[arethuza]

I read Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" a few years ago and it certainly is a sobering book. I would agree with its thesis that we face a distinct possibility of our high tech "Western" society crashing - and due to the Threads linking us together this crash could be pretty hard.

I would use the 100 million to investigate possible ways of mitigating the effects of such a crash. As the actual causes would be essentially unpredictable I'd pass on that effort and concentrate on what we could do to establish a degree of continuity of core areas of knowledge: maths, medicine, geography etc.

One option would be to build bunkers full of useful books in remote locations (like the gene bank in the Svalbard). However, a better way might be to build a long lasting organisation set apart from our culture - very much like secular versions of medieval monasteries or the mathic concents in Neal Stephenson’s excellent Anathem.

[dsplittgerber]

I haven't read Collapse but Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures had an idea for "black swan philantrophy", which would be "focused on funding projects aimed at preventing or coping with very low probability events that would have cataclysmic outcomes for humanity."

I don't know why threats.org is down at the moment; perhaps it's due to the fact that there weren't that many people willing to actually help with the non-profit a few months ago.

http://continuations.com/post/106672598/looking-for-help-in-...

[steveitis]

Sounds like Asimovs 'Foundation'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series