10/8/20
*The Real Risk*
The Battle of Stalingrad during World War II was the largest battle in history. With it came equally staggering stories of how people dealt with risk.
One came in late 1942, when a German tank unit sat in reserve on grasslands outside the city. When tanks were desperately needed on the front lines, something happened that surprised everyone: Almost none of
them worked.
Out of 104 tanks in the unit, fewer than 20 were operable. Engineers quickly found the reason for Tanks not working.
Historian William Craig writes: “During the weeks of inactivity behind the front lines, field mice had nested inside the vehicles and eaten away insulation covering the electrical systems.”
The Germans had the most sophisticated equipment in the world. Yet there they were, defeated by mice.
You can imagine their disbelief.
This almost certainly never crossed their minds.
What kind of tank designer thinks about mouse protection? Not a reasonable one. And not one who studied tank history.
But these kinds of things happen all the time. You can plan for every risk except the things that are too crazy to cross your mind. And those crazy things can do the most harm, because they happen more often than you
think and you have no plan for how to deal with them.Avoiding these kinds of unknown risks is, almost by definition, impossible.
You can’t prepare for what you can’t envision.
If there’s one way to guard against their damage, it’s avoiding single points of failure.
A good rule of thumb for a lot of things in life is that everything that can break will eventually break.
So if many things rely on one thing working, and that thing breaks, you are counting the days to catastrophe.
*That’s a single point of failure*.
Some people are remarkably good at avoiding single points of failure. Most critical systems on airplanes have backups, and the backups often have backups. Modern jets have four redundant electrical systems. You can fly
with one engine and technically land with none, as every jet must be capable of stopping on a runway with its brakes alone, without thrust reverse from its engines.
Suspension bridges can similarly lose many of their cables without falling.
In fact, *the most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan.*
( From the Book Iam currently reading, “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel )
This too shall pass,
The world had planned for every possible disaster; Man Made, natural, Nuclear, Alien attack etc etc. Even though books had been written and movies had been made on the Pandemic, nobody could ever envision that a Virus will bring the world to a halt and bring about such disruption and change.
Plan to avoid your Single point of failure, the Unknown Unknown and stay blessed forever.