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I think theres a valid argument to made for spending effort to maintain some degree of decentralisation. That is, enough individual resilience adds up to a degr

by zxcmx 9y ago

I think theres a valid argument to made for spending effort to maintain some degree of decentralisation. That is, enough individual resilience adds up to a degree of collective resilience. I suppose I have been fortunate enough to have never seen people respond to a crisis in the ways outlined in the article though. My experience has been people pulling together and working collectively to help each other. Centralised organisation is powerful but easily overwhelmed. Decentralised response can solve a lot of smaller problems at at once.

emn13 9y ago
In some really abstract way: that makes sense! But the problems of a widespread long term power outage sound like something a centralized preparation could cope with at least as effectively, if not more so; partially because it can simply be prevented appropriate preparations, and partially because even when a blackout cannot be prevented you almost certainly can ensure that recovery is relatively trivial (as compared to "rebuild transformers"). Both mitigation strategies simply aren't available to hyper-local prepper style preparations. Not to mention the fact that the population (even in the low-density US of A) is probably much higher than a prepper-tech based society can ever hope to sustain. I.e: mass prepping would likely replace famine and other catastrophes with immediate civil war, followed by famine and other catastrophes. In abstract: Decentralization offers a remedy because it is distributed; however, the best way to make a system (more) distributed may still be via a coordinated (i.e. centralized) approach.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  The optimum lies all along that spectrum I think. So combined global/centralized, localized/coordinated and individual/decentralized preparedness would give you the highest level of resilience. Defense in depth, if you will. It's also the highest effort/cost, of course. I was thinking when the parent poster hinted at that - You see that broad-spectrum approach advocated and implemented by disaster preparedness agencies - A central coordination capability coupled with regional direct response capabilities, and strong appeals from them to citizens for individual/family-level preparedness.
  - emn13 9y ago
    That's sane sounding. But given how poor people are at dealing with low-probability, high-impact risks, the more individual levels of risk probably should have some formal guidance and/or legal requirements imposed by the the layers higher up.
bensonn 9y ago
Good point, reminds me of the Red strategy of the Millineum Challenge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

by zxcmx 9y ago

emn13 9y ago

In some really abstract way: that makes sense! But the problems of a widespread long term power outage sound like something a centralized preparation could cope with at least as effectively, if not more so; partially because it can simply be prevented appropriate preparations, and partially because even when a blackout cannot be prevented you almost certainly can ensure that recovery is relatively trivial (as compared to "rebuild transformers"). Both mitigation strategies simply aren't available to hyper-local prepper style preparations. Not to mention the fact that the population (even in the low-density US of A) is probably much higher than a prepper-tech based society can ever hope to sustain. I.e: mass prepping would likely replace famine and other catastrophes with immediate civil war, followed by famine and other catastrophes. In abstract: Decentralization offers a remedy because it is distributed; however, the best way to make a system (more) distributed may still be via a coordinated (i.e. centralized) approach.

FooHentai 9y ago
The optimum lies all along that spectrum I think. So combined global/centralized, localized/coordinated and individual/decentralized preparedness would give you the highest level of resilience. Defense in depth, if you will. It's also the highest effort/cost, of course. I was thinking when the parent poster hinted at that - You see that broad-spectrum approach advocated and implemented by disaster preparedness agencies - A central coordination capability coupled with regional direct response capabilities, and strong appeals from them to citizens for individual/family-level preparedness.
- emn13 9y ago
  That's sane sounding. But given how poor people are at dealing with low-probability, high-impact risks, the more individual levels of risk probably should have some formal guidance and/or legal requirements imposed by the the layers higher up.

bensonn 9y ago

Good point, reminds me of the Red strategy of the Millineum Challenge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002