New study names the best place to ride out a global catastrophe. It isn’t Canada

Advertisement 1 This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Breadcrumb Trail Links HomeNewsScience New study names the best place to ride out a global catastrophe. It isn't Canada The lead author says agriculture in Canada ceases almost completely in many nuclear winter scenarios Author of the article: By Mason Kossak Published Aug 26, 2026 4 minute read Join the conversation A windblown, empty municipal road during winter. Bryan Schlosser Article content Australia is the country most often named as best able to ride out a global catastrophe. Canada is on the other side of the ledger. Article content Florian Ulrich Jehn is the lead author of the first review to map which places on Earth would hold up best in a global catastrophe, published Aug. 23 in the journal Global Challenges. Article content Article content The paper defines a global catastrophic risk as the death of a significant share of humanity, most commonly at least 10 per cent of the world’s population within months to years. It reviews 152 documents rather than modelling anything new. Article content Article content The authors sorted those threats three ways with the first being sunlight reduction scenarios. That is the review’s term for anything that suddenly blocks out the sun, whether a nuclear war, a large volcanic eruption or an asteroid strike. Article content NP Posted Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format. Sign Up By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Article content Another is infrastructure loss, usually a long blackout caused by a solar storm, a cyberattack or an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude. The third is a pandemic severe enough to cause mass casualties. Article content “In many nuclear winter scenarios agriculture ceases almost completely in Canada,” Jehn said in an email to National Post. Article content Canada is strong on biological threats and mediocre on infrastructure collapse, he wrote, and “probably near the worst among wealthy democracies for abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios.” Article content Australia is the only country directly named as resilient across all three categories in the research the authors reviewed. New Zealand and Japan were the only others with evidence in all three. Article content On nuclear winter, the review…