Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy

Is Self Destruction from the Rapid Growth of Technology the Answer to the Fermi Paradox?

The Lifeboat Foundation is an organization which seeks to raise awareness about the potential threats humanity as a whole faces, whether from external threats such as X-Ray bursts, nearby supernovas, or cataclysmic meteor impacts, or from internal threats such as global nuclear war, a malicious organization or individual intentionally releasing a biological engineered virus, or even accidentally releasing a self replicating nanotechnology which could devour all life on earth. The simple fact is that for intelligent sentient life to survive, humanity must spread out among the stars. This is something recognized by many prominent members of the scientific community, including most recently Stephen Hawking, who said, warning of earth destroying disasters, that humans must spread out into space. In the long term the Lifeboat Foundation would like to actually see self-sustaining space stations created and built, with humanity spreading among our solar system and eventually to neighboring solar systems.

I am an adamant supporter of the Lifeboat Foundation's goals for three major reasons: The Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, and The Law of Accelerating Returns. The combination of these three principles illustrates something terribly jarring; that life throughout the universe almost always destroys itself through technology.

Now, I am not a luddite and I love technology and all the great things it has brought, and I hope to see the day when technology has conquered aging, all disease, and death in general. But I do not embrace the idea that many strong proponents of technology do; an absolute blind faith in everything turning out perfectly well. I hope it does, and I think that it will, but I also think I will get to work safely everyday yet still wear my seat belt. I do not plan on coming down with a life threatening illness but I have insurance anyway. In our daily lives we take steps to mitigate and humanity as a whole needs to do the same thing, we need an insurance policy. That is what the Lifeboat Foundation seeks to create.