Cannibalism Bites: Speaking at the Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning Symposium in Singapore

I was invited to Singapore March, 2007 to speak at their International Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) symposium. While people with varied interests and expertise were invited (including such folks as John Petersen of the Arlington Institute, Admiral John Poindexter and James Surowiecki, author of "The Wisdom of Crowds") one of the recurring themes involved systems which assist humans in considering future scenarios.

Scenario folks scare me.

Let me give you an example: the evening before my speech I was invited to a dinner function. Over dinner Petersen explained to me that one future scenario involves the super-volcano that lives under Yellowstone Park. Apparently, this volcano goes off like clockwork every 600,000 years, well … except, it is already 100,000 years overdue! This sucker is so big, that when it goes off the world may go dark for a couple years. Another person at the table chimes in and says … "We are thinking humans will have to resort to cannibalism." I’m thinking "Excuse me … I’m trying to eat dinner here!"

Then during another presentation it was mentioned that one scenario team predicted that in the year 2012 Earth will see an unscheduled 10 kiloton nuclear weapon discharged. That is five years from now. Oh goodie.

With all this in mind, when I spoke at the conference I opened with: "Scenario folks scare me." Then I proceeded to talk about another aspect of horizon scanning. As Singapore has one of the largest shipping container ports in the world, I wanted to talk about the 23 million containers a year that emerge over their horizon. More specifically, selecting which ones they should be focusing their attention on as there is neither enough resources nor time to inspect all containers!

So, while there was much talk about predicting future scenarios such as health epidemics like SARS (which caught Singapore completely off-guard and caused an enormous toll on their economy) … I wanted to talk about pointing laser beams at containers. With laser beams in mind, I rendered a new PowerPoint chart I titled "Targeting Austin Powers." Then, last minute, I decided not to show it because after a short survey it turns out more than half the audience had never seen this Austin Powers movies.

Oh. And get this … a couple days ago I was reading a science magazine which indicated that physicists think they will finally be able to create their own black hole in 2008. How? The CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland will be operating at full power next year. I’m no math guy, but can this be a good thing? 

Comments

[Mike Hodges]

Jeff,
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[Sarbojit]

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