[pogimabus]

Becoming multiplanetary IS handling it, just not in a necessarily "ideal" way. The problem is that we don't want to have the reset button hit and have every human in existence set back to the stone age technologically; having multiple self sustaining human societies on multiple planets mitigates that risk in a major way since the likelihood of a disaster being so large that it resets technology on both/all planets is much smaller than the likelihood of having a disaster that does it for just one of them.

[Symmetry]

There aren't many catastrophes that would totally wipe out Earth but still leave offworld colonies intact. Even after a supervolcanic eruption or plague or nuclear war there'll probably still be more living humans on Earth than on Mars. And supernovas and rogue AIs can wipe out both. I like the idea of settling space because I think human lives, if they're pleasant, are intrinsically valuable and I'd like there to be a trillion people in the solar system eventually. But in terms of of overcoming catastrophies you're better of donating to groups like Allfed or AI safety or arms control groups.

[lgl]

> There aren't many catastrophes that would totally wipe out Earth but still leave offworld colonies intact. Even after a supervolcanic eruption or plague or nuclear war there'll probably still be more living humans on Earth than on Mars.

Supervolcanos, nuclear war and meteor impacts are probably the most likely of all and could be survived by offworld colonies. And while these could still leave a lot of humans on Earth, the biggest issue is that there is a big possibility for them to evolve into full blown ice ages that could potentially last for millennia which would pretty much guarantee extinction since the initial phase would most likely also destroy a large portion of infrastructure and human knowledge.

> And supernovas and rogue AIs can wipe out both.

I'm not a scientist but I think that supernovas and solar flares could maybe be detected with enough advance to possibly make sophisticated enough space colonies time their orbital movement to get in cover behind large bodies and any non-earth planetary colonies would already have to be mostly prepared for life under radiation shielding and zero atmosphere so the damage would probably be less than for everything on Earth's surface.

Rogue AIs, assuming we're the ones building them, I feel are the least of our problems although I may be wrong of course. Viruses are also a possibility but could also be largely mitigated with multiple pockets of humanity spread by enough distance.

> But in terms of of overcoming catastrophies you're better of donating to groups like Allfed or AI safety or arms control groups.

I don't agree since it shouldn't be an either-or situation. We should strive to keep our marble safe and blue for as long as possible but preemptively prepare for any of these well known existential risks.

[s1artibartfast]

supernova photo blast waves travel at the speed of light, so it is difficult to get advanced notice.

Looking for an advance blast wave of neutrinos gives us about 3 hours of lead time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperNova_Early_Warning_System

[lgl]

Thanks, it was because of having heard about the early neutrino detection that I assumed we could potentially get some sort of warning but didn't really bother to look for sources. Assuming the lead time is associated with how close the nova occurs, I guess for stars that could cause us actual damage then the warning would be even smaller than 3 hours so we'd probably get fubar.

[owl57]

> Viruses are also a possibility but could also be largely mitigated with multiple pockets of humanity spread by enough distance.

If I understand correctly, SARS-CoV-2 hit some "sweet spot" being rather sneaky and rather dangerous at the same time, but is nowhere near top sneakiness across all viruses.

[Camas]

Nothing intrinsically valuable about human life except from the fact that we're good at surviving when other similar life wouldn't. Expanding into space will be an extension of that.

[kmonsen]

The problem is that it is at least 10x easier to fix Earth than to terraform Mars, and all the problems we have on Earth are going to be there as well.

[unFou]

That might be the point. Few people are going to bother spending resources to fix a problem that doesn't exist. And by the time such a problem arises on Earth (inhospitable living conditions due to e.g. supervolcano), we might not have the resources to fix it. Whereas terraforming Mars creates the incentives to develop solutions while we have abundant resources, which means that we have a fix ready and waiting if something catastrophic happens on earth.

[baby]

Resilience is not about fixing something. Otherwise we wouldn’t have created the internet.

[newsbinator]

I suppose a pandemic would still do it though, assuming sustained travel between habitats.

We're gonna want a multi-week airlock to be allowed into the Moon & Mars habitats.

[Nasrudith]

Latency provides a natural level of quarantine as well even if the volume is high enough for a sustained stream. Although there are plenty of messy details involved in sufficiency.