Arturo, thank you for this comment and the very kind words! 

I really like your point about beneficially "dual-use" interventions, and that we might want to look for right-of-boom interventions with near-term positive externalities. I think that's useful for market-shaping and for political tractability (no one likes to invest in something that their successor will take credit for) -- and it's just a good thing to do!

It feels similar to the point that bio-risk preparedness has many current-gen benefits, like Kevin Esvelt's point here that "Crucially, any passive defence capable of substantially impeding the spread of a novel pandemic agent would also suppress or outright eliminate many or even most endemic human viruses and pathogenic bacteria"

Johannes, as he often does, said it better than I could! 

Thanks, Vasco. I totally forgot to reply to your comment on my previous post -- my apologies!

I think you raise a good general point that we'd expect societal spending after a catastrophe to be high, especially given the funder behavior we see for newsworthy humanitarian disasters. 

There are a few related considerations here, all of them touching on the issue you also raise: "Coming up with good interventions in little time may be harder."

1. Fast-Moving Catastrophes -- I would expect many nuclear wars to escalate very quickly, far outpacing the timelines that funders and policymakers operate on.  Escalation management tools (e.g. better hotlines, relevant changes in nuclear posture and targeting policy) should be implemented before such a catastrophe. That being said, I think the problem of protracted great power wars (including slow-moving nuclear wars) is underappreciated, so there are a few other considerations in the cases where the catastrophe moves more slowly... 
2. Post-Catastrophe Funder Resources -- Aside from the Patient Philanthropy Fund, I expect most funders will not have thought about the impact of global catastrophes on their portfolios. I'd expect even a regionally limited nuclear war to cause a severe decline in the portfolios of most funders, and possibly a total collapse of the financial infrastructure that funders rely on. So there might not be any liquid funds to move!
3. Post-Catastrophe Funder Additionality -- The counterfactual value of farsighted private funders is higher pre-catastrophe; after a catastrophe, we'd expect governments and small-dollar or traditional donors to flood the philanthropic market with humanitarian aid. Pandemic-preparedness and -response spending pre-2020 was more attractive in retrospect than COVID-relief funding 2020-2022. 
   1. I think there's a related point here about the emotional resonance of some classes of disaster-relief spending that probably contribute to the character and allocation of post-catastrophe funding. 
4. Pre-Catastrophe Funder Leverage -- Relatedly, right now, a funder can beneficially shape the direction of the entire field for less than $10 million. After a catastrophe, that "smart money" might be an unnoticeable drop in the bucket, and would have far less leverage.
5. R&D Timelines -- Some "right of boom" interventions have long R&D lead times, especially if they involve more speculative technologies. I'm thinking, e.g., about the development and implementation of technologies for resilient food systems.
6. Policy Implementation Timelines -- Similarly, many interventions designed to keep limited war from turning into all-out thermonuclear exchange probably need to go through a fairly slow policy process. 

Thanks again for the thoughtful comment! I hope this partly answers it. 

Just a note that the Likert scale in the poll is not symmetrical ("Agree" vs. "Strongly Disagree")

Agree with Johannes here on the bias in much of the nuclear winter work (and I say that as someone who thinks catastrophic risk from nuclear war is under-appreciated). The political motivations are fairly well-known and easy to spot in the papers

Hi Quinn! Thanks for this comment. Yes, I expect any theory of change for private actors here will run through policy advocacy. This both provides massive leverage  (by using government funds) and is just necessary given the subject matter. 

I wouldn't say it stops at a white paper -- one could organize track II dialogues to discuss the systems, lobby government, give policy briefings at a think tank, hold side events at international security conferences and treaty review conferences, etc.  

This could also take the form of advisory roles (I'm thinking of case studies like Ash Carter and Cooperative Threat Reduction) to government. 

Still,  I agree that the "get buy-in from governments" is the crucial stage (but I think this is true for many and possibly all GCR-related interventions). 

Thank you, James :)

Thanks, David! I really appreciate this comment. One reason I find this left/right framework more intuitive than "prevention, response, and resilience" is that there are right-of-boom interventions that I would classify as "prevention." For example, I think of escalation management after limited first use as "preventing" the largest nuclear wars (especially if we think such a war poses qualitatively different problems). 

Your cost-effectiveness models are very helpful, and I plan to cite them in the bigger project :) 

Thanks for the kind comment, Stephen! You're right I phrased that wrong -- it is about tractability, not probability. I agree with you that the tractability of escalation control is probably the biggest issue here, but I also think we should expect low-hanging fruit given the relative neglectedness. There are a couple of concrete projects that I am/would be be excited about:

• Escalation management with North Korea --  How can we keep nuclear war limited with North Korea? As I understand it, the problem of deterrence  after  DPRK first use has gotten relatively little attention, despite its relevance to U.S.-China conflict.  A project to study this and help the U.S. and China find guardrails, CBMs, etc. to work on this seems especially valuable. The broader class of interventions here is something like "keeping 'smaller' nuclear wars geographically and politically limited";
• Intrawar crisis communications projects -- especially understanding China's attitude to crisis communications. How can states better communicate the desire to terminate a war and the terms of peace once nuclear war has broken out?
• Three-body escalation control -- Like you, I'm concerned about a future where China has a much larger arsenal (see China Military Power Report), and the fact that U.S. planners have barely begun to think about the "nuclear three body problem" with China and Russia. A large-scale project that seeks to better understand these dynamics and what, if any, of the game theory from the Cold War applies to three-way escalation control, how different theories of limited war might interact, etc.  would be valuable.

Thanks, Conor!