The irony is that the very people who talk most about “existential risk” often have the thinnest understanding of the very events that came closest to ending civilization. Ask your average longtermist about the Cuban Missile Crisis and they might give you a Bayesian estimate of nuclear launch probability. But ask them about Khrushchev’s internal politics, or the role of Vasily Arkhipov, or the military chain of command on October 27th, 1962 – and you’ll get blank stares. That stuff doesn’t fit in the model. Too messy. Too human.