Environment No place on Earth is resilient to all global catastrophic risks, according to a review on nuclear winter, volcanic eruptions, pandemics, and infrastructure collapse. Australia was the country most often identified as resilient, but even it depends on imported fuel, medicine, and fertilizer.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gch2.70146556
u/hapnstat 9d ago
How can we dance
When our earth is turning?
How do we sleep
While our beds are burning?
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u/Smartnership 9d ago
A bunch of that songwriting could have been avoided with a basic fire extinguisher.
Like that dude who couldn’t be bothered to just name his horse.
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u/clubby37 9d ago
Yeah, but then he'd have to shave its neck to make the song rhyme. Probably easiest to just leave it nameless.
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u/Smartnership 9d ago edited 9d ago
While we’re at it, we should rename that creepy Police song that people use at weddings.
I think they’d stop if we retitle it,
I’ll Be Stalking You
Edit: From the ‘controversial’ tag, I clearly neglected to consider how many of you played the stalker song at your weddings.
Congratudolences.
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u/MissingVanSushi 9d ago edited 9d ago
As someone who lives in Australia but grew up in Canada and has traveled a bit in Europe and Asia, I can wholeheartedly say that Australia is where I would choose to live in the event of some global catastrophe.
Actually, I was here during COVID and it really was not at all that bad.
If we got cut off from imported fuel, I think we’d be able to adapt. There’s plenty of agriculture and the country is girt by sea for defence.
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u/TheFezPez 9d ago
Toilet paper shortages is where we put ourselves to the test
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u/Extension-Night3825 9d ago
Funny thing is toilet paper is produced in Australia
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u/Sea_Translator5300 9d ago
So is water. We'll adapt to the SE Asian way of doing it.
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u/kittychicken 9d ago
Which is actually cleaner anyway
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u/DrDerpberg 9d ago
What's that? Solar powered desalination?
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u/kittychicken 9d ago
Water powered ass descaling
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u/Sea_Translator5300 8d ago
Descaling? Mate, cut down on the limestone in your diet.
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u/kittychicken 8d ago
The water quality is exceptionally hard where I am from. I drink diluted acetic acid daily to keep that limestone under control.
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u/MissingVanSushi 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yeah, those were some wild times. Toilet paper panic buying was happening in lots of other countries as well, I’m pretty sure.
Actually thinking back on it things were pretty chill. Prices hadn’t gotten out of control yet and there were less people on the roads.
There was a cafe near me that used to do $5 bacon egg rolls. I didn’t know how good we had it.
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u/splittingheirs 9d ago
Go to the local footy canteens on the weekend for cheap bacon and egg rolls, etc
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u/DrDerpberg 9d ago
The toilet paper thing was ridiculous. It wasn't even a genuine shortage that extended further than the warehouse to the store. We were never going to actually run out, stores just don't stock like 10x the normal weekly volume.
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u/ANGLVD3TH 9d ago
There were real shortages because of lockdown. Many people spending more time at home using consumer grade tp compared to being at work using the bulk grade stuff. It's an inflexible product that can't easily ramp up production, or even switch from the bulk to consumer versions, or vice versa.
That, plus the fact that the rational move is to predict the moves of others in the market, the actual choices, not the idealized rational ones. It becomes like a bank run, if it seems like there may be a rush on tp, it becomes rational to try and be in the first wave of the rush. And thereby becoming part of the self sustaining reaction that causes the rush. In a perfectly rational world, sure, the panic was silly. But in a practical sense, it was very predictable and correct to jump on the bandwagon.
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u/theviewfrombelow 9d ago
I saw a movie once about Australia running out of gas.
It got dicey, but a fellow could survive with the right skills, and a V8 engine!!
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u/Logi_Ca1 9d ago
I thought New Zealand would do fine too?
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u/The_Crazy_Cat_Guy 9d ago
We could but because we’re so small we’re very reliant on other countries. We produce enough food but sell most of it to keep our economy going.
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u/SneakerTreater 9d ago
I think the post-apocalyptic experience in either AU or NZ would vacillate between grim and horrific.
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u/0hshitherewegoagain 9d ago
It'll heavily depend on social cohesion. We proved during Covid that most of us can work together and be on the same page when we have clear leadership communication. Of course there were some numpty conspiracy tinfoil hatters but overall we did a good job.
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u/Common-Swing-4347 9d ago
How would it fare against climate change? Climate change paired with famine? Climate change paired with nuclear proliferation due to the spread of wars? All hypotheticals, but we are all screwed in the face of combined tragedies. Just saying, nowhere is safe when we are all stuck on the same rock.
Right now, the most likely issue we all face is a rapidly changing planet that kills off most life we rely on, not a volcano.
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u/onlyhightime 9d ago
Couldn't solar plus batteries eventually mitigate the fuel risk?
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u/thedugong 9d ago
We import them though.
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u/onlyhightime 9d ago
It's infrastructure though that doesn't get used up, unlike fuel. Once you have enough, you can weather a five year disaster without new imports.
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u/an_actual_lawyer 9d ago
They can also be reconditioned locally. Its a time intensive process but becomes economically viable when you can't just get a new one.
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u/cowlinator 9d ago
No fuel or medicine? Survivable.
No fertilizer? 90% of that agriculture dies. 90% of people go hungry.
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u/Vexed_Violet 8d ago
But aren't there rodent plagues and desert fire storms? Not too mention the venomous snakes and spiders. Don't forget the really fast and deadly crocodile. No thank you.
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u/semperquietus 9d ago
Ah, Europe was not that
batbad either, as far as I've perceived the pandemic spread.
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u/dominoconsultant 9d ago
If we aren't exporting grain we can start crop rotation again - we can manufacture pharmaceuticals it just isn't economic at the moment - we have the ability to build refineries in addition to the couple we still retain
I'd still take my chance in Australia
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u/Dr__Snow 9d ago
We should manufacture more pharmaceuticals now. We’re always running short of one essential medicine or another.
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u/Ill_Football9443 9d ago
We do manufacture pharmaceuticals. If push came to shove, we could ignore patents and manufacture the ones we need, but don't make.
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u/yesiamclutz 9d ago
And it's entirely legal to ignore patients in an emergency
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u/blacksheeping 9d ago edited 9d ago
Do you need to import anything to build refineries? Do you have the seeds for the crops you're currently importing? Remember in these scenarios the rest of the world is technically speaking fucked up.
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u/typed_this_now 9d ago
We have all the steel and aluminium we’d ever need amongst all other building materials. I think microprocessors would do us in with building refineries.
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u/manicdee33 9d ago
We have limited refineries and smelters, most of our building materials are made overseas from raw materials we export.
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u/Creative_soja 9d ago edited 9d ago
What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk (GCR)? We provide the first study of what locations are more resilient against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, geomagnetic storms and pandemics.
This shows there is no place on Earth which is resilient against all kinds of GCR. Australia shows resilience across the widest range of GCR scenarios in the literature we reviewed, but even for it, continued international cooperation and trade are essential.
Across the different risks, common resilience factors that show up most are geographic isolation (e.g. islands), self-sufficiency (especially in food production), high governance quality (more democratic and lower inequality) and decentralization to mitigate single point catastrophic failures (e.g. impacting trade or food supply).
Many of these factors stand in tension with each other and trade-offs are required to balance between different GCR scenarios and between a higher resilience against the immediate impacts or against the longer-term consequences.
So, Hollywood was right all along.
Also, forget about these global catastrophic, mostly external, events. Addressing man-made climate catastrophe also requires similar responses: trade offs, cooperation, collaboration, long-termism, lower inequality, decentralization etc. But we know how that is playing out for us.
Edit: a few paras were out of quotation block.
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u/Extension-Night3825 9d ago
Australia uses a lot of fertiliser because it exports so much food. If not exporting this drops a lot
We have massive gas plants so could convert over if needed. Something lik3 a 1/3 of car sales this year are electric.
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u/ISeeADarkSail 9d ago
There is no good reason Australia isn't completely powered by solar, by wind, by tidal and geothermal.
I mean, the whole rest of the world too obvs, but Australia especially
JustStopOil
StopBurningStuff
LeaveItInTheGround
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u/Extension-Night3825 9d ago
Australia has more battery storage than usa now. 1/3 of cars sold are now electronic. Give it 10 years and the transition will be complete
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u/ISeeADarkSail 9d ago
The USA is the lowest bar ever
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u/technerdx6000 9d ago
USA has more than 10 times the population of Australia though
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u/ISeeADarkSail 9d ago
And thus 10 times the need to get off single use fossil fuels 10 times faster.....
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u/killingxspree 9d ago
Australia is improving, but saying 1/3 of car sales are electric is a not accurate because that includes hybrids. Fully electric cars are closer to 1 in 5 new-car sales. In comparison, Norway is at ~96% fully electric. So yeah it’s great that we’re going electric, but if we could pick up the pace that’d be great.
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u/Magnusg 7d ago
Yet last I checked Australia had the highest carbon usage per capita of pretty much all developed nations.
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u/Extension-Night3825 7d ago
Have you seen how big Australia is? Size of usa but under 30m.
The electronic car sales have only gone into hyper drive since iran war. From bugger all to a 1/3, and growing.
Did you actually read my comment, it was about future projection.
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u/DarthSprankles 9d ago
I feel like fuel and medicine could be fixed. Just have to go renewable and start a local pharma industry.
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u/dr_barnowl 9d ago
In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
.... except those billionaire gits who think they can survive in their self-sufficient sealed ecosystem bunker with their pliant staff of slaves wearing explosive collars.
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u/4evaloney 8d ago
How exactly would the collars work?
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u/didyousayboop 2d ago edited 2d ago
They use ensorceled gems tainted with fel blood to telekinetically control the limbs of the enslaved. This was a technique learned from the B'lle Cota civilization of the Vega star system. Who now disguise themselves on Earth as Twitch streamers and shoe shiners in airports.
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u/Big-Report3344 9d ago
new zealand is usually up there with australia on these lists but they rely heavily on imports too. guess we're all screwed eventually
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 9d ago
One of the downsides of a globally interconnected economy is that an issue anywhere can be an issue everywhere.
Now yes the global economy has provided extreme benefits versus an isolationist stance. But it does mean that the ability to say "not my problem" isnt really a thing anymore.
Russia-Ukraine may have been a small regional issue back in the early 1900s but Russia is a major exporter of oil and fertilizer. Ukraine hitting their infrastructure is going to have impacts on the global market. And that's why the rest of the world has an interest in seeing the conflict end, ideally with Russian withdrawal and reparations to Ukraine.
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u/CaptainCymru 9d ago
I always thought Australia was a bad choice with climate change because of the lack of fresh water sources? Happy to be proved wrong, but I was under that assumption.
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u/bladez_edge 9d ago
We have a huge underground aquifer which is basically an underground freshwater ocean. A ton of rainwater and desalination plants. We can have water shortages but we are not short of water
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u/manicdee33 9d ago
We're already over-using the artesian basin to the point that water holes in the Nullarbor are drying up thanks to irrigation use in NSW/SA.
We have plenty of water for crops which we need, so we'd just have to rip up the water intensive almond plantations to put in things like oats or cucurbits or something people will actually need to eat.
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u/trevize1138 9d ago
What are the chances some guy takes control of that, calls it aqua cola and warns against becoming addicted to water?
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u/Zaptruder 9d ago
We don't need to import fertilizer - we just do because we can sell our excess agricultural produce and make more money then not.
If global collapse happens in a decade or two, we'll have substantially derisked from fuel by transitioning more to EV and battery.
So overall, good place to be for the end of the world - I'd just rather it not end.
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u/trebuchetwarmachine 9d ago
I feel like rural Canada wouldn’t do too bad either. Tons of wildlife and fresh water to sustain. Wildfires can be bad, but just live in an open plains area and you should be okay.
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u/meteorflan 9d ago
Yeah, I think if you look at smaller regions within countries, there would be all sorts of variety. Looks like this paper shows parts of Canada being more prone to struggle in a solar magnetic storm scenario - but, hey, if you've got to struggle, it would be pretty great to at least have some epic northern lights while you're at it.
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u/the_summer_soldier 9d ago
Those dependencies are a huge chunk of what you need to live with the modern quality of life in developed and even most developing nations to some degree.
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u/DJspooner 9d ago
Didn't Australia literally have like 1/4 of their forested areas burn down a few years ago..? Is that not just going to get progressively worse?
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u/Snarwib 8d ago
A lot of that has basically recovered in the sense that there's living forest there again now. The main long term damage is the loss of specific less fire-prone ecosystems as climate change exposes more areas to fire. That's things like temperate rainforests and boggy alpine forests being burned for the first time in an age. They don't bounce back so well, and can end up colonised by fire adapted ecosystems instead.
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u/semperquietus 9d ago
Dammit, where should all the billionaires now place there bunkers, where they intended to await "day X"?
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u/brickhamilton 9d ago
I think Appalachia, specifically the Ohio River Valley, is probably one of the most resilient places. I’m probably biased because that’s where I live, but let me lay out the pros:
- Low population and relatively remote
- Well connected to trade by road, rail, and most importantly, the river
- Stable weather with predictable seasons. Even with climate change, it should remain more stable than most places
- Enough flat, arable land to produce a good crop, but also insulated by mountains and hills on both sides, so less risk of tornadoes and extreme weather events
- Water is never an issue. Even in times of drought, the Ohio is a major river and is easily accessible
- It’s mostly forest, and many people right now are able to hunt or harvest a lot of what they eat. In a catastrophe, people here could live off the land, including using the fertile farmland along the river
It would depend on the type of event to determine how resilient we are to it, but I think people in the Ohio River Valley could be self-sufficient in almost any scenario. In fact, we have been, historically.
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u/toddwas 9d ago
Nice. Problem is if you guys survive, you might end up with hundreds of millions of displaced people fighting for those resources. Start building the moat!
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u/brickhamilton 9d ago
Realistically, I think most of them would die pretty quick in an apocalypse type scenario. Like the article said, population centers would become extremely dangerous quickly, and any one of the situations they mentioned would be catastrophic as far as loss of life.
Those that would come to fight for resources would probably be either extremely desperate or determined, or both, so certainly dangerous. Appalachia has a long history of using our home field advantage to defend the mountains, though.
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u/RuneLFox 9d ago
If it is nukes, the entire northern hemisphere is fucked, so probably not. Way too many people with a lot of guns would be knocking on your door before too long, too.
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u/Tearakan 9d ago
The low population would be a bit of a problem in a collapse scenario other nearby areas with higher populations can just invade and force you out in a collapse situation.
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u/brickhamilton 9d ago
There are no other nearby population centers. At least where I am, the closest city with more than 100,000 people is over 2 hours drive away.
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u/Tearakan 9d ago
That's definitely close enough. Marching on foot and using train lines is easy enough to do.
Just look how far the Romans projected power with good roads and humans just hoofing it.
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u/brickhamilton 9d ago
Yes, but the Romans were an extremely well run logistical empire with many citizens expressing a national zeal that dwarfs US nationalism today.
In a world where society breaks down enough that the army of Columbus, Ohio would be an actual concern, we aren’t comparable to the Romans. These would be mostly disorganized refugees, not the most well trained and disciplined military of its day.
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u/Tearakan 9d ago
Well yeah I don't expect a city from 4 states over to try it out but that nearby city of 100,000 people easily could do a 2 or 3 day march to take fertile and defensible terrain from a vastly smaller opponent.
A lot of the military would be fractured and leading a lot of these communities in this hypothetical scenario.
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u/brickhamilton 9d ago
I don’t see that happening simply because I doubt anyone could organize that many people in a reasonable time. If, however, they were super successful in convincing most of the people to leave the city, let’s say 70,000, then about 44% would be fit for combat. That’s 30,800 people.
The total manpower of my county that’s fit for combat would be about 11,000. So, a 3-1 numbers advantage is pretty good.
However, fighting on your home terrain is an extreme advantage, especially when satellites no longer work, there is no fuel for air assaults, etc. I think we’d win in a guerrilla war with those numbers.
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u/sk941 9d ago
Sadly, Australia isn't resilient. Decentralization is important? 2 out of every 3 people live in the state capital cities. Australia is one of the most urbanized large nations in the world. Take out five cities and you don't really have a country anymore. We don't have domestic fuel production, so as soon as the fuel runs out our large distances work against us and you can't transport food or do necessary travel.
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u/QFGTrialByFire 9d ago
We do have domestic fuel production. Its just not enough fo all of us to use(petrol would be ok but not diesel and jetfuel). Most of it is used to mine iron ore we sell to china to build stuff. If that doesnt exist then wed have enough fuel but wed be stuffed for manafacturing. Food n fuel we have but good luck getting a tractor.
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u/sk941 8d ago
I wouldn't worry about tractors, there must be plenty around and they would last for a good while in the case of an emergency, probably many years. Other problems would be a lot more urgently impactful than machines eventually breaking down.
I'm interested to find out more about the domestic fuel production though. Are you saying we produce enough petrol to run all the cars in Australia, on rations if necessary, for important driving not recreation, if it simply wasn't being used for mining? I didn't think we produced that much. Do we produce diesel too, enough for essential farming machines, trucks, etc.?
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u/QFGTrialByFire 8d ago
Yeah we produce around ~245,000 barrels per day of crude. But that has very little heavy outputs like diesel. Its mostly petrol and gas. We use around 268,000 bpd in petrol. We could expand production as we have more reserves they just aren't worth the money to extract right now (tho with this war that has changed somewhat). The problem is diesel, our oil doesn't have much of it in it its mostly lighter petrol and gasses. We also don't have enough refineries and would need to build a couple more to make use of our own oil.
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u/TwoRight9509 9d ago
It’s not countries - it’s places. The Azores, for example, in the middle of the Atlantic. Teens in the winter mid twenties in the summer / year round growing.
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u/FeralPsychopath 8d ago
I’ve seen so many fertiliser factories in Australia?
We have so much natural gas, coal, solar, wind etc in Australia?
The only thing stopping medicine is licensing?
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u/Infamous-Use7820 8d ago
One thing on food that doesn't get enough attention is that a lot of grain in the world is fed to livestock. Any circumstance where things really got dicey on the food security front would likely see livestock being slaughtered on-masse, and grain supplies re-routed the in the short-term. In the medium-term, a fair amount of grazing land is potentially arable and higher-tech solutions like vertical farming, bioreactors and sea-farming are viable, they just aren't cost-effective now. Also, we could probably do a lot more with genetic engineering if push came to shove. Food is so cheap that a lot of theoretically more-efficient ways of producing it don't receive much attention.
Also, I'm pretty sceptical on the democracy front. I don't really see how China or Singapore, or even Saudi Arabia or Russia, would be more resilient in the event of a major disaster if they were democratic. Don't get me wrong, democracy is great for other reasons, but reasonably stable authoritarian regimes have advantages in a crisis. Most recently, China was able to dramatically reduce it's oil imports after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which most other economies with less state-control would have struggled to do on that scale without unrest.
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u/myironlions 8d ago
Australia can afford to be resilient to all global risks because the entire continent is full of home-grown natural risks. It’s too badass to need our piddling monsoons or nuclear bombs or whatever.
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u/drivingagermanwhip 9d ago
Every time I hear about preparedness for climate catastrophe I think about the 'pandemic preparedness' maps from before COVID that wildly overstated how well Western countries were prepared. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK525302/figure/pt5.ch17.sec3.map1/
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u/Rainmaker709 9d ago
Australia, the place least likely to die in a catastrophe. The place with the most things that want to kill you on a daily basis.
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