There is no such thing as "worst-case" planning in the military. The going-in assumption is that something (a lot of somethings) will go wrong. If you don't plan for the worst case as a matter of course, you will most often fail.
Successful military planners never use the word "hope."
So, the Colonel, without a glimmer of hope allowed to rest lightly on his faltering optic nerves, always thinks about what bad thing could happen next.
He doesn't worry. He ain't afraid of nothin' or nobody...
...except the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda.
The Colonel's planning pessimism is not rooted in worry. It comes of a life-time spent in the study of history. Not the inanity of names and dates. No, to study history is to dig deep into the cause and effect of events.
To truly study history is to understand the major events that shaped the arc of humanity in the past, and to gain a healthy appreciation for probable major events that will challenge humanity in the near future.
The current Chinese Communist Party abetted pandemic sweeping the globe is nothing new. Pandemics have swept the globe dozens of times in recorded history. They will sweep again. Humanity will never be completely immune to the effects of viruses whose very existence is based on the natural drive to adapt to and overcome immunities.
So, the Colonel is not at all surprised by the virility and spread of COVID-19. In fact, he's been expecting something like it. Not because he has any special prescience -- he just studies history. And history tells him that these things happen fairly regularly.
This morning, the Colonel has begun to wonder if and when the next shoe will drop.
Major events like pandemics, natural catastrophes, economic disturbances, wars, or social upheavals rarely happen in isolation. They are often inter-connected -- causing, or exacerbating one another. For microcosmic example, local epidemics often follow on the heels of natural disasters that compromise sanitation.
What the Colonel "what ifs" (he doesn't worry, remember) about is the effect a really huge (but certainly not unprecedented) natural catastrophe would have on modern civilization -- particularly at a time when (like the current pandemic) society is already under stress.
What if the New Madrid fault were to slip? (For you Bama and LSU grads, the Colonel ain't talking about some Spanish wardrobe malfunction.) A little over 200 years ago, a series of major earthquakes occurred along a mid-continent fault that runs through and near the town of New Madrid, Missouri. Three of the temblors -- spaced about a month apart -- have been estimated to have been somewhere between 7.5 and 8.0 on the Richter Scale.
Those are big shakes.
Fortunately, the population of the region at the time was sparse. The human death toll was minimal.
The physical effects were, in a word, frightening.
Were a similar earthquake to strike today, the metropolitan areas of Memphis and St. Louis (along with scores of smaller towns in the region) would cease to exist as viable places of habitation. Very few multi-story buildings would be left standing. Highway and railroad bridges across the Mississippi River would be compromised, at least; dropped, at worst. Pipelines of all types -- feeding cities across the nation -- would be ruptured. Electrical transmission grids would be destroyed. Roadways would be impassable. Ten million souls in the region would be instant refugees -- with no way to get away except on foot.
Oh..., and geologists, archaeologists, and seismologists who study the New Madrid Fault, say that earthquakes, like the ones 205 years ago, have occurred every 200 to 500 years in the past.
But, hey, it might not happen again for another 300 years...
Okay, let's talk volcanoes, then.
Cataclysmic volcanic activity has been a geologic constant throughout history of our planet. And, when the Colonel uses the word "cataclysmic," he ain't talking about your run of the mill Pompeii-burying Vesuvius, or the more recent Mount St. Helens or Mt. Pinatubo eruptions. Those were small potatoes compared to what our planet is capable of.
Out west, in our great Republic's fly-over country, is a volcanic caldera the size of Rhode Island. Millions of folks visit it yearly. The geologic wonders of Yellowstone National Park are the result of a thin part of the Earth's crust under which bubbles a monstrous plume of molten rock. The last truly cataclysmic eruption at Yellowstone was approximately 640,000 years ago.
So, we're due, right?
The projections for the effects of another Yellowstone mega-eruption are awe-inspiring. The ash fall, alone, will cover a majority of the continental United States in a layer of pulverized rock thick enough to collapse structures. Actually, it won't be "ash" as in wood ash. It will be microscopic bits of volcanic glass, which will lacerate lungs and kill..., unless you are protected by, get this, an N-95 mask.
A volcanic mega-eruption, anywhere on the globe, will truly alter the climate. No tax in the world will fix it.
Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis caused by earthquakes -- our planet constantly challenges life's foothold. The terrestrial threat is great -- the extra-terrestrial threat even greater.
Chunks of rock and ice zipping around our solar system have a habit of running into things -- like each other, planets, moons, and our star. Over the last few decades we have become painfully aware of the threat. The Colonel won't belabor it.
The Colonel will, however, bring to your attention an even more likely extraterrestrial threat to humanity -- and it comes from our star.
From casual daily and seasonal observation, ol' Sol seems a constant. Our sun is in fact a changeable and tempestuous star. That it provides a predictable supply of light and warmth allows us the dangerous luxury of ignoring it's life-altering capabilities.
The Colonel refers to what he believes is one of the single greatest threats to humanity's existence on this wet rock -- a coronal mass ejection (CME) from our sun.
A CME is solar burp of magnetized plasma. CMEs occur quite regularly -- three to five times a day, depending on the 11-year cycle of solar activity -- and vary greatly in intensity. Really large CMEs -- fired off in our direction (or rather in the direction of where our planet will be when the CME arrives at our orbital distance from the sun) have very intense effects on our planet's magnetosphere and atmosphere. When a very large CME's slug of matter and electromagnetic radiation strikes smashes into our magnetosphere, it compresses it, wraps around the planet, and snaps back in a burst of terawatts of electromagnetic energy -- creating a planet-wide electromagnetic pulse (EMP). If the EMP is strong enough, it pulses through anything that conducts electricity and fries electronic equipment.
The largest EMP-causing CME on record occurred in 1859; named the "Carrington Event" after the British astronomer, Richard Carrington, who observed the immense solar flare and recorded its effects. And, the effects were incredible. The only "electronic" equipment at the time were telegraphs. During the hours-long impact, the Carrington Event CME/EMP surged through telegraph wires, shocking operators and igniting the wooden blocks on which telegraph terminals were mounted.
When a Carrington Event level CME occurs again (and it will) the EMP will render inoperable every un-shielded piece of electronic equipment, and equipment with electronic components, on the planet -- every car, every radio, every battery-operated watch, every TV, every aircraft (outside of gliders), every computer, every cell-phone, every ICU ventilator, every Keurig coffee machine, every... you get the picture.
Even if some piece of equipment happened to miraculously survive the EMP because it was shielded or wasn't plugged in, it still would be useless -- there will be no surviving electric grid available to power it.
A 2008 study, "Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts: A Workshop Report, National Academy of Sciences, 2008," predicted that a Carrington Event level CME/EMP will cause "$2 trillion in damages with a recovery time of four to ten years."
Oh, and scientists tell us that Carrington Event level CME occur roughly every 100 years.
Enjoy the rest of your fine day... waiting for the other shoe to drop.
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