in a technology which turned out to somewhat effective against the problem and Pfizer had massive funds, established contact network including decision makers and established ability to quickly run large clinical trials. Neither of all that much use without the other. Taken together, an opportunity to conduct highly profitable business, mitigate a health emergency, and look great doing it. There seems to be lessons about conditions for successful cooperation in the example, but I'm not so sure what they say is particularly encouraging about uniting nations.

We created a vaccine in record time and distributed it in peoples arms in even less. I think all in all the Covid pandemic response was an incredible achievement, even if far from perfect.

Far from perfect? Have you seen the latest data?

We now know for example, that the risk of being hospitalised due to vaccine side effects is orders of magnitude more likely than that the vaccines will save you from being hospitalised with COVID.

In randomized control trials of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines here in the UK, we now know the risk of serious adverse effects from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated i.e. a ~1 in 800 change of serious adverse effects:

22-Sep-22 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/

The UK government has now published its estimate of the number of people needed to vaccinate to prevent a COIVD-19 hospitalisation:

25-Jan-2023 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

For example in the 20-29 year no-risk group, the number needed to vaccinate to prevent one hopitalisation is 168,200. To prevent one serious hospitalisation requiring oxygen or ventilation you would need to vaccinate 706,500.

In the UK data, there is litterally no group of people where the likelihood of being hospitalised with side effects is less than the liklihood of being hospitalised with COVID.

It was a disaster that has left us with a plague of "unexplained" excess deaths - a topic that no politician or mainstream journalist wants to touch with a barge pole.

Your first link, straight from the introduction: "Our study was not designed to evaluate the overall harm-benefit of vaccination programs so far. To put our safety results in context, we conducted a simple comparison of harms with benefits to illustrate the need for formal harm-benefit analyses of the vaccines that are stratified according to risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes. Our analysis is restricted to the randomized trial data, and does not consider data on post-authorization vaccination program impact. It does however show the need for public release of participant level trial datasets."

If it wasn't designed to evaluate the harm benefit of vaccination, why are you portraying it as such?

It doesn't really matter the stated intent of the authors. The fact is that the paper does show a hospitalisation rate of 1 in 800.

Exactly

Not a good example. Large parts of the population were resistant or showed very weak flu-like symptoms. You couldn't show the full hospital wards, the high death rates to all parts of society. You needed to force very invasive measures - closures, quarantines, getting a vaccination - with not much to effectively show what for. Conspiracies and resistance was then of course aloof. With an obvious external threat that would be different.

“Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity,” Reagan said.

“Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond,” Reagan proposed.

“I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”

Given the news just this week about Reagan it's a little funny to cite him as a prophet of unity and our better nature. He did say some good stuff, but he also wasn't above exploiting a catastrophe for political gain. It's the person he used the catastrophe against, Jimmy Carter, who actually sacrificed in the name of unity and our better nature. Reagan pitched Carter out of office.

There's a great YouTube channel that goes deep into questions like these.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@WhatifAltHist

Yes and no. Some dedicated individuals and groups will come together and try. And the power struggle within will bifurcate the effort, as all human collective efforts tend so have internal power struggles. Those losing in that power struggle will look to the deniers of the need for the collective effort and with luck manipulate that population to "join" them. ..and of course, as we play our political games, the clock runs out and a few might survive.

Who caused the catastrophe?

Already with the blame!

Aliens

the two examples we hear are - meteors with 100% certainty of hitting - climate change

I'd like to hear opinions on other thing. would nations unite against alien invasion? a solar flare? killer robots?

What could we unite and do against a solar flare? We get some advanced warning but not that much. The sun had a massive solar flare just in this past week that we got lucky was on the opposite side of our orbit whose shockwave still hit the Earth, and that can reach us in about 30 minutes according to the following article. That's not a lot of time to unite and take action.

"Even though the CME erupted from the opposite side of the Sun, its impacts were felt at Earth. As CMEs blast through space, they create a shockwave that can accelerate particles along the CME’s path to incredible speeds, much the way surfers are pushed along by an incoming ocean wave. Known as solar energetic particles, or SEPs, these speedy particles can make the 93-million-mile journey from the Sun to Earth in around 30 minutes."[1]

[1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2023/03/14/a-powerful-solar-e...

ok, bad example. maybe the CME will take out the alien fleet

Are economic interests in place? Good luck with that.

You mean will.

I don't really see benefit for countries like Japan, Australia or other isolated countries to join others.

Thanks to globalisation, no developed nation is truly isolated these days

that's by choice, if they wanted they can get isolated and be self sufficient with some minor compromises/inconveniences

Lets take your Japan as an example. It has no indigenous oil, lng, or nuclear fuel. 60% of consumed food is imported[1]. Famed Japanese steel is almost completely relying on imported iron. Your minor inconvenience is more like rolling back industry 200 years and decimating the population.

[1] https://www.merlofarminggroup.com/agri-view-japan%E2%80%99s-...

pretty sure they could just turn to solar, wind or water for energy (especially wind turbines or water dams can build even any developing country without kuch know how, let alone Japan, no need any rare resources from China for that) if they really wanted/needed to be self sufficient

same with food, it's just not worth for them right now, quite irelevant comparing status quo with situation where you want to be isolated not part of globalized system, just because now they import 60% food doesn't mean they need to import 60% of food

Scott Adams talks about the law of slow disasters and thinks that cooperation against a common threat is possible, as long as there is enough time to prepare and agree. Eg. working around climate change will happen, shooting down the next meteor will not.

I'm not sure why anyone should care what Scott Adams thinks about a global catastrophe. He writes funny office comics and that's about it.

There are two types of funny. Ridiculous-funny and insightful-funny. And sometimes insightful-funny is confused with clever-funny.

"He writes funny office comics and that's about it."

If that would have been it, he would not have been canceled. (After publishing a racist rant, so also not really a qualification to predict global human social behavior).

What did he say?

He reacted to the Rasmussen poll which said that 53% of black people in the US disagree with the statement "it's ok to be white", and suggested it would be wise to "stay the hell away" and "there's no fixing this"

He said to "stay the hell away" from ALL black people. No matter how they individually think, which qualifies as racism, if it is to be taken literally. Now he uses satire as well, but this seems to be his genuine opinion. (a comic the next days had the lines: "How is honesty working out for you? - to which Dilbert replies "Shut up")

And for context, the statement "it's ok to be white" is political charged, as it originally comes from white racist, so it is up for debate, how much this changed the poll.

It doesn't matter the context. Is it ok, or isn't it?

The correct response is "yes of course it is ok to be any race. Why wouldn't it be?".

It's quite reasonable to be cautious around anyone who equivocates on this question.

With human natural language, context always matters. Common humans are not trained in boolean logic and don't try to make mathematical correct sentences like we nerds do (clearly we do not succed with that always, either).

So if someone associates a phrase as an slogan of an enemy group, he or she will not agree to that phrase.

But this point aside, for sure there are many black racists. Who hate white people, because some white people enslaved their ancestors. But saying now ALL black people are to be avoided because SOME black people are racist, is equal to disagreeing to "it is ok to be black". The very thing he criticized black people for. But honestly, it is all BS to, focusing so much on the color of peoples skin in the first place.

Don't be patronising. Black people are not stupid - I should know because my wife is one.

If a black person says they disagree with the statement "it's OK to be white", you can believe they know what they're saying. And it's no surprise, because you have this problem in America - there are so many voices in echo chambers stoking racial grievance today... well I'm relieved that the number isn't even higher.

So what is the solution to this?

Scott Adams says there isn't one. Maybe he's right. How do you deescalate this? And if tensions continue to escalate, then what choice do people have other than to peacefully move apart?

I did not say black people are stupid. I said common people are not strict users of boolean logic in their language. You can see that also with "black lifes matter". If you would poll for that, then very likely quite some people would answer no, not because they are racist, but because they think "all lifes matter".

"How do you deescalate this?"

To me the solution would simply be not caring about skin color anymore. Not making such flamewar polls. Not encode it in laws, regulations, quotas, ... because all this is cementing the importance of skin color, instead of moving beyound it.

"And if tensions continue to escalate, then what choice do people have other than to peacefully move apart? "

You can just move towards people, who also don't care about skincolor.

It is not a binary decision. Ask people in between, what they think of it.

Anyway, if black and white racists seperate and stay by themself, then this is fine by me.

For that he was cancelled? I don't get it. The Dilbert site is still up.

It sounds like there is room for nuance, but one side of the issue has no room for nuance. I'll try to find his original essay to see what I can make of it. For what it's worth, I've never heard of the Rasmussen poll.

Well, he is obviously not in jail and his site is private, so still up, but all the major magazines and newspapers don't show his cartoons anymore.

And it was originally a youtube video, not an essay, but I don't have the link at hand anymore. (But there were plenty of articles about it with the video linked)

He used to have (has?) a very insightful blog as well which I stopped reading somewhere in the middle of the 2016 presidential campaign - I couldn't handle that much Trump gloating anymore. A smart guy but... no.

He’s becoming increasingly bizarre and hostile of late to the point where he was recently straight up describing how he wants racial segregation, quoth he:

> I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people, because there is no fixing this

So I suspect if he’s talking about global cooperation in the case of a catastrophe, he probably means a different and less idyllic sort divided on racial lines.

Bruh Scott Adams is a loon.

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