My Second End of the World

I’ve already lived through the end of the world once. But it was a little different from the one that is probably coming.

Early February 2022. I’m walking down the street where I grew up, heading to the mall. A completely ordinary day — I had walked the same route dozens of times before. But now, instead of thinking about school, relationships, or science, I had this thought that this might be my last walk here.

Everyone around me is talking about the coming war. I brush it off and tell my mother that “bombers flying over a major European city in the 21st century is just absurd.”

Almost as a joke, I tell myself: “What if this is the last time I ever walk down this street?” And then I laugh at the thought. “No. Stupid. That simply can’t happen.”

“This is nonsense. It makes me angry that you’ve fallen for the Terminator scenario,” my girlfriend tells me in early 2025. “That simply can’t happen.”

Yes. I’ve heard that sentence before. I was repeating it to myself in February 2022, and just two weeks later fighter jets and missiles were flying over my head, the windows were shaking from strikes, and smoke from the explosions was filling the room.

The first six months of getting into AI risk were rocky for me. I immediately understood how serious it was, but I kept asking myself: Have I gone insane? Can something this terrible really happen?

But something like that had already happened to me. That walk really did turn out to be my last one, and I never saw my home again.

In reality, by that point the war was obvious to almost anyone who was closely following the news. But I was a teenager whose mind was occupied with completely different things; I wasn’t paying attention to politics. When everyone around me started talking about it, I simply ignored the subject, unable to deal with the horror I felt whenever I imagined what might be coming.

Now this isn’t my first time. Maybe that makes it easier for me.

At the beginning of 2025, people around me often laughed about AI risks. By September 2026, many of them are messaging me or telling me in person that they’re afraid of AI and that they now understand what I was talking about.

Before my first end of the world, I could almost burst into tears just by allowing myself to consider that it might really happen. Before my second end of the world, I’m much calmer. But for many people, it seems to be the opposite.

People who still call AI risks “hype” or “bubble-pumping” may simply be afraid — as afraid as I was four years ago.

And although my first end of the world was more internal than external, the coming one promises to be much more serious.

It seems there aren’t many options left: try to enjoy what remains of this period of relative stability, or devote yourself to trying to make some contribution toward saving the world.

The truly skillful person is the one who manages to do both.