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I was born at the end of the cold war, unaware of the danger we were emerging from. Duck and cover drills (as if those could protect schoolchildren from a nuclear blast) were a curiosity of the past.
The farmer-poet Wendell Berry, who wrote about the dread of nuclear war, died recently. From his 1968 “The peace of wild things”:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least...
I feel like this is a hard question to answer. People who identify as an Effective Altruist come from all sorts of backgrounds and I suppose there aren't specific groups of people who are more likely to become EAs, as opposed to others.
While I agree this is a hard question + anyone could self-identify as an aspiring EA, I lean towards thinking that right now, EA attracts certain kinds of people moreso than others, as evidenced by Rethink Priorities' demographic surveys: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ThdR8FzcfA8wckTJi/ea-survey-2020-demographics
At the very least, I suspect people who are more (academically) educated are more likely to become part of the EA community.
That survey was just the thing I was looking for. Thank you!