Worried About Nuclear War? Consider the Micromorts

Do you know if your hobby will kill you? Most base jumpers have felt the fear that each jump could be their last, but this isn't something you need to think about if you're into knitting. Some hobbies are more risky than others.

Ronald Howard came up with the idea of a unit of measurement called the micromort. There is a one in a million chance of death. Base jumping will net you 430 micromorts per jump, but scuba diving is riskier at 5 micromorts per trip. If you traveled 230 miles by car, it would add up to 1 micromort, but if you traveled 6 miles by motorcycle, you would be exposed to the same risk.

We have a good amount of data on how people die. It's difficult to quantify other risks. It is possible to die in a nuclear war. It is not something that most people want to think about. Since the use of nuclear weapons in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, there have been a few close calls. The chance of a nuclear conflict was estimated by John F. Kennedy. Nuclear conflict has once again risen uncomfortably to the fore as a result of the war in Ukraine. Whether we like to admit it or not, behind every discussion of nuclear war looms the same question: How likely is it that a nuke will kill me?

Micromorts can help here as well. Getting to grips with probabilities might help us make better decisions about our own lives and give us hints about how we can avoid nuclear conflicts in the future.

The field of research deals with assigning probabilities to future events. The topic of superforecasting started to take off in the mid-2010s after the author of an influential book on the topic. Even experts in a particular field are bad at predicting the future, but some people are good at it. Governments are becoming more interested in using the expertise of these people to make better policy decisions.

One group of superforecasters was interested in figuring out if the war in Ukraine would lead to a nuclear war that would kill a person in London. Samotsvety is a group that has a good track record of predicting future events. The group won the competition for the second year in a row in 2021. Russia would invade Ukraine by the end of the year according to the forecasts. They won over $30,000.