Reduce harm
Mitigate suffering, death, and destruction through practical interventions and preparedness.
Preparing for catastrophic risks, and enabling recovery.
Recoverable Foundation helps reduce suffering and preserve the foundations of advanced civilization in the aftermath of existential-scale disasters, including nuclear war, climate disruptions, and other large-scale threats to humanity's future.
Recovery-first
Focused on what happens after the event
Research-guided
Evidence informs action and course-correction
Action-oriented
Funding, pilots, and resilience initiatives
Why recovery?
Many excellent organizations help to reduce the probability of catastrophe. We complement that work by strengthening humanity’s capacity to endure and rebuild if prevention fails.
- Minimize human suffering and loss of life
- Preserve critical knowledge and infrastructure
- Increase the likelihood of re-establishing advanced civilization
Mission
Help humanity endure. Reduce suffering. Rebuild.
Recoverable Foundation exists to help humanity survive and recover from existential disasters that could end modern civilization, events that severely harm humanity but do not eliminate the possibility of recovery.
Enable recovery
Support post-disaster restoration of food systems, energy, public health, governance, and knowledge.
Preserve progress
Increase the chance that advanced civilization endures and can continue to improve human well-being.
What we do
We fund research and build practical capacity for recovery, prioritizing interventions that can be deployed under severe constraints.
Fund applied research
Support projects that clarify impact pathways and surface actionable interventions.
Develop intervention portfolios
Identify and compare options across food, energy, public health, governance, and knowledge preservation.
Support enabling technology
Back tools that improve resilience (e.g., robust communications, distributed manufacturing, alternative food).
Strengthen community resilience
Partner with communities to improve preparedness and recovery capabilities with measurable outcomes.
"Recovery capacity is a critical, under-resourced complement to prevention. Preparation today can save lives and preserve the possibility of rebuilding humanity's greatest achievement: modern civilization itself."
— Recoverable Foundation
Risks we prepare for
We prioritize severe global disruptions that could end current civilization while still allowing recovery. Examples include nuclear conflict, extreme climate disruption, pandemics, technological disasters, and other large-scale systemic shocks.
Nuclear conflict & aftermath
Recovery planning for infrastructure collapse, food disruption, and public health emergencies.
Climate disruption & cascading failures
Resilience to prolonged supply shocks, migration pressures, and infrastructure stress.
Emerging & unknown risks
We fund research into AI catastrophes, engineered pandemics, nanotechnology risks, and threats not yet imagined, building flexible recovery capabilities that work across scenarios.
How we work
We operate at the intersection of research and implementation: we fund and conduct research to identify high-leverage interventions, then pilot and scale what works.
Research → Action
Our research is designed to be decision-relevant, informing policy influence, funding priorities, and on-the-ground resilience improvements.
- Map failure modes and recovery bottlenecks
- Evaluate interventions by cost, feasibility, and impact
Action → Learning
Implementation generates feedback. We update our strategy as evidence changes, and collaborate with domain experts across academia, civil society, and industry.
- Pilots with measurable outcomes
- Partnerships with communities and institutions
- Iterative, evidence-based prioritization
Collaboration: We work with leading institutes and researchers in the existential risk
community, including university-affiliated and independent experts.
Support our work
We're building long-term capacity for recovery. If you're aligned with our mission, we'd love to talk: donors, researchers, businesses, and institutional partners.
Partner
We collaborate with institutes, labs, NGOs, and companies working on resilience, infrastructure, alternative energy, food systems, and risk analysis.
Start a conversation
Research with us
Have a high-leverage project idea? We're especially interested in applied, decision-relevant work that informs action.
Propose a project
Donors
Recoverable is not currently seeking financial support. However, we eagerly invite dialogs with those looking to make large contributions to this urgent cause.
Start a dialog
Contact
For partnerships, research proposals, or donor conversations, reach out below.
Organization
Legal name: Recoverable Foundation
Status: 501(c)(3) operating foundation