About The Weekly Existential
We cover risks to the continuity of civilisation and humanity's long-term future, fast or slow, technological or environmental.
What we cover
Our selection is motivated by existential risk. That is the editorial interest. We cover nuclear weapons, climate change and artificial intelligence now, and expect to add biosecurity and governance.
A subject has to pass two tests to be covered. It must plausibly bear on civilisational continuity or large-scale irreversible harm. And we must be able to draw a credible pathway from the event or trend to existential-scale risk, or to risk reduction. The mechanism is the test, not the size of the headline.
Our standards
- Even-handed reporting. The interest decides what we cover. It never decides what a fact is. We are not an advocacy group, a party-political project or a campaign.
- Every factual claim is sourced. Footnotes link to the source we relied on, and we note when that source is a primary document, a wire report or a secondary summary.
- Evidence strength is shown, not hidden. Where a claim rests on a single report, a preprint or an author's own model, the article says so.
- Uncertainty is stated. We say what is established, what is contested, and what is projection. We do not present worst cases as forecasts.
- Independent checking. Whoever verifies a story should not be whoever wrote it. Some of our articles are prepared with AI assistance, and every one is checked against its sources.
How this publication is made
The Weekly Existential is being built as a staged editorial pipeline. Separate roles collect sources, extract and corroborate facts, write, and check. Some of those roles are AI agents.