Civilization Roadmap

A staged roadmap for a humane, stable, and net-positive future: meeting basic needs, fixing incentives, reducing systemic risks, and building long-term resilience.

Core idea

• Begin with keystone actions that unlock many benefits at once
• Meet basic needs early so cooperation and innovation become easier
• Flip incentives so long-term value outcompetes short-term damage
• Prefer interventions with strong multipliers and durable effects
• Upgrade institutions so they can learn and adapt as quickly as technology

Guiding principles

• Meet basic needs first: food, water, health, safety, education
• Price harms and reward positives instead of relying solely on goodwill
• Back policies with evidence where available; use best-guess models where not
• Invest once in durable infrastructure instead of endless short-term patches
• Use transparent, digital, and auditable systems to support trust

Phase 1 · Years 0–5 — Stabilise and boost demand at the bottom

• Close the hunger and extreme-poverty gap globally
• Scale low-cost digital cash-transfer systems so every adult can receive direct aid or wages
• Provide universal school meals and micronutrient fortification in low- and middle-income countries
• Fund R&D in deep-geothermal power, long-duration energy storage, and water-from-air technologies
• Introduce rising prices on carbon, single-use plastics, and planned-obsolescence waste

Phase 1 milestones

• Child hunger and stunting sharply reduced
• First 24/7 deep-geothermal demonstration plants online
• Carbon and plastic fees generating stable revenues for social and green investments

Phase 2 · Years 6–15 — Re-structure for long-term value

• Shift capital-gains and corporate-tax rules to reward long-term holdings and impact reporting
• Make early-childhood education and parental support universal
• Transform justice systems from punishment-first to rehabilitation-first
• Rebuild curricula around critical thinking, media literacy, empathy, and civic competence
• Build digital public infrastructure (ID, payments, data trusts) on open standards

Phase 2 milestones

• High school completion rates above 90% in most countries
• Recidivism reduced through education, mental health care, and rehabilitation
• Digital tools widely used in budgeting and public decision-making

Phase 3 · Year 16 onward — Establish resilience

• Reach net-negative carbon and a circular materials economy
• Redirect excess military growth into global risk reduction through “peace dividend” mechanisms
• Create lifelong-learning and civic-income systems funded by sovereign wealth and long-run returns

Phase 3 milestones

• Atmospheric CO₂ levels falling each year
• Majority of materials circulating in closed loops
• Dedicated global funds for pandemics, AI risk, climate adaptation, and planetary defense

Why the package matters

• Keystone actions are interdependent; removing one weakens the whole structure
• Social protection supports climate policy and technological transition
• Clean energy and smart taxes help finance education and justice reform
• Education and health improvements accelerate innovation and governance capacity
• Together they create a reinforcing loop rather than fragile, isolated fixes

Second-stage boosters (Years 0–10, overlapping)

• Superbug Defense Fund — payments for new antibiotics and rapid diagnostics to counter antimicrobial resistance
• 100-Day Vaccine Mission — capacity to design, test, and scale vaccines for new pathogens within ~100 days
• Vector-control and gene-drive programs targeting major disease carriers
• Mental-health and loneliness infrastructure: community spaces, digital peer support, social prescribing
• Alt-protein cost-parity sprint — funding to bring low-emission proteins to price parity with conventional meat
• Regenerative-agriculture carbon markets — payments for verified soil-carbon gains and resilience improvements
• Governance-as-code systems — citizens’ assemblies and advanced voting tools on secure digital rails
• Compute-governance treaties — registration and licensing of advanced AI compute to cap unsafe capability races

Planetary-boundary and risk extensions

• Cut methane emissions rapidly, especially from fossil-fuel leaks and agriculture
• Decarbonise cement and construction through new materials and updated standards
• Scale permanent carbon storage in minerals, ecosystems, and engineered systems
• Protect and reconnect biodiversity through land and ocean conservation corridors
• Provide universal digital public infrastructure and broadband access
• Build global multi-hazard early-warning and response systems
• Govern extraction of key materials (such as sand) and phase out dangerous chemicals
• Create institutions representing future generations

Long-term extension: beyond Earth

• Stabilise Earth and build deep-tech capacity as the launchpad
• Develop a commercial cis-lunar economy and space infrastructure
• Scale life-support, planetary-defense, and space-habitat technologies
• Pursue off-world expansion only after Earth is resilient

Meta-principles

• Prefer interventions with high long-term multipliers
• Reduce catastrophic and existential risks before maximizing growth
• Invest in durable infrastructure over recurring subsidies
• Design systems that remain adaptive under rapid technological change
• Make harmful externalities visible and priced
• Align incentives with long-term value creation
• Strengthen human capabilities early: health, nutrition, learning
• Preserve optionality; avoid irreversible decisions under uncertainty
• Use transparency and data to support trust and cooperation
• Build globally interoperable systems whenever possible

Design constraints

• Reduce existential and global catastrophic risk
• Stay within planetary ecological limits
• Avoid single points of failure in energy, supply, governance, and compute
• Ensure benefits reach the poorest and least represented
• Preserve democratic values and human rights
• Enable distributed resilience, not centralized fragility
• Engineer for both robustness and graceful failure modes

Short version

• End hunger and extreme poverty
• Universal childhood nutrition and early education
• Direct cash systems and basic social protection
• Massive clean-energy and water innovation
• Price pollution and waste; reward long-term value
• Rehabilitative justice and mental-health support
• Critical thinking, media literacy, and civic education
• Digital public infrastructure and transparent governance
• Net-negative carbon and circular materials
• Global systems for pandemics, AI risk, and biosecurity
• Biodiversity protection and continental-scale wildlife corridors
• Space and off-world expansion after Earth is stable

What this builds toward

• A stable world where basic needs are met
• A global economy aligned with long-term value
• Reduced existential and catastrophic risk
• Institutions capable of learning and adapting
• Healthy, educated, cooperative populations
• A resilient civilization capable of exploring beyond Earth

Short description

A roadmap for building a stable, resilient, and net-positive civilization through basic needs, aligned incentives, global risk reduction, and long-term capacity building.