Disaster proof
Means for AP manufacturing have a stabilizing effect on advanced civilization since using them is akin to growing plants from abundant seeds. Reaching this level of capability means reaching something like a "game checkpoint". Even if there's no central power source and no infrastructure basic necessities as well as all sorts of luxury goods can be made.
In (2013) there was (and still is) a situation where electric power supply was highly centralized. If there would have been a catastrophe of some sort stopping all systems from working at once there would have been great problems to get it all up and running again since the systems depended on themselves mutually. One could say the whole electric system was in a dynamic state of "alive" always threatening to "die".
APM technology in contrast can lie dormant for eons without loosing functionality.
The main threatening factor for the continued availability of AP systems (not the size of the human population - this is an entirely different matter) is destruction from within due to bad too much centralized software architecture.
Further remaining threats reside in the far future and are rather exotic like:
- global radiation exposure from gamma bursts.
- planetary collisions
- ? (insert your favourite SciFi doomsday here)
[Todo: Discuss importance of avoiding the loss of a bootstrapping path. Documantation and abbreviation of the threaded attainment path such that it could be repeated in the quickest possible way]
