Australia could be one of the safest places on Earth if, or rather when, a global catastrophe strikes.
New research has found Australia's isolation, self-sufficiency, and political stability mean it can withstand most crises.
The catastrophe could be anything from nuclear winter to asteroid strikes, or even a technological doomsday.
But researchers warn no country would escape unscathed, and resilience may depend as much on local communities as national borders.
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What's a global catastrophic risk?
By some definitions, any event that puts 10 per cent of human lives under threat is considered a global catastrophic risk.
These risks generally fall into three broad categories: abrupt sunlight reduction, catastrophic infrastructure loss, or global biological threats.
Matt Boyd, who co-authored the research in the journal Global Challenges, said such scenarios were not simply the stuff of science fiction.
"In fact, some of them have happened before, and some of them are guaranteed to happen," he said.
"And while COVID didn't meet the definition of global catastrophic risk as we've been studying it, it overwhelmed the capacities of the world."
Dr Boyd is also the executive director of Islands for the Future of Humanity, a resilience charity based in New Zealand.
His home country, along with Australia, ranked among the safest places in the world in many catastrophic scenarios.
Both are isolated, democratic island nations with the potential to be largely self-sufficient in food production, energy, transport, and communications.
But a key finding is that densely populated cities may be particularly vulnerable to global catastrophic risks.
Dr Boyd said volcanic ash from a major eruption, or nuclear fallout blocking sunlight, could severely disrupt food supplies, while a catastrophic cyber attack could disable many of the systems cities depend upon to function.
Global biological threats may also spread more rapidly through major urban centres, where large populations live and work in proximity.
"There's such a large population density that requires a continuous supply of resources, water, food, electricity, and so forth," Dr Boyd said.
"If you start to lose one of those, because of the interconnected nature of all those systems, you start to lose all of them."
That means smaller communities and regional areas could be better positioned to adapt in some crisis scenarios.
What's special about regional Australia?
The COVID pandemic offered a glimpse of how people respond to perceived vulnerability in major cities, with many Australians relocating to regional areas.
Kate Sollis was one of them, moving from Canberra to the Bega Valley on the far south coast of New South Wales.
She described the region's population of nearly 40,000 people spread across more than a dozen towns and villages as both diverse and deeply connected.
"There's really something special about the Bega Valley that brings people in, and it makes them stay as well," Ms Sollis said.
"It's a place where you can easily tap into networks and rely on other people.
"And what I hear anecdotally is the more socially cohesive a community is before a disaster, the easier it is to recover following a disaster."
The region has faced repeated challenges in recent years.
It was one of the areas hardest hit during the Black Summer bushfires before recovery efforts were disrupted by the COVID pandemic.
Like communities across Australia, it has also faced ongoing cost-of-living pressures.
Both Mr Whitaker and Ms Sollis are conscious of the competing claims that Australia could be one of the safest places in the world, while still facing significant risks of its own.
"I don't think you can put all Australia in one basket when you're looking at resilience," Mr Whitaker said.
"You've got to have that community nuance about exactly how things are going to affect them.
"You've got to have that granular data."
Mr Whitaker is the co-founder of the Bega Valley Data Collective, which formed after the Black Summer bushfires.
Ms Sollis recently became its chief executive, and their work focuses on in-depth surveys on community wellbeing and providing local data to help guide decisions affecting the region.
"There's a massive movement around Australia and across the world with this kind of thinking," Ms Sollis said.
"It comes in a number of different names: the wellbeing economy, doughnut economics, Regen Melbourne, and Regen Sydney.
"But all with wellbeing of people and planet front and centre when developing policy and programs."
Despite living through the 2019-20 bushfires, Mr Whitaker was unsure whether the community was significantly better prepared for future disasters.
"I hope we've learnt some lessons," he said.
"How we bounce back after that, I really don't know."
How can the world survive disaster?
When asked what gives him hope in the face of a potential global catastrophe, Dr Boyd pointed to both institutions and ordinary people willing to plan for the future.
"Plans are cheap, and we've previously suggested things like a parliamentary commissioner for catastrophic risk," he said.
"But even things like local deliberative democracy, citizens' assemblies in local regions or towns, can come up with a plan if something should happen.
For Dr Boyd, preparing for catastrophic risk is ultimately about balancing efficiency with resilience.
"To what degree do we want to focus on protecting profit?" he said.
"Instead of focusing just on the efficiency of things, we could start to focus a bit more on the resilience and redundancy of systems to protect us longer term and to protect future generations."
The central conclusion of the research is captured in its title: No Place To Hide.
Australia may be better placed than many nations to endure a global catastrophe, but no country would be spared from its impacts.
How well communities, governments and nations prepare may ultimately determine how resilient they prove to be in an uncertain future.
