Lifeboat Foundation

Safeguarding Humanity

About us

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization established in 2002 and dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

The Lifeboat Foundation was formed to prevent existential events from happening, as once they occur, humanity may have no possibility to correct the error. Unfortunately governments and humanity in general, always react AFTER a disaster has happened, and some disasters will leave no survivors so we must react BEFORE they occur. We must be proactive.

The Lifeboat Foundation funds research into preventing a technological catastrophe. Most of the research money funds projects at universities. The Lifeboat Foundation is developing programs to prevent existential events ("shields") as well as programs to preserve civilization ("preservers") to survive such events.
Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity such as new methods to combat viruses, effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

Current Programs:
• AIShield: To protect against unfriendly AI (Artificial Intelligence). AsteroidShield: To protect against devastating asteroid strikes. BioShield: To protect against bioweapons and pandemics. InternetShield: As the Internet grows in importance, an attack on it could cause physical as well as informational damage. An attack today on hospital systems or electric utilities could lead to deaths. In the future an attack could be used to alter the output that is produced by nanofactories worldwide leading to massive deaths. NanoShield: To protect against ecophages and nonreplicating nanoweapons.
• LifeShield Bunkers: Developing fallback positions on Earth in case programs such as our BioShield and NanoShield fail globally or locally.
• SecurityPreserver: To prevent nuclear, biological, and nanotechnological attacks from occurring by using surveillance and sousveillance to identify terrorists before they are able to launch their attacks.
• Space Habitats: To build fail-safes against global existential risks by encouraging the spread of sustainable human civilization beyond Earth.
Future Programs:
• BioPreserver: To preserve animal life and diversity on the planet. ClimateShield: To protect against unwanted climate changes. CommPreserver: Explores new communication technology for surviving existential events. EnergyPreserver: If our civilization ran out of energy, it would grind to a halt, so Lifeboat Foundation is looking for solutions. NeuroethicsShield: To prevent abuse in the areas of neuropharmaceuticals, neurodevices, and neurodiagnostics. Worst cases include enslaving the world´s population or causing everyone to commit suicide. NuclearShield: To prevent nuclear holocaust including destruction of entire cities. SeedPreserver: To preserve plant life and diversity on the planet by storing seeds in a safe location and other methods.
Long Range Programs:
• AlienShield: To prevent annihilation by an alien race (biological or otherwise). AntimatterShield: To prevent antimatter-based annihilation. BlackHoleShield: To protect against black holes that are not manmade. This would include an "eye to the sky" program that would scan for signs of them. GammaRayShield: To protect against gamma ray bursts. SunShield: To protect against and/or cope with our sun becoming a red giant and other harmful fluctuations in its output.

Eric Klien is the Founder of the Lifeboat Foundation.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.