Resurgence of terrorist groups and an increase of members fuels apocalyptic movements and extinction.

Another type of omnicidal actor comes in the form of apocalyptic terrorists who believe that to save the world, it must first be destroyed. ISIS, arguably the largest and richest terrorist group in history, is a paradigm case. While some members of ISIS probably didn’t hold apocalyptic beliefs, the leadership most certainly did — and they made strategic decisions based on these beliefs. The man who essentially founded ISIS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed that Islam’s version of Armageddon was about to unfold around the small Syrian town of Dabiq. Hence, the name of the group’s propaganda magazine, Dabiq. After the U.S. military killed al-Zarqawi in 2006, leadership of ISIS transferred to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a fevered apocalypticist who insisted that the Islamic end-of-days messianic figure, the “Mahdi,” was about to appear in Iraq. Like al-Zarqawi, he based his strategy on his apocalyptic belief — and it backfired. He soon met his end at the hands of Western forces. Both of these individuals really believed that the end was nigh, and that it was their duty to use violence — catastrophic violence, to be more specific — to bring about the apocalypse. ISIS members talked about acquiring nuclear weapons, releasing deadly pathogens, and building dirty bombs. There isn’t a single terrorism scholar who doesn’t think that ISIS would have gleefully pushed a “destroy-the-world” button, especially if Western forces were marching toward Dabiq. But ISIS is far from the only apocalyptic group. Famously, the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo attempted to trigger Armageddon by releasing sarin in the Tokyo subway in 1995. Here in the U.S., more than a dozen hate groups subscribe to Christian Identity, an apocalyptic worldview that endorses the use of catastrophic violence as a means of triggering a “race war” that will initiate the end of the world. And one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, the Taiping Rebellion, involved an apocalyptic movement called the “Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.” This was led by a man named Hong Xiuquan, who believed that he was the brother of Jesus Christ, “commissioned by the Lord of Heaven to slay the devil-demons (Manchus) whose rule had brought ruin to China.” Hong Xiuquan A final type of omnicidal actor lingers within the outermost fringe of radical environmentalist, anarcho-primitivist, and Neo-Luddite ideologies. Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, provides an example par excellence. Beginning in 1978, Kaczynski perpetrated numerous domestic terrorist attacks, killing three people and injuring 23 others. A former UC Berkeley mathematics professor and Harvard alumnus, Kaczynski didn’t wish for humanity to go extinct. Rather, he wanted to trigger a global revolution against industrial society, with the ultimate goal of causing its collapse. Kaczynski ultimately didn’t care whether his revolution would cause people to die, since in his utilitarian calculus the ends would justify the means. As Kaczynski wrote in 1995: “This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.” In contrast, other actors in this category have explicitly embraced pro-extinction convictions. For example, the Gaia Liberation Front (GLF), an ecoterrorist group, holds as their mission “the total liberation of the Earth, which can be accomplished only through the extinction of the Humans as a species.” In advocating this, they argue that “if any Humans survive, they may start the whole thing over again. Our policy is to take no chances.” How might they accomplish their omnicidal aims? GLF contends that bioengineering is “the specific technology for doing the job right of annihilating humanity — and it’s something that could be done by just one person with the necessary expertise and access to the necessary equipment.” They continue: “…genetically engineered viruses… have the advantage of attacking only the target species. To complicate the search for a cure or a vaccine, and as insurance against the possibility that some Humans might be immune to a particular virus, several different viruses could be released (with provision being made for the release of a second round after the generals and the politicians had come out of their shelters).” This parallels an anonymous article in the Earth First! Journal, published in 1989, meaning that this idea has been around for a while: “Contributions are urgently solicited for scientific research on a species specific virus that will eliminate Homo shiticus from the planet. Only an absolutely species specific virus should be set loose. Otherwise it will be just another technological fix. Remember, Equal Rights for All Other Species.” While the most radical fringe of the environmentalist movement has avoided the limelight in recent years, some experts, such as the terrorism scholar Frances Flannery, expect a resurgence as climate and biodiversity crises worsen. This poses an obvious danger in a world replete with bullets and bombs; but it poses an existential threat in a world of cheap and easy gene editing. Technologies such as gene drives, digital-to-biological converters, and CRISPR-Cas9 are making it increasingly feasible to synthesize designer pathogens that could be far more devastating than anything found in nature.