What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk? Our new review in Global Challenges is the first study to look at this across nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large volcanic eruptions, cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, geomagnetic storms and pandemics.

Australia is plausibly the most resilient place, but even it is reliant on trade for fuel, medicine and fertiliser. There is no place on Earth which is a complete refuge.

Four factors appeared most consistently: geographic isolation, self-sufficiency in food production, governance quality (democratic institutions, low inequality, low corruption, social cohesion) and decentralisation. The first two are largely fixed. The last two are modifiable through policy, improve resilience against every category of catastrophe we examined, and also make societies better places to live. All of them are currently trending the wrong way, which is bad, but also means we can work towards a more resilient and more livable society at the same time.

Open access in Global Challenges: https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.70146
Longer summary on my blog: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/no-place-to-hide
Data and code: https://github.com/allfed/gcr-resilience-map

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