Global risk mitigation resembles the parable of the blind monks and the elephant — each of six disciplines grasps a real part of the problem, but none sees the whole. This talk uniquely connects polycrisis dynamics to cultural evolution, arguing that we face not just accumulating risks but an erosion of the adaptive mechanisms needed to respond to them.

• Systemic risk and polycrisis concepts are moving from the margins to the centre of risk science

• Human biases and evolved social dynamics create locally successful but globally disastrous strategies — "trap states" that erode societal adaptability

• Evolvability — not prediction or stability — is the key structural property societies must preserve to navigate an uncertain future

• The meta-crisis: we are losing the capacity to evolve our way out of the polycrisis itself

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Early Covid-19 analyses suggested pandemic preparedness didn't matter — even that higher-scoring countries fared worse. This talk shows why those conclusions were wrong: flawed mortality data, poor statistical methods, and a failure to separate islands from non-islands systematically distorted the picture. With better data and methods, preparedness clearly saves lives.

• The GHS Index does predict lower excess mortality — once underreporting, age structure, and appropriate transformations are applied

• Islands had a fundamentally different pandemic experience and must be analysed separately; geography and border strategy drove their outcomes

• Democracy mattered more in islands; lower inequality was the key structural factor in non-islands

• Island biosecurity advantages may generalise beyond pandemics to zoonotic and other infectious disease risks

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