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Ask HN: Would a global catastrophe unite or divide nations?
If a globally coordinated project of an unprecedented scale were required for our survival, could we pull it off?
- jamesy0ung 4y agoLook at the response to COVID-19.
- rbanffy 4y agoConsidering people deny it happened, we might need something more drastic.
- rbanffy 4y agoOTOH, 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.
- ggeorgovassilis 4y agoThat can be read both ways. Please elaborate.
- tpetry 4y agoNations 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.
- ughitsaaron 4y agoBut there was also some international cooperation, as well, e.g. Pfizer-BioNTech.
- csomar 4y agoThe 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..)
- etiam 4y agoWhere 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.
- scrollaway 4y agoWe 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.
- realjhol 4y agoFar 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/ 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/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1131409/appendix-1-of-jcvi-statement-on-2023-covid-19-vaccination-programme-8-november-2022.pdf 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.
- VistaBrokeMyPC 4y agoYour 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?
- mantas 4y agoExactly
- poisonborz 4y agoNot 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.
- kypro 4y agoWho caused the catastrophe?
- ggeorgovassilis 4y agoScott 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.
- WA 4y agoI'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.
- gregw2 4y agoThere are two types of funny. Ridiculous-funny and insightful-funny. And sometimes insightful-funny is confused with clever-funny.
- hutzlibu 4y ago"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).
- dotancohen 4y agoWhat did he say?
- realjhol 4y agoHe 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"
- hutzlibu 4y agoHe 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.
- Havoc 4y agoYes, 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
- jacquesm 4y agoDon't look up.
- inductive_magic 4y agoI 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.
- Havoc 4y ago>And it hasn't been for a long time. I agree...the problem is there are some that don't...
- CaptWillard 4y agoClimate 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.
- samus 4y agoEven 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.
- bartislartfast 4y agothere 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
- RHSman2 4y agoYou mean will.
- The_Colonel 4y agoIt 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.
- addandsubtract 4y agoA pandemic wasn't able to unite humanity to fix it, why would a meteor be any different?
- HPsquared 4y agoWith 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.
- bartislartfast 4y agoWasn't it?
- inductive_magic 4y agoNo? 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.
- bartislartfast 4y agoEU internal borders being closed was agreed between countries in the EU though. It wasn't every country for themselves.
- inductive_magic 4y agoIn 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.
- james-skemp 4y agoSpoiler 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.
- 6nf 4y agoWhy would the deniers win?
- aae42 4y agoIt's the path that requires the least action.
- james-skemp 4y agoBecause 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.'
- petodo 4y agoI don't really see benefit for countries like Japan, Australia or other isolated countries to join others.
- zokier 4y agoThanks to globalisation, no developed nation is truly isolated these days
- petodo 4y agothat's by choice, if they wanted they can get isolated and be self sufficient with some minor compromises/inconveniences
- zokier 4y agoLets 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-agriculture-imports-exports https://www.merlofarminggroup.com/agri-view-japan%E2%80%99s-...
- petodo 4y agopretty 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
- SirLJ 4y ago“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?”
- DFHippie 4y agoGiven 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.
- ckemere 4y agoHistorically, 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...
- ckemere 4y agoTo 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.
- bsenftner 4y agoYes 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.
- bartislartfast 4y agothe 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?
- cableshaft 4y agoWhat 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-eruption-on-far-side-of-sun-still-impacted-earth/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2023/03/14/a-powerful-solar-e...
- bartislartfast 4y agook, bad example. maybe the CME will take out the alien fleet
- surprisetalk 4y agoThere's a great YouTube channel that goes deep into questions like these. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@WhatifAltHist https://www.youtube.com/@WhatifAltHist
- gmuslera 4y agoAre economic interests in place? Good luck with that.