Matt Boyd, Ben Payne, Nick Wilson TLDR *Note: some readers report this hyperlink not working, the url is: https://adaptresearchwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/230215-nuclear-war-hazard-profile-nz-1.pdf Resilience: NZ’s Bread & Butter Global catastrophic risks such as nuclear war could result in long-term harm on a global scale, with profound disruption to our way of life in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). Other global … Continue reading "Workshop on Nuclear War/Winter & NZ: Wellbeing of millions and $1 trillion plus at risk, strategic resilience must become bread & butter NZ policy"

Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash TLDR: Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) include those events or incidents consequential enough to significantly harm or set back human civilization at the global scale (including: severe global pandemics, nuclear war, asteroid and comet impacts, supervolcanoes, sudden and severe changes to the climate, and intentional or accidental threats arising from the use and development of emerging

TLDR Overview The world still faces the risk of nuclear conflict and resulting severe cascading global impacts. A new paper from the McGuinness Institute provides a summary of the excellent work on the nuclear risk to NZ that was completed in the 1980s. This work found that the likely impact of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear … Continue reading "Nuclear War and NZ: Impact and Mitigation Approaches"

Matt Boyd & Ben Payne TLDR Introduction The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet proactively released two Cabinet papers describing a plan for improving how security risks of national significance are managed in New Zealand. These Cabinet papers address aspects of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attacks, the ongoing development of … Continue reading "Development of a National Security Strategy (plus NEMA) is one part of a National Risk Approach"

Matt Boyd, Nick Wilson, Ben Payne (12 min read) TLDR: The draft NZ National Security Long-term Insights Briefing (already informed by a public survey) is currently out for public consultation.

Seminar 21 Oct 2022 Ahead of our forthcoming Aotearoa New Zealand Catastrophe Resilience Project, I presented a seminar at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. You can listen to the audio of the seminar here (90 min total, question time with the CSER audience begins at 58:30). The slides associated with the presentation can be downloaded here.

This post introduces the Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat), and outlines the aims, methods, and results of the project. You can read a range of project blogs here.

This is a link post to our new long-read on nuclear winter and abrupt sunlight reducing scenarios.

This short piece is a reply to Dr Reuben Steff’s insightful new article about geopolitics and strategic risks to New Zealand on Newsroom : https://www.newsroom.co.nz/nz-cant-kick-the-can-on-global-crises Great piece Reuben, and I largely agree with your assessment.

TLDR : This post surveys Peter Zeihan’s new book on demographic trends and geopolitical strife, in which he warns of future severe disruptions to global trade, and the likelihood of industrial collapse in many regions.

This instalment of the Adapt Research Blog brings you a selection of Matt’s recent audio and video presentations. These appeared in podcast, radio and conference format through April–June 2022. Podcast with Ben Reid of Memia (6 June, 2022): Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks (66 min) – Covering: Risks, risk analysis, refuges, strategic planning. Full details in the show notes.