A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI
Existential Threats — and Why History Urges Calm
It’s hard to read the news today without sensing that something fundamental is at risk. Nuclear tensions flicker back into relevance. Artificial intelligence accelerates faster than governance can follow. Climate systems strain, pandemics linger in collective memory, and truth itself feels fractured by speed, scale, and noise.
The language has grown heavier: existential risk, civilizational collapse, end of the world as we know it. These aren’t fringe ideas anymore; they’ve moved into mainstream conversation. And on the surface, the concern doesn’t seem irrational. The tools we’ve built are powerful, interconnected, and increasingly autonomous. A mistake at scale no longer stays local.
It feels different this time.
But that feeling deserves examination.
A necessary pause
Before concluding that the present moment is uniquely fragile, it’s worth asking a quieter, steadier question:
How many times have recent generations believed they were living at the edge of catastrophe—and survived anyway?
The answer is not “once or twice.”
It’s repeatedly.
Living under the shadow of instant annihilation
From 1945 through the end of the Cold War, nuclear war was not a background concern—it was a daily assumption. Children practiced duck-and-cover drills in classrooms. Missile flight times were measured in minutes. Early-warning systems were crude, leaders were fallible, and several near-launch incidents were stopped only because a single human being hesitated.
This was not a slow, abstract threat. Civilization could have ended on a Tuesday afternoon due to misinterpretation or panic.
It didn’t.
World wars that truly looked final
Before existential risk was a phrase, it was a lived reality. World War I shattered empires and faith in progress. World War II erased cities, normalized mass civilian death, and introduced industrial genocide. Nuclear weapons were not theoretical—they were used.
In the early 1940s, it was entirely reasonable to believe that modern civilization had run past its own limits.
Instead, nations rebuilt. Institutions re-formed. Norms—damaged but not destroyed—re-emerged.
Economic collapse that shook belief itself
The Great Depression wasn’t just a downturn; it was a crisis of legitimacy. One-quarter of the workforce unemployed. Banks failing. Democratic capitalism itself under suspicion. Radical alternatives didn’t just sound plausible—they sounded inevitable.
Later came oil shocks, stagflation, and repeated predictions that the economic model could not continue.
It did—messily, imperfectly, but decisively.
Environmental fears that once felt irreversible
In the 1960s and 1970s, many believed overpopulation would cause mass starvation, pollution would make cities unlivable, and atmospheric damage was permanent. Some fears were exaggerated. Others were real—and addressed through regulation, innovation, and adaptation.
Not solved. Managed well enough to keep going.
So what’s actually different now?
The difference is not danger itself. Danger has always been present.
What is different is how risks now overlap, compound, and accelerate. Technology compresses decision-making time. Systems are more interconnected. Failures propagate faster. Threats are less discrete and more ambient.
That makes the present feel uniquely unstable—even if, historically, it may not be uniquely lethal.
The pattern history keeps revealing
Looking backward, one truth emerges with surprising consistency:
Catastrophe requires near-perfect failure. Survival requires only partial success.
Civilizations rarely endure because they are wise in advance. They endure because:
- restraint interrupts escalation,
- coordination emerges under pressure,
- and adaptation happens before collapse becomes inevitable.
History’s most underrated force isn’t genius.
It’s imperfect competence sustained long enough.
A quieter, earned conclusion
None of this denies today’s risks. It simply resists panic masquerading as insight.
Every generation feels its moment is unprecedented—and in form, it usually is. But in structure, it rarely is. The future always looks more fragile when you’re standing inside it.
That doesn’t guarantee safety.
It does suggest resilience.
Not because humans are calm.
Not because institutions are flawless.
But because again and again, we adjust, restrain, and muddle through before the worst becomes unavoidable.
That isn’t denial.
It’s historical memory.
And memory, used well, is one of humanity’s most reliable survival tools.
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