At ALLFED we are always looking for new volunteers and external collaborators: see the ALLFED research project database.

I know you wrote that new types of research are not really what you are looking for, but I leave the link in case you are interested, and we sometimes also take volunteers to work on areas other than research and policy.

Appendix: list of project titles

1. Recovering infrastructure as quickly as possible after a catastrophe
2. Retrofitting ships to be wind-powered
3. Emergency CubeSat
4. Developing plants resilient to low sunlight, temperature, or water
5. Foods from thin air: Towards CO2-based diets for deep space missions, Earth's environment, and existential food resilience
6. Potential of combined production of lignocellulosic sugar and leaf protein concentrate for preventing mass starvation in an ASRS
7. Potential of microbial fats for preventing mass starvation in an ASRS
8. Potential of single cell protein from wood and agricultural residues for preventing mass starvation in an ASRS
9. Potential of single cell protein via solid fermentation of peat/lignite for preventing mass starvation in an ASRS
10. Rapid repurposing of industrial infrastructure for microbial food production in global catastrophic food shocks
11. Retrofitting single cell protein animal feed factories to single cell protein human food factories
12. Agricultural residues: Potential for feeding ruminants
13. Integrated model with addition of crop relocation, expanded planted area, and (maybe) leaf protein concentrate
14. Quick cost estimates of potential resilient foods
15. Systematic review of health outcomes of nutritional issues in an ASRS
16. Integrated model with infrastructure and population loss
17. Expanded planted area scale-up analysis
18. In-depth analysis of labor and equipment for industrial food production
19. Food production during an x-pandemic
20. Analysis of international cooperation in an ASRS like nuclear winter
21. Cost and scaling of energy/electricity production in a catastrophe
22. GIS analysis of water supply and demand if the sun is obscured
23. Integrated model with varying number of Tg and duration of aerosols
24. Literature review and mapping of regions resilient to global catastrophes
25. Estimating worst drop in food production globally so far for every country
26. GCFF mental health
27. Literature assessment on whether people inexperienced in growing food could be trained quickly to do so
28. Supply-chain modelling under severe disruption scenarios
29. Mortality from losing infrastructure if basic needs are met
30. Trade economics without money in loss of industry
31. Produce a governmental ASRS response plan for a particular country
32. Produce ASRS or GCIL response plans at various governance levels
33. Piloting agriculture in ASRS conditions
34. Water treatment in an x-pandemic
35. Plant-based meat to displace inefficient animal agriculture in an ASRS

Interesting post. Just a quick comment on the effectiveness of "research and dissemination" and "Spreading “we’re all in this together” frames" type interventions. These sound similar to interventions that policymakers try time and again in response to disasters because they're intuitive, despite the fact that they don't work very well or at all.

The source I linked describes a comparison of interventions for pandemic response in the general public, so it's not directly applicable, but I worry a similar issue may be at hand here. The interventions aimed at changing minds generally have negligible effects, especially compared to other interventions such as providing social support and tapping into individuals’ behavioral skills and habits as well as removing practical obstacles to behavior.

I don't know what the equivalent on the "nuclear war prevention" area is of these other interventions that work well for pandemic response, but I do worry that the "knowledge and beliefs" type interventions proposed would also be negligible like they are in this other field.

Thank you so much for writing and sharing this resource Sam, and again I can't thank you enough for your support in helping us launch our policy org ORCG, we quite probably could not have done it without you.

I was reading one today I think on a similar vein to those you mention

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/75844/9781800647886.pdf?sequence=1#page=226

There is peer-reviewed literature estimating that this work is likely to be more cost-effective than GiveWell interventions for saving lives in the present generation, and likely more cost-effective than artificial general intelligence safety for improving the long run future (resilient foods and resilience to loss of electricity/industry).

Other independent or non-academic related evaluations of cost-effectiveness can be found here:

• Unjournal's 1st eval is up: Resilient foods paper
• Intermediate Report on Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios
• Speedrun: Demonstrate the ability to rapidly scale food production in the case of nuclear winter
• Famine deaths due to the climatic effects of nuclear wa
• Shallow evaluations of longtermist organizations

if this space was closer to my grantmaking, I'd be excited to fund a fully neutral study into these questions.

Here's hoping that the new set of studies on this funded by FLI (~$4 million) will shed light on the issue within the next few years.

https://futureoflife.org/grant-program/nuclear-war-research/

May I suggest: https://allfed.info/research/publications-and-reports