Global Extinction Awareness System

The Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) is a computer system which forecasts the future. It has been designed in collaboration with several private companies, including Google, Intel and Cisco. Its predecessor, the Global Forecasting System, was developed in 2010, in response to the flooding of Bangladesh, leading to the exile of approximately 2 million people. The GEAS was developed in 2014 to make use of the increased bandwidth, information collection and information processing possibilities, which made collaborative future forecasting over the internet much more feasible.

Technology behind GEAS

GEAS is a distributed collective forecasting system, drawing on the available processor cycles of devices connected to the internet. Private companies have the possibility to for a fee review the effect of envisaged strategies. Google, Intel and Cisco, however, are able to tap into the system at no cost, thereby further strengthening their grip on the information society.

Forecasts from GEAS

In 2019, GEAS has identified five superthreats to mankind and given them memorable names as a way of encouraging discussion and awareness:

* Quarantine covers the global response to declining health and pandemic disease, including the current Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ReDS) crisis.

* Ravenous focuses on the imminent collapse of the global food system, as well as debates over industrial vs. ecological agricultural models, and basic issues of access, energy, and carbon.

* Power Struggle tracks the results of energy resource peaks and the shifts in international power as nations fight for energy supremacy and the world searches for alternative energy solutions.

* Outlaw Planet embodies the volatile mix of new forms of surveillance, transparency, civil rights, and access to information as people work out new rules for human security.

* Generation Exile follows the massive "diaspora of diasporas" underway globally, as the number of refugees and migrants skyrockets in the face of climate change, economic disruption, and war.

In the multiple WorldRun simulation exercises GEAS has performed, the details can vary, but the outcome has been consistent: by the decade between 2040 and 2050, typically closer to the beginning of the period, the combined drivers described here as "superthreats" have driven the global human population to collapse. The super-threats are rarely directly responsible for the result; instead, the combination has so weakened human civilization that any one new global crisis looms catastrophic: a succession of global warming-driven superstorms, regional war, or new pandemic disease--any of which would become more likely as a result of the superthreats--would be enough to trigger the wholesale collapse of the human endeavor.

See this link for regular updates of GEAS.

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