2030: The Last Chance. Why Superhuman ai could save humanity
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Has anything like this happened before? Yes — and more than once. That became clear through the work of Fusa Miyake, then a graduate student at Nagoya University in Japan. In 2012 she examined the wood of a 1,900-year-old Japanese cedar that had been cut down in 1956. Miyake was looking for a history that might be written into the cellulose of the tree’s rings. She discovered that, in their chemical composition, some rings contained excessive amounts of carbon-14. This isotope is extremely rare: roughly one particle per trillion particles of ordinary carbon. Even so, its signal is strong enough to be detected by researchers.
Modern scientists are able to track radiocarbon and determine its amount in organic remains such as tree rings. And if the year in which a tree was cut is known, one can determine the precise year of a particular event recorded in those rings. This is known as dendrochronology.
Miyake was not studying the Carrington Event, but something older and far more powerful. Examining the cedar’s rings year by year, she found a clear signal: between AD 774 and 775 there was a 12 percent jump in carbon-14. That fluctuation was about twenty times greater than anything produced by ordinary cosmic phenomena.
Other researchers confirmed Miyake’s conclusions by studying European and North American trees. Scientists also found a corresponding signal in beryllium isotopes preserved in Antarctic ice cores. The concentration per square centimeter was roughly the same everywhere. This indicated that the event in question had been global, not a local Japanese phenomenon such as a volcanic eruption. The newly identified phenomenon came to be called a Miyake Event. And it pointed to bursts of energy orders of magnitude greater than the solar flares that produced the Carrington Event of 1859.
By now, thanks to the work of scientists around the world, we know of at least nine Miyake Events, from AD 774 back to 12,350 BC.
The earliest known event was also the strongest — a Miyake Event at the edge of the Ice Age, when the Earth was colder and had no technological shield for such a shock to strike. It passed “quietly” then. Today, something of that kind would bring an era to an end.
The Carrington Event and the Miyake Events are not just flashes in the sky; they are reminders that we live on a small sphere beside a giant reactor, and that our star can overturn the whole world with a single “sneeze.”
Could something like this happen again in the near future?
Events like the Carrington Event and the Miyake Events tell us something simple: if this has already happened before — and happened many times — it will happen again. The only question is when.
Judge for yourself: as of 2026, we are near the peak of Solar Cycle 25, with a record 69 storms in 2025 and 164 geomagnetically disturbed days — the highest level in twenty years. The cycle began in 2020, and scientists had predicted it would be weak, like Cycle 24. Reality turned out differently: activity exceeded forecasts by 60 percent.
We are now on the downslope after the peak. Models such as FB Prophet (2025) predict that the sunspot number will decline to 100 by the end of 2026, with the cycle minimum arriving in 2030. But the Sun likes surprises: Solar Cycle 25 has already outperformed expectations, and fresh observations indicate that elevated activity continues.
On January 20, 2026, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared a “critical weather day” because of extreme space weather. What was observed was a combination of a powerful solar radiation storm and a geomagnetic storm of the highest category.
If events continue to intensify along their current trajectory, the Sun may produce a superflare like the one in 1859 or in one of the Miyake Events. On the surface of the Earth, we would immediately see a blackout from pole to equator. But no less dramatic changes would occur beneath the surface.
Solar plasma, penetrating more deeply through a weakened field, would induce currents in the outer core. A quantum leap would follow: spin transitions in perovskite, the principal mineral of the lower mantle, synchronization across millions of cubic kilometers of matter. As a result, mantle viscosity would fall and convection cells would reorganize — not as a crude displacement of the crust, but as a phase transition, a kind of “wave collapse.”
And this is not the scenario of a science-fiction disaster film. It is the direction in which deep scientific research points, even if only a small part of that research is presented in this chapter. It was precisely such research that underlay the report by scientists from the National Research Council (NRC), working under the auspices of the U.S. National Academies, on the threats posed by space weather. The report’s full title is Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts: A Workshop Report.
These dangers were already clearly visible to scientists in 2008, when they gathered for a workshop in May of that year to examine how extreme space weather could strike our fragile techno-world.
The report was born of an anxiety stated plainly in the document itself:
“The adverse effects of severe space weather on modern technology — electric power outages, disruption of high-frequency communications, degradation of spacecraft operations — are well known and have been extensively documented. The physical processes that underlie space weather are also reasonably well understood. However, the potential social and economic consequences of disruptions to critical technological systems caused by severe space weather are much less well documented and understood”9.
The report focuses on the “perfect storm”—a superstorm like the Carrington Event of 1859, when the damage was minimal because the world did not yet depend on electricity. In the 2020s, however, that is a very different matter. Here is what the scientists foresaw:
Power systems in ruins: a geomagnetic storm induces currents in transmission lines, overheating transformers. Not all of them will burn out, but the key ones — especially at high latitudes — will. Replacement will take months or years: transformers are enormous machines built in factories that themselves require electricity. The report estimates that in the United States alone, a blackout could affect 130 million people, with economic losses reaching $1—2 trillion in the first year.
Satellites and communications: CMEs bombard orbit, causing anomalies ranging from GPS disruptions to complete failures. Communications suffer: HF radio falls silent, air travel is paralyzed as pilots lose contact, and finance freezes — ATMs, exchanges, the whole digital infrastructure. The report warns that modern technology is more vulnerable than older systems because the miniaturization of chips has made them more sensitive to radiation.
Cascading effects: without electricity, water pumps stop, gas stations shut down, hospitals survive on generators for only a few days. Transportation — trains, subways, airports — grinds to a halt. The economy’s supply chains collapse. Society responds with panic and fear. Recovery stretches across years, accompanied by decline in every sphere of life.
The report recommended improving monitoring through NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, investing in resilient grids, and advancing forecasting capabilities.
In 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the NASA Authorization Act, directing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to coordinate preparation for changes in space weather. By 2015, the SWORM Working Group had been created to develop strategy and planning. The world responded with bureaucracy: reports, workshops, and planning exercises echoed the NRC’s warning that the threat was real.
From 2016 to 2022 the response gathered momentum — new plans, studies, and forecasts appeared — but reality-testing came in 2022, when SpaceX lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm. The episode showed that humanity remains largely powerless before the fury of the Sun.
In 2023—2026, as solar storms continued breaking records in both frequency and intensity, the world responded with updates to plans and scenarios. But what can human beings in fact oppose to the Sun’s energy today? No system of scenarios and plans can truly shield the Earth from an assault that may come at any moment.
Solar risks remind us that a civilization built on electricity and the digital realm is vulnerable to forces that have no intentions but possess colossal energy. History suggests that such forces do not bring about the end of humanity, but the end of a given version of civilization — which, for modern people, is almost the same thing.
Someone once put it well: the most dangerous catastrophe is the one after which everything remains except the ability to live as before. A solar strike does not kill humanity. It tests whether civilization possesses any reserve of strength — or only comfort.
Global Warming: Myths and Realities
Over the past three decades, this topic has become the subject of intense debate. The discussion has unfolded vigorously both in the media and at international climate forums. And there is an objective reason for that: from the preindustrial period (1850) to 2025, the Earth’s average temperature rose by approximately 1.2—1.3°C. Over the past fifty years, moreover, warming has accelerated compared with the earlier period. The year 2023 became the warmest in the history of instrumental observations at +1.48°C. Yet that record was broken the very next year (+1.60°C, according to Copernicus), while 2025 came in at +1.47°C, again according to Copernicus. These figures are broadly consistent across the major centers — NASA, NOAA, Copernicus, Berkeley Earth, and the Hadley Centre. The spread in estimates usually falls within ±0.05—0.1°C.
So what, exactly, is so alarming about that? a person far removed from climate science may ask. So what if the planet has become warmer by only a degree and a half? That might even be good. Beach season will last longer; crops will ripen sooner…
In reality, it is bad — very bad.
This is shown clearly and persuasively in the National Geographic film Six Degrees Could Change the World (2008).10 Each additional degree is not simply “warmer weather,” not just another number on the thermometer. It triggers a chain reaction of feedback loops that greatly amplify the initial warming and create a qualitatively new, far more dangerous world. Drawing on the work of climate scientists, the film’s authors build, step by step, a picture of what awaits the planet as average global temperature rises.
+2°C (we are already close). Most of the world’s coral reefs will die off because of ocean warming and acidification. That will lead to the collapse of marine ecosystems and the loss of food sources for hundreds of millions of people. Melting of the Greenland ice sheet will intensify. Hurricanes and tropical storms will become markedly stronger and more destructive. In the United States, Australia, and the Mediterranean, prolonged and devastating droughts will begin. Wheat and maize yields in key regions will fall by 10—20 percent. Millions of people in poorer countries will face food and water shortages. Arctic ice will melt at an accelerated pace, raising sea levels by tens of centimeters and intensifying storm surges.
+3°C. This is already a critical threshold. The Amazon rainforest will begin to die, and vast territories will be transformed from the lungs of the planet into savanna and desert.
The melting of the Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers will first bring flooding and then a catastrophic drop in water levels in Asia’s great rivers — the Ganges, Indus, Yangtze, and Mekong. Hundreds of millions of people in India, China, Bangladesh, and Pakistan will be left without drinking water and irrigation for their fields and will become climate refugees.
Super-hurricanes and typhoons will become commonplace even in regions where they were once atypical.
+4°C. This is a world in which civilization approaches the edge of survival. The Amazon will be virtually destroyed. Africa will become largely unsuitable for agriculture, forcing millions to flee hunger and thirst.
In Europe, the southern regions — Spain, Italy, Greece — will turn into semidesert landscapes resembling today’s Sahara. A sea-level rise of 1—2 meters will inundate densely populated coastal zones from Bangladesh and Vietnam to Florida and the Netherlands. Billions of people will become climate refugees.
Conflicts over water and food will escalate into regional wars.
+5°C. Much of the tropics and subtropics will become effectively uninhabitable for human beings because of the combination of heat and humidity, with wet-bulb temperatures rising above 35°C — the point at which the human body can no longer cool itself through sweating.
Ocean circulation will slow or even shut down, paradoxically cooling Europe while throwing the global climate into chaos. Mass extinctions will affect 50—70 percent of species.
Fires in the boreal forests will release still more carbon. Coastal cities will be abandoned entirely. Billions of people will be forced to migrate toward the poles.
+6°C. The planet approaches a state close to “Hothouse Earth.” Summer temperatures in the mid-latitudes will regularly exceed 45—50°C. The atmosphere will become saturated with water vapor and methane, creating a greenhouse effect that reinforces itself.
Temperatures in the tropics will become so high that many regions of the planet will be physically unfit for human beings to remain outdoors for more than a few hours. Enormous territories will turn into lifeless deserts. Humanity as a species will come under threat of extinction.
Much of the ocean will become anoxic, releasing hydrogen sulfide — a toxic gas that smells of rotten eggs. Nearly all coral reefs, forests, and agricultural regions will disappear. Humanity will survive only in small near-polar refuges. Most mammals will die out.
The planet will begin to resemble the Earth of 55 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum — but unfolding far more rapidly and without time for adaptation.6
The film ends with a harsh conclusion: each additional degree is not a linear worsening, but a transition into a qualitatively different and increasingly hostile state. We have already passed the point of no return by reaching the 1.5°C level and are moving rapidly toward 2°C. Beyond that lies only acceleration.
The seriousness of the issue has been confirmed not only by scientists but also by political leaders at the highest level.
In November 2007, for the first time in history, the UN Security Council held a special session devoted to climate. Britain’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, John Sawers, declared: “In this new century, climate change will become the major threat to humanity, the main cause of instability and the disappearance of entire states.”
Leading climatologists reinforced his warning: life on Earth would be altered beyond recognition. Sea level would rise so far that many coastal countries — home to a third of the world’s population — would go underwater, while much of the remaining land would become waterless desert.
In response to these threats, humanity tried to organize a global response. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was adopted — an international agreement intended to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere in order to counter global warming.
That agreement failed completely: by 2012, global CO2 emissions had risen by 58 percent.
In 2015, a new attempt was made to limit CO2 emissions, and 196 countries, including the United States, India, and China, signed the Paris Climate Agreement. But it met the same fate. Global greenhouse-gas emissions continued to rise from 2015 to 2024. In 2025, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning reached a record high of 38.1 billion tonnes.11
All these efforts were focused on one thing: limiting the anthropogenic factor — reducing industrial CO2 emissions, shifting to renewable energy, and introducing carbon taxes and quotas.
But there is another view, also advanced by scientists. Many of them state directly that human industrial activity is not the primary cause of climate change on our planet. Today the entire world is preoccupied with cutting technogenic emissions into the atmosphere. Yet one might argue that all such factors account for not even 10 percent of the carbon dioxide released as a result of geotectonic processes. The ridges that cut across the floor of the World Ocean are sites of constant volcanic activity, with giant gas emissions whose scale simply cannot be compared with human activity. A single major submarine volcano can release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the whole of global industry produces in a decade.
And there is still another lurking enemy, one that is mentioned far less often, but is far more frightening than CO2—and it is already beginning to awaken.
The Methane Bomb
In recent years, the Arctic Ocean has been increasingly clearing of ice during the summer season. Warming in the Arctic is occurring three to four times faster than the planetary average. This is a source of great excitement for shipping companies, which stand to benefit from shorter routes and faster voyages.
The retreat of the ice also opens access to previously hard-to-reach deposits of minerals and hydrocarbons. By some estimates, the Arctic contains about 13 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves.
But the hidden cost of this seemingly attractive development is a growing climatic threat to all humanity.
Beneath the layer of permafrost on the ocean floor lie methane hydrates — crystalline compounds in which methane molecules are “packed” into cages of ice. When warmer water, heated by the disappearance of the ice cover, reaches the seabed, the permafrost thaws, pressure drops, and the methane hydrates destabilize. As a result, powerful methane plumes rise from the seafloor. Scientists from the Pacific Oceanological Institute have recorded dissolved-methane anomalies with concentrations ten thousand times above background levels.
Scientists have calculated that the frozen ground of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada stores twice as much carbon as humanity has emitted throughout its entire history. But that is not even the main point: thawing permafrost also releases methane, whose warming impact over a twenty-year horizon is 84—87 times greater than that of CO2.
The most frightening part of this story lies underwater. The shelf of the East Siberian Sea contains about 80 percent of all subsea permafrost, with methane reserves measured in the thousands of gigatons. A release of only 5 percent of those reserves — about 40 gigatons — would be enough for a planetary-scale catastrophe. That is eight times more than the current amount of methane in the atmosphere.
Over the past thirty years, the rate of thaw in subsea permafrost in the seas of the eastern Arctic has doubled compared with previous centuries. Once a certain warming threshold is crossed — a critical water temperature — the process of methane release can become self-reinforcing and difficult to reverse.
It is true that most climatologists regard a sudden release of tens of gigatons of methane as unlikely in the short term.
But if we look back at climate forecasts from previous years, we find many errors in them.
The Greenland ice sheet is melting at a rate roughly 6 gigatons per year higher than older models projected.
The clearest example concerns the Arctic. Earlier generations of climate models — for example, those used in IPCC reports ten to fifteen years ago — projected the disappearance of summer sea ice toward the end of the twenty-first century, around the year 2100. But in 2020 an international group of climatologists from the British Antarctic Survey, the University of Washington, and the University of Reading published a study in Nature Climate Change concluding that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice as early as 2035.
When we reason about the speed of climatic processes and the timing of major events, we must also take into account what is known as the climate feedback loop. It works like this: warming in the atmosphere raises the temperature of seas and oceans, which in turn causes permafrost to thaw and increases emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, which then accelerate global warming still further. And so the cycle continues, moving faster and faster.
Even if the present warming trend were merely to continue at its current rate, we are moving steadily toward the point beyond which an irreversible cascade begins.
And if all the other threats described in this chapter — the Great Flood, supervolcanic eruptions, solar coronal mass ejections, and the impact of a large asteroid — may still be delayed for centuries, climate change leaves us with a very narrow window of time. International agreements by themselves are incapable of stopping the process. Nature operates on a scale far beyond human control.
Preparing for Global Catastrophe
Those capable of strategic thought and willing to face the obvious have already begun preparing for the coming cataclysm. Such people do not read the soothing articles of mainstream scientists about the 0.00014 percent risk of a Yellowstone super-eruption, nor do they believe in the doctrine of uniformitarianism, which denies abrupt climatic shifts. They prefer to rely on other sources of information that assess current processes and the likelihood of potential risks turning into real events more soberly.
The clearest confirmation of how seriously existential threats are being taken was the construction of the Doomsday Vault on Svalbard — officially the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — the largest backup seed bank for agricultural crops in the world. It is, in effect, a kind of Noah’s Ark for plants, or a seed bunker for humanity.
The idea emerged in the 1980s and 1990s out of international discussions about preserving biodiversity. In 2004—2005, the Norwegian government began implementing the project. The vault officially opened on February 26, 2008, and on that very day it received its first deposit — about 100,000 samples from seven countries and international centers.
The facility has several layers of protection: its entrance lies 130 meters above sea level, guarding against ocean rise; it is built 120—160 meters deep into the mountain; its storage temperature is maintained at — 18°C by combining natural permafrost with active cooling; and its capacity reaches 4.5 million samples.
Its level of security is extremely high: seismic resistance, protection against flooding, radiation, and explosions, along with two airtight doors, airlocks, video surveillance, and biometric access systems.
The vault was created specifically as a global collective insurance policy against black-swan scenarios:
• nuclear winter;
• global warming or abrupt cooling;
• the loss of genetic material in ordinary gene banks, many of which are located in high-risk regions such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq;
• solar superstorms capable of destroying power supply and cooling systems in gene banks around the world.
As of 2026, the vault holds more than 1.2 million samples from over 100 countries, and more than 90 countries and international organizations have deposits there.
The irony is that in 2017 the vault suffered its first serious incident: because of abnormally warm weather and heavy rain, meltwater entered the access tunnel, though it never reached the seeds themselves. It became a symbolic reminder that even the safest place in the world is already vulnerable to the effects of climate change. One is forced to ask: what would happen to this Doomsday Bank in the event of a truly serious catastrophe?