Sandy's Key Lesson Applies to More Than Bad Weather

The NY Times is out with a story today chronicling all the warnings about Gotham's vulnerability to storms and flooding.

Loss of life and economic devastation are made all the more tragic when we realize that these losses were at least in part preventable.

But as an anonymous source close the New York government officials put it:

"until things happen, people aren’t willing to pay for it".

Indeed.

As Nassim Taleb, et al have written about, there are deep psychological and evolutionary roots to our species' tendency to ignore seemingly low probability, catastrophic events until it is too late.

Explain this 'insurance' thing to me one more time?

Perhaps as the human species was evolving and facing a daily battle for survival there was a prohibitive cost to planning too far into the future. Now, however, with the hunting/foraging days long gone for most of us, we're still stuck traveling through life with the same 'Cave Man software' of our forefathers.

With Mother Nature having reminded us what she's capable of there will likely be some changes to storm protection systems along the East Coast. But unfortunately I'm not terribly optimistic that we can extrapolate the lessons of Sandy to other systemic risks, such as asteroid collision, climate change, and number one focus of this blog, financial crises.

Sadly, the Cave Man is still in charge of this joint.

Scientists Propose One-Way Trip to Mars

Not a suicide mission, mind you, but a proposal to send the real life version of 'Space Cowboys' (older astronauts) on a one-way mission to Mars to begin permanent colonization of the red planet.

And what's the big justification for a one-way trip? Scientists argue it would cut mission costs by 80%.

From the article:

Schulze-Makuch believes many people would be willing to make the sacrifice.

He and Davies believe a Mars base would offer humanity a "lifeboat" if Earth became uninhabitable.

"We are on a vulnerable planet," Schulze-Makuch said. "Asteroid impact can threaten us, or a supernova explosion. If we want to survive as a species, we have to expand into the solar system and likely beyond."

I agree with Schulze-Makuch that numerous people would volunteer to become the first human Martians. But the additional time and cost of bringing back the first human visitors to Mars may well be worth it.

While humans have been exploring space for almost five decades, space travel is still dangerous. Turning the first human trip to Mars also into the first human colony sounds like great bang-for-the-buck, but it is fraught with risk. Schulze-Makuch's suggestion may accelerate the initial timetable, it could also set the overall long-term space exploration and colonization effort back.

Reflecting its longheld "first you must go slow before you can go fast" approach, it's unsurprising that Schulze-Makuch's proposal was greeted by a lack of NASA enthusiasm.

But Schulze-Makuch's suggestion that the private sector might be interested in taking on such risks introduces all sorts of interesting property rights and legal questions. For example, will or should the first visitors to Mars be allowed to stake a claim?

Morbidly Cool Website: The 'Impact Catastrophe Calculator'

Following up my recent post on the Ultimate Black Swan, if you're curious about how much damage different types of asteroids would do if they struck earth check out the 'impact catastrophe calculator'.

You can customize your asteroid along the following parameters:

• Diameter - a prepopulated list gives asteroid sized options such as a school bus, the Empire State Building, or the London
• Density - i.e., ice, porous rock, iron, etc.
• Impact Angle
• Velocity
• Surface type struck (i.e, sedimentary rock, water, etc.)

A brief video showing your asteroid careening for earth plays, which is then followed up with a damage report detailing the crater size, etc.

Cheap Insurance Against the Ultimate Black Swan

With minds fixated on next week's U.S. midterm elections and Fed QE2, I thought it could be a nice, light distraction to write about the greatest known threat to life on earth.

What is it?

Global warming, infectious disease, and thermonuclear war are some of the more common answers to this question.

However, there is another threat of perhaps even greater danger which doesn't receive nearly as much airtime, or resources devoted to its prevention.

Illustration of an asteroid impact

Former astronaut Russell Schweickart recently penned a NY Times piece on the very real risks posed by asteroids to life on earth. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Schweickart several years ago, and he is generally considered the leading advocate for increasing awareness and addressing this threat.

Asteroids -- as any T-Rex fan will attest -- can be absolutely devastating. Strong scientific evidence suggests that 65 million years ago an asteroid of approximately seven to eight miles in diameter struck near Mexico and wiped out the dinosaurs and over half of all species.

It doesn't take an eight mile asteroid to cause significant damage. The 'Tunguska event', which featured an asteroid with a diamater of only 120 feet, leveled approximately 800 square miles of (thankfully) relatively empty Siberian forest. An asteroid much smaller than Tunguska could hit a heavily populated area and cause a loss of life in the millions.

Can Anything Be Done?

There is some good news. We already possess the technical knowledge to prevent asteroid impact. We can detect asteroids that may collide with earth, sometimes up to a decade in advance of potential impact. We also know what to do once we've spotted one that's on a collision course with our planet. One option can be described simply as using a spacecraft to "rear-end" the asteroid. This alters the asteroid's trajectory away from earth.

The bad news is that we are not investing the relative pittance it would take to mitigate asteroid impact risk. Schweickart estimates that it would cost roughly $250-$300 million over the next 10 years to track all asteroids and fully develop the deflection capability. Annual maintenance expense for the program would be $50-$75 million. These figures represent a small fraction of the U.S. federal budget.

Further, international discussions are underway so that the U.S. may not have to foot the entire bill. The below video features Russell Schweickart speaking about asteroid risk and international coordination at a recent European Space Agency meeting in Germany.



So, the choice is pretty clear. We can either spend a few hundred millions dollars and mitigate asteroid risk. Or we can continue to roll the dice risking perhaps all life on earth.

Do we really need to think hard about this one?