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Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination
Al Qaeda detonates a nuclear weapon in Times Square during rush hour, wiping out half of Manhattan and killing 500,000 people. A virulent strain of bird flu jumps to humans in Thailand, sweeps across Asia, and claims more than fifty million lives. A single freight car of chlorine derails on the outskirts of Los Angeles, spilling its contents and killing seven million. An asteroid ten kilometers wide slams into the Atlantic Ocean, unleashing a tsunami that renders life on the planet as we know it extinct.
442 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 31, 2018
In most respects, this is an excellent book -- it's just densely written for lay readers, which is my only criticism.
As Lee Clarke writes in the Preface, although this is a book full of disaster stories (and it definitely is), is really is a book about imagination. Specifically, people plan for the most probable disasters, and therefore too narrowly plan for possible risks that they should recognize might also occur if only they thought about risk more broadly. This is the reason tabletop exercises SHOULD pile catastrophe upon catastrophe. It's relatively easy to plan for the most reasonably foreseeable risks (although in my work I see people fail to do even that much all the time). The big challenge is getting people to exercise their risk management muscle hard enough, through more complex but still possible scenarios, to become strong and flexible. Lee Clarke addresses this latter challenge very effectively.
As a professional who deals with risk and safety in public places, I found Worst Cases to be thoughtful and challenging. But I'm going to remove it from my "Risk Management in Venues" course syllabus in favor of distilling its key points in other ways for my law students. If I were teaching a course on the sociology of disaster (which I think would make for a great course), this would be top of my list.
As Lee Clarke writes in the Preface, although this is a book full of disaster stories (and it definitely is), is really is a book about imagination. Specifically, people plan for the most probable disasters, and therefore too narrowly plan for possible risks that they should recognize might also occur if only they thought about risk more broadly. This is the reason tabletop exercises SHOULD pile catastrophe upon catastrophe. It's relatively easy to plan for the most reasonably foreseeable risks (although in my work I see people fail to do even that much all the time). The big challenge is getting people to exercise their risk management muscle hard enough, through more complex but still possible scenarios, to become strong and flexible. Lee Clarke addresses this latter challenge very effectively.
As a professional who deals with risk and safety in public places, I found Worst Cases to be thoughtful and challenging. But I'm going to remove it from my "Risk Management in Venues" course syllabus in favor of distilling its key points in other ways for my law students. If I were teaching a course on the sociology of disaster (which I think would make for a great course), this would be top of my list.
October 24, 2024
I was intrigued by the ideas I expected to be discussed in this book. I think the concept presented had the potential to be much more than it ended up being if the author had adjusted his framework and the lens in which he was approaching the topic.
The book could have benefitted from a broader range of case studies from different sectors (healthcare, finance, etc.) or regions of the world, which would have provided a more diverse perspective on how different organizations and cultures approach worst-case thinking. As it stands, it was very Western-centric, and in being so, neglected to acknowledge how regular some of these worst-case scenarios are in the Global South.
I also had an issue with the incompleteness of Clarke's discussion about accountability. He talks about the need for holding organizations accountable for their preparedness, but he doesn’t fully explore how accountability could be enforced in practice. Governments and large institutions often avoid accountability after disasters by shifting blame or claiming that the event was unforeseeable. I think a deeper discussion of what accountability mechanisms should look like felt like a necessary component that was missing.
I found some gaping holes in the realm of impact of worst-case scenarios. Failing to acknowledge how impact can look different depending on the community impacted automatically means that discussion of what preparedness should look like will be lacking. Worst-case scenarios often disproportionately affect marginalized racial and ethnic groups due to systemic inequalities. Hurricane Katrina disproportionately impacted Black communities in New Orleans. When Clarke discusses climate disasters (or any disasters, frankly) he doesn’t seem to explicitly engage with these disparities, which is problematic in establishing a preparedness framework.
Another major issue I had was in the imagination of worst-case scenarios. The way society/ies imagine worst-case scenarios is often riddled with racial bias. Historically, racial and ethnic minorities, have been seen as "threats" in worst-case scenarios (e.g., people exhibiting indiscriminate fear of all Muslims post-9/11 ). Clarke discusses the role of imagination in shaping worst-case thinking, but he doesn't acknowledge how racial and cultural biases can distort this imagination.
Lastly, I think the final missing piece here that Clarke did not address is the massive amount of human agency in creating worst-case scenarios. Events like 9/11, for example, didn't happen in isolation or out of thin air. Many of the disasters that occur in our world result from complex, often deeply flawed, policies or actions, particularly when it comes to international relations, environmental decisions, or social inequalities. Just look at the amount of harm that has been done globally due to foreign policy blunders, military interference, and economic exploitation. All that is preventable.
By focusing primarily on how to prepare for worst cases after they are already in motion, Clarke’s framework completely misses what I'd argue is the most crucial first step: identifying and addressing the root causes that make those scenarios more likely to happen in the first place. Preparedness alone is purely a reactive approach (which he does say is not ideal), but an emphasis on preventing disasters through thoughtful policy and decision-making as opposed to only on disaster management, would have made this framework much more effective.
The book could have benefitted from a broader range of case studies from different sectors (healthcare, finance, etc.) or regions of the world, which would have provided a more diverse perspective on how different organizations and cultures approach worst-case thinking. As it stands, it was very Western-centric, and in being so, neglected to acknowledge how regular some of these worst-case scenarios are in the Global South.
I also had an issue with the incompleteness of Clarke's discussion about accountability. He talks about the need for holding organizations accountable for their preparedness, but he doesn’t fully explore how accountability could be enforced in practice. Governments and large institutions often avoid accountability after disasters by shifting blame or claiming that the event was unforeseeable. I think a deeper discussion of what accountability mechanisms should look like felt like a necessary component that was missing.
I found some gaping holes in the realm of impact of worst-case scenarios. Failing to acknowledge how impact can look different depending on the community impacted automatically means that discussion of what preparedness should look like will be lacking. Worst-case scenarios often disproportionately affect marginalized racial and ethnic groups due to systemic inequalities. Hurricane Katrina disproportionately impacted Black communities in New Orleans. When Clarke discusses climate disasters (or any disasters, frankly) he doesn’t seem to explicitly engage with these disparities, which is problematic in establishing a preparedness framework.
Another major issue I had was in the imagination of worst-case scenarios. The way society/ies imagine worst-case scenarios is often riddled with racial bias. Historically, racial and ethnic minorities, have been seen as "threats" in worst-case scenarios (e.g., people exhibiting indiscriminate fear of all Muslims post-9/11 ). Clarke discusses the role of imagination in shaping worst-case thinking, but he doesn't acknowledge how racial and cultural biases can distort this imagination.
Lastly, I think the final missing piece here that Clarke did not address is the massive amount of human agency in creating worst-case scenarios. Events like 9/11, for example, didn't happen in isolation or out of thin air. Many of the disasters that occur in our world result from complex, often deeply flawed, policies or actions, particularly when it comes to international relations, environmental decisions, or social inequalities. Just look at the amount of harm that has been done globally due to foreign policy blunders, military interference, and economic exploitation. All that is preventable.
By focusing primarily on how to prepare for worst cases after they are already in motion, Clarke’s framework completely misses what I'd argue is the most crucial first step: identifying and addressing the root causes that make those scenarios more likely to happen in the first place. Preparedness alone is purely a reactive approach (which he does say is not ideal), but an emphasis on preventing disasters through thoughtful policy and decision-making as opposed to only on disaster management, would have made this framework much more effective.
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December 20, 2020Just looked at
February 12, 2025
This was the first monthly free ebook I downloaded from University of Chicago Press and it wasn't great. It was easier to read than I expected (yay!) but neither very rigorous or well-argued. I didn't think the author made many interesting points about how people perceive disaster. This was basically just a collection of disaster stories written in a pretty dry way.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews