Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A researcher specializing in existential risk (threats that could end civilization or humanity) tries to communicate the urgency of their work. Nobody cares — not because people disagree, but because existential risks are too abstract and long-term to compete with immediate concerns like rent, healthcare, and whatever's trending on social media.

The researcher notes that this psychological inability to take existential risks seriously is itself an existential risk.

The Humor

The comic identifies a genuine meta-problem in existential risk research: the very cognitive biases that make us vulnerable to existential risks (short-term thinking, scope insensitivity, normalcy bias) also prevent us from taking them seriously enough to address them. It's a trap with no obvious exit.

Context

Existential risk research has grown as a field thanks to organizations like the Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford), the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (Cambridge), and the Future of Life Institute. Key risks include engineered pandemics, nuclear war, runaway AI, and climate tipping points. The comic captures the communication problem that these researchers consistently face: how do you make people care about low-probability, high-magnitude events when the human brain is wired to focus on immediate, tangible threats?