An unofficial spokesman at the office of East Japan Railway Company in New York says that contrary to press reports, no bullet trains have been lost, although service is still shut down. The original stories apparently confused commuter-rail lines with bullet trains. He confirmed the tsunami swept away three, possibly four of the four-car commuter units, as I noted from looking at Google photos of the disaster, although casualties are unclear.
Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson has a long essay over at Pajamas Media treating at length the other subject I discussed in Tuesday’s post, namely “The Fragility of Complex Societies”:
Japan’s high density, central planning, mass transit, demographic uniformity, and a culture of mutual dependence allow millions to live humanely and successfully in quite crowded conditions (in areas of Tokyo at 6,000 persons and more per square kilometer). And compared to other Asian and African cities (Mumbai or Lagos) even Tokyo is relatively not so dense, though far more successful. Yet such urban societies are extremely vulnerable to the effects of earthquakes, tsunamis, “man-caused disasters” and other assorted catastrophes, analogous in nature perhaps to tightly knit bee colonies that have lost their queens.
I don’t know quite why many of our environmentalists and urban planners wish to emulate such patterns of settlement (OK, I do know), since for us in America it would be a matter of choice, rather than, as in a highly congested Japan, one of necessity.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Victor's thesis, at least as you quote here, is that more complex societies are more fragile? That's absurd on its face.
Look at the deaths associated with the Indonesian Tsunami and the deaths associated with the Japanese tsunami. Look at the earthquake/hurricane deaths in the US (or other developed countries) compared to similar ones that hit 3rd world countries. While direct comparisons can be difficult, it is very difficult to come away with the conclusion that the more modern (and therefore more complex) societies are less robust. Look through history, after the fall of the Roman Empire and into the dark ages. "Complex" cities were more likely to survive than people out in the hinterlands.
Usually, what we find is that with complexity comes in-built damage control, rerouting and other safeguards. The Internet is unbelievably complex, but also resilient for this complexity. Markets are incomprehensible, but they still do a better job at dealing with resource utilization than "simpler" systems run by command and control.
It is easy to lose perspective when you live in a modern, complex society, and know-it-alls like us often see other people doing things "wrong" and decide that we could do it better. And so, when we see complex systems where lots of redundancies and decision points exist, we often think a simpler system would be so much better. Almost always, it is not.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think that it is obvious that modern societies are much more robust, but the consequences of a disaster are much larger, even though they are less likely. In simpler societies local problems are more likely to stay local; in modern societies we all succeed or fail together.
To find the risk, you need to multiply probability * consequence, you can't just focus on one or the other. A fifty percent chance of killing two people is like a million to one chance of killing a million. Complex societies are like the second one, and simpler societies like the first one.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy are the consequences of a disaster much larger in complex societies (even if they are rarer)? I see no evidence of this.
Take that 9.0 Earthquake and put it in Istanbul or Rio de Janeiro and I guarantee you'll be talking about hundreds of thousands dieing, not the tens of thousands tragically lost in Japan.
A Cat-5 Hurricane hit one of the most populated and most complex cities on the Gulf (New Orleans) and the total death toll was less than 2,000 people.
And these are just the initial deaths. Go to the Tsunami aftermath in Indonesia and you see that many deaths happened afterwards, where "simple" infrastructure was completely inadequate to get relief to the stricken people. Rather, it was the highly complex US Navy and the highly sophisticated networks of modern rescue organizations that finally delivered support.
Reading over the quotes again, I think both authors are mistakenly condemning complexity when they really have a beef with Urban Density. While urban centers are certainly more complex than rural ones, there are many urban centers that are more complex than others- even though the densities are about the same. And I guarantee you that a disaster befalling two similar urban centers will always impact the less complex one worse.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCan we at least agree that signficant earthquake faults and nuclear power plants are a bad mix?
Which leads me to wonder why there's a nuclear plant at San Onofre ... tho I see the questions are starting to be asked. Better late than never.
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