Russian x-risks newsletter fall 2021

post by avturchin · 2021-12-03T13:06:56.164Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

It is estimated that excess morality during Covid pandemics will reach 1 million in Russia to the end of 2021, according to demograph A.Raksha. He also said that in October 2021 daily morality in Russia was highest since 1945. He uses numbers from local death-registration offices (ZAGS). Population structure is also contributed to the higher mortality, as there are a lot of old people. The current wave of Delta is strongest in Russia and official deaths reach all-time highs this fall, and remain on 1200 a day level with little variation. Real deaths maybe 3 time higher.   No Omicron was reported yet.   Two suspected cases just now, Dec,3.

Russia destroyed old satellite while testing anti-satellite weapons which increased the changes of a cascade failure of satellites on orbit which will make the low earth orbit unusable for decades. It also put ISS at risk. Also, Russia deployed lasers Peresvet which blind American satellites used to observe nuclear missiles.

Meanwhile, Russian search company Yandex got 3 powerful computers which are on 19, 36 and 40 places in TOP500. Its main rival in Russia Sber created multimodal ruDALL-E neural net with 12 billion parameters trained on its supercomputer. It is text to picture transformer. It’s 1.3 billion parameters version is online as telegram bot.

There are many reports in foreign press that Russia is planning an invasion in Ukraine during winter. This could spillover in a larger war. Also, major nuclear plants are located in Ukraine. Chernobyl is located on the border with Belarus which promised to support Russia, and not far from Kiev. Zaporizhzhia station is relatively near from Donbass region.

Russian investment fond Rosnano which was created during the hype about nanotech but never invest in real manufacturing nanotechnology, now defaulted on its bonds. 

“Cause of worst mass extinction ever found”, and it is nickel from Russian region near Norilsk, where large volcanic eruptions happened 250 million years ago. Nickel caused growth of special bacteria in oceans which produce methane. “The paper pinpoints huge Norilsk nickel sulfide ore deposits in the Tunguska Basin that “may have released voluminous nickel-rich volcanic gas and aerosols into the atmosphere” as the start of the chain of events that led to the mass extinction.” 

Tunguska basin also known as place of impact of Tunguska meteorite, 1908 but the region is large.

Kriorus still suffers from the internal conflict, which is now in body-steeling phase. First Valeria tried to snatch full-body patients from the older facility Semhoz. Then Danila raided her facility in Tver and took some neuropatients. Finally, she raided again his base in Semhoz and with help of police took all full-body patients to Tver. As a result, they now exchange patients.

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