dolanbaker wrote:My pick has not changed either, a major nuclear war could still happen with the current instability in the Middle East easing but a long way from calm. None of the other options will destroy the infrastructure anything like the large scale devastation such a war would cause to happen.
Certainly not in the short term, anyway. (And I disagree with the Cassandra notion that an economic crash must mean "collapse" of the system with no recovery). Now, the real question is how likely is such an event?
I worry longer term about some terrorist event re a dirty bomb set off in a large city during a time of geopolitical crisis or even just high stress, tipping over a domino and possibly starting a chain reaction that wouldn't occur under normal circumstances.
When diplomacy is evolving toward threats, insults, accusations, and things like secret spying on supposed allies, that doesn't seem helpful either re quickly preventing such a domino from tipping re a "please trust me until we can sort out what is happening" context.
So I still think it's long odds, but I don't like the way the odds tend to be drifting in the world of the tech (and resulting social) changes of the past couple decades or so.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.