

Ask HN: What other low-probability high-impact events are we ignoring? - tc

The gulf oil spill is a canonical example of a "low-probability, high-impact event."  Everyone who cared knew that this sort of thing could happen, but the risk was widely perceived as tolerable.<p>What other high-impact scenarios are out there that are likely to create a meaningful "event" at least once in the next 30 years?  How are we currently mis-pricing the risk?<p>[Edit for clarity.  Low-probability, in this instance, means risks that are low when taken in discrete units.  Getting on an airplane is low-risk.  With 14M scheduled US flight per year, though, it is almost certain that <i>one</i> plane will crash once in awhile.  We're looking for events here that have a perceived low risk (correctly or not), and that are likely to surprise people when they actually happen.  In hindsight, it will be clear to us that the event was actually likely given the extended circumstances.]
======
randombit
I'm confused by the 'likely to create an event in the next 30 years' part -
either it's unlikely or it's likely. There are events that are quite likely,
but with a low _perception_ of risk. Oil spills happen all the time, it's just
been a while since one has happened in a rich Western country. Why? Because
we've already tapped almost all of our oil - most of the worst spills happened
long before we were born! Now the spills happen in places like the Middle East
and Nigeria, but because only poor people live there, nobody notices or cares.

Other events that were or will be likely to occur, but have a low perception
of risk, include the recent financial crisis, and, looking forward a decade or
two, ocean level rise flooding major cities, and a US debt default.

Some interesting events that (seem to) have a genuinely low probability, but
would really change the world if they happened:

* Asteroid hit (either a big one, or a smaller one that hits just right).

* A 'supervolcano' eruption that puts us into nuclear winter

* Solar flares fry every piece of electronics on the planet

* Sudden tipping point in the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets that raises ocean levels by a few meters over a year.

* A strong 'godlike' AI (benevolent or otherwise)

* A self-replicating nanoassembler

* Godzilla attack

~~~
btmorex
I find it interesting that you would put "US debt default" in the category of
things likely to happen in the next decade or two. The reason that the US is
able to borrow money for practically nothing is that it has _never_ defaulted
on debt. Now, clearly there is a possibility that at some point in the future
the US will default, but I don't how you would determine that is likely in the
next couple decades. Remember we had a significantly higher level of debt as a
percentage of GDP following World War II than we do now. We didn't default
then.

~~~
randombit
Treasury rates are almost absurdly low right now, so we can clearly agree that
there is very little perception of risk that the US will default. That's why
it makes a great example of this phenomenon; people will look back and see all
the (in retrospect) obvious signs of a coming default and wonder why it wasn't
obvious now.

I would hope the structural differences between the US situation in 1945 and
now would be obvious - exporter vs importer, young vs old, short term debt
(the war) vs long term (SS and Medicare, plus maintaining an ongoing worldwide
military presence). And we don't currently have the advantage that every
possible economic competitor of ours was recently carpet bombed and utterly
drained by years of total war, which certainly didn't hurt our exports.

Adding for clarity: I don't currently believe either a default or major
coastal flooding is inevitable or unstoppable, I just think there is
substantially more risk associated with it than is generally perceived.
Ironically, the perception of little risk can help make such events more
likely, because after all there is little point wasting lots of effort trying
to prevent something that probably won't happen, right?

~~~
jessriedel
I think then your claim is that the true risk and the perception of risk are
very different, not that default is necessarily likely (i.e. > 50%). If you
were really confident that default was likely within 20 years, you could make
an awful lot of money shorting T-bonds (or something).

~~~
randombit
You can buy credit default swaps in T-bills, so if the US defaulted you could
make a nice return - if you think you can find a counterparty in the form of a
large insurance company or bank who would actually survive a US default, which
seems unlikely. An article in the Economist (IIRC) made the comment that these
CDS's had best be denominated in Kalashnikovs and cans of spam.

------
cia_plant
One possibility which seems very much overlooked is that of a catastrophic
ecosystem crash. The recent bee die-off gives a hint of the kinds of things
that are possible. Another possible catastrophe is a plague or parasite that
is resistant to all of our methods of disease control. It could attack either
us, or our crops. Our disrespect for complex ecosystems which we still barely
understand is the most egregious example of short-term thinking, to my mind.

~~~
thaumaturgy
By "ecosystem crash", what we really mean here is "an environment in which
nobody will want to live". I am not at all skeptical towards various warnings
about the environment, but we do have to acknowledge that the Earth has
supported life for long before we ever came around, and will continue to
support life long after we're gone.

And, humans are resourceful. It's likely that, even in the worst of scenarios,
at least some humans will find a way to survive -- even if it's subsistence
living.

The question is, would it be an environment that we would _want_ to live in?

I think that's an important distinction that might help sort out some of the
ecological "debates".

~~~
troutwine
At subsistence levels, it is not unlikely that all but the most basic human
learning would be lost to active memory in a generation or two. While the
species will persist, the ability to live as flailing gods will not.

I wonder, how do we preserve our science across such gaps in ability to
sustain it. Should we even bother?

~~~
electromagnetic
I'm sorry but there's been several occasions in human history where
civilization has fully collapsed (region specific) and lost the written word
(namely proto-greece) but fully recovered with no outside influence.

If something doesn't spell our doom either in the short term or in the
moderately-short term then we will quickly recover from where we left off. A
generation or two of subsistence living will not entirely wipe out human
civilization. No one is going to have to reinvent the wheel, because we've got
so many present in our civilization that they could easily be scavenged for
hundreds of years before the quantity became depleted and it would likely take
a good thousand years before someone couldn't find an 'original wheel' to at
least take inspiration from. Aluminium alloy wheels have such high proportions
of aluminium in them that even the exceptionally slow oxidization (I work in
siding and I can tell you that 20 year old aluminium siding barely has marks
on it and it's paper thick, a few pounds would take millennia to degrade but
would likely still be clearly recognizable).

If we're really concerned about our longevity I'd suggest manufacturing
information arcs that can teach the major language of the geographical area
allowing people 100 years down the road to access the knowledge stored when
civilization recovers. It would have to be built for longevity and nothing
else (IE it can't easily be recovered for materials by scavengers or used to
draw power). Essentially you'd want a very long life RTG to power a multiple
redundancy computer system and basically load encyclopaedias and patent
databases and an archive of literature, magazines and journals.

~~~
troutwine
To be sure, though I think that the no outside influence restriction is a bit
contrary to the archeological record. Though I didn't make it clear, what
concerns me are not the coarse technologies of life--wheels and pottery and
what not--but more fine, non-obvious innovations. Consider concrete: with the
dissolution of the Roman political structure the secrets of concrete were
lost. It took 13 centuries, until the 1750s, to rediscover its formula. During
that time, public works were greatly retarded. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon (whose
buildings rarely had windows for stability purposes) culture produced a rather
famous poem we now call The Ruins in which Roman ruins are attributed to the
works of giants.

What concerns me is not the transmitting of basic machines across the
simplification of a society, to use Joseph Tainter's jargon, but, rather,
difficult, contextual knowledge. Our knowledge of Mathematics, for example,
was preserved by luck: the Byzantine Empire harbored enough learned
individuals and archivists until such a time as the Crusades swept through.
All of my work simply assumes an industrial, technological civilization with
advanced computational capacity. Any textbooks I might produce in the future
will have the implicit assumption of contemporary operating systems, compilers
and hardware. If, through sheer chance, any of my potential works survived
across a collapse they would be useless without further context. I imagine
that the same holds true for advanced works of physics, especially that which
requires hugely complex experimental devices.

Euclid held up well enough as his works were self-contained. What modern works
can say the same?

------
sethg
The last record-breaking _accidental_ oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the
Ixtoc I, in 1979. I should also note that the Atlantic Empress spill, also in
1979, and the _Amoco Cadiz_ , the previous year, had a combined spillage equal
to the Ixtoc I.

The record-breaking _deliberate_ oil spill happened during the Gulf War, in
1991.

In the past thirty-five years, there have been ten oil spills in which over a
million barrels of crude were released. I don’t see how you can classify this
kind of thing as “low-probability”, in the same category as asteroid strikes.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spills#Largest_oil_spills>

------
anamax
> The gulf oil spill is a canonical example of a "low-probability, high-impact
> event."

I think that what's going on is awareness.

There was a much larger deep-water spill in Mexico in 1979. There have been
huge on-shore spills, some that ran into the sea. There have been huge tanker
spills. And so on.

The difference is that this one is off the US coast, we have on-scene video,
and folks who claimed to be uber-competent have, arguably, dropped the ball.

Yes, they've probably gotten more blame than they deserved, but they've also
tried to exploit this incident for political gain, so ....

------
Alex3917
Oil spills aren't really that low probability when you don't follow any of the
safety procedures and you use broken equipment.

~~~
jswinghammer
And rare events always seem like they could obviously happen in retrospect.

~~~
whimsy
[http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day-
bp...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day-bps-
horrifying-safety-record)

With such a flagrant history of safety violations, I'm surprised it didn't
happen sooner.

------
istari
Most of you aren't trying hard enough to come up with things we'll PROBABLY
live to see:

1\. California earthquake

2\. global economic depression

3\. war involving developed countries(N Korea vs S Korea, India vs Pakistan,
Iran vs Israel, China vs Taiwan, etc)

4\. 2 leading into 3(maybe)

5\. pandemic

6\. The Next Big Thing(biotech? nanotech?)

7\. car accident resulting in serious injuries involving yourself or a loved
one

8\. serious illness involving yourself or a loved one

~~~
btilly
Let me add a scary possibility, the use of a nuclear bomb on a major city.

It is worth noting that India and Pakistan have fought several recent wars,
and are now both nuclear armed. Worse yet, everyone's wargame simulations have
concluded that their next war _WILL_ go nuclear. As one friend of mine (whose
father is high up in India's air force) put it, "The only real question is
whether the bomb that Pakistan drops on New Delhi works."

To be specific, the likely scenario is that they go to war, Pakistan, lacking
reserves, knows it has to win fast. Pakistan throws everything into the battle
front, India breaks through somewhere, and Pakistan, with nothing to stop
India's breakthrough, drops a nuke on Indian troops in Pakistani territory.
(There is a perverse logic to having all of the civilian casualties be your
own.) India, having just lost major numbers of troops, has little choice but
to escalate to nuclear war against Pakistani military targets. Pakistan, with
a more limited supply of nukes, has only one way to escalate. And New Delhi is
the easiest to reach major city.

There is speculation that the last military coup in Pakistan happened in part
because the Pakistani army was scared that Pakistan was escalating into
another war with India, and it was the easiest way to force the situation to
de-escalate.

------
hop
A nuclear event would fit that and could certainly happen in the next 20 years
--

\- Israel bombing all suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran retaliating
with a nuke.

\- Low level or dirty bomb by any number of terrorists groups in the world.
India/Pakistan is a pressure cooker right now. Could happen in Europe, the
Mid-East or America.

------
razzmataz
Earthquake along the New Madrid fault. Almost nothing in the midwest is built
with earth quakes in mind.

~~~
btilly
New York's construction is even more vulnerable, and there are a lot of fault
lines there.

Another very real possibility is that the Cascadia zone could have a
megathrust earthquake. This would be a 9.0 hitting cities like Seattle,
Victoria and Vancouver that are completely not prepared for it. The last one
in 1700 gave Japan a really nice tsunami as well.

That could also potentially trigger the lahar that is waiting on Mt Rainier.
Which brings to mind all of the volcanos listed at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade_Volcano> \- the eruption of any of which
would qualify as low probability high impact event.

------
aristus
An airliner crashing into a building that houses a major intercontinental
cable landing, an e911 datacenter, and a dns root node. Beleive it or not
there are several such in the world.

~~~
korch
I find it hard to believe this is true! Maps or GPS coordinates, or it didn't
happen!

------
mixmax
A major global pandemic seems like a plausible scenario. We've had a few
(semi..) close calls with SARS and swine flu but have been lucky that they
haven't mutated to be airborne and infectous from human to human.

You don't have to go further back than the 1918 global flu pandemic to see an
example of what a global pandemic can do. 3% of the global population died.

You may think that we have better vaccines and better systems in place now
than we did 100 years ago, but you'd be largely mistaken[1]. A vaccine takes
so long to develop and produce that when it's ready for the market millions of
people will already have died. Pandemics spread quickly. Adding to the problem
is that the world is so connected and people so mobile that once the virus is
out it could easily spread across the globe in a matter of days. One infected
stewardess in Heathrow airport wil lmake sure of that.

[1] I'm no expert on biotech so please correct me if I'm mistaken.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Government regulators tend to choke off vaccine development, but those
policies would change in a hurry during a dangerous pandemic.

Of greater importance is a disease that there is a vaccine for but which the
U.S. government is actively suppressing: smallpox. DNA synthesizers are
already at the point where anybody who wants to can resurrect smallpox. It is
only a matter of time before that scourge is set loose. The results will be
ghastly.

~~~
dkasper
Funny, last night I watched a West Wing episode where they mention the
possibility of a smallpox outbreak. Is it still true that there are just a
handful of smallpox vaccines on hand in the US?

~~~
run4yourlives
Vaccines don't have a shelf life of forever, and storing components to defeat
a disease that no longer exists beyond a few petri dishes in a military lab
isn't really efficient.

Odds are there is barely any.

------
sharpn
In terms of mispriced expectations, it's unprecedented for 1/3 of the world
population (<2bn people - India & China) to smoothly transition from 3rd/2nd
to 1st world economies without massive internal 'social unrest' (&/or war).
Yet that is what we appear to expect... Hope it's the first time.

~~~
aristus
Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.

------
abreckle
Most low-probability, high-impact events are un-predictable by definition.
Only in hindsight do they appear obvious. This has to do with many factors
such as the narrative fallacy and confirmation bias, which Taleb describes as
the Black Swan.

That being said, here a few high-impact (moderately low probability) events
that could be on the horizon.

* Northern California Earthquake * Israel v Iran Nuclear Conflict that triggers WW3 * Singularity

------
bdr
At the risk of sounding crazy, I'll say fascism in a Western country.

~~~
jokermatt999
It Can't Happen Here

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Cant_Happen_Here>

Edit: corrected link, sorry.

Edit 2: Or...not. Apparently I can't have a URL with an apostrophe.

~~~
RevRal
Here you go: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here>

:)

------
pavel_lishin
How low-probability is an event if it's _likely_ to happen in the next 30
years?

Isn't that kind of like asking "What's an unlikely event that's likely to
happen"?

~~~
brazzy
I suppose by "low-probability", tc means "unlikely to happen at any particular
time, in any particular place".

Think serious car accidents: unlikely enough that most people never have one,
yet many thousands happen each year. The effects can be devastating to the
people involved, but everyone keeps telling themselves that "it won't happen
to me", and many people forego actions that would decrease or mitigate their
risk, or even engage in actions that increas it substantially.

~~~
ErrantX
This is the problem with the whole concept of risk: because your chances of
suffering a car accident are actually relatively high when compared with all
sorts of other risks.

On a scale of things _unlikely enough that most people never have one_ a car
accident is pretty near the bottom.

------
grandalf
There are a lot of such events looming in the improbable horizon. Each would
be viewed as a total surprise when in fact it's known that there is a nonzero
(but small) probability of the event occurring:

\- a moderately sized meteorite strikes a major city.

\- the capital requirements set after the recent financial crisis might turn
out to be horribly inadequate if just the right series of coincidences occurs.

\- The US could have significant post-election riots, etc.

\- With a slight increase in trauma injuries, all ERs and available hospital
beds and skilled professionals could be quickly used up within a 1000 mile
radius of an event. Many would die in transit, etc. Think back to the
superdome.

\- A significantly noteworthy event could easily overwhelm mobile phone
network capacity in any major city making communication nearly impossible,
this would be made worse due to the panic that it inspired.

\- An unsophisticated terrorist group could bring mass transit in the top 5
major US cities to a standstill for a budget of less than $10K. (simply by
igniting backpacks full of regular gasoline in buses, subways in some sort of
unison). This would probably provoke martial law.

\- The US could elect a Hitler-esque strongman. Both Bush and Obama are shades
of this sort of leader in their own way. That anyone (especially the media)
took McCain's candidacy seriously is evidence of this.

\- Mexico could become a failed state, putting pressure on the US, and sending
the US toward a nationalistic strongman leader type.

------
Unseelie
I'm suprised that no-one's suggested aliens arriving, an event which can
arguably be getting more and more likely as time goes on.

The trick to that statement being that we don't know where the baseline
is...at .00001% likeliness this year, an exponential increase of 1.0001x every
year isn't particularly likely.

~~~
InclinedPlane
There are many in the same vein that would have similar impact on society.

Aliens arriving, being discovered, or merely communicating with us, there are
so many possibilities, many of them with the potential for being as disruptive
to human civilization on Earth as an asteroid impact. The mind boggles at the
possibilities.

------
apowell
How about a major earthquake along the San Andreas fault in southern
California? We've had a couple little shakes this week. There isn't much we
can do to prevent it from occurring -- we can only reduce the impact. Build
strong and keep emergency supplies on hand.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm upvoting this because (a) I know that a huge percentage of you live
directly on _top_ of the San Andreas fault; (b) I've seen the upcoming
earthquake mentioned a few times on this thread, but always in a list with
things like "the Singularity".

For god's sake. The difference between a major Northern California earthquake
and the effing Singularity is that one of these has happened in the last
century and is guaranteed to happen again.

Lay in an emergency supply of drinking water and strap your heavy shelves to
the wall.

------
tremendo
Contrary to the majority of predictions here, this would be a positive change:
We should all at one point or another, hopefully not too far into the future,
realize we've been led tragically astray in terms of our nutritional health by
well meaning but unfortunately ill informed government officials and doctors.
The current common wisdom will likely reverse and take with it many of the
diseases of civilization: diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, maybe
even cancer. That out of the way, current debates about socialized medicine
and escalating insurance costs would turn into bad memories and we'll think
"how could we have been so ignorant?" We'll live better, healthier, cheaper
and maybe even longer. Local economies will revitalize, the environment will
benefit, and it'll be "easy". Of course, current dogma will fight tooth and
nail, proclaiming the new path leads to disaster, but disaster is what we have
now, and it'll be soundly defeated. Nostrademus has spoken… :)

------
tlrobinson
I've heard seismologists describe the San Andreas fault in California as "10
months pregnant".

There's a good chance there will be a massive earthquake on it in the next 30
years.

------
andrewt
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned anything to do with the structure of the
internet. Suppose someone takes out all of the root DNS servers or the bgp
system breaks down, or something similar. Even though there might not be any
loss of life, this could cause tremendous amount of damage in other areas.

------
ErrantX
_Everyone who cared knew that this sort of thing could happen, but the risk
was widely perceived as tolerable._

There are billions of things that could happen, that might happen or that will
eventually happen given enough time. We _should_ reasonably ignore those or it
starts to get silly :)

I think what you are really talking about are "Elephant in the Room" problems.
Things which shouldn't happen, or are low probability, but end up being caused
by bad management or human error.

If someone had asked this question 6 months ago would anyone have brought up
deepwater oil drilling? I somehow doubt it. Finding these scenarios is
difficult, if not impossible, because they rely on things that don't get
reported till it has happened.

------
vaksel
Large Hadron Collider having an accident or creating a black hole.

Running out of oil, which will in turn start a whole host of problems.

Some genetic disease like the plague, wiping out most of the civilization.

An experiment on next level weapons that make nukes look like firecrackers,
going out of control.

Sun going nova for no apparent reason.

America becoming a "christian nation" with science/technology being outlawed.

Someone hacking the pentagon or whatever, and detonating all the nukes at the
same time.

Skynet becomes self-aware(AI/robots taking over) - will probably happen like
the irobot movie.

aliens

~~~
RevRal
_> Running out of oil, which will in turn start a whole host of problems._

It starts getting scary when oil production vs demand becomes
disproportionate. Aka, peak oil.

 _> Someone hacking the pentagon or whatever, and detonating all the nukes at
the same time._

I recently watched Hackers Wanted and one of the interesting things the movie
pointed out was that when terrorists start becoming hacker savvy, a new war
front will be introduced into the world.

------
tedunangst
Solar flares. Magnetic pole reversal. The Yellowstone caldera going boom
again.

------
jlgosse
I think what's brewing on the Korean Peninsula is a great example of a
potential low-probability, high-impact event. Things are heating up further
and further, and the potential outcome could be devastating.

------
uptown
My vote is for the Yellowstone Supervolcano. If you take a look at the image
showing potential range of the ash cloud, you can see it might cause a few
problems if it were to blow. Maybe not a next-thirty-years type of event, but
still an interesting possibility with potential for tremendous casualties, and
very little that can be done in the way of prevention.

<http://www.earthmountainview.com/yellowstone/yellowstone.htm>

~~~
maukdaddy
_THE BIBLE CODE PREDICTS THAT YELLOWSTONE WILL BLOW MARCH 31 OR APRIL 1, 2004_

W T F?!

~~~
uptown
You mean you didn't pull the latest version of the bible code from github?

------
pjscott
Here's a happy one, for a change: the Focus Fusion guys actually succeed, and
we get radically cheaper electricity that can be mass-produced in a big way.
This would change everything. Aluminum would become a lot cheaper with cheap
energy for refining it. The various water shortages in coastal areas would be
easier to deal with, thanks to cheaper energy for desalination. We could
replace gasoline with carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. I'm probably still
thinking way too small here.

------
RevRal
Evil cats: <http://www.exitmundi.nl/meow.htm> ?

I am posting this as an example of a "risk that is widely perceived as
tolerable." Is it high risk? I think so, judging by all the other examples of
non-native animals destroying parts of ecosystems.

It is hard to predict how things like this extrapolate. But that is how it is
-- we are more likely to observe consequences and infer the origins, and
extinction around the world is a pretty big one. The evil cats scenario is
just one from that article.

A snippet: _In the street where I live, there are more cats than people!

And that is a problem. All those cats catch lots of birds and mice and rats
and butterflies. Biologically speaking, cats are eating a huge hole in the
food chain. No, seriously! According to several alarming reports, this is
exactly what is happening in countries like the United Kingdom, Sweden and my
own country, Holland. Bird species are vanishing, mouse subspecies are going
extinct. All because of Molly, and Lizzy, and the other many billions of
domestic cats that inhabit the planet today._

~~~
RevRal
Okay, this an instance where I would like the downvoters to explain the
downvoting.

The submitter asked for "low-probability, high-impact" events. Cats destroying
local ecosystems is a low-probability, high-impact event _and perceived as
tolerable_. We've seen situations where non-native animals have messed up
ecosystems, and there are a lot of cats in the world hunting lower on-the-
food-chain prey.

Is the word "cat" taboo on HN or something?

An article on feral cats and
dogs:<http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/envstudies/research/feral.html>

 _Sigh_ Nobody will probably see this. I guess I'll just go upvote a couple of
people to make up for it.

------
Estragon
Why do you believe this was a low-probability event? My impression is that
important safety measures were neglected, and this laxity played a key role in
the failure.

A better question might be "Where else has avarice gotten the better of known
sensible precautions?" I hear there are clear risks in the Commercial Real
Estate market, similar to the problems which led to the residential housing
crisis. Then there is the fact there has been essentially no meaningful
regulatory reform of the financial system as a whole (in fact, there has been
encouragement of the same bad behavior.)

------
Kaizyn
As I understand it, they still haven't fixed the levies around New Orleans.

------
d_c
Fault in a nuclear power plant?

~~~
pjscott
A lot lower-impact than people generally think. Those things are _safe_
nowadays.

------
smanek
The 'Singularity' (in the sense of a super-human intelligence, for example
either augmented human or purely machine) comes into being and, basically,
gets to exert influence over humanity's future.

~~~
Unseelie
Singularity's a fun one, because its got more vectors than just Moore's law.
Or, anyway, Moore's law is being played out in a lot more vectors than just
IT.

Drastic life extension would count, as would 'a mature nanotech', matter
edition on any scale,

------
jarin
Asteroids?

------
Daniel_Newby
Washington, D.C. being taken over by a competent, efficient government.

