Posted on 02/21/2012 5:11:24 AM PST by Kaslin
Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a fantastic book on the impact of large, high impact, statistically rare events called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Technically, Taleb would probably classify the events we're about to discuss as "grey swans," unlikely events that we should still be able to anticipate, but that's splitting hairs. Long story short, we should be aware that our world can change for the worse in a hurry and we should make sure we're taking steps to alleviate the danger.
Default on the Debt: This is, far and away, the scariest option on the list because all we have to do to ensure that it occurs is maintain the status quo for the next 10-15 years -- if that long. Congressman Mike Pence says we may only be a decade away from a default and Senator Tom Coburn thinks we may be less than 5 years away. By 2020, it'll take 19% of the world's GDP just to finance our debt and by 2030 it'll take 36% of all our tax revenue just to pay the interest on the debt. When people call our spending "unsustainable," that's not hyperbole. What happens if America goes bankrupt and defaults? A Depression would begin, your life savings could become worthless overnight, your taxes would explode, your standard of living would plunge, violence and instability would break out, and payments from the government could dramatically drop or stop altogether.
Demographic Assimilation: "According to a 2002 Zogby poll, 58% of Mexicans said that the ‘territory of the United States’ southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.'" Mexico, being a bad neighbor, actively encourages both illegal aliens and Mexican-Americans to have their first loyalty to Mexico. This hasn't been a big issue thus far, but we still have porous borders and there's a genuine danger that Mexico could become a failed state. What if the worst happens and we go from 10-12 million illegals in the United States to 25-40 million packed into the southwestern United States in a relatively short period of time? Demographics are destiny, which is something we taught both Mexico and the Indians the hard way, which is why it's so ironic that we think that same lesson couldn’t ever apply to us.
EMP: There haven't been any high altitude nuclear explosions since 1962; so it's hard to definitively know exactly how much damage a nuke exploding over the center of the United States would cause. A Solar Storm, which could theoretically produce almost the same effect, is even more of an unknown. However, it's entirely possible that a single nuclear bomb or Solar Storm could fry enough electronics to send us all the way back to the Dark Ages in the space of a few heartbeats. Airplanes would drop from the sky, the power grid would go down long term, the Internet would go offline, and nearly all the electronics, computer circuitry, and automobiles people rely on would stop functioning. Millions would die in a few months’ time, economic activity would grind to a halt, and people all across America would get to experience the old school "Oregon Trail" video game in real time.
Nuclear Weapons: There's always a chance that some dictator or religious nut could launch a nuclear weapon at us, but as nukes proliferate to more unstable nations, the chances of terrorists or hostile intelligence agencies sneaking those weapons into the United States will increase dramatically. This will especially be true if Iran gets nukes, because that would undoubtedly inspire Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt among other nations to also acquire nuclear weapons.
Imagine nuclear weapons going off in LA, DC, NYC, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia all in the same day. Millions would be killed, tens of millions would be displaced, it would cost tens of trillions, those cities could be unusable for decades, and it's entirely possible we would likely have NO IDEA who is behind it at first. That would seem to make our porous borders into a high priority problem although you certainly wouldn’t realize it from the lackadaisical approach the Bush and Obama administrations have taken to securing the border.
Biological Weapons: The Black Death killed somewhere between 30%-60% of the population in Europe, smallpox killed roughly 300 million people in the 20th century, and less than a hundred years ago, the Spanish Flu killed somewhere between 50-100 million people. Now consider that there are roughly 20 nations that are believed to have biological weapon programs including Iran, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, and North Korea. Put together hostile and/or unstable regimes with access to weaponized biological agents with terrorists (or even environmental extremists who believe the planet is overpopulated) and you have the potential for tens of millions of deaths, nationwide disruptions, and panic that could last for months or even years.
From your lips...
We will find
sooner or later
if Achmed’ll pray
to a glowing crater
That’s precisely why it’s a black swan. The tip off is your use of the phrase every time. Everytime arguments always work until they don’t.
And if enough people think that way and then things change that’s when s h t f.
Oops. I was replying to your post and another website at the same time. You did not use the phrase every time, although it is the inference of your statement.
As the brokers say - past performance does not guarantee future results.
It doesn’t HAVE to be a fast from food. We can fast from TV, alcoholic beverages, sweets....it can be giving up something we like for a period.
Also, it could be a fast only on a particular day each week.
Pray and ask God to direct you as to what type of fast He wants from you.
;-)
I completely agree. A black swan event is, by definition, an event that is not anticipated, not discussed constantly nor on the radar......For those of you who are not opposed to a bit of heavy science reading, there is such a discussion ongoing on this forum. You might find it interesting.
Thank you for the link. Perhaps you would both be appeased by the coinage (which I saw above), "grey swan". After all, if someone like Mother Abigail has forseen, intuited, or somehow perceived the danger, then the definition of "black swan" as written no longer strictly applies.
That said, perhaps the definition could be modified slightly to include events that are insufficiently manifest to allow intelligent, coordinated response(s) by the community. The Pearl Harbor Raid would be an example. Colonel Bonner Fellers, USAAC officer attached to the chief air marshal's office in Cairo in December 1941, was told about the Pearl Harbor raid the day before it happened, by someone who'd just seen a warning from British intelligence. Fellers assumed the knowledge was general and did not forward it. The raid went in unmolested by any effectual response, British and Soviet (and White House) foreknowledge notwithstanding.
I wouldn’t consider Pearl Harbor a Black Swan because it was both within the realm of possibilities and many people had anticipated what to do if it did happen. They knew the Japs might attack in some fashion.
Yellowstone.
New Madrid is defined by a failed rift arm underlying (and forming) the Mississippi Valley. There's a Precambrian Mid-Continent failed rift in the same general area as the Mississippi Valley, but the failed rift we're talking about is associated with the Jurassic opening of the Gulf of Mexico, which actually began in the Triassic, about the same time as the Atlantic rift zone.
The geology of rifting is that the rift usually forms as a three-armed rifting area, generally star-shaped, over a spreading center that underlies a craton. As the rift develops, two of the arms open wider than the third; the two wider arms become the new rift and spreading center => ocean basin, and the third arm stops spreading and becomes quiescent, with residual geological activity (volcanism, heat flow, subsidence and seismicity). Hence the New Madrid Zone.
Yellowstone is a hot spot, a mantle plume that blowtorches the crust plates above it with very high heat flow. Right now it's melting its way repetitively through the two overlapping plates under western North America (the leading edge of the overridden Pacific and Nazca Plates roughly defined by the Front Range of the Rockies). Hot spots are largely independent of spreading centers. The Hawaiian Island chain (which includes French Frigate Shoals, the Farallones, and Midway) is another hot spot.
And no doubt America as it stands would allow a dictatorship.
And no doubt America as it stands would BEG FOR a dictatorship, within a month of national supermarket-clearing riots.
Of course it was in the realm of possibilities.
You are shopping one day and in a very brief instant everything has changed.
It must have been that way many times in our history. Geological disasters, invasions and plagues - all events that just occur out of the blue, so to speak.
But I am told that chatter and background noise are important and (perhaps I am just to into the subject) but from my stock show in the morning to the last posts I read on the Internet at night - the theme of imminent danger permeates the discussion.
Perhaps it is always this way and TEOTEAWKI is just around the corner for each generation - but there really is a very heavy feel to atmosphere.
I am not certain if there is a swan, and certainly I have no clue as to the color of said bird....
But all the same since my contact with MA I have changed.
When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
Your comment about TEOTEAWKI for some reason reminded me of the calf-scramble scene at the opening of Independence Day or Contact or one of those alien-contact movies, when the young radioastronomer suddenly realizes he's looking at a modulated carrier from deep space: the song "The End of the World as We Know It" (title?) was playing on his boombox in the background, as a sort of in-joke or audio inescutcheon.
You wrote: “since my contact with MA [”Mother Abigail” ]I have changed.”
Must have been one too many “Crown Royals” on the rocks.
PS: I suspect that you are really “James S”, that James S.is really “Mother Abigale”, and that it was you who signed up to post on FR under that MA screen name on 10/9/2001.
I also think you got the idea for that screen name from a
Fantasy Land movie that came out in 1994 about how a super-flu wipes out most of the earth’s population. And wonder of wonders, one of the characters is called “Mother Abigail”. LOL:
Mutant Reviewers from Hell do Stephen King’s The Stand
1994 It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
http://www.mutantreviewers.com/rstand.html
Summary Capsule:
A super-flu wipes out most of the earth’s population, and the survivors try to rebuild civilization while fighting evil (or being evil).
What better subject for a cult miniseries than one of the most beloved cult books of all time? Stephen King’s The Stand is one of my all-time favorite books, and for a good reason. Instead of dickering around with saving the world from a deadly virus (a la Outbreak), King goes right ahead and kills off 99.9% of the world’s population within a few weeks. The survivors find themselves congregating into two camps: the “good” people, who follow prophetess Mother Abigail to Boulder, and the “bad” people, who gather forces in Las Vegas under the demonic Randall Flagg. On one hand, it’s about the death and rebirth of America and civilization; but more ultimately, it’s the ultimate showdown between good and evil in the apocalyptic sense.
The miniseries, which spans 4 one-and-a-half hour episodes, is as faithful an adaption of this book as I could ask for. Released on ABC in 1994, The Stand holds up quite well even to today’s standards, approaching movie-like level instead of mere TV-adaption. .......
I will end with a totally random observation. The best moment of this miniseries is one of its most quiet. The plague has ended and two survivors — Fran and Harold — listen to an LP of that Crowded House “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. As the song plays, numerous scenes are shown, giving a terrific impression of the stillness after death, and the small hope that remains. This is the human race, signing off...
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The Stand
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand
[snip]
Plot summary
“Captain Trips”
The novel is divided into three parts, or books. The first is titled “Captain Trips” and takes place over nineteen days, with the escape and spread of a human-made superflu (influenza) virus known formally as “Project Blue”, but most commonly as “Captain Trips”. The virus is developed at a U.S. Army base, where it is accidentally released. While the base tries to shut down before any infected person can escape, a security malfunction allows a guard and his family to sneak out. Unfortunately, they are already infected, and set off a pandemic that kills an estimated 99.4% of the world’s human population, as well as that of domesticated animals, such as horses and dogs.
King outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence, the failure of martial law to contain the outbreak, and eventually the death of virtually the entire population. The human toll is also dealt with, as the few survivors must care for their families and friends, dealing with confusion and grief as their loved ones succumb to the flu.
The expanded edition opens with a prologue titled “The Circle Opens” that offers greater detail into the circumstances surrounding the development of the virus and the security breach that allowed its escape from the secret laboratory compound where it was created. ......
“The Stand”
The stage is now set for the final confrontation as the two camps become aware of one another, and each recognizes the other as a threat to its survival, leading to the “stand” of good against evil. There is no pitched battle, however. Instead, at Mother Abagail’s dying behest, Stu, Larry, Ralph and Glen set off on foot towards Las Vegas on an expedition to confront Randall Flagg. Stu breaks his leg en route and drops out. He encourages the others to leave without him, telling them that God will provide for him. Glen, Ralph, and Larry soon encounter Flagg’s men, who take them prisoner. When Glen rejects an opportunity to be spared if he kneels and begs Flagg for his life, he is shot on Flagg’s order by one of his men. Flagg gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of the other two, but before it can take place, Trashcan Man arrives with a nuclear warhead and a giant glowing hand”The Hand of God”detonates the bomb, destroying Flagg’s followers and the two remaining prisoners.
Stu, with the aid of Glen Bateman’s dog “Kojak” (formerly “Big Steve”) and Tom Cullen, survives injury, illness, and a harsh Rocky Mountain winter. The three of them arrive back in Boulder soon after the birth of Fran’s baby. Although the baby falls ill with the superflu, he is able to fight it off. In the end, Stu and Fran decide to return to Maine, and the original edition of the novel ends with the two of them questioning whether the human race can learn from its mistakes. The answer, given in the last line, is ambiguous: “I don’t know.” ...
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How’s THAT grab ya? bttt
I'd say it's a site for a little bit more than, "marginally" insane substance abusers. LOL
I meant to ping you to my post #132 above HERE
Marking post 15 for reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=GqZmac2Bg5M
Many experts say you do NOT need grounding
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