The Screaming Canary

Black Swan Disasters:
Low Probability, High Consequence Events

An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict. This term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable." Mr Taleb is a finance professor and former Wall Street trader.

He took his title from the shock that Europeans experienced when they discovered black swans in Australia. Until then, their data told them that all swans were white, so the discovery was unexpected.

See Japan's ‘black swan': Scientists ponder the unparalleled dangers of unlikely disasters The article properly notes that there are events still waiting to happen that have occurred in the past--but people and governments live as though they don't even exist. I believe it goes back to how people measure time. Basically I think it is their lifetime. If they or their parents have not experienced an event, it is like it won't ever happen. Intellectually they may acknowledge that something could happen, but that knowledge won't prompt them to action.

One quote from the article above is, "I think many of our systems do not operate as if things could go wrong. They operate as if everything will go right." aka, Gulf Oil Spill. Safety was a given, but not really paid attention to--based on their personal experience and other pressures to perform.

Other Black Swans? September 11, the 2008 economic meltdown etc. In disaster terms we are talking about the low probability, high consequence type of event ... asteroids ... you can think of more.

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