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Apocalypse Early Warning System

ews.kylemcdonald.net

91–100 of 137 posts

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#91
post #88
post #87

> we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. I would bet on the exact opposite. Unless you're within a few hundred meters of ground zero you're better off seeking shelter than trying to run, and if you are running you only want to go those few hundred meters and then take shelter. The local airport where your plane presumably is would be far…

I think this is meant to detect insider knowledge of imminent risk of a nuclear attack. It's not meant to detect if nukes are already inbound.

That, or any other potentially apocalyptic event

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#93

By definition it's a bit of a lagging indicator, unless we assume that all these folks have better access to inside information than the rest of us. Given that I was well aware of, for example, the likelihood of a Covid pandemic well before a bunch of rich people flew to New Zealand, it seems likely that CNN is gonna be a better gauge.

I think the point is exactly that some people do have better information for wars.

In COVID's case nobody knew how governments all over the world would react and how bad the situation would get (and rich people weren't particularly affected anyway) but for wars we do have regular insider trading happening because it's easy to know more or less exactly "there is going to be an attack".

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#94
post #87

> we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. I would bet on the exact opposite. Unless you're within a few hundred meters of ground zero you're better off seeking shelter than trying to run, and if you are running you only want to go those few hundred meters and then take shelter. The local airport where your plane presumably is would be far…

There’s also a non-zero chance that the pilot left without you.

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#96
post #3

Fun idea of a metric, but if I'm reading this correctly, we get roughly one apocalypse warning per year? > Level 5 is calibrated so only the highest daily peak in the trailing year should exceed it.

So, if you see a 5, you are probably fine. If it gets up to 6 or 7, maybe start worrying.

You don‘t get to worry much then because 5 is the max level

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#97
post #87

> we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. I would bet on the exact opposite. Unless you're within a few hundred meters of ground zero you're better off seeking shelter than trying to run, and if you are running you only want to go those few hundred meters and then take shelter. The local airport where your plane presumably is would be far…

Insiders.

Most rich people work in cities.

They will want to get to their hideaways quickly.

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can currently bet on Jesus returning before 2027, which means they would also have a hard time paying you, and 4% are betting on yes.

i have a hard time fathoming why anyone would bet yes. if they’re right isn’t their money irrelevant anyway?

One factor: There's a limit on shorting, due to discounting. Suppose you're 100% convinced that Jesus does not return by 2027, so you want to buy the "No" trading at 96 cents. But you only get your 1$ back in 2028, when the bet resolves. You're not going to pay more than 96 cents for that if you can instead put them in risk free treasuries for the same paltry return.

Thus, the 4% yes are not necessarily people actively pushing back against "No", but rather an artefact of discounting. To alleviate that (and make bets near the extremes track implied probabilities more closely), the cost of making a bet should not be the currently traded probability (plus a spread), but the currently traded probability times the discount factor to resolution time. (This gets tricky if resolution time is probabilistic, of course.)

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#99
post #72

Can you keep an eye on government planes that would be airborned if the SHTF? E-4Bs, E-6s, VC-25As, C-32A, etc plus mass helo flights exiting DC. Topic reminds me of the movie Miracle Mile.

As someone already mentioned, these are often tracked on Twitter. Just wanted to add: many of these Air Force and government planes use ADS-B so they're easy to follow. Seems to be more tankers and cargo that do. We were able to watch some of the movements to Venezuela and Iran in advance of hostilities. Other interesting things have popped up like US or British intel flights over the Black Sea.

This would be a great thing to add to the apocalypse tracker. Though I guess it might be a bit tricky. Would need to know the baseline of normal operations. And what would be more or less typical while conflicts, like the current one, are ongoing. Then figure out what would be a sufficient deviance from that for alarm thresholds.

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#100
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a good chance a nuclear apocalypse is imminent. Or that an excavator took out some fiber.

For network engineers is there really any difference between an excavator taking out your network and an actual apocalypse?

I run to my fallout shelter every time Google fails to load.
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