Engineered pathogens create a much higher risk of an extinction-level pandemic

An accident involving a biological weapons programme working with a sufficiently dangerous pathogen could also trigger a Wildfire scenario. Rates of civilian laboratory-acquired infections and the history of accidental bioweapon releases yield estimated annual likelihoods mostly in the single-digit percentages conditional on a nation-state bioweapons programme working with a Wildfire agent (see Appendix 1). This includes the possibility of a rogue state building a system to deliberately cause a Wildfire pandemic as a dead-hand switch to deter outside interference, which could accidentally leak. Given that the Soviet Union’s bioweapons programme apparently aimed at enhancing variola major,24 there are reasons to believe current and future programmes may pursue similar goals, particularly if other nations view a specific pandemic-class agent as a credible threat.

The last potential source of a Wildfire pandemic is a deliberate release. Zealots of many different ideologies aim to inflict mass death and civilisational collapse, from omnicidal cultists,25 to apocalyptic terrorists,26 anti-civilisation or suffering-focused ideologues,27 deep ecologists,28 nihilists,29 and those who see no future for their own value system and way of life.30 While the capabilities of these non-state actors are severely limited relative to those of nation states, civilian research will eventually provide widespread access to genomic blueprints: many well-meaning research programmes explicitly aim to identify credible pandemic pathogens and share their genome sequences and pathogen-specific reverse genetics protocols.31 Even if they were to refrain from such activities, other advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence will provide widespread access. Scientists will continue to seek to understand and program biology, including pandemics, and therefore will eventually learn to create them.

Thankfully, the vast majority of natural pandemic pathogens are not at the Wildfire level, sharply limiting the probability that any given deliberate release event would trigger a Wildfire scenario. Eventually, however, such an agent will be discovered or created, whether through advances in artificial intelligence,32 increasingly powerful biological design tools,33 or well-intended efforts to enhance the transmission of an already lethal virus.34 If the genomic blueprints to such an agent become widely available and access to unscreened DNA synthesis35 remains widespread,36 the likelihood of a deliberate Wildfire pandemic will increase sharply. Under these circumstances, historical data suggests that the annual probability of a deliberate Wildfire release may substantially exceed that of an accidental release from a state programme, with likelihoods ranging from the low single to low double digits per year (see Appendix 1).