Florian U. Jehn

New preprint! Global inequality is on the rise, and so is global catastrophic risk. These two problems are not independent: inequality drives societal instability and increases catastrophic risk. We show this by drawing on historical and empirical research highlighting the corrosive effects of inequality. The danger comes via two pathways: 1) inequality erodes trust and information sharing, making collective action much harder; 2) inequality is especially damaging to democracies, which are our best bet for surviving future hazards. This means, if we want a society more resilient to global catastrophic risk, we need more democratic participation and less inequality. See the paper for the full argument: https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/12164/ #inequality #wealth #GlobalCatastrophicRisk #History

Who actually shapes global risk?

One common answer is to focus on individual apocalyptic actors, like terrorists aiming to end the world. But are these groups really what we should be on the lookout for most? Or should we not also consider institutional actors, like states, large militaries, or companies, who actually have the power and resources to meaningfully tip the global balance?

Find out more in post: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/who-shapes-global-risk

#GlobalCatastrophicRisk #ExistentialRisk #Terrorism #Military

New post about the state of research around nuclear war and nuclear winter, with a focus on the food system.

This one's a bit different, as it was originally an invited contribution to the United Nations Independent Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War. I also wanted to share it publicly, because I think there just aren't that many summaries of the state of nuclear winter research out there.

It also discusses the most important gaps and unanswered research questions in the field. So, if you are interested in the topics in general or plan to work in the area, I think it could be an interesting read.

https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/nuclear-war-nuclear-winter-and-the

#NuclearWar #NuclearWinter #FoodSystem

New paper is out!

We identified the worst crop shock every country experienced since 1961: the global average was −29%, with Botswana even losing 80% in a single year. Climate—especially drought—was the leading cause, although conflict is also a major contributor to crop failures. We can also see that the frequency of climate-driven shocks has doubled since the 1960s.

You can find the whole paper here: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/17/151/2026/esd-17-151-2026.html

In the map below you can see the global distribution of the most severe shocks.

#Agriculture #CropFailure #Famine #Climate #Drought #conflict

Had a great conversation with Samuel Arbesman on the podcast "The Orthogonal Bet" about all things collapse. If you are curious about the interdisciplinary nature of collapse studies, how it connects history to global catastrophic risk, and how societal resilience increases and decreases, check it out.

You can find it as podcast (https://pod.link/1796494444/episode/MGZlMTY2MmItZmVlOC00ZmE3LWJkNDUtMWE5MmEwYTVjMGU4?view=apps&sort=popularity) and on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayPkVL7wj4s&feature=youtu.be).

#collapse #resilience #GlobalCatastrophicRisk

One important factor to understanding the impact of global catastrophes is economics. How might agricultural prices rise? What are the general economic outlooks? In the next post in my living literature review I try to explore exactly this. The literature is scarce, but I still think we can learn some interesting things here.

https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/end-time-economics

#economics #NuclearWar #GlobalCatastrophicRisk

Next round of updates for my #LivingLiteratureReview. This means I go back to the old posts and add new papers I found, to make sure that everything stays as up to date as possible. Posts which got updated this time:
* Mapping out collapse research (https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/mapping-out-collapse-research): Added Goliath's curse and improved the overview figures of different collapse ideas.
* Famine's role in societal collapse (https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/famines-role-in-societal-collapse): Added my new paper about crop production shocks.
* Climate anomalies and societal collapse (https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/climate-anomalies-and-societal-collapse): Added a study about how extreme weather events were related to major battles in the Roman Empire.
* Economic inequality and societal collapse (https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/economic-inequality-and-societal): Added a paper that empirically explores how the onset of capitalism was pretty bad for many societies.

If you want to read about the updates in more detail, you can check out the update post: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/december-2025-updates

#SocietalCollapse #Food #Climate #inequality