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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grave Diggers as Critical Infrastructure, February 16, 2006
This review is from: Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (Hardcover)
Great book for emergency planners. A professor who teaches disaster management once said, "think big, really big". He is right. This book explores the realm of low-probability, high consequence events and realistic planning for them or the futility of planning. Lee Clark talks about critical infrastructure, how it relates to the social fabric of society and once a disaster strikes, critical infrastructure changes, hence, grave diggers, may be very important in the recovery phase. This book is a must in every emergency planners professional library.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Sky could be falling!, May 11, 2008
This review is from: Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (Hardcover)
Traditional risk managers have used probabilistic methods when determining which potential disasters to prepare for.
Professor Clarke points out many of those assessing the probabilities have vested interests that 'shrink the ruler' when measuring the likelihood of a particular disaster occurring. They tend to discount the 'irrational' attitudes of the public who often evaluate risks according to 'possiblistic thinking. The Cassandra's are often being proved right these days.
Professor Clarke also points out the value of thinking about the worst cases in a sensible way to improve disaster planning.
Finally his argument for empowering "first responders" during 'worst cases' is compelling. By first responders he means the person next to you in a building on fire, in your business, the teacher in your school, etc. The Police, Fire, Ambulance, Military are"official responders" and they are simply not there in the beginning.
Don't treat the public like mushrooms. Tell them the truth. They will not panic. Given information that the people trust the majority of people will respond rationally in a crisis.
A lot of the views that Clarke put forth are shared by the following Authors:
Looks at improving infrastructure to deal with worst cases.
The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation
The concept of "Intelligence Minutemen" Thomas Jefferson's quote "A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry" sums up Steele's philosophy.
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
We don't need to give up moral values to combat terrorists. People want to help. They need to be informed not frightened and manipulated.
Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Be Afraid, be very afraid...., July 3, 2006
This review is from: Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (Hardcover)
Worst Cases pulls readers in two directions. First, it encourages us to embrace worst cases. Hard thinking about worst cases, we are told, opens new possibilties. Envisioning worst case scenarios may allow us to reduce the probability of their emergence, reduce the time to recovery or both. It is the thesis of this book that, even in th is very nervous world, insufficient thought is being given to the possibility of worst cases. Second, in the other direction, this is a book that convinces you that no how matter bad you thought things could get, they can get a lot worse. Professor Clarke does this in two ways. First, he revisits every notable modern historical disaster, sans Katrina. The familiar are all here: the Titanic, 9/11, the San Francisco earthquake and others. Also present are historical catastrophes that have been eclipsed by more recent events, like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. Second, and this is key, it is not the past but the future that adds to the anxiety. My particular favorite, of which I would otherwise have been blissfully ignorant (thank you Professor Clarke) is the near earth object (asteroids, meteors, and the like). NEOs, Clarke tells us, are tracked by NASA. No easy task since there are hundreds of them! A recent example: XF11, a mile in diamter, it would have released the equivalent of a million megatons of of energy (think nuclear). XF11 drifted safely by ( in the late 90s), but there are more pleny more where it came from; indeed, as Clarke warns, "it may only be a matter of time."
Ultimately, Clarke wants us to think less about probabilities, than possibilities. The former, he claims, misleads us into under-stating worst case possibilities. This argument falls a bit short. Even Clarke has to defer to probabilities when confronting the possibility that the lab at Bookhaven could create black holes. In such cases, he says, we have to use "possibilities" in a sensible way. This strikes me as simply another way of saying that not all possibilities merit attention, but such conclusions are made possible only by the very probabalistic reasoning against which he cautions. That aside, this book deserves the wide readership it is likely to attract because, truth is, we really do need to take seriously our vulnerability to the untoward.
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