Currently, the emergency response team has 9 members, and is looking for more.

Profile for reservists

As currently conceived, Sentinel is looking for reservists that are, chiefly, capable and independent. A key requirement is being able to rapidly switch to a new focus; not having a traditional job might enable this. Some other optional but desirable extras are: mobility—being able to travel to new countries on short notice; fluency in additional languages besides English, so that the Sentinel team as a whole can cover many countries; having a large network and being able to reach people in countries where things may be happening; management ability or willingness.

It might not be inaccurate to frame this profile as looking for “capable strays”. For a capable but well adjusted person, working for a normal large corporation (e.g. programmer at Google) probably offers more money & prestige, but also less ability to commit to projects like this.

Responsibilities for reservists

During peacetime, reservists participate in occasional trial exercises. These could be wargames (i.e., fictional), or trial runs addressing a small-scale emergency. They also make sure they have the slack needed for this project. For example, set clear expectations with other projects that this one takes precedence in case of an emergency.

In the event of an emergency, reservists drop other projects and start working on addressing the emergency. For instance, if this team had existed when the Samotsvety forecasting team foresaw the Russian invasion of Ukraine about two weeks before it happened, one potential action would have been to get people in planes to outside Ukraine before Ukraine instituted the draft. For another example, the Epidemic Forecasting team was quickly sprung up while COVID was starting, and ended up advising a few third world governments. Or, if the likelihood of WW3 seems to spike, there could be many possible courses of actions one could take, starting with stockpiling reserves. As a last example, in case of an extreme abrupt sunlight reduction scenario, ALLFED has some preliminary plans to turn wood into edible food, which could be set into motion.