Morbidly, I guess for me it might be a race between that and the cancers that killed off the other side of the family.
I don't really care to get checked for the gene, but I do have a general idea of what needs to happen once the speech starts to go.
≤10% of ALS is inherited. And even if you carry a gene which makes you more susceptible to ALS, the risk seems to cap out at ~50%. So, at worst, it's a coin flip.
So. It's not an inevitability -- not certain doom. It's a roll of the dice, with the odds in your favor.
That coin-flip-at-worst still probably gives one a better than evens chance of falling on the side of the average life expectancy where folks don't live to enjoy a long healthy retirement, for example.
You might, though, so you can't burn it all either.
There's also some added complexity that comes along for the ride when choosing to have children or not, saddled with a family history of nasty, fairly early onset baggage.
Another commenter said that embryo selection can help in that regard, which is an interesting angle that I hadn't considered.
ALS is a horrible way to exit this earth. It is a death I would wish on no one