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RETHINKING PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES
SERIES EDITORS:
OLIVER P. RICHMOND · ANNIKA BJÖRKDAHL · GËZIM VISOKA

Existential Risks
in Peace and
Conflict Studies

Noah B. Taylor
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies

Series Editors
Oliver P. Richmond
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK

Annika Björkdahl
Department of Political Science
Lund University
Lund, Sweden

Gëzim Visoka
Dublin City University
Dublin, Ireland
This agenda-setting series of research monographs, now more than a
decade old, provides an interdisciplinary forum aimed at advancing inno-
vative new agendas for peace and conflict studies in International Relations.
Many of the critical volumes the series has so far hosted have contributed
to new avenues of analysis directly or indirectly related to the search for
positive, emancipatory, and hybrid forms of peace. Constructive critiques
of liberal peace, hybrid peace, everyday contributions to peace, the role of
civil society and social movements, international actors and networks, as
well as a range of different dimensions of peace (from peacebuilding, state-
building, youth contributions, photography, and many case studies) have
been explored so far. The series raises important political questions about
what peace is, whose peace and peace for whom, as well as where peace
takes place. In doing so, it offers new and interdisciplinary perspectives on
the development of the international peace architecture, peace processes,
UN peacebuilding, peacekeeping and mediation, statebuilding, and local-
ised peace formation in practice and in theory. It examines their implica-
tions for the development of local peace agency and the connection
between emancipatory forms of peace and global justice, which remain
crucial in different conflict-affected regions around the world. This series’
contributions offer both theoretical and empirical insights into many of
the world's most intractable conflicts, also investigating increasingly sig-
nificant evidence about blockages to peace.
This series is indexed by Scopus.
 Noah B. Taylor

Existential Risks in
Peace and Conflict
Studies
Noah B. Taylor
Universität Innsbruck
Innsbruck, Austria

ISSN 1759-3735     ISSN 2752-857X (electronic)

Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-24314-1    ISBN 978-3-031-24315-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24315-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To all who have come before, and all those yet to
 Acknowledgments

The journey of this book was helped, knowingly and unknowingly, by

many along the way. To Nerea, I want to express gratitude from the bot-
tom of my heart for your support, accompaniment, kind ears, and keen
eyes. A big thank you to Shawn for your friendship over all these years and
the sound boarding sessions for this book. A deep thank you to Wolfgang
for his guidance, mentorship, and inspiration over this decade and a half;
you have had a profound influence on my thinking and my life. Thank you
to Nobert, Josefina, and many more in my extended peace family for your
support and camaraderie. A deep thank you to Esthi for your love and
support. All my love to my family Karen, Bruce, Patti, Judy, Dan, Laura,
Ben, and Barrett. I would also like to thank Habiba and Arden, at 80,000
Hours, for helping me work out this book’s initial idea and for feedback
on the first draft.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Foundations  5

3 At the Intersection of PCS and ERS 41

4 Great Powers Conflict 63

5 Peace, Pandemics, and Conflict 85

6 Climate Change Peace and Conflict109

7 Emerging Technologies, Risk, Peace, and Conflict139

8 Totalitarianism Risk and Peace191

9 Conclusion205

Index211

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
(Frost, 1920)

I have thought about the end of the world for as long as I can remem-
ber. When I was young, a fear of death drove my fascination with the
apocalypse. For me, the tragedy of death, myself or my loved one, was that
we must go on without the other. The idea of the end of the world held
freedom from fear because there would be nothing nor no one to miss or
to be missed. Over time I began to study how the world may end. My
namesake, Noah, is known for saving life from a prototypical antediluvian
existential risk.
Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice” was the first poem I memorized in
school. The poem introduces two classical Greek elements; the first, fire,
often used to symbolize power, action, and the gift Prometheus stole, here

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
N. B. Taylor, Existential Risks in Peace and Conflict Studies,
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24315-8_1
2 N. B. TAYLOR

is equated to a fate through the consumption by desire. No doubt, in part,

an echo of the moment of its writing, one year after the end of World War
I. The second element, water in the form of ice, and the image of a frozen
apocalypse, is anecdotally inspired by a conversation with the astronomer
Harlow Shapley about the universe’s ultimate fate. For Frost, influenced
by Dante’s Inferno, the destructive force of ice equates to hatred.
Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, understood the soul as a mixture of
fire and water. For Frost, the world’s fate sits between a fiery apocalypse
spurned by desire and a frozen wasteland resulting from hate.
The spirit of this book is based upon the ultimate end of humankind,
our role in determining that fate, and what that means in the pres-
ent moment.
Many years after I memorized that poem I went into studying, and later
practicing, Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS). It seemed a useful tool to
understand and try to overcome the roots of one of our tendencies as spe-
cies: destroying each other. PCS is concerned with understanding the
causes and impacts of violence, how conflicts can be transformed, and how
humans can relate to each other and the world in a way that allows the
unfolding of potential. Coming back to Frost’s poem, PCS is a discipline
seeking to transform hate. But, what about desire? What about fate? Where
is the fire? This is where Existential Risk Studies (ERS) came into place.
While the essence of PCS is how we relate to each other, ERS is concerned
with our medium, long, and very long-term future: the possibilities of
humanity, the chances that we will not make it.
As I dived deeper into this recently developed discipline, the fact that
there were points of convergence between PCS and ERS that were not
being explored became increasingly clear. PCS and ERS have similar roots,
aims, and ethos. Both fields are, in a way, a reaction to destruction in the
past and concern for the future. However, both disciplines have not been
in dialogue with each other; as often happens in academia, they develop in
silos, unaware of each other. In this book I aim to reveal ways of thinking
of risks to our existence together with Peace and Conflict Studies. I hope
that bringing together these two fields contributes to understanding how
our future can be shaped, peaceful, and long.
I wrote this book amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, worsening climate
change, a new war in Europe, and the ever-present specter of nuclear war.
At the outset, it feels no leap of the imagination to posit that peace and
human survival are interlinked. Further, it is no longer radical to posit that
we are not prepared for the worst that can happen.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

This book explores the topic of peace and the long-term survival of the
human species. The departure point for this text is that both fields could
benefit from each other. PCS would benefit from the future emphasis that
comes from ERS, while ERS could benefit from the relational focus of
PCS. To this end, this text draws from the field of ERS, which has been
developed precisely to find ways of envisioning humanity’s long-term
future, possible threats to human survival, and methods for addressing
those risks. This text lays out a theoretical framework for drawing on per-
spectives from ERS to contribute new ways of thinking about the future
of peace research. Experts in PCS need to be involved in discussions
regarding the future. PCS offers perspectives that will be complementary
to better decision-making on issues that will affect the future.
I begin with a brief history of both fields focusing on the historical
contexts in which they developed. I then summarize the current state of
the art in both fields and engage with critical philosophical questions at
the intersection between PCS and ERS. The second question examines
the intersection between these two fields focusing on each field’s under-
standing of time, prioritization, and values.
With the overall frame of the discussion established, I make the case for
five research topics in PCS that are both current topics of concern yet
require a substantial understanding of existential risks and frameworks for
looking toward the future. Each of these topics is defined and discussed.
Current perspectives on these issues in PCS are outlined, how they are
understood in ERS, and what approaches would be beneficial to adapt and
integrate into PCS. Each section concludes with a reflection on what ques-
tions may be relevant for developing a body of research at this intersection
between these two fields. The book concludes with a discussion of PCS
and long-term thinking in the context of threats to existence.
This book adds new ways of thinking to discussions about the future.
When considering the long-term future, the question needs to be asked,
“how do we still relate to each other in the here and now?” I often imag-
ine that last being at the edge of the last black hole as the final star goes
dark and wonder what their reflections would be. I position this book
between the present moment and the long-term future in what Elise
Boulding, one of the early founders of PCS, called the “long-present,”
which invokes the idea of any of us living mid-history, at the intersection
of the lives preceding us, and those that will precede from us. In this book,
I build an epistemological bridge between how to think about threats to
4 N. B. TAYLOR

the future and how to peace in every single present without

contradiction.
In 1925 (five years after Frost’s “Fire and Ice”), T.S. Eliot wrote “The
Hollow Men.” The poem also has an apocalyptic tone. The narrator
describes himself as being one of the hollow men, those empty people liv-
ing in a desolate and broken world, neither living nor dead. His image
echoes the horrors of that World War I and prophecies: “This is the way
the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper” (128). Written 20 years
before the first nuclear bomb was dropped, I wonder if he would have still
placed his bets on “whimper.”

References
Eliot, T. S. 1925. Eliot’s Poems: 1909–1925. London: Faber & Faber.
Frost, Robert. 1920. “A Group of Poems by Robert Frost.” Harper’s
Magazine, December.
 CHAPTER 2

Foundations

Peace and Conflict Studies

Ancient Concerns, Modern Discipline

Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS) and Existential Risk Studies (ERS) are
both simultaneously old and new. Concerns about war, peace, and survival
are as old as human civilization and, at the same time, have only recently
crystallized into distinct fields of research and practice. The history of
humanity is often told as the history of conflicts. For example, both the
Mahābhārata and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War were
written centuries ago to address the above-mentioned concerns and still
have contemporary religious and political influence.
PCS does not have a single definition; there are many camps with dif-
ferent emphases and perspectives. Broadly speaking, these different focuses
are security and conflict management, conflict resolution, conflict trans-
formation, applied, and transdisciplinary approaches. What connect these
different camps are efforts to understand conflict, violence, and peace.
Specifically, PCS examines the causes, dynamics, and effects of different
types of conflict and what factors and processes contribute to peace and
reduce violence and suffering. In its transdisciplinary nature, PCS draws
from Political Science, Philosophy, International Relations (IR), Sociology,
Anthropology, Psychology, Religious Studies, Contemplative Traditions,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 5

Switzerland AG 2023
N. B. Taylor, Existential Risks in Peace and Conflict Studies,
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24315-8_2
6 N. B. TAYLOR

Peace Movements, and our collective history of conflicts and experiences

of peace.
The beginning of Peace and Conflict Studies as an academic field is
placed at different moments in history by scholars: the founding of the
first Peace Studies Program in 1948 at Manchester College in Indiana
(Harris et al. 1998); the work of Johan Galtung who is the founder of
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959 and the Journal of Peace
Research in 1964 and his popularization of many foundational ideas in the
field such as positive and negative peace, peace research, and structural
and cultural violence (Galtung and Fischer 2013a); or the work of Adam
Curle and the establishment of the Department of Peace Studies at the
University of Bradford in the UK in 1974 (Woodhouse 2010). While
these are important moments in the history of the field, rather than defini-
tive founding moments they represent moments in a longer story. Many
scholars and practitioners have built the field of PCS. It has been shaped
by the movements of history, resulting in an ongoing synthesis of different
streams of thought.
The emergence of PCS has its roots in disillusionment with previous
ways of understanding conflict and approaches to building peace during
World Wars I and II. The Treaty of Versailles marked the end of the World
War I at the beginning of the twentieth century. A consensus emerged that
new ways of thinking needed to be developed and supported by the found-
ing of institutions to scientifically study the causes of war and how it could
be prevented in the future. This resulted in the development of the field of
International Relations (IR) to guide newly formed institutions, such as
the League of Nations in 1920, the American Institute of International
Affairs (later the Council of Foreign Relations), and the British Institute
of International Affairs (later the Institute of International Affairs), both
in 1922. The aim of the field of IR and the mission of these institutions
was to apply a scientific approach to understanding relationships between
countries at a global level to prevent another world war. World War I was
seen as an aberration in an otherwise peaceful system. It was believed that
future global conflicts could be prevented by understanding and manag-
ing the relationships between nation-states as they were seen as the pri-
mary actors in conflicts and have a monopoly on the use of force (Dietrich
2012). At this time the field of IR was shaped by the competing perspec-
tives of Realism and Idealism. Both voices argued for ways of understand-
ing the world that were not based on religious faith but rather on
 2 FOUNDATIONS 7

philosophical assumptions about the nature of humankind, society, and

the state.
Despite the lofty aims of trying to understand conflict to prevent
another global war, World War II erupted just 21 years later. The failure of
the League of Nations to prevent the invasion of Manchuria (1931) and
World War II (1939–1945) cast doubt on the ability of theories of
International Relations to prevent war. These failures can be understood
as the beginning of the disillusionment that arose after World War II. The
horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the use of
nuclear weapons fractured the faith in previous ways of understanding
conflicts and their ability to deliver on the promise of peace.
The development and use of nuclear weapons were influential factors in
the emergence of PCS. The destruction wrought on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki became, to many, a symbol of the inevitable conclusion of devo-
tion to modern thinking and the destructive potential that technology
could bring, and the mistrust of the systems of governance that wield that
power. Further, the voices of those in the scientific community concerned
with these developments became an important force in the development
of PCS throughout the 1940s–1950s. These voices came together in the
Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which is regarded as the “impulse document
for peace studies as a discipline” (Dietrich 2012, 181). This manifesto,
authored by Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and nine other scientists,1
warns of the disastrous potential ramifications of the use of Hydrogen
Bombs and calls for humanity to decide against armed conflict. It was
published in July of 1955 at the beginning of the nuclear arms race and
was a radical call for nuclear disarmament on all sides.
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto gave rise to the Pugwash movement
beginning in 1957, with many of the signatories to the Russell-Einstein
Manifesto becoming prominent Pugwashites. The creation of the Pugwash
movement was also supported by the newly formed Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists (the Bulletin), whose co-founders include scientists who worked
on the Manhattan Project: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Hans
Bethe. The Bulletin is a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate fel-
low scientists about atomic weapons, especially the connections between
their scientific work and national and international politics. An additional
aim of the Bulletin is to educate US citizens about the potential risks

1
Max Born, Percy Bridgman, Leopold Infeld, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Hermann Muller,
Linus Pauling, Cecil Powell, Joseph Rotblat, and Hideki Yukawa.
8 N. B. TAYLOR

posed by nuclear energy in its application to warfare. They are also the
keepers of the Doomsday Clock, an artistic metaphor for the dangers and
urgency posed by manmade threats to humanity.
Since its creation, the Pugwash movement has become a series of inter-
national conferences and workshops. In these spaces, scientists come
together to discuss questions of global security, armed conflict, nuclear
weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction and the responsibility of
those working in the sciences with regard to working for war or peace.
Some of the most noteworthy accomplishments of this movement were
the nuclear test ban in 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in
1968, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, and the ban on chemical
and nuclear weapons in 1972 (Kraft et al. 2018). In 1995 the Pugwash
movement was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to commemorate these
accomplishments (Nobel Prize Outreach 2022).
From these initial foundations, the field of Conflict Resolution began in
earnest at the height of the Cold War between 1950 and 1960. People
came together from different disciplines concerned about escalating geo-
political tensions, the nuclear arms race, and the specter that war between
superpowers could threaten human survival. These pioneers recognized a
common vision in developing rigorous and scientifically grounded
approaches to studying conflict. Early systems theories by Ludwig von
Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Ralph Gerard, Kenneth Boulding, and Elise
Boulding brought cross-disciplinary perspectives and methods to the field
of Peace Studies as it developed in the USA. The multidimensional
approaches developed from their early work were built on a radically dif-
ferent starting point than previous ways of understanding conflict. Their
approach was based on the observation that the vast majority of all social
conflict occurs nonviolently and that the minority of human activity is
related to war. From this perspective, researching peace requires an under-
standing built from peace rather than conflict, war, or violence
(Dietrich 2012).
In the 1980s, the Harvard Negotiation Project popularized, particu-
larly through Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes (1981), many of the princi-
ples of negotiation and mediation, such as separating people from problems
and distinguishing between interests and positions. These approaches
shaped interventions in the struggle to end Apartheid in South Africa,
developing problem-solving workshops to support peace processes in the
Middle East and taking community-oriented approaches to resolving con-
flict in Northern Ireland. Additionally, many development and
 2 FOUNDATIONS 9

humanitarian agencies, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia, began to

focus on understanding conflict and mainstream Conflict Resolution as an
essential component of their activities (Ramsbotham et al. 2016).
Another important development in PCS was the UN Security General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s “An Agenda for Peace: Preventative Diplomacy,
Peacemaking, and Peace-Keeping” (1992), which marked the changing
nature of conflict in the global political system at the end of the Cold War.
The inception of the Agenda for Peace was a request made by the UN
Security Council for an analysis of and recommendations for strengthen-
ing the practices of peacemaking and peacekeeping in light of these politi-
cal changes and of recent failures that had made the flaws in peacekeeping
practices increasingly visible. The Agenda for Peace outlines how the UN
should respond to conflicts in the new post-Cold War era. Among the key
points of the document was the establishment of methods of preventive
diplomacy that could be used before or during peacekeeping operations.
It also defined and differentiated between peacemaking and peacekeeping.
Further, it introduced and defined the concept of “post-conflict
peacebuilding.”

Conflict Management, Conflict Resolution,

and Conflict Transformation
The field of PCS is often subdivided into different approaches of Conflict
Management, Conflict Resolution, and Conflict Transformation. Even
though these perspectives have developed over time, they should not be
understood as a linear development or mutually exclusive perspectives.
These approaches can be differentiated by their answers to five founda-
tional questions.
Human nature: What is the view of human nature at the core of this
approach? Are humans inherently violent or peaceful, or is our nature
ambivalent?
The nature of conflict: What is conflict, why does it happen, and what
function does it serve?
The primary actor: According to this perspective, who is the ideal actor to
work in conflicts?
Method of peace work: What is the main approach for working on con-
flict from this perspective?
The goal of peace work: From this perspective, what is the overall aim of
peace work?
10 N. B. TAYLOR

Conflict Management approaches are built on the assumption that con-

flict is inherent in human nature and cannot be avoided, and thus, the
most logical approach for working with conflict is to try to prevent or
manage it. Peace work, in this understanding, is left to those actors (usu-
ally nation-states) powerful enough to manage other parties’ conflict.
Conflict Resolution approaches take an ambiguous view of human
nature where we are neither inherently prone to violence nor peace. They
posit instead that conflicts arise through a lack of understanding and com-
munication. This approach involves skilled neutral meditators who engage
with conflicting parties to come to an official resolution to the “problem”
of conflict through a better understanding of themselves and a clearer abil-
ity to communicate with the other.
Conflict Transformation starts from the same ambiguous view of
human nature and takes a different view of the nature of conflict, which is
understood to be a fundamental driver of transformation and change.
Conflicts occur at all levels, from the individual to the global, and result
from the relational dynamics among those involved in the conflict. Thus,
the task of the peace worker is to operate as a facilitator, seeking to guide
transformational processes in the relationships present in the conflict to
reduce violence and build peace.
Approaches to Conflict Transformation are further subdivided into pre-
scriptive and elicitive approaches. These terms refer to “ideal types” of
approaches, and in real life, a pure version of either is likely not to exist. In
a prescriptive approach, a peace worker, here imagined in the role of a
trainer, is understood as an expert, and the training event is conceptual-
ized around the transmission of their specialized knowledge and experi-
ence to the participants. The goal of the encounter is the mastery of a
piece of knowledge, or a set of skills, where the participants try to emulate
the expert’s work. The concept of Elicitive Conflict Transformation was
introduced into PCS in the 1990s to expand approaches to the under-
standing of the dynamics of peace and conflict. This approach seeks to
draw out, or elicit, existing knowledge about how conflicts are addressed
by a specific group of people in a specific time and place. This approach
then facilitates the catalyzation of these existing practices of dealing with
conflict to guide a transformation process between individuals, groups,
and communities. In an elicitive approach, the peace worker is understood
as a process facilitator, rather than an expert trainer. The process is aimed
at the discovery, creation, and rarefication of models of understanding that
come from the participants in the encounter, who are seen as vital resources
 2 FOUNDATIONS 11

for grounded contextual knowledge. The facilitator functions as a catalyst,

holding and guiding the process whereby those involved determine the
outcomes (Lederach 2015).
With changes in the understanding of peace work, there have been
subsequent changes in how timescales are viewed when working for peace.
Conflict Management approaches have the narrowest timescale, focusing
on discrete episodes of conflict and developing power-based strategies to
reach a formal agreement. Conflict Resolution approaches expand the
temporal view by seeking to understand the deeper root causes of the
conflict, and come to solutions that build a more sustainable peace.
Conflict Transformation approaches paradoxically hold both the narrow-
est and the farthest-reaching view of time, integrating a multigenerational
perspective on approaches to transforming systems of relationships with
the importance of a focus on the present moment with the people in the
room. Peace scholar, John Paul Lederach, calls this balancing act the 200-­
year present (Lederach 2005).
Many forces have continued to shape the field of Peace and Conflict
Studies. Globalization has had a host of influences including increasing
access to information on conflicts around the world, the expansion of
identities that reach further than they have before while at the same time
contributing in some cases to more localized identities. Shifts in the geo-
political order, particularly by the USA which has come to think of itself as
the leader in a monopolar world, have had a significant impact on
International Relations. The nature of war has shifted from warfare
between professional militaries of nation-states to hybrid wars fought with
a mixture of state and nonstate forces. These wars are often fought for
goals that are different from the past, with more attention to identity
issues over ideology (Kaldor 2012).

Defining Peace and Conflict Studies

A precise definition of Peace and Conflict Studies is difficult to articulate
beyond the tautological “peace and conflict studies” is the “study of peace
and conflict.” Nonetheless, there are some core definitional criteria for the
field. A critical analysis of the key terms of peace, conflict, and violence has
been deemed appropriate and necessary. As the field has developed, many
voices have been brought into this discussion, adding further depth and
nuance. Whatever is meant by peace is an incomplete understanding if it is
defined only as the absence of violence (Galtung and Fisher 2013b). The
12 N. B. TAYLOR

conditions that need to be present for there to be peace are at the heart of
the field.
Some generally agreed-upon characteristics can describe the field: PCS
has roots in a postmodern field of study fueled by disillusionment with the
grand explanatory narrative. The field tends to cast a critical eye on how
peace and conflict issues are understood. PCS is transdisciplinary, drawing
from and transcending the disciplinary boundaries of many fields (Political
Science, International Relations, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology,
Psychology, Religious Studies, peace movements, our collective history of
conflicts, and experiences of peace). It is also multilevel in that while
International Relations had an explicit focus on elite-level actors, govern-
ments, and militaries and sought to find strategies to prevent war at the
nation-state level, PCS took an expanded view on who can work to pre-
vent violence and build peace. PCS is multicultural. While a clear influence
of particular cultures and places shaped its origins as a field, as it has grown
and developed, increasing attention has been placed on bringing experi-
ences from different cultures, religions, ethnicities, sexes, genders, and
sexual orientations into its theory and methodology. The field is analytical,
seeking to utilize various methods and frames to understand the nature
and dynamics of peace, conflict, and violence. PCS is also a normative
discipline. Similar to medicine, few doctors would think of themselves as
neutral. They are on the side of the patient seeking a particular outcome.
PCS maintains a clear bias toward reducing violence and increasing peace.
Finally, PCS emphasizes the linkage between theory and practice. Effective
peace work and research depend on each other for their validity. The effi-
cacy of peace work is important because the subjects of research are the
lives of people.

State of the Art

The state of the art in PCS is growing and changing. There are a few key
trends that define PCS that are particularly relevant to the topic of the
long-term survival of humanity and peace. The early history of PCS as a
defined field of inquiry was characterized by disillusionment with previous
approaches to dealing with the problem of conflict. The further develop-
ment of this field has followed this essential motivation, taking what has
been learned through successes and failures, and going beyond the con-
fines of previous approaches. At the same time, the changing nature of
violent conflict has also necessitated changes in theory and practice. One
 2 FOUNDATIONS 13

set of interpretations traces the development of peace thinking through

the “Liberal Peace” and posits different ideas for what comes next.
Here liberal peace refers to an understanding of peacebuilding that
emerged after the end of the Cold War. It focuses on the importance of
“external interventions that are intended to reduce the risk that a State
will erupt into or return to war” (Barnett et al. 2007, 37). There is a con-
sensus that this type of liberal peacebuilding rests on the principles of
democratization and the liberalization of markets (O.P. Richmond 2011,
2015). A precondition for sustainable peace is that a wide range of social,
economic, and institutional reforms must be put in place to support these
principles and ensure the presence of a strong system of democratic poli-
tics. This understanding and approach to peace have shown their limita-
tions, and much of the research in contemporary PCS is attempts to go
beyond this initial understanding. What lies beyond a liberal peace has
variously been termed “Post-liberal Peace” (O.P. Richmond 2011,
Richmond and Mitchell 2012), “Hybrid Peace” (O.P. Richmond 2015;
Mac Ginty and Richmond 2015), “Everyday Peace” (Mac Ginty 2014,
2021), and “Transrational Peace” (Dietrich 2012, 2013, 2017, 2021).
Within these different conceptions are key themes of complexity (de
Coning 2016, 2018; von Bertalanffy 1972), systems thinking (CDA
2016; Gallo 2012; Ropers 2008), and resilience (de Coning 2016, 2018;
Cote and Nightingale 2011).
The term “hybrid peace” has been used to describe a Post-liberal Peace
and refers to the complex and multileveled dynamics of peace that strad-
dles the local to the international. A hybrid piece is observed at the in-­
betweens, at the intersections of local understandings and practices of
peace and the national and international norms that guide and govern
international relations and development. These kinds of peace first emerge
in the tension of the opposition between the local and the international
until some kind of accommodation and, at least, a tacit agreement is
reached that this kind of peace and those actors who work toward building
and maintaining it have legitimacy at both local and international levels
(O.P. Richmond 2015; Mac Ginty 2014). Attempts at moving toward this
kind of hybridity are found in the Agenda for Peace, the Millennium
Development Goals, and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
The concept of “Everyday Peace” is one of these hybrid turns which
focuses peace research on the everyday practices that individuals and
groups use to navigate their dynamics when society is deeply divided. The
rationale for coining the term is to designate a more human-focused and
14 N. B. TAYLOR

vernacular approach to understanding experiences of peace and conflict.

Examples of these practices of everyday peace range from coping mecha-
nisms, such as avoiding hot topics in mixed company, concealing identi-
ties, rituals of politeness, concern with ascertaining the social identifications
of others, to deferring blame to those outside of the context. This every-
day peace is the bottom-up organizations of local agency in conflict-­
affected societies that are mechanisms and practices that address grievance,
conflict, and difference in ways that allow communities to live together.
Though, at first glance, this conception of peace may seem to be conflict
avoidance by a different name, these strategies often overlap into a com-
plex system that is aimed at survival through minimizing risk while poten-
tially building the ground and necessary calm for gradually working on the
differences that have led to the conflict (Mac Ginty 2014).
Another future development in PCS follows a different line in under-
standing peace that does not follow through a progression from “liberal”
to “post-liberal.” The “transrational approach” developed by Wolfgang
Dietrich in his “Many Peaces Tetralogy”2 takes a different history and
vision of peace. Dietrich identifies his approach as “Transrational Peace
Philosophy.” This perspective’s origin is two-fold. An understanding of
peace requires a perceiving subject to have meaning. It thus is more accu-
rate to describe peace in the plural, as “peaces” than as a single “peace.”
Even though this can, and does, on one level, suggest that there are as
many interpretations of peace as perceiving subjects, it is possible to group
understandings of peace into general categories. These categories he
describes as “peace families,” denoting the fuzzy delineations between dif-
ferent groups of interpretations of peace. This type of categorization also
suggests that although these different families have developed over time,
one should not read it in an evolutionary sense where one perspective
excludes the other. These peace families are the energetic, moral, modern,
postmodern, and transrational (Dietrich 2012, 2013).
The energetic peace family comprises immanent understandings of
peace rooted in the human perception of dualities: hot and cold, dark and

2
Dietrich, Wolfgang. 2012. Interpretations of Peace in History and Culture. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
—. 2013. Elicitive Conflict Transformation and the Transrational Shift in Peace Politics.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
—. 2017. Elicitive Conflict Mapping. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
—. 2021. Der die das Frieden. Nachbemerkung zur Trilogie über die vielen Frieden.
Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
 2 FOUNDATIONS 15

light, wet and dry. The core value of this understanding of peace is the
striving to unite these dualities, not into a final state but a balance of
homeostatic equilibrium. Energetic peace is peace out of harmony
(Dietrich 2012, 2013).
The moral peace family begins with the same perception of duality but
draws different conclusions by positing an ultimate transcendent point
outside the experience of imminence. Since this point is situated outside
the world of experience, it becomes the referent for ethical rulings and the
establishment of norms. Here peace becomes a gift given to the good by
a creator God. Moral peace is peace out of justice (Dietrich 2012, 2013).
The modern peace family is structurally similar to the moral. The norms
that govern human relations are interpreted through a transcendental ref-
erent point, but this point becomes a secular one. God is replaced by
Reason, and the world is reduced to the material and understood as
mechanical. Visions of a utopia on earth replace the promise of a paradise
in the afterlife if we are just rational enough. Since this view of the world
only validates what can be seen, held, and measured, those same valuable
things can be taken away. This becomes a call for defense, and the modern
understanding of peace becomes peace through security (Dietrich
2012, 2013).
These modern peaces are those that lost their draw after the horrors of
World War II had revealed what unbridled devotion to rational progress
could bring. This wounding of the story that was once held to be true
resulted in disillusionment and disenchantment with all grand narratives
that claimed explanatory power on who we are as a people, where we are
going, and how we should get there. With this collapse of the orienting
narratives, the question of truth, or rather truths, became paramount in
the postmodern peace family (Dietrich 2012, 2013).
The transrational peace family is named because this perceptive
acknowledges that human beings possess rational faculties but that we are
so much more than those. The term “transrational” is used because this
perceptive applies the rationality of modern science, while, at the same
time, transgressing its limits to embrace the entire sphere of human nature
and experience. A transrational perspective of peace integrates subjective
experiences of harmony, behavioral understanding of security, cultural
considerations of truth, and social perceptions of justice. These four ele-
ments do not constitute discreet parts of an overarching singular under-
standing of a transrational peace but rather a dynamic and contextualized
peace. As a research practice, a transrational approach focuses on
16 N. B. TAYLOR

encounters, relationships, and communication styles—understanding

humans as “contact boundaries at work” (Dietrich 2012, 2013, 2017).
As understandings of peace and conflict have developed, complexity has
become a central component in describing the dynamics of conflict and, in
response, systems thinking and resilience as two concepts to guide the
development of conflict transformation and peacebuilding initiatives.
Complexity here refers to a few key qualities of a system. The first is the
existence of emergent properties that are qualitative of a system that is
only made manifest at certain thresholds of complexity. This implies that a
system cannot be best understood in a reductionist manner, where the
complex system is reduced to the sum of its parts, but rather that a system
needs to be understood as more than the sum of its parts. The second
quality of a complex system pertaining to peace and conflict is the func-
tioning of non-linear dynamics. The system components do not necessar-
ily have a direct relationship to each other, but rather, interact in complex
modulated forms of feedback. Finally, all systems have an inherent ten-
dency to seek a homeostatic equilibrium. In a conflict system, this often
shows up as a form of self-organization where the complex system itself
seeks to regulate itself without an outside agent inputting energy into the
system (de Coning 2016).
As a result of recognizing complexity as a core element of conflict, sys-
tems thinking has become an increasingly vital tool in peace research and
practice. This development is related to several reasons. First, both con-
flicts and the actors responsible for addressing them have become increas-
ingly more complex. Second, advancements in peace theory and conflict
analysis have shown that the dynamics of conflict are more complex than
previously thought. And finally, the understanding of what the overall goal
is for working with conflict has evolved from signing a peace agreement to
solving the root problems, to working on building relationships that foster
a more sustainable peace.
Systems thinking, briefly stated, is a perspective that came about as a
reaction to prevailing tendencies in scientific thinking, which focused on
deconstructing complex wholes in order to better understand them
through their parts. Instead, a systems perspective argues that, especially
for complex phenomena, it is equally if not more important to focus on
the whole system as the whole is more than the sum of its parts. A systems
perspective focuses on understanding complex networks of relationships
and the dynamics of feedback loops within a system. This perspective also
includes an expanded view of time, recognizing that the complexities of a
 2 FOUNDATIONS 17

system are dynamics, and their effects are seen on different timescales. It
also recognizes that systems are often characterized by complex, rather
than linear, relationships between cause and effect, and overall emergent
phenomena are unique to different levels of complexity within the system.
Lastly, a system perspective also recognizes that it is perspective-­dependent,
and thus it is a map that will never be the territory (Ropers 2008).
The advantage of incorporating a systems perspective in peace research
and practice is that it provides an increased ability to grasp the complexity
of the system of interest. In particular, this kind of perspective helps shed
light on the deeper dynamics of conflict intractability and provides an
approach for understanding the difficulties encountered by peace pro-
cesses. A systems perspective offers flexibility and creativity as a tool for
conflict analysis and intervention design. In most cases, the ability of any
peacebuilding or conflict transformation organization to change an actor
or organization in a conflict is extremely unlikely. However, by shifting the
perspective from actors to relationships, a systems approach can highlight
which relationship, if focused on, stands the best chance of producing the
desired change in the system. Further, an asset of a systems approach is
that it is not possible to be working on a system of conflict and not be part
of it; this helps to situate the individual or the organization into the system
they are working on, often assisting in revealing implicit assumptions and
moving implicit understanding to explicit knowledge (Coleman 2006;
CDA Collaborative Learning Projects 2016).
The use of complexity theory and systems thinking in PCS has high-
lighted the importance of the concept of resilience. Though the concept
has existed for a long time in different fields, it has recently become an
important topic for academics and practitioners, especially to imagine
peace work beyond the failings of liberal peace (Juncos and Joseph 2020).
A resilience approach to peacebuilding and conflict transformation can
have several interrelated meanings. At its basic level, drawing from under-
standings of resilience from ecology, it can be understood as “the capacity
of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while changing to still
retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedback”
(Walker et al. 2004). When adapted to PCS, resilience can be understood
as the capacity to recover from, or diminish, the effects of violent shocks
and stressors on the system to maintain an overall state of peace (van Metre
and Calder 2016). More specifically, concerning Conflict Transformation
and Peacebuilding approaches, resilience can be understood as a group’s
capacity to transform conflictive relationships into sources of change,
18 N. B. TAYLOR

growth, and adaptation, rather than let the conflicts manifest as violent
episodes. This capacity can be referenced at the horizontal level, that is,
between individuals and groups, and on the vertical level between the
people and the state.
Applying systems thinking and complexity theory to conflicts has led to
an increased focus on resilience in peace research. Resiliency is the emer-
gent and self-organized capacity for complex systems to balance, adapt,
and evolve after a disruption. A systems perspective is necessary to see how
resiliency arises, not due to any specific component of the system, but as a
result of the system as a whole (Capra 1983). A resilient system is more
likely to handle acute shocks to the system and prolonged stresses. The
fragility of a system can be understood as a lack of sufficient resiliency in
the system (de Coning 2016). When considered in the context of a violent
conflict, a resilient society is one where the quality of the relational dynam-
ics, meaning-making systems, and economic and political institutions can
maintain a dynamic equilibrium of harmony, truth, justice, and security to
ensure the disruptions from the violent episodes can be absorbed, sus-
tained, and transformed with integrity and coherence.
A focus on resilience can be a challenge to liberal peacebuilding per-
spectives. If a social system is considered in its complexity, it cannot be
approached in the rather mechanist view of many peacebuilding approaches
where international actors come from outside the system to build peace
from above. If sustainable peace is understood in terms of resiliency, then
an appropriate peacebuilding approach would seek to facilitate the capac-
ity of a society to self-organize and adapt to a high enough degree to
transform the shocks and adapt to the stressors.
Already some of the paradoxes in PCS have started to emerge. If every-
thing is connected in a complex set of relationships, where is the line
drawn between the local and the international? Even if this line is disam-
biguated, how can international actors outside of a conflict do anything to
help contribute to peace in another place? Especially because one could
take a systems-complexity view on resiliency to mean that any external
interference could be detrimental to the emergence of the self-organizing
capacity of the system to adapt. If this is the case, then is it best to do noth-
ing? How to approach these questions and their underlying tensions are at
the vanguard of the current state of the art in peacebuilding and conflict
transformation and has direct links with the field of existential risk.
“Adaptive Peacebuilding” has been proposed as an approach to work-
ing toward peace from a perspective informed by “complexity, resilience
 2 FOUNDATIONS 19

and local ownership” (de Coning 2018, 5). In this way of thinking, if
complex systems cope with changes in the environment by evolving in
tandem with it, so too, then should peace theory and practice. The core
frame of application should of process facilitation, similar to Elicitive
Conflict Transformation. In a peacebuilding context, a Theory of Change
needs to be made explicit in a partnership between external actors and
local stakeholders, laying out a hypothesis of which series of actions are
likely to lead to the desired outcome. These interventions are monitored
and evaluated, both about their intended and unintended consequences.
After a given time, those affected by the programs and those who designed
the interventions decide together which ones should continue, allowing
for a type of natural selection process. The learning results then need to be
disseminated as broadly as possible within the system, so other initiatives
can integrate this information into their theory-planning-action-reflection
cycle. The external actors then use the finding to frame the processes that
they facilitate in ways that foster the capacity for self-organization and thus
the strengthening of resilience (de Coning 2018).
Concerns about peace and conflict are ancient. The academic study of
the causes and dynamics of conflict and the nature and conditions of peace
is new. Born from a fusion of our collective experiences of peace and con-
flict with the specific historical context of the end of World War II, the
field of Peace and Conflict Studies emerged. It holds a set of overlapping
objectives: to explore different understandings of what peace is or could
be, to learn from previous conflicts and all the moments where violence
did not happen, and to envision new ways of relating to each other. At its
core, PCS is about how the energetic potential in conflicts can be trans-
formed into an engine for change rather than a source of violence.

Existential Risk Studies

The understanding of the concept of risk has changed over time. As a
concept, risk is likely traced back to prehistoric times and was thought of
in terms of danger. To frame the discussion of the field of Existential Risk
Studies, I will first touch on the development of the notion of risk as it is
currently used in English. From there, I will highlight some of the histori-
cal shifts that were necessary for the idea of humanity’s extinction to
emerge. I will then discuss a brief history of ERS.
The contemporary understanding of the concept of risk dates back
roughly a thousand years. Dr. Karla Mallette, a professor of Italian and
20 N. B. TAYLOR

Mediterranean Studies at the University of Michigan, traces, in her article

“How 12th-Century Genoese Merchants Invented the Idea of Risk”
(2021), the origin of the concept of “risk” in Western Europe through its
Latin cognate resicum to the twelfth century. The term referred to the
Mediterranean practice of splitting the profits between ship captains and
investors at the end of a successful shipping journey. It was necessary
because the law forbade usury, so the resicum was considered a bonus paid
to investors. Historians believe that resicum is derived from a much older
Arabic word al-rizq, a Quranic Arabic word that refers to god’s provision
for creation. In its contemporary English usages, risk, both as a noun and
as a verb, carries connotations of the possibility of loss, danger, or injury
(Oxford University 2010; Merriam-Webster 2016)
Contemporary usage of the term “risk” has often been used to help
estimate the probability of loss in a given venture or in reference to safety
when assessing the probability of danger. When the qualifier “existential”
is included in the concept of risk, it draws on those elements of “loss, dan-
ger, or injury.” It scales those concerns to the level of existence itself. In
the field of Existential Risk Studies (ERS), existential risks are those that
“threaten the destruction of humanity's long-term potential” (Ord 2020,
6) or “threaten the extinction of intelligent life on earth” (Bostrom 2013,
15). Global catastrophic risks is a closely related concept referring to those
risks that “have the potential to inflict serious damage to human well-­
being on a global scale” (Bostrom and Ćirković 2011, 1). These risks,
despite being severe, do not necessarily threaten all human existence. Put
differently, all existential risks are global catastrophic risks, but not all
global catastrophic risks are existential risks. The nuances in these distinc-
tions and their importance in studying these risks will be discussed in this
chapter.
The systematic study of these risks is a new academic field, and the pre-
cise terminology has not yet been standardized. This book will follow the
convention used by Simon Beard and Phil Torres (2020) of using the term
“Existential Risk Studies” (ERS) as an umbrella term covering topics of
existential risks and global catastrophic risks, as well as the research that
focuses on understanding the nature and dynamics of these risks (Existential
Risk Research) as well as the research on what can be done about these
risks (Existential Risk Mitigation) (2).
 2 FOUNDATIONS 21

Humanity’s Destruction—Thinking About the End

Concerns about the ultimate fate of the world and humanity are both an
ancient concern and a newly crystalizing field of study. Eschatology,
derived from the Greek eschatos meaning the “study of the final end of
things, the ultimate resolution of the entire creation” (Walls 2008, 4), has
long been the domain of religious speculation and finds its expression in
many of humanity’s oldest stories. Stories of past endings pervade mythol-
ogy and religious texts. The preponderance of flood myths across the
world points to this fact. Stories from the Hebrew texts of Noah, the
Sumerian Ziusudra, the Greek Deucalion, and the Indian Manu all tell a
similar tale—the world has become corrupt; therefore, a great flood comes
to end the world, to literally wash it away and mark the beginning of a
new, better world (Dundes 1988).
Another end story is found in the Vaishnavite Hindu tradition where
time is cyclical and divided into four yugas. A complete set of yugas spans
approximately 4.32 billion years. As the cycle of time progresses through
the yugas, there is a marked decline in the goodness of life. This decline
progresses until the final and current Kali Yuga, where Kalki, the tenth
and final avatar of the God Vishnu, comes into being (Dalal 2011). Seated
on a white horse with a flaming sword, Kalki dissolves the remnants of the
world, after which existence enters a phase of rest known as pralaya, after
which the world is reborn into a golden age the cycle repeats (McFarland
2009; Dalal 2011).
The Book of Revelation in the Christian bible also depicts the end of
times. It tells a narrative that begins with a warning to heed the author’s
words to survive the apocalypse. The book describes a vision of Jesus
encouraging the faithful to continue to believe in him even when they are
being persecuted. God then reveals that seven seals will be opened, and
with each seal will come disasters—rivers of blood and plagues. Chaos
continues to spread until a final judgment happens and the faithful will
ascend into the kingdom of heaven (Resseguie 2020).
This fascination with “the end” continues today. Post-apocalyptic dys-
topia has its own genre of film. The Hunger Games (Ross 2012; Lawrence
2013, 2014, 2015), The Matrix (Wachowskis 1999, 2003a, b), World War
Z (2013), Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller 2015), and The Book of Eli (Huges
and Huges 2010) are movies that all are built upon apocalypse or post-
apocalyptic themes and have grossed between $94.4 and $424.67 million
each (IMDB 2016). The popularity of the apocalypse in the collective
22 N. B. TAYLOR

imagination may be a retelling of old myths in a new medium or may be a

means by which fiction is used to process collective fears and insecurities
about the present and the future. The apocalyptic narrative in film or print
reassures the audience that there might still be meaning in the face of such
a horrible proposition. The ongoing curiosity with “the end” indicates its
importance in human thought.
It is worth noting that even though the notion of apocalypse seems to
have perennially occupied our collective consciousness, in these tellings,
the story does not end. Some “things” survive most of the “great flood”
myths; the end of the Kali Yuga ushers in a rebirth of the universe, and a
subsequent golden age, and monotheistic “final judgments” still purport
a transcendental plane after the end of time. In Hollywood movies, the
crisis is usually averted in some way by the hero. Even in the edgier
domains of speculative and science fiction, the stories rarely end with the
absolute extinction of earth-originating intelligent life. After all, such an
ending would not be a compelling narrative because humans are the audi-
ence for this media. Considering the possible reality of our own extinction
does seem to be relatively new.
Pondering the possibilities of human extinction, how it might happen,
and what might be able to be done about it is the task of Existential Risk
Studies (ERS). ERS takes a secular approach grounded in a scientific
worldview and builds models on the laws of nature, observations of human
behavior, and statistical probability. The “end” that is the subject of inves-
tigation ranges from complete extinction of the human species to a soci-
etal collapse on such a scale and magnitude that there would be no hope
of getting anywhere back to where we once were.

The Emergence of Existential Risk Studies

The development of ERS shares some similarities with the origins of
PCS. Both fields arose following scientific revelations that the existence of
humanity could be threatened and, further, that it may be threatened by
the ways in which humans act, organize, and govern themselves. Simon
Beard and Phil Torres’ article “Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief
History of Existential Risk Studies” (2020) provides an overview of the
development of ERS organized as developing through three interrelated
waves of thought. The emergence of these waves was dependent upon a
few essential precursors.
These antecedents illustrate that while the possibility of an apocalypse
is not a new idea, the possibility of human extinction is. Beard and Torres
 2 FOUNDATIONS 23

argue that the general realization that humanity could become extinct
required four main events. The first two of these events are connected to
relatively recent scientific discoveries in the natural sciences and the accep-
tance of those findings. In 1815, the French Zoologist Georges Cuvier
(1769–1832) published his Essay on the Theory of the Earth which helped
to convince the scientific community that not only is it possible for species
to go extinct, but it has happened many times throughout history (Cuvier
2009). The second of these discoveries was that humanity is, in fact, part
of the natural order of the biological world. The acceptance of this idea
was driven by the publication of Charles Darwin’s, On the Origin of Species
(Darwin 1859). At this point in history, acceptance was growing that
humans are a species like any other and that species have and can become
extinct. Added to these discoveries was the gradual secularization of
thought beginning in the 1960s. Eschatology moved out from the sole
purview of religious and theological discussions into other fields of study.
Finally, witnessing the use of nuclear weapons and the knowledge in the
1980s that a nuclear winter may be possible and would pose a grave threat
to humanity gave the scientific community a kill switch, a mechanism by
which the extinction of humanity, by our own hands, is possible (Beard
and Torres 2020).
Beard and Torres (2020) identify two driving forces that build upon
these precursors and set the stage for the emergence of ERS. The first of
these forces is speculative fiction, where some of the earliest thoughts
about human extinction can be found. Authors such as Lord Byron
(1788–1824), Mary Shelley (1797–1851), Jean-Baptiste Cousin de
Grainville (1746–1805), Alexander Winchell (1824–1891), Jules Verne
(1827–1905), and H.G. Wells (1866–1946) brought the notion of human
extinction into the public imagination through their now well-known
novels. The second force, and similar to the development of PCS, was the
communities of concerned scientists that emerged after World War II, pri-
marily in response to the use of nuclear weapons. Their concern found its
most effective articulation in the already mentioned Russel-Einstein
Manifesto of 1955 which led to the establishment of the Pugwash
Conferences and their work on addressing weapons of mass destruction
and other threats to the globe (Beard and Torres 2020).
The publication of Nick Bostrom’s paper “Existential Risks: Analyzing
Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards” (2002) is often noted
as the beginning of ERS as a field of study. Bostrom is a Professor of
Philosophy at Oxford University and the founding Director of the Future
24 N. B. TAYLOR

of Humanity Institute. Bostrom’s work set the stage for the first wave of
ERS, defined by its dual philosophical foundations of Transhumanism and
Utilitarianism. Transhumanism is the belief that humanity can, and should,
evolve beyond its physical and mental limits through scientific and techno-
logical interventions (Bostrom 2008). Total Utilitarianism is a philosophi-
cal position that maintains that ethical acts are those that increase the total
prosperity in the universe. This logic scales as the human population
increases. The more people there are, the greater number of people can
experience well-being. Estimates of how many potential future humans
there could vary wildly due to the starting assumptions and definitions
used in the calculation. If humanity remains as it currently is and stays on
earth, Carl Sagan estimated that there could be upwards of 500 trillion
future humans (Sagan 1983). If humans were to colonize the galaxy,
Milan Ćirković estimates that the Virgo Supercluster would be able to
support approximately 1010 future humans (2002). Bostrom (2003)
extends these calculations further, estimating that if a posthuman state of
being (e.g., in a simulation) is considered, then there could be upwards of
1038 future humans in our supercluster per century (Beard and
Torres 2020).
This first-wave ERS has a teleological momentum toward a type of
techno-utopia. This future utopia would be inhabited by beings that, very
likely, would be quite unlike ourselves. Proponents of this wave of ERS
placed the emphasis of their hope and faith in technology, particularly
artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology, to lead
humanity into a type of posthuman state where the divisions between the
physical, virtual, mechanical, and biologic blur.
This utopia is seen as our cosmic potential, and any failure to achieve it
would doom countless future humans (biological or otherwise) to nonex-
istence. To this end, Bostrom coined a type of guiding principle, which
became known as the “Maxipok rule,” which states that one should “max-
imize the probability of an okay outcome, where an okay outcome is any
outcome that avoids existential disaster” (Bostrom 2002, 8). This type of
approach can be understood as “etiological,” where the focus of the
inquiry is on individual existential risks according to their cause. By draw-
ing logical connections between an existential risk and its likely cause,
scholars seek to determine interventions to mitigate the risk. This type of
methodological approach is most effective if there are a small number of
factors that would bring about the catastrophe that can progress in a more
or less straightforward manner (Beard and Torres 2020).
 2 FOUNDATIONS 25

The second generation of ERS built on this foundational work and

incorporated many aspects of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement.
With this integration of EA thinking, the importance of Transhumanism
was less emphasized (Beard and Torres 2020). The question at the heart
of the EA movement is how to do as much good as possible for the great-
est number of people possible. This central ethos shapes the priority of the
EA movement to an explicit focus on the long-term future. There are
many more possible people in the future. Thus, if you want to maximize
the total amount of good done for the most amount of people, then a
focus on the long-term future is essential. In the EA logic, this long-term
perspective has been neglected in efforts to do good in the world. When
assessing how to do good in the world while reducing existential risk, a
long-term time horizon implies that even small decreases in existential
risks could save millions or billions of lives. This emphasis on looking to
improve the long-term future has led to the second wave of ERS to eschew
the narrow threat-based approaches in favor of broader strategies to
reduce risk such as the reduction of poverty and improving education
(Beard and Torres 2020).
Beard and Torres (2020) point toward a newly emerging third wave of
ERS primarily defined by its movement away from analyzing risks based
on their most direct cause (what they call the etiological approach) to an
increased emphasis on ethical pluralism. In this expanded perspective on
understanding existential risks, the larger systems of causes and contexts
that lead to risks must be understood. This approach also places emphasis
on increasing the number and diversity of viewpoints that help define and
classify existential risks and devise methods for their study. The third-wave
approaches generally favor a systems perspective that embraces the com-
plex systems that give rise to existential risks as emergent phenomena and
are subjected to systems of feedback loops. A systems perspective brings
the importance of including vulnerabilities and exposures into the existen-
tial calculus of existential risks (Beard and Torres 2020).
By acknowledging and embracing complexity, third-wave approaches
seek to shift attention to epistemically messy scenarios in which the links
between cause and effect are not immediately obvious. This type of per-
spective is well-suited for addressing issues such as climate change and loss
of biodiversity within the context of existential risks. Scholars following
these approaches also have placed the importance on including discussions
of medium-term risks in the ERS scholarship. Third-wave approaches also
move away from utilitarian ethics. An existential catastrophe would be
26 N. B. TAYLOR

negative not because humanity would not fulfill its technological utopian
destiny, as first-wave approaches hold dear, nor that the catastrophe would
be detrimental because of the effects it would have on future not-yet-­
existing humans, as second-wave scholars hold, but rather it would be bad
because of the immense amount of suffering it would cause to those
humans who are currently alive (Beard and Torres 2020).
It is likely that these three phases often represent overlapping approaches
to understanding and addressing existential risks, and each will continue
to go grow and develop over time. The continued evolution of this line of
thinking is demonstrated by the number of recently established research
centers with high levels of funding, the growth of the Effective Altruism
movement, and the number of scholars from different backgrounds who
are being brought into these discussions.

Classifying Risks to Existence

Given the wide range of events or phenomena that could threaten human
extinction, it is necessary to find ways of breaking down and categorizing
these risks into smaller domains of analysis. Since its inception, refining the
possible definitions of existential risks and ways in which they could be
grouped has been a key concern of ERS. Perhaps the most instinctive way
of grouping these kinds of risks is separating them into natural or anthro-
pogenic sources of risk.
Humanity has contended with a host of natural existential risks since
the dawn of time. These risks arise from natural vulnerability and occur
independently of our existence on the planet (Bostrom 2019). Existential
risks of this variety are events such as a comet or asteroid strike, a super-
volcanic eruption, or a stellar explosion. These risks have always been
there; yet we have only relatively recently become aware of them. Before
we began to understand astrodynamics, it would have been difficult to
imagine, let alone calculate, how likely it would be for an asteroid to strike
the planet or assess the level of destruction such a strike might cause.
How dangerous are naturally occurring existential risks? Estimates on
this vary. In his book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of
Humanity (2020), Toby Ord, places his current estimate on the total like-
lihood of all natural risks posing a threat to human extinction within the
next 100 years at 1 in 10,000 (167).
Despite our seeming inability to affect natural events, these advance-
ments in scientific understanding and technology have given us the
 2 FOUNDATIONS 27

potential to mitigate some of the death and destruction they may bring.
Effective evacuation plans can be made for earthquakes. Robust systems of
detection and early warning for tsunamis have been constructed.
Organizations such as the International Asteroid Warning Network and
the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs have even been con-
structed to track objects in space and calculate the likelihood of an impact
on the earth (UNOOSA 2020; IAWN 2020; Ord 2020).
Anthropogenic risks are those that are directly related to our existence
on this planet. These risks emerge as a result of our influence on the planet
such as climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity and do not nec-
essarily imply malicious intent. They can be a byproduct of the current
ways in which humans live on earth, for example, habitat loss, globaliza-
tion, and inadequate preparedness mechanisms for theoretically manage-
able problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic. These types of risks can
also be a result of our technologies; most notably, the development of
nuclear weapons leading to warfare shifting from a relatively low risk of
existential catastrophe to the specter of annihilation now thought possible
with any potential act of aggression involving a nuclear-armed state.
How likely is an anthropogenic risk? Ord (2020) estimates a 1 in 6
chance of an anthropogenically generated existential catastrophe in the
next 100 years. What then is the total risk posed by both these types of
risks, natural and manmade? Toby Ord (2020) estimated of total existen-
tial risk in the next century as 1 in 6 or as he wrote: “Russian roulette”
(2020, 62). This estimate fits into Nick Bostrom’s statement that a typical
range based on subjective surveys among experts is between a 10% and
20% chance of existential catastrophe in the same time period (Sandberg
and Bostrom 2008, Bostrom 2013). Through writing on civilizational
collapse and not existential risk, Sir Martin Rees, Royal Astronomer and
co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, estimates that
humanity has a 1 in 2 chance of surviving the century (Rees 2003). If
these estimates are to be taken at face value, they are striking. Torres
(2016) contextualizes the scale of these risks by pointing out that the aver-
age US American is 1500 times more likely to die in an extinction event
rather than an airplane crash and 4000 times more likely to witness the
collapse of civilization (as of 2016). However, it is important to note that
there does not seem to be widespread consensus among a wide range of
experts on the exact scale of this risk. However, as we will see, squabbling
on the precise estimate may not be of much importance given the possible
consequences of any of these events coming to pass.
28 N. B. TAYLOR

As the field of ERS has grown, the theoretical frameworks and underly-
ing ethics have changed and expanded as have the methodologies for clas-
sifying the risks. The classification methods are roughly traced along with
the first-, second-, and third-wave paradigms. First-wave approaches to
classification are heavily focused on the overall outcome of the risk. This is
because, from this perspective, what is most important is the near-infinite
number of potential future humans or posthumans that could span the
galaxy. Risks are only problematic if they inhibit or significantly delay this
trajectory. Bostrom (2002) proposed a system for classification along this
line of thought, borrowing two of his categories from T.S. Elliot’s “The
Hollow Men” (Beard and Torres 2020). Existential risks can be consid-
ered “bangs,” events such as an asteroid impact, super volcano eruption,
badly designed superintelligent artificial intelligence, or a global nuclear
war. In a “bang,” intelligent life goes suddenly extinct from acts of destruc-
tion, either intentional or unintentional. Risks can be “crunches,” events
such as resource depletion, where the level of resources can no longer
sustain advanced technological human civilization or humanity may suc-
cumb to dysgenic pressures, where it becomes vastly more fertile but
much less intelligent. During a crunch, humanity may survive but our
species is forever prevented from reaching the goal of posthuman galactic
colonization. Humanity may end in a “shriek,” examples of this would be
domination by badly designed artificial superintelligence or an uploaded
human mind that grows to a superintelligence. In these examples, human-
ity achieves a degree of its posthuman future, but its effects are not wanted
by the vast majority of people. Finally, the world may end in a “whimper,”
which for Bostrom is either hitting some long-term limit on the expansion
of humanity or the abandonment of what makes us human. Humanity
could give up every activity: art, leisure, pleasure, family, and friends for
the goal of interstellar colonization. In this example, humanity does not
biologically die out but has changed to something else. In a whimper,
humanity reaches a posthuman future but follows a trajectory where we
live lives that humans do not find value in (Bostrom 2002).
Another outcome-oriented classification system later developed by
Bostrom proposes a typology of existential risks based on the relationship
between the probability of an event and its consequences. Any risk level of
scope will be based on how many people are likely to be affected ranging
from a single individual to multiple generations across the globe. This risk
will also have a likely level of intensity, from being imperceptible to termi-
nal. At the intersection of these two variables—a terminal level of intensity
 2 FOUNDATIONS 29

at the transgenerational scope—is human extinction. A step down from

this intersection, in either scope (i.e., not transgenerational) or intensity
(i.e., less than terminal intensity), would result in a global catastrophic
risk. These are events that could be horrendous and could potentially
require centuries or more from which to recover but would not result in
the final extinction of humanity. Global catastrophic risks have also been
defined as “possible events or processes that, were they to occur, would
end the lives of approximately 10% or more of the global population or do
comparable damage” (Cotton-Barratt et al. 2016). Bostrom’s spatial-­
temporal matrix was an important starting framework in the field of ERS
as it implies that at different levels of intensity and scope, different types of
strategies to mitigate these risks would need to be developed.
The Necessity, Tractability, and Importance (NTI) Framework, origi-
nally developed by the Open Philanthropy Project, is an example of a
system of classification that is more in line with the second-wave approaches
to ERS. This framework is oriented around the prioritization of focus and
is heavily used in the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. If the ethos of
EA is to do as much good as possible, then a system is needed to deter-
mine which efforts are likely to produce the “most good.” In order to do
so, the NTI Framework utilizes three factors: how neglected the particular
issue is, how tractable is (the likelihood that the issue can be affected), and
how important the issue is (Open Philanthropy n.d.). This classification
system, though having eschewed the emphasis on a transhuman future,
still maintains the importance of longtermism, originally coined by Nick
Beckstead 2013, and the qualifier strong longtermism later added that
when decisions need to be made and actions taken, they should be done
so that they benefit the long-term future and prioritize giving more ben-
efits to the long-term future over the near term (Greaves and
MacAskill 2021).
Third-wave approaches for understanding existential risks are those
that build on a framework of systems thinking and complexity theory to
examine the interplay between many causal factors that may result in an
existential risk, while also considering how the levels of resilience, vulner-
ability, and exposure are understood. Exemplifying this type of approach,
Karin Kuhlemann (2019) proposes distinguishing between sexy and
unsexy risks. The so-called sexy existential risks grab our attention, imagi-
nation, and fascination. By definition, they have a low probability of occur-
ring, but if they do, their disastrous outcome for the human species has
the highest possible severity and magnitude. A meteor strike, a highly
30 N. B. TAYLOR

contagious and deadly pathogen, a nuclear war, and the rise of a hostile
superintelligence are all examples of sexy risks. They can also be thought
of as epistemically neat in that it is quite clear which academic field they fall
under which makes coordinating inter-disciplinary approaches straightfor-
ward. To understand the threat and possibility of a meteor strike, we
would naturally turn to astrophysicists and emergency managers. For a
deadly pandemic we turn to epidemiologists and biologists. For the pros-
pect of nuclear winter, meteorologists and physicists. For possible risks
associated with artificial intelligence, we would rely on computer scientists
and philosophers. These risks are viewed as having a sudden onset, a
knockout punch, where the risk is crystallized in a matter of hours or
years. Further, these risks tend to have a significant focus on technology as
either the cause and/or solution to mitigating these risks (Kuhlemann
2019). Many of the sexy risks can be attributed to acts of nature (asteroid
impact), malicious actors (nuclear weapons and engineered pandemics),
or incompetence/lack of foresight and planning (runaway climate change
and reckless AI development) (Kuhlemann 2019).
Unsexy risks have a low probability of an existential outcome but have
a high probability of a less than existential outcome. These risks are epis-
temically messy and pose conceptually difficult wicked problems (Head
and Alford 2015). Examples of these kinds of risks are the degradation and
erosion of topsoil, waning biodiversity, increasing scarcity of freshwater,
large-scale problems with unemployment, unsustainable fiscal policies,
and overpopulation. These kinds of risks develop gradually and incremen-
tally damage the potential for human flourishing. Unsexy risks arise from
people behaving rationally, doing things they normally do, causing an
aggregate impact over time that directly contributes to global catastrophic
risks or indirectly to existential risks. These risks are messy, creeping, and
highly political (Kuhlemann 2019).
Kuhlemann argues that between these two, the unsexy risks warrant
more concerted attention than the sexy ones. The choice between the two
is based on how one evaluates potential impacts for people currently exist-
ing or people in the future. People in the future are, of course, theoretical
until they come to exist. It is true that there could be an astronomical
number of people in the future on a long enough timeline. If focusing on
a sexy or unsexy risk is based purely on the number of people who could
benefit from it without regard to when those people exist, then the choice
would focus on the sexy risks. Conversely, if equally weighted value is
given to the actual living, breathing people, then the choice would be the
 2 FOUNDATIONS 31

unsexy risk. Of course, such a choice is hardly ever going to be exclusive,

and there would likely be ways to work on unsexy risks that benefit living
people that also have positive effects on future people (Kuhlemann 2019).
Following a similar third-wave approach, Avin et al. (2018) propose a
system of classification that seeks to point out areas of convergence
between possible risks. The first of these areas of convergences looks at
how critical systems essential to human survival may be affected by a risk.
Critical systems are considered to be those that sustain life on earth and
range from physical systems (laws of nature, stability of temperature),
through the whole organism (our ability to learn and reproduce), to the
socio-technological (our ability to extract resources and influence the
world around us). These systems are assessed in terms of boundaries and
thresholds to consider what the breaking point may be for each system.
The second organizational criteria are the mechanism that would spread
that risk to the critical system(s) across the globe. These scale from mecha-
nisms that spread through the biological, cultural, or digital worlds to
those dispersal mechanisms that affect the air and water on the planet.
Finally, the systems and institutions that could be used to prevent or miti-
gate these disasters are considered with regard to the possibility that they
may fail under pressure. These are considered at the individual, interper-
sonal, institutional levels, and beyond.
A more immediately useful picture may arise when categorized in this
overlapping manner. Because many risks have dissimilar initial causes, this
way of thinking can pose different ways of understanding and mitigating
risks that may not have been obvious when using different approaches. As
Kuhlemann (2019) pointed out, existential risks, especially of the unsexy
variety, tend not to be epistemically neat. By looking at risks in this, it may
be easier to determine which expertise may be needed for a specific risk
and where different kinds of expertise intersect. Finally, this structure, or
another built on it, may prove useful for revealing previously unknown
areas of neglect and, hopefully, contribute to providing a more resilient
Existential Risk Mitigation system in the face of black swan events (Avin
et al. 2018), those events that are highly influential and impossible to pre-
dict (Taleb 2010). The capacity to absorb the shocks of unpredictable
events is critical to the survival of humanity, as target preventative mea-
sures cannot be taken.
In their article, “Governing Boring Apocalypses: A New Typology of
Existential Vulnerabilities and Exposures for Existential Risk Research”
(2018), Liu, Lauta, and Maas argue that focusing on vulnerabilities and
32 N. B. TAYLOR

exposures over specific existential hazards is a more helpful framework for

increasing existential security. This systems perspective is warranted
because few existential threats happen in a vacuum, and it is equally, if not
more likely, that complex, slow-moving “unsexy” risk will threaten our
extinction. Vulnerabilities here are “a weakness in a system that increases
the chance that human civilization will collapse in response to pressure or
challenge.” In their approach, an existential risk results from the interplay
between a “hazard,” a “vulnerability,” and our “exposure.” From this way
of thinking, when a specific “source of peril” (hazard) meets a vulnerable
system and can affect a sufficient number of people, you get an existential
risk. Put differently, “[…] a hazard is what kills us, and a vulnerability is
how we die. Exposure is the interface or medium between what kills us,
and how we die” (7).
They propose four classifications of vulnerabilities relevant to
ERS. These are (1) Ontological, those vulnerabilities inherent in existing
in a given time and space—human dependence on food and water paired
with the ecosystem’s need for energy input; (2) Passive, those vulnerabili-
ties that occur because of inaction—lack of a reliable global crisis manage-
ment organization; (3) Active, those vulnerabilities that occur because of
insufficient or misguided actions—insufficient protection of critical infra-
structure to solar flares; and (4) Intentional, those vulnerabilities that are
intentionally maintained—a centralized nuclear launch authority making
it possible for a single actor to launch a nuclear attack (Liu et al. 2018).
Bostrom offers another understanding of vulnerabilities centered on
technological development, which he terms “civilizational vulnerability.”
This type of vulnerability rests on the premise that there is a level of tech-
nological development where the devastation of human civilization is
almost ensured. This level of development, dubbed the “semi-anarchic
default condition,” occurs when technological progress meets a limited
capacity for control (Bostrom 2019). In this civilizational condition, there
are four types of vulnerabilities:

(Type-1) where it becomes very easy for any small number of people to
cause mass destruction; for example, advances in biotechnology lower
the bar to the creation of virulent and deadly engineered pathogens, so
that anyone with a basic understanding of biochemistry and lab proce-
dures could do it;
(Type 2-a) a technology emerges that encourages powerful actors to cause
mass destruction; for example, a way of reliably shielding one country
Another random document with
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right. Last Wednesday, I was in the Cambridge Arms in the evening,
same as I almost always am. In comes old Ben Colburn, and comes
straight over to me. He puts his hand in his pocket, and slaps an
ordinary bone counter down on the table in front of me. ‘Now then,
Sam, what’s the meaning of this little joke?’ he says.
“I looks at the counter and I looks at him. ‘What do you mean,
what’s the joke?’ I says.
“Why, didn’t you send me this?” he says, suspicious like.
“I told him I hadn’t, and then he says that it came to him by post
that morning, wrapped up in a bit of blank paper. ‘I made sure it was
one of your jokes, Sam,’ he says. I picked up the counter and looked
at it. On one side it had the figure II drawn on it in red ink. ‘What
does it mean?’ I said. ‘That’s just what I want to know,’ says Ben.
‘You shove it in your pocket, Sam, you’re better at finding out that
sort of thing than I am.’ So I shoved it in my pocket, and here it is.”
Mr. Ludgrove took the counter which the tobacconist handed him
and looked at it curiously. It was just as Mr. Copperdock had
described it, a white bone counter, about the size of a halfpenny, with
the Roman numeral II, carefully traced upon it in red ink.
“I never thought about it again, until this afternoon,” continued Mr.
Copperdock. “Naturally I didn’t connect it with Ben’s death. Why
should I? But to-day, being Sunday, I went round to see Mrs. Tovey
neighbour-like. You see, it was her first Sunday after Jim’s death,
and I thought that she and Ivy might get brooding over things.”
Mr. Copperdock looked anxiously at his friend as he spoke, but
the expression on the herbalist’s face was one of polite interest only.
“Very thoughtful of you, I’m sure,” he murmured. “I hope that Mrs.
Tovey is not taking her husband’s death too much to heart.”
“She’s bearing up as well as can be expected,” replied Mr.
Copperdock. “She and I got to talking about Jim, and wondering
whoever it could have been that murdered him. She was telling me
all about the telephone call, and she went on to say that this was the
second queer thing that happened just before he died. Naturally I
asked her what the first was, and she told me that on the Friday
morning before his death, a typewritten envelope came addressed to
him. He opened it, and all there was inside was a white counter with
the number I drawn on it in red ink. Now what do you make of that?”
 Mr. Ludgrove sat silent for a moment under his friend’s
triumphant gaze, a thoughtful frown upon his face. “This is most
extraordinary,” he said at last. “If your facts are correct—not that I
doubt them for a moment, but I know how fatally easy it is to find
presages after the event—it means that both Mr. Tovey and Mr.
Colburn received, a couple of days or so before their respective
deaths, a white counter bearing a numeral in red ink. It is almost
certain that both counters were sent by the same person, and, if they
were intended as a warning, we may infer, as you said, that both
men were murdered by the same hand.”
Mr. Copperdock nodded rather impatiently. “Just what I told you,
all along,” he said.
“But, my dear sir, look at the difficulties which that theory entails,”
objected Mr. Ludgrove. “We are agreed that it is impossible to think
of any motive for the murder of Mr. Tovey, and I at least am inclined
to say the same regarding the murder of Mr. Colburn. Yet now we
are faced with the problem of finding a man who had a motive for
murdering both of them. By the way, do you happen to know if they
were ever associated in any way?”
“Never!” replied Mr. Copperdock emphatically. “Although they’d
both lived in these parts most of their lives, I don’t suppose they
even knew one another by sight.”
“The fact that they had nothing in common makes it all the more
puzzling,” said Mr. Ludgrove reflectively. “But perhaps you have
thought of a way out of the difficulty?”
A cloud came over Mr. Copperdock’s naturally cheerful face, and
there was a marked hesitancy in his tone as he replied. “Aye, I have
thought of something, and it’s that that’s been worrying me. Mind, I
don’t believe it myself, but I’m in mortal fear lest someone else
should see it too.”
“I think I can guess what you mean,” said Mr. Ludgrove gently. “I
know as well as you do that it isn’t true, but we’re both of us too well
aware of the mischief that can be caused by whispering tongues to
treat it as unimportant. You mean that young Colburn was not on
good terms with his father, that he and your son are great friends,
and that your son sold Mr. Colburn the pipe which is supposed to
have been the agency of his death.”
 “I do mean that,” replied Mr. Copperdock deliberately. “I mean too
that Ted is very sweet on Ivy Tovey, and that poor old Jim wasn’t
very keen on the idea. Now you see the sort of lying whispers that
might get about if all this was known. And I’m blest if I see what I can
do about it.”
“I think you told me that you had some conversation with a Police
Inspector last week on the subject of Mr. Tovey’s murder?”
suggested Mr. Ludgrove.
“That’s right,” replied Mr. Copperdock. “Very decent sort of chap
he was, too. What about him?”
“Do you know where and how to get hold of him?”
“Yes, he left me his card. I’ve got it at home somewhere.”
“Well, Mr. Copperdock, if you will take my advice you will go and
see him, and tell him everything you know, as you have just told me.
It’s all bound to come out, sooner or later, and if you have already
informed the police, your position will be all the stronger. Don’t you
agree?”
“Yes, I suppose I do,” replied Mr. Copperdock reluctantly. “But it
seems terrible, like giving evidence against my own flesh and blood.”
“On the contrary, you will be doing the very best for your son. A
frank statement of facts is always the best defence of the innocent.
Tell your friend the Inspector everything, not forgetting the curious
incident of the numbered discs. He will know better than I do what
advice to give you in the matter. And, if you feel that I can be of the
slightest assistance to you, do not hesitate to come to me at once.”
After some further discussion Mr. Copperdock agreed to follow
his friend’s advice, and, after a parting drink, went home, somewhat
comforted. The herbalist, having locked the door behind him,
returned to the interrupted classification of his plants. But, from the
slight frown which passed across his face from time to time, one
might have guessed that he was thinking more of his conversation
with Mr. Copperdock than of the specimens before him.
 Chapter V.
Inspector Whyland
The death of Mr. Colburn, following so closely upon that of Mr.
Tovey, caused a distinct sensation in Praed Street and its immediate
neighbourhood. Suspicion was, so to speak, in the air, and anybody
known to have been intimate with either of the dead men was looked
at askance, and became the subject of whispered comment when
their backs were turned. Not that this floating suspicion actually
settled down upon any individual head. But Praed Street discovered
an uneasy feeling that the two inexplicable deaths of which it had
been the scene indicated that it harboured a murderer.
On the Wednesday morning following Mr. Ludgrove’s visit to
Suffolk, a man walked into his shop and rapped upon the counter.
The herbalist emerged from the back room at the summons, and, as
was his habit, glanced gravely at his customer. He saw before him a
youngish man, immaculately dressed, who immediately turned
towards him interrogatively. “Mr. Ludgrove?” he said.
The herbalist bowed. “That is my name,” he replied. “Can I be of
any service to you?”
The stranger placed a card upon the counter, with an apologetic
gesture. “I’m Detective Inspector Whyland, attached to the F
Division,” he said. “And if you could spare me a few minutes, I
should be very grateful. I’m awfully sorry to have to intrude in
business hours.”
“Oh, pray do not apologize, I am rarely very busy in the morning,”
replied Mr. Ludgrove courteously. “Perhaps you would not mind
coming through this door. We shall be able to talk more privately.”
Inspector Whyland accepted the invitation, and sat down in the
chair offered him. Mr. Ludgrove having pressed him to smoke, sat
down in the opposite chair, and looked at him enquiringly.
 “I daresay that you can guess what I have come to talk about,”
began the Inspector, with a pleasant smile. “I may as well confess at
once that I want your help. We policemen are not the super-men
which some people think we ought to be, and most of us are only too
anxious to ask for assistance wherever we are likely to get it. And I
personally am under a debt of gratitude to you for persuading Mr.
Copperdock to unburden himself to me.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “Oh, he told you, did he?” he replied. “It was
much the best thing he could do. I hope he convinced you, as he
certainly did me, that both he and his son were completely innocent
of any knowledge of these queer happenings.”
It was the Inspector’s turn to smile. “He did. I don’t think that Mr.
Copperdock is of the stuff of which deliberate murderers are made,
and from what I have seen of the son, I fancy the same applies to
him. But may I, since you appear to be pretty intimate with Mr.
Copperdock, ask you one or two questions about him? You needn’t
answer them unless you like.”
“Most certainly I will answer them to the best of my ability,”
replied Mr. Ludgrove gravely.
“Thank you. In the first place, can you suggest why he is so
obviously confused when any reference is made to the Tovey family?
I understand that his son and Tovey’s daughter are—well, great
friends, but that could hardly account for his manner.”
Again Mr. Ludgrove smiled, this time with genuine amusement.
“My dear sir, haven’t you guessed the reason? I did, some days ago.
Mrs. Tovey is, I believe, a very charming woman, and by no means
too old to consider the possibility of marrying again. Mind you, Mr.
Copperdock is convinced that his secret is safely locked in his own
breast, and I should forfeit his friendship if he had any inkling that I
shared it.”
Inspector Whyland laughed with an obvious air of relief. “Oh,
that’s the way the wind blows, is it?” he said. “You may rest assured
that I shall be the soul of discretion. I had an uncomfortable feeling
that he knew something that he did not care to tell me. Now, if I may
trouble you with another question, what do you know of the relations
between the Copperdocks and the Colburns?”
 This time Mr. Ludgrove shook his head. “Nothing at first hand,” he
replied, “only what Mr. Copperdock has told me, which is doubtless
the same as what he told you.”
“You will forgive my pressing the point, Mr. Ludgrove,” persisted
the Inspector. “But I gather from Mr. Copperdock’s remarks that you
are to some extent in the confidence of young Colburn.”
Mr. Ludgrove looked him straight in the face. “Inspector
Whyland,” he said gravely, “I should like you fully to realize my
position. Many of the inhabitants of this part of London believe,
rightly or wrongly, that my experience of the world is greater than
theirs. Consequently they frequently seek my advice upon the most
personal and intimate matters. I have been the recipient of many
confidences, which it has been my invariable rule never to mention
to a third person. Dick Colburn has consulted me more than once,
and it is only because I believe it to be in his interest that I am
prepared to break my rule in his case.”
“I fully appreciate your motives, Mr. Ludgrove,” replied the
Inspector. “I will make no use of anything you care to tell me without
your permission.”
“Thank you, Inspector,” said Mr. Ludgrove simply. “Dick Colburn
informed me some months ago that he found it very difficult to get on
with his father. His chief complaint was that although he performed
the whole work of the shop, his father treated him as though he were
still a child, and refused to allow him any share of the profits of the
business. I advised him to persuade his father to admit him into
partnership, and if he proved obdurate, to announce his intention of
seeking work elsewhere. I think it is only fair to add that the lad came
to see me yesterday evening, in order to assure me that he had no
share in his father’s death.”
Inspector Whyland shrugged his shoulders. “In spite of
appearances I am inclined to believe him,” he replied wearily.
“Frankly, Mr. Ludgrove, I am completely at a loss. As you know, the
jury at the inquest on Mr. Colburn returned an open verdict, but I
think there can be very little doubt that he was deliberately
murdered. We can rule out suicide, people don’t take such elaborate
steps to kill themselves. And the circumstances seem too
remarkable to be accidental, which brings us back to Mr.
Copperdock and his remarkable story of the numbered discs. What
do you make of that, Mr. Ludgrove?”
“Very little, although I have puzzled over it a good deal, since I
heard it,” replied the herbalist. “Of course, it is possible that the
receipt by Mr. Colburn of the one you have doubtless seen had
nothing whatever to do with his death, and that the combined
imagination of Mr. Copperdock and Mrs. Tovey evolved the first out
of something equally harmless. Mrs. Tovey is the only person who
claims to have seen it, I understand.”
“And yet her accounts of it are remarkably consistent,” said the
Inspector. “I went to see her and introduced the subject as tactfully
as I could. She described the incident in almost exactly the same
words as Mr. Copperdock used, and added that her husband,
attaching no importance to it, threw counter, envelope and all into the
fire. Her daughter, Ivy, was not present at the time. And yet, if we
apply the obvious deduction to the sending of these numbered
counters, what possible motive could anybody have for murdering
two peaceful and elderly tradesmen, apparently strangers to one
another, or, still more, for warning them first? It only adds another
problem to this extraordinary business.”
“Are you going to make the story of the numbered counters
public?” asked Mr. Ludgrove.
“One of my reasons for coming to see you was to ask you to say
nothing about it,” replied the Inspector. “We have decided that there
is nothing to be gained by letting it be known. Bone counters of this
size are very common, and we are not likely to learn where these
particular ones originated. On the other hand, the minute the story
becomes known, there will be an epidemic of counters bearing the
number III in red ink. The Post Office will be overwhelmed by
envelopes containing them, and every one of the recipients will come
clamouring to us for protection. You may think this is an
exaggeration. But you have no idea of the effect of crime upon some
people’s mentality.”
Mr. Ludgrove laughed softly. “I think I have,” he replied. “I haven’t
been a sort of confidential adviser to the poorer classes all these
years for nothing. Nearly everybody who has been in this room for
the last week has had definite knowledge of the murderer of Mr.
Tovey, for which knowledge they seem to think it is my duty to pay a
large sum of money. When I tell them to go to the police their
enthusiasm evaporates with amazing rapidity. And since you people
offered a reward for Wal Snyder’s sailor, the whole neighbourhood
appears to have seen him.”
“So I imagine,” said the Inspector. “There is usually a queue at
the police station waiting to claim the reward. But what could we do?
I confess I was very sceptical about the existence of this man; but
I’ve bullied the wretched Wal half a dozen times, drunk and sober,
and he sticks to the story. ‘S’welp me, it’s as true as I’m standing
here,’ he says, ‘a big tall bloke, dressed like a sailor, with a black
beard, an ugly gash on his cheek, and a woollen cap.’ We had no
option but to advertise for such a man.”
“Well, I hope you’ll find him, Inspector,” remarked Mr. Ludgrove.
“But you’ll forgive my saying that I have grave doubts about it. Even
Mr. Copperdock, who spends a large part of his time watching the
people who pass his shop, has never seen anybody answering his
description. And again I find it difficult to imagine a black-bearded
sailor with a scar having a grudge against Mr. Tovey. Besides, he
doesn’t sound the sort of person to deliver numbered counters in
typewritten envelopes.”
The Inspector rose from his chair with a smile. “It is a maxim of
the police never to admit defeat,” he said. “I am immensely obliged
to you for your courtesy, Mr. Ludgrove. Perhaps if you hear of
anything which has any possible bearing on the case you will send
for me?”
The herbalist willingly consenting to this, Inspector Whyland took
his departure. He had scarcely been gone five minutes before Mr.
Ludgrove, who had returned to the back room, heard Mr.
Copperdock’s voice in the shop.
“Come in, Mr. Copperdock,” called the herbalist genially.
The curtain was furtively drawn aside, and Mr. Copperdock came
in, a look of deep anxiety upon his face. “That was Inspector
Whyland in here just now, wasn’t it?” he enquired.
“It was,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “We had quite a long chat.” Then,
with a sudden change of manner, he laid his hand on his friend’s
shoulder. “Look here, Mr. Copperdock,” he said earnestly, “get out of
your head all idea that the police have any suspicions of you or your
son. I can assure you that they have not, and that your
straightforwardness in going to them and telling them all you know
has impressed them greatly in your favour.”
“Thank God for that!” exclaimed the tobacconist fervently. “I’ve
been terrible worried these last few days. I’ve laid awake at nights
and puzzled over it all again and again. I’ve even given up going to
the Cambridge Arms of an evening. I sort of feel that the fellows
there don’t talk to me quite in the way they did.”
“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Ludgrove. “You mustn’t let this
prey on your mind. We all know as well as you do that you have
done nothing to reproach yourself with. Now I must ask you to
excuse me, for I think I hear a customer in the shop.”
As the days went by, and no further developments took place, Mr.
Copperdock’s face regained its accustomed cheerfulness, and he
resumed his visits to the Cambridge Arms. The newspapers found
fresh sensations with which to fill their columns, and even Praed
Street, in the stimulus to trade furnished by the approach of
Christmas, began to forget the strange occurrences of which it had
been the scene. Ted Copperdock developed a new smartness of
appearance and carefulness of speech, no doubt the results of his
frequent enjoyment of Ivy’s company. It was only natural that on
Sundays, when the young people were out at the Pictures, Mr.
Copperdock should walk over to Lisson Grove to console Mrs.
Tovey’s loneliness. Only Mr. Ludgrove, as he regretfully explained to
his friends, found himself too busy to spend one of those week-ends
in the country which he so much enjoyed.
Indeed, it was not until the week-end before Christmas that he
found an opportunity for leaving the shop for more than an hour or
two at a time. He confided his intentions to Mr. Copperdock on the
Friday. “I have just heard that a plant of which I have long been in
search is to be discovered in a spot not far from Wokingham,” he
said. “The nearest Inn appears to be at a village called Penderworth.
I propose to go there to-morrow and spend the afternoon and
Sunday searching for the herb. As I mean to come up by an early
train on Monday, I have taken the liberty of telling Mrs. Cooper, who
comes in every week-day to tidy my place up, that I have left the key
with you. I suppose that it is no use asking you to come with me?”
Mr. Copperdock fidgeted uncomfortably. “Leave the key by all
means,” he replied heartily. “I’ll look after it for you. Sorry I can’t
come with you, but you see about Christmas time I—we—there’s a
lot of folk comes to the shop and I can’t very well leave Ted alone.”
“I quite understand,” said Mr. Ludgrove, without a smile. “I shall
leave Waterloo at 1.30 to-morrow, and reach that station again just
before ten on Monday. If Mrs. Cooper has finished before then, she
will bring you back the key.”
His arrangements thus made, the herbalist closed his shop at
noon on Saturday, and, equipped with a suit-case which he always
took with him, took the Tube to Waterloo station. On arrival at
Wokingham, he hired a car to drive him to the Cross Keys at
Penderworth. It was after three o’clock when he arrived, and after
securing a room, writing his name and address in the register, and
arranging for some supper to be ready for him at half-past seven, he
went out again immediately, a haversack slung over his shoulder,
and an ordnance map in his hand.
It was after seven when he returned, his boots covered with mud,
and his haversack bulging with a miscellaneous collection of plants.
A fine drizzle had come on during the afternoon, and he was very
wet. But trifles like these never dampened his spirits, and he made
remarkable headway with the cold beef and pickles produced for his
delectation. His meal over, he made his way to the smoking-room
fire, and, spreading a newspaper on the table, began to examine the
contents of his haversack.
The rain, which by this time was falling steadily, seemed to have
kept the regular customers of the Cross Keys at home. The smoking-
room was empty, but for Mr. Ludgrove; and the landlord, after
leaning idly against the bar at one end of the room, and staring
inquisitively at his solitary guest, could restrain his curiosity no
longer. Lifting the flap, he walked across the room, with the
ostensible object of making up the fire.
Mr. Ludgrove looked up at his approach. “Good evening,” he said
pleasantly.
 “Good evening, sir,” replied the landlord, glancing at the plants
laid out on the newspaper. “You’ve been having a walk round the
country this afternoon, then.”
“Yes, and a very pleasant country it is for one of my interests,”
said Mr. Ludgrove. “I have secured several very interesting
specimens, and I hope to find others to-morrow.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the landlord. “Flowers and that aren’t much in my
line. I’ve got a bit of garden, but it’s mostly vegetables. Pity the rain
came on like it did.”
“Oh, I don’t mind the rain,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “Walking about
the country as I do, I am compelled to take the weather as it comes. I
can only get away from London during the week-ends.”
“I see you come from London by what you wrote in the book,”
said the landlord slowly. “It’s Praed Street you lives in, isn’t it?”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. The eagerness in the landlord’s voice was
very transparent. “Won’t you sit down and have a drink with me?” he
said. “Yes, I live in Praed Street. Perhaps you saw in the paper that
we had some very unusual happenings there a few weeks ago.”
“I did, sir, and it was seeing you came from there made me think
of them,” replied the landlord. He went back to the bar and got the
drinks, which he brought to the fire. It immediately appeared that his
interest in crime, as reported in the newspapers, was at least as
keen as that of the late Mr. Tovey. But never before had it been his
fortune to meet one who had personally known the victims of two
unsolved murders.
“It’s a queer thing,” he said, “but a couple of days or so before
this Mr. Tovey was murdered, I was polishing the glasses behind the
bar in this very room, when I looked out of the window and sees a
sailor, big chap he was, walking past. I didn’t rightly catch sight of his
face, but he was carrying a bag and going towards London. Looked
as if he was on the tramp, I thought. I never thought about it again till
I sees the police advertising for this sailor chap, then, of course, I
tells the constable at the Police Station up the village. I never heard
whether they traced him or not.”
“You didn’t notice if he had a black beard or a scar?” suggested
Mr. Ludgrove mildly.
 “No, I didn’t see his face,” replied the landlord, with an air of a
man brushing aside an irrelevant detail. “But that’s just like the
police. You give ’em a bit of valuable information, and they hardly
ever says thank you for it.”
The landlord, warming to his work, and finding Mr. Ludgrove an
excellent listener, developed theory after theory, each more far-
fetched than the last. It was not until the clock pointed to closing
time, that he rose from his chair with evident reluctance. “You mark
my words, there’s more in it than meets the eye,” he said darkly, as
he leant over the table, “as my old dad, what kept this house afore I
did, used to say, if there’s anything you can’t rightly understand,
there’s bound to be a woman in it. Look at the things what you sees
in the papers every week. How do you know that these two poor
chaps as were killed wasn’t both running after the same woman?
And if she was married couldn’t ’er ’usband tell you something about
why they was murdered? You think it over, sir, when you gets back to
London.”
And the landlord, nodding his head with an air of superlative
wisdom, disappeared in the direction of the tap-room. By the time he
returned, Mr. Ludgrove had collected his belongings and retired to
bed.
By the following morning the rain had ceased, and Mr. Ludgrove
was enabled to pursue his explorations in comfort. He went out
directly after breakfast and returned to the Inn in time for lunch. In
the afternoon he followed a different direction, arriving back shortly
after dark. When he repaired to the smoking-room after supper, he
found that his fame as a personal acquaintance of the murdered
men had preceded him. Mr. Ludgrove was before all things a student
of human nature, and he seemed almost to enjoy taking part with the
leading men of Penderworth in an interminable discussion of the
unsolved crimes. Perhaps he reflected that the looker-on sees most
of the game, and that these men, viewing the circumstances from a
distance, might have hit upon some point in the evidence which had
escaped the observers on the spot.
At all events, he went to bed on Sunday night with the remark
that he had thoroughly enjoyed his visit to Penderworth. A car had
been ordered to take him to Wokingham station early on Monday
morning. His first act upon reaching the platform was to buy a paper
and open it. Across the top of the centre page lay spread the
ominous headline:

ANOTHER TRAGEDY IN PRAED STREET

 Chapter VI.
A Middle-aged Poet
Mr. Richard Pargent’s public was a very limited one. A few lines
of type, of unequal length, would appear from time to time in one of
the ultra-artistic magazines, and would be hailed by critics of the new
school as yet another deadly blow at the shackles which have
hitherto fettered the feet of the muse of poetry. The general public
found them incomprehensible, which was perhaps a fortunate
circumstance for Mr. Pargent’s reputation.
But, in spite of Mr. Pargent’s extreme literary modernity, his
surroundings and circumstances were typically mid-Victorian. His
age was between fifty and sixty, and he lived with his sister Clara in
a tall, narrow house in Bavaria Square, Bayswater. It was, as a
matter of fact, the house in which he and his two sisters had been
born. On their parents’ death he and Miss Clara Pargent had elected
to remain where they were and keep house together. Miss Margaret,
younger and more adventurous, had taken unto herself a companion
—of the female sex—and migrated to a house in the little town of
West Laverhurst, in Wiltshire.
It will be gathered from this that the Pargent family were not
dependent upon Mr. Richard Pargent’s literary earnings. Each
member of it was comparatively well off, and lived according to the
standards of mid-Victorian comfort. In their own phrase, they knew
quite a number of nice people, and sometimes they found it difficult
to make time in which to perform all their social duties. As a
consequence, they had little opportunity left for doing anything
useful.
Although many years had elapsed since Miss Margaret had
shaken the dust of Bayswater off her feet and retired to the
intellectual wilderness of West Laverhurst, her brother and sister had
never completely recovered from the shock of such a revolutionary
proceeding. Never before, within the memory of man, had any
member of the Pargent family done anything but what was expected
of them. And even now, when any of their friends asked after Miss
Margaret, they replied with an almost imperceptible hesitation, with
the apologetic smile we adopt when speaking of anyone who
exhibits such remarkable eccentricity.
Not that Miss Margaret’s departure had entirely broken the bonds
which united the family. She and Miss Clara exchanged letters every
day, although it must exceed the comprehension of ordinary mortals
what they found to write about. Further than this, West Laverhurst
was the object of a regular fortnightly pilgrimage on the part of
Richard Pargent. Every other Saturday he caught the 10:45 at
Paddington, which reached West Laverhurst at 12:25, giving him
ample time to lunch with his sister and catch the 3.10 up, which
deposited him at Paddington at 4.55. Miss Clara always had tea
ready for him in the drawing-room in Bavaria Square. A No. 15 bus
from Paddington took him almost to his door.
The Saturday before Christmas happened to be the occasion for
one of these fortnightly visits. It was usual for Mr. Pargent to walk the
short half mile which separated West Laverhurst from his sister’s
house, but, the afternoon being wet and Mr. Pargent very careful of
his health, he asked Miss Margaret to requisition a car to drive him to
the station. He arrived there in plenty of time, and in due course the
3.10 came in punctually. Mr. Pargent took a corner seat in a first-
class non-smoking carriage, and immediately became immersed in a
book which he had brought with him for the purpose of reading in the
train. He inwardly congratulated himself upon having secured a seat
in an empty carriage.
The 3.10 up from West Laverhurst stops twice before reaching
Reading, and then runs fast up to London. The stop at Reading is a
somewhat long one, owing to the fact that tickets are collected there.
On this particular afternoon, the train had run into the station a
minute or two before time, and the stop was even longer than usual,
giving a tall man in a rather tight-fitting overcoat ample time to walk
leisurely the whole length of the train and select an empty first-class
smoking carriage close to the engine. The train started at last, Mr.
Pargent being left in undisputed possession of his compartment.
The train arrived at Paddington punctually at five minutes to five.
Mr. Pargent had observed that the rain was falling more heavily than
ever, but, from his long experience of Paddington station, he knew
how to reach the stopping place of the No. 15 bus, keeping under
cover nearly all the way. He had only to follow the subway which
leads to the Underground booking-office, and then climb the stairway
which leads into Praed Street. The No. 15 bus stops nearly opposite
on the further side of the street.
The passenger who had got in at Reading seemed to know his
way about as well as did Mr. Pargent. This man, who somehow
vaguely suggested a retired ship’s officer, had an iron-grey beard
and a curious patch of crimson, such as is popularly known as a
port-wine mark, on his left cheek. He walked slowly down the
subway, so slowly that Mr. Pargent overtook him before he reached
the foot of the stairway. The two ascended it together, only a few
steps separating them, Mr. Pargent leading.
The mouth of the stairway was blocked, as it so often is in wet
weather, by a knot of people unfurling their umbrellas and waiting for
an interval in the traffic to dash across to the refuge in the middle of
the road. Mr. Pargent unfolded his umbrella like the rest, and seizing
his opportunity, ran for the island. The interval was a narrow one; an
almost unceasing stream of buses and taxis was pouring down
Praed Street. Only two or three followed Mr. Pargent’s example,
among them the Reading passenger. In the blinding rain and the
flurry of the traffic nobody noticed a swift movement of the latter’s
arm, nor did they watch him as he left the refuge immediately and
gained the far side of the road.
The clock above the entrance of the station showed it to be
exactly five o’clock. The Reading passenger glanced at it, walked
swiftly a few yards westward up Praed Street, then, seizing his
opportunity, crossed the road again. This brought him to the slope
leading to the departure platform of Paddington station. He hurried
through the booking office on to No. 1 platform, at which stood the
5.5 train for Bristol, which stops for the first time at Reading. He
showed the ticket collector a third-class single ticket for Reading,
and the man hastily opened a carriage door and pushed him in.
“Near shave that, sir!” he remarked.
The passenger was far too short of breath to do anything but nod
his head in reply. He sank down exhausted upon the seat as the
guard blew his whistle and the train drew out of the station. There
were only two men beside himself in the carriage, and they, with true
British indifference, took no further notice of him. The train had
nearly reached Reading when he walked down the corridor to the
lavatory. He did not return to the carriage, but stepped Straight from
the corridor to the platform as the train came to rest. He mingled
unnoticed with the stream passing the barriers. He noticed that the
hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes to six.
Meanwhile Mr. Pargent had stood for an instant upon the refuge
in the middle of Praed Street, a puzzled expression on his face. An
approaching taxi-driver noticed his swaying form and swerved
sharply, just in time to avoid him as he crashed forward into the road-
way. The taxi-driver’s action caused a sudden check to the traffic,
and for an instant there was a chaos of skidding vehicles, screeching
brakes, and blasphemous language. Then the nearest drivers
jumped from their seats and clustered round the prone form. A
majestic policeman, setting a calm and undeviating course through
the tumult, knelt down and turned the body over. Mr. Pargent was
dead.
The newspaper which Mr. Ludgrove bought at Wokingham
station and read carefully during his journey to Waterloo contained
nothing more than a bare statement that the famous poet, Richard
Pargent, had fallen dead in Praed Street, and that, upon the body
being conveyed to the mortuary, a blade was found in it, with the
point entering the heart. Round these facts a formidable structure of
conjecture and reminiscence was built up. There was an obituary
notice, in which Mr. Pargent’s Christian names and the titles of his
published works were incorrectly stated. There was a résumé of the
case of Mr. Tovey, and a photograph of Praed Street, with heavy
black crosses marking the places where the murders had taken
place. Finally there was a leading article, in which the responsibility
for the murders was ingeniously fixed upon the Government, which
in consequence came in for severe criticism. In fact, the murder of
Mr. Pargent was evidently the topic of the day.
Mr. Ludgrove sat with his haversack beside him on the carriage
seat, even his beloved plants unheeded. He read every bit of the
paper over and over again, seeking for some clue which might
account for the crime. The description ended with the words “the
police are, however, in possession of a clue, the nature of which they
are not at present prepared to divulge, but which, they are confident,
will lead to startling developments in the near future.” Mr. Ludgrove
smiled rather cynically as he read them. They seemed to him to have
a somewhat familiar ring.
He had the paper in his hand as he walked into Mr. Copperdock’s
shop to get his key, and his friend caught sight of it. “So you’ve seen
the news, then?” he said excitedly.
Mr. Ludgrove nodded gravely. “I have been reading the account
as I came up in the train,” he replied.
“We didn’t know a thing about it till eight o’clock on Saturday
evening,” continued Mr. Copperdock eagerly. “I was just going
across to the Cambridge Arms when Inspector Whyland came in and
asked me casual-like what I’d been doing all the afternoon. As a
matter of fact neither Ted nor I had hardly left the shop, and so I told
him. It wasn’t till then that he let on that three hours before a
gentleman had been murdered not a hundred yards away, exactly
the same as poor Tovey. Then I remembered that a customer had
told me something about an accident outside Paddington station,
but, being busy, I hadn’t taken any heed of it. And, that reminds me,
the Inspector left a message for you, asking if you would let him
know when you got back. I’ll ring him up from here if you like, I’ve got
his number.”
“I wish you would, I have no telephone, as you know,” replied Mr.
Ludgrove. “Has Mrs. Cooper brought my key back yet?”
Mr. Copperdock felt in his pocket and handed the herbalist a Yale
key. “She brought it in ten minutes ago. She was terribly upset, and
talked about our all being murdered in our beds next. It’s a terrible
thing to have happened just before Christmas like this. People will be
afraid to go out of doors after dark.”
 Mr. Ludgrove nodded rather absently, and took the key which his
friend offered him. “You’ll let Inspector Whyland know I’m back?” he
said, and, without awaiting Mr. Copperdock’s reply, he left the shop,
crossed the road, and entered his own premises, a thoughtful frown
upon his face.
Inspector Whyland lost no time in acting upon Mr. Copperdock’s
message. The murder of Mr. Richard Pargent, following so soon
upon that of Mr. Tovey, and perpetrated by the same method, had
made a great sensation, not only among the public, but, which was
far more important to the Inspector, at Headquarters. He had been
given a pretty direct hint that unless he could find some clue within
the next few days, the case would be taken out of his hands and
given to some more capable officer. All the machinery at the disposal
of the police had been put into action, but so far without the slightest
result. And in Inspector Whyland’s despair it seemed to him that the
only hope left of gaining any information was through the herbalist,
with his peculiar inner knowledge of the inhabitants of the district.
He arrived to find Mr. Ludgrove busily engaged in writing up
descriptions of his botanical trophies in a large manuscript book. The
herbalist greeted him warmly, and invited him to a seat in the best
chair. The two sat for a moment in silence, until the Inspector spoke
abruptly.
“Look here, Mr. Ludgrove, what do you know about this man
who’s been killed?”
“Richard Pargent?” replied the herbalist quietly. “I know nothing
about him personally. I have seen his name mentioned once or twice
as a writer of verse, but I doubt if I should have remembered it had it
not been recalled to me by what I read in the papers this morning.”
“Do you know anything about this poetry of his?” continued the
Inspector.
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “I am no judge of poetry,” he replied. “But I
can hardly imagine that it was bad enough to inspire anyone with a
desire to murder him.”
Inspector Whyland shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “That’s
just it!” he exclaimed. “There doesn’t seem to have been anything
about the man to provide a motive for his murder. Look here, Mr.
Ludgrove, you’re not the sort of man to go round spinning yarns to
your friends. I’ll make a bargain with you. You get to know all sorts of
things that never come to our ears. Tell me your honest opinion
about these murders, and I’ll tell you what we’ve found out so far.”
For a moment Mr. Ludgrove made no reply. When at length he
spoke it was with a deep note of earnestness in his voice. “I am
honoured by your confidence, Inspector. As you have guessed, I
have been very much concerned by these murders. I have feared
that they would be traced to one or other of my clients, some of
whom, I regret to say, have little respect for the law. I know much of
the inner history of Praed Street and its neighbourhood, and I regret
to say that much of it is almost incredibly sordid. I refer of course to
its underworld, and not to its respectable inhabitants, who are greatly
in the majority. But of two facts I can assure you. The first is that in
all my experience I have never heard of a crime committed by any of
the class to which I refer except for some specific purpose, either
gain or revenge, and the second is that none of them would resort to
murder except perhaps in a sudden access of passion.”
The Inspector nodded. “That’s very much my own experience of
regular crooks,” he replied. “But you say you’ve thought a lot about
this business. Haven’t you any theory of your own?”
“The only theory I can form is that the murders are the work of
some irresponsible maniac,” said Mr. Ludgrove quietly.
“Would an irresponsible maniac have put a piece of poisoned
glass on the end of Colburn’s pipe?” countered the Inspector quickly.
“No, I am afraid that theory won’t do, Mr. Ludgrove.”
“I think it is the only theory which fits in with the assumption that
these three men were all murdered by the same hand,” replied the
herbalist.
“Yet I don’t think you can get away from that assumption,” said
Inspector Whyland. “I don’t mind telling you something that worries
me a bit, since it’s bound to come out at the inquest. One of the first
things we found when we searched Pargent’s pockets in the
mortuary was this.”
He put his hand in his pocket, then held it out with extended palm
toward Mr. Ludgrove.
The herbalist leant forward with an exclamation of surprise. “Ah,
a white counter with the figure III drawn on it in red ink!” he