Comments on: Space Storm Insurance

By: TheMoneyIllusion » Will the experts save us from catastrophe?

TheMoneyIllusion » Will the experts save us from catastrophe? — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 18:47:48 +0000

[...] PS. Robin Hanson has a much better example here. [...]

By: Fareed Zakaria – Kevin Burke

Fareed Zakaria – Kevin Burke — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:03:36 +0000

[...] a whole lot of people would go hungry fast as global crop supply would fail to meet demand. Or a solar eruption could cause such a large burst of electromagnetism that it would wipe out the entire East Coast [...]

By: » Wyścig zbrojeń nuklearnych i ignorowanie małego prawdopodobieństwa Trystero: Niezależny blog finansowy

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:24:05 +0000

[...] Ocena tej konkretnej części polityki administracji Reagana jest ściśle związana z poznawczym skrzywieniem rodzaju ludzkiego: permanentnej skłonności do ignorowania małego prawdopodobieństwa. To skrzywienie jest tym groźniejsze im większe straty związane są ze zdarzeniem obarczonym małym prawdopodobieństwem. Koronnym przykładem takie skrzywienia jest ignorowanie zagrożenia związanego z uderzeniem asteroidy (str. 187) lub ignorowanie niebezpieczeństwa związanego ze skutkami burzy słonecznej. [...]

By: Predicting the Future « The Excitement of Typing

Predicting the Future « The Excitement of Typing — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:56:06 +0000

[...] Black Swans: terrorism, war, plague, a sudden energy shortage, financial crises, asteroid strike, solar storm, cultural collapse, or one of the thousands of possibilities we cannot yet [...]

By: John

John — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:54:34 +0000

Robin, what’s the source of the $10 million estimate? I don’t see it in the linked materials.

By: TheMoneyIllusion » Did the Great Depression and WWII have the same cause?

TheMoneyIllusion » Did the Great Depression and WWII have the same cause? — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:46:11 +0000

[...] disease that is fatal and easily spread, or even something as mundane as a solar flare, which Robin Hanson claims could easily plunge us into a dystopian world out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. (At least [...]

By: Robert Koslover

Robert Koslover — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:06:15 +0000

mtc, the real problem is that we may not have nearly that much time of warning.

By: mtc

mtc — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:44:19 +0000

Well the wikipedia link on the 1859 storm says it took 18 hours for the massive coronal ejection to actually get to earth. So in 18 hours, we can’t just open all the relevant breakers (that are set up trip almost instantly during overload conditions)? I understand just shutting down power generation doesn’t help any, but I have to think there’s a way to break the loops in the distribution system and save all/most of the transformers. So you have a 24/48/72 hour blackout, which causes some significant problems, but certainly doesn’t leave millions dead (as destroying most of the electrical infastructure might plausibly does over a year).

By: David

David — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:57:37 +0000

Buy spare transformers, lots of them and put them in secure storage depots throughout the nation along with other spare parts. This might well cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is the only decent defense you can make for this critical part of our infrastructure against what I call the attack of the 24 angry rednecks (so named because 24 angry rednecks could easily cause the scenario depicted in the original post with nothing more than hunting weapons, improvised explosives, cell phones, and pickup trucks). Unfortunately the US is notoriously slothful in the area of civil defense, and has been since at least the 80s. It’s almost comical that we spend crazy amounts of money on missile defense but don’t spend the far smaller amounts of money needed to protect against attacks like these. News flash, almost every nation on earth can field 24 angry rednecks, although the local translation may vary.

By: K. Larson

K. Larson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:01:35 +0000

I believe there are significant network effects and dependencies in the power grid (although I’ve no direct knowledge of the engineering involved). A single operator who installs protection may be doing very little to protect himself unless others do the same. Such a coordination problem could account for the reluctance of existing operators to spend on protection. Although, 10 million does seem almost absurdly low.