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The Extinction Surplus

Abstract

We introduce three terms: the Cost of Extinction (the minimum military spending required to destroy civilization once), the Minimum Viable Apocalypse (the spending threshold at which assured destruction is achieved), and the Extinction Surplus (all military spending above that threshold). Using nuclear weapon cost-per-death calculations and global military budget data, we estimate the Cost of Extinction at $136B per year and the Extinction Surplus at $2.58T (95% of global military spending). We further show that annual military spending could purchase 850 (95% CI: 583-1.27 thousand) bullets for every person on Earth, renewing this capacity yearly. A proposed 1% treaty would redirect $27.2B from the Extinction Surplus to clinical trials, reducing overkill capacity from 20x to 19.8x while leaving deterrence entirely intact.

Keywords

war-on-disease, 1-percent-treaty, medical-research, public-health, peace-dividend, decentralized-trials, dfda, dih, victory-bonds, health-economics, cost-benefit-analysis, clinical-trials, drug-development, regulatory-reform, military-spending, peace-economics, decentralized-governance, wishocracy, blockchain-governance, impact-investing

It costs $136B to destroy civilization. Your governments spend $2.72T. The other $2.58T is the Extinction Surplus: military spending beyond what is needed to end the world even once.

95% of the global military budget buys nothing that the first $136B didn’t already purchase.

This paper shows the math. It is not complicated. A child could follow it. (The adults who set these budgets presumably also followed it, which makes the outcome harder to explain.)

The Price of a City

How much does one nuclear bomb cost?

The military bundles warhead costs into “modernization programs” and “delivery systems” to hide the individual price tags, in the same way a restaurant hides the cost of bread by calling it “table service.” But we have the B61-12 Life Extension Program as a benchmark:

One fancy airplane costs the same as four city destroyers. The airplane breaks a lot. The bombs would work perfectly on the first try, but you can only use them once.

One fancy airplane costs the same as four city destroyers. The airplane breaks a lot. The bombs would work perfectly on the first try, but you can only use them once.
  • Program Cost: $11 billion for 400-500 bombs
  • Unit Cost: $27.5 million per bomb

$27.5 million per city-destroying weapon. That is less than one F-35 fighter jet. You could buy 3-4 nuclear warheads for the price of one airplane. The airplane requires maintenance. The warheads just sit there, patiently, being worth more than your neighborhood.

The Price of a Person

NUKEMAP (created by historian Alex Wellerstein) simulates nuclear detonations. A single modern 300-kiloton W87 warhead over Manhattan:

How many people a nuclear bomb kills depends on three things: how big the bomb is, how many people are standing nearby, and whether you blow it up in the air or on the ground. Modern bombs are better at all three.

How many people a nuclear bomb kills depends on three things: how big the bomb is, how many people are standing nearby, and whether you blow it up in the air or on the ground. Modern bombs are better at all three.
  • Estimated Fatalities: 1,619,570 people

Immediate deaths. Blast, heat, initial radiation. Not counting fallout, disease, starvation, or the collapse of medical infrastructure. Those numbers are much higher. This is the conservative estimate.

Now the math:

Nuclear weapons are extremely affordable per death. This is the worst possible way to measure value for money, but here we are, measuring it.

Nuclear weapons are extremely affordable per death. This is the worst possible way to measure value for money, but here we are, measuring it.
  • Cost per Bomb: $27,500,000
  • Deaths per Bomb: 1,619,570
  • Cost per Death: $27,500,000 / 1,619,570 = $16.98

For the price of a coffee, your military can kill one human being. You have industrialized death to the point where killing a person costs less than caffeinating them.

I looked for a consumer product cheaper than $16.98 that is considered essential to daily life. A Starbucks latte costs more. A sandwich costs more. A movie ticket costs more. The cheapest thing in your economy is ending a human life with a nuclear weapon, and nobody put this on a graph, because putting it on a graph would make it real, and if it were real, someone might have to do something about it.

The Overkill Calculation

A 1% treaty143 redirects 1% of military spending to fund pragmatic clinical trials. This leaves $2.69 trillion for killing people.

Tiny sliver: cure diseases. Massive remainder: prepare for war. The military keeps 99 percent. They’ll barely notice it’s gone, like losing one fry from a large order.

Tiny sliver: cure diseases. Massive remainder: prepare for war. The military keeps 99 percent. They’ll barely notice it’s gone, like losing one fry from a large order.

How much killing does $2.69 trillion buy?

$2,690,000,000,000 / $27,500,000 per bomb = 97,818 bombs

97,818 bombs x 1,619,570 deaths per bomb = 158.4 billion people

Earth’s population: 8 billion.

Overkill capacity: 20x.

Your governments can kill every person on Earth 20 times. Not “once, but thoroughly.” Not “twice, to be safe.” Twenty times. After giving 1% to medicine. The treaty asks militaries to keep enough firepower to end civilization 19 times instead of 20.

Nobody needs to end civilization 20 times. That is just showing off.

Eight billion people. Weapons that can kill 160 billion people. Even after the 1 percent cut. Someone should check if we’re doing math right.

Eight billion people. Weapons that can kill 160 billion people. Even after the 1 percent cut. Someone should check if we’re doing math right.

The Cost of Extinction

If the military budget can destroy civilization 20 times, then destroying it once costs:

\[ \begin{gathered} C_{extinction} \\ = \frac{Spending_{mil}}{Overkill_{nuke}} \\ = \frac{\$2.72T}{20} \\ = \$136B \end{gathered} \]

$136B. That is the Cost of Extinction: the Minimum Viable Apocalypse. The price of ending civilization a single time, using the most cost-effective weapons your species has ever built.

I want to be precise about what this number means. It does not mean you can walk into a store and buy the apocalypse for $136B. You also need delivery systems, submarines, early warning radar, command-and-control infrastructure, and enough soldiers to turn the keys. (Nuclear launch requires two people turning two keys simultaneously. Your species trusts itself so little with these weapons that the firing mechanism requires a buddy system, and yet it built enough of them to kill everyone twenty times. I find this instructive.)

The actual cost of maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent (second-strike capability, survivable submarines, hardened silos, intelligence apparatus) is higher than $136B. The United States alone spends roughly $50-60 billion per year on its nuclear forces. Russia, China, France, the UK, and others add to this. A generous estimate of global nuclear deterrence costs is $100-150 billion per year.

This makes the argument worse, not better. If credible deterrence costs ~$150 billion, and total military spending is $2.72T, then 95% of the budget is still surplus. The denominator changes. The conclusion does not. However you calculate the Cost of Extinction, most of the budget is not paying for it.

Every dollar above that line buys a redundant apocalypse.

The Extinction Surplus

\[ \begin{gathered} S_{extinction} \\ = Spending_{mil} - C_{extinction} \\ = \$2.72T - \$136B \\ = \$2.58T \end{gathered} \]
where:
\[ \begin{gathered} C_{extinction} \\ = \frac{Spending_{mil}}{Overkill_{nuke}} \\ = \frac{\$2.72T}{20} \\ = \$136B \end{gathered} \]

$2.58T per year. That is the Extinction Surplus: the gap between what governments spend on military and what it costs to destroy civilization once.

95% of the global military budget is Extinction Surplus. Ninety-five cents of every military dollar purchases nothing beyond the destruction that the first five cents already guaranteed.

“But most military spending isn’t on nuclear weapons!” says the economist who took one semester of defense policy. Correct. Well observed. Most of it funds conventional forces: salaries, pensions, healthcare, vehicles, bases, and airplanes that cost more than the nuclear warheads they’re supposedly defending. This is the point, not the objection. The nuclear arsenal alone, costing a small fraction of the budget, already provides 20x overkill. The other 95% buys conventional capability on top of an extinction guarantee that was already purchased twenty times over. You are adding a home security system to a house rigged with enough explosives to destroy the neighborhood. The security system is not the problem. The question is why you keep buying more explosives.

“But conventional forces serve purposes other than extinction! Deterrence! Alliance commitments! Humanitarian operations! Power projection!” Also correct. And those purposes are funded at a level where the same budget, if converted to its most efficient lethal form, could murder every person alive 20 times. Whatever “purposes” the surplus serves, it serves them at a scale so grotesquely beyond any conceivable defensive need that the word “defense” has become decorative.

A 1% treaty asks for $27.2B from this surplus. It does not touch deterrence. It does not touch conventional readiness. It takes from the budget line that buys the 2nd through 20th apocalypse and redirects it to clinical trials.

How Much Defense Is Actually Enough?

The net return on US military hegemony is -$674 billion to -$1.38 trillion per year. The only quantifiable benefit ($20-200 billion in dollar reserve privilege) covers 2-23% of the cost. Switzerland spends $7 billion on defense, has not been invaded in 227 years, and the average Swiss citizen has higher income, longer life expectancy, and better healthcare than the average American who is paying 126 times more. The US Army ranked 17th in the world in 1939, behind Portugal, and won World War II by mobilizing in four years. For the full cost-benefit analysis, deterrence sufficiency data, and the evidence that hegemony creates the instability it claims to prevent, see The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Global Hegemony.

The Weapon Efficiency Rankings

Now that you know nuclear weapons cost $16.98 per death, you can compare them to other methods of killing people. This is the darkest optimization problem in human history. But here we are.

Bullets: expensive per death. Missiles: very expensive per death. Tanks: extremely expensive per death. Nuclear weapons: so cheap per death they broke the chart. Efficiency!

Bullets: expensive per death. Missiles: very expensive per death. Tanks: extremely expensive per death. Nuclear weapons: so cheap per death they broke the chart. Efficiency!

Small Arms

In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces fired approximately 250 thousand rounds for every insurgent killed8.

It takes 250,000 bullets to kill one person in modern warfare. This seems inefficient. At 40 cents each, that’s 100,000 per death. The bullets cost more than a house.

It takes 250,000 bullets to kill one person in modern warfare. This seems inefficient. At 40 cents each, that’s 100,000 per death. The bullets cost more than a house.

Artillery

Twenty big shells at ten thousand dollars each equals two hundred thousand dollars per casualty. Artillery is expensive. Being on the receiving end is worse.

Twenty big shells at ten thousand dollars each equals two hundred thousand dollars per casualty. Artillery is expensive. Being on the receiving end is worse.
  • 10-50 rounds per target, $8,000-$14,000 per shell
  • Cost per death: $200,000

Precision-Guided Munitions

  • Excalibur GPS-guided: $176,624 per round. Cost per death: $177,000-$350,000
  • Air-launched missiles (AMRAAM, AARGM-ER): $1-6 million each. Cost per death: $1-6 million+

Nuclear Weapons (The Winner)

  • B61-12: $27.5 million per bomb, ~1.6 million deaths per detonation
  • Cost per death: $16.98

The Leaderboard

Weapon Cost per Death
Nuclear warhead $16.98
Small arms $100,000
Artillery $200,000
Precision artillery $177,000-$350,000
Missiles $1-6 million+

Nuclear weapons are 5,900x more cost-effective at killing than bullets. They are 10,000-350,000x more cost-effective than precision missiles. Your species optimized for maximum death per dollar and then expressed surprise at the result. On Wishonia, we have a word for organisms that optimize a single metric until it destroys everything around them. The word translates roughly to “cancer.”

Conventional weapons: expensive per death. Nuclear weapons: so cheap per death that accountants get excited. The accountants should probably not get excited about this.

Conventional weapons: expensive per death. Nuclear weapons: so cheap per death that accountants get excited. The accountants should probably not get excited about this.

The Bullet Metric

The efficiency rankings measure combat cost-per-death. But there is a simpler calculation that requires no combat at all.

A 5.56mm NATO round costs $0.4 (95% CI: $0.25-$0.6) at bulk military rates7. Global military spending is $2.72T a year.

\[ \begin{gathered} n_{bullets/person} \\ = \frac{N_{bullets,yr}}{Pop_{global}} \\ = \frac{6.8T}{8B} \\ = 850 \end{gathered} \]
where:
\[ \begin{gathered} N_{bullets,yr} \\ = \frac{Spending_{mil}}{c_{bullet}} \\ = \frac{\$2.72T}{\$0.4} \\ = 6.8T \end{gathered} \]

Every year, your governments spend enough on military to murder every man, woman, and child on Earth 850 (95% CI: 583-1.27 thousand) times over. With bullets alone. Every year.

The nuclear overkill factor (20x) measures a stockpile: existing weapons, built over decades. The bullet metric measures something worse. It measures annual cash flow. You are not sitting on a one-time surplus of redundant death. You are renewing your subscription to it. Every year, you pay for the capacity to murder everyone 850 (95% CI: 583-1.27 thousand) times, receive a receipt, and then pay again next year.

“But militaries don’t actually spend their entire budget on ammunition!” Correct. They also buy food, housing, vehicles, pensions, and very expensive airplanes. This is a purchasing power calculation. It measures the scale of spending by converting it to the cheapest lethal commodity available. In actual combat, it takes 250 thousand rounds to kill one person8. At that rate, the entire global military budget converted to small arms would kill roughly 27 million people. Not 8 billion.

This objection is interesting because the person making it thinks it helps their case. “We can only kill 27 million people with bullets, not 8 billion” is not the reassurance they believe it to be. I have noticed that on your planet, when someone points out that a number is obscene, the response is often to quibble about the denominator. The denominator is not the problem. The numerator is the problem. The numerator is $2.72T.

Metric Overkill Type
Nuclear arsenal

20x

 Existing stockpile
Bullet purchasing power 850 (95% CI: 583-1.27 thousand)x/year Annual spending flow

A 1% treaty moves the bullet count from 850 (95% CI: 583-1.27 thousand) to about 842 per person. Nobody will notice.

The Receipt

The Death Budget is huge. The Not-Dying Budget is tiny. The proposal moves 1 percent from Death to Not-Dying. This should not be controversial, and yet.

The Death Budget is huge. The Not-Dying Budget is tiny. The proposal moves 1 percent from Death to Not-Dying. This should not be controversial, and yet.

The Cost of Extinction is $136B. The Extinction Surplus is $2.58T. A 1% treaty asks for $27.2B.

The treaty does not touch the Cost of Extinction. It does not reduce deterrence. It does not weaken a single military. It takes from the 95% of spending that buys nothing except redundant apocalypses and redirects it to clinical trials, so that humans might figure out which of the 9.5 million untested treatment combinations actually work.

Your species can kill every person on Earth 20 times. It cannot cure most cancers. It spends $2.72T a year on the first problem and a fraction of that on the second. The proposal is to move 1% from the budget that murders everyone 20 times to the budget that might stop some of them from dying.

That is the whole proposal. I have been trying to find the controversial part. I cannot find it. If you find it, please let me know, because I have been looking for several years and I am beginning to suspect it does not exist.