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Musings Report 2021-23 6-5-21 What's Your Damage Control Plan (Plan C)?
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What's Your Damage Control Plan (Plan C)?
I asked What's Your Plan C? in Musings 40-2018 (October 2018), and now (post-pandemic, pre-financial crisis) is a good time to revisit the topic.
In Musings 40, I defined Plan B as our projected adaptations should significant changes occur in the fundamentals of our lives.
I defined Plan C as what few people even consider, which is our response to accelerating social, political and economic upheaval.
By way of example, Plan B might involve finding a new job or moving to another neighborhood. Plan C is abandoning the entire region and taking up a completely new livelihood and lifestyle.
In other words, Plan B is the range of alternatives that are within the basic structure of our existing life. Plan C is when continuing our existing life is no longer possible.
I want to put Plan C in the context of damage control and overlapping crises, a particular kind of worst-case scenario.
Overlapping, mutually reinforcing crises need little in the way of explanation: we intuitively understand that individuals and organizations that can manage one crisis at a time, or perhaps two, are overwhelmed by overlapping crises that reinforce each other.
Mutually reinforcing crises catalyze predictable, controllable linear dynamics into unpredictable, chaotic non-linear dynamics: once a threshold or level of control gives way, the entire system unravels.
Time is an important function of overlapping crises. Most of us have experienced an accident that is an immediate danger/shock that we react to more or less instinctively because it all happened too fast.
Our response can also be influenced by our training and preparation. But these may break down if another crisis hits us before we've dealt with the first one. If we lose situational awareness of what's swirling around us and lose our sense of control, then the resulting chaos makes it very difficult to regain control of the situation.
These overlapping challenges don't have to be sudden or extreme; they can accrete over time. For example, the first homeless encampment on your street is jarring but you habituate to it. Then random crimes increase, then your favorite cafe closes, then your income drops, and at some point you wonder, what am I doing here? I no longer feel safe. How is being here serving my goals?
Our responses to mutually reinforcing challenges are the consequence of assumptions and decisions made long before. Most people assume they'll never need damage control, as the stability and safety of their lives will never be seriously threatened. If the topic comes up, then they assume they already have the means to deal with any crisis successfully.
But these assumptions rest on loose sand. A life of security and safety doesn't prepare us to deal with novel threats and the assumption that we'll always win / manage any challenge successfully is equally untested.
The Battle of Midway, World War Two's decisive naval engagement in the Pacific Theater, offers a real-world example of these dynamics.
A combat example might not seem to be the best choice to illuminate overlapping crises in the civilian realm, but the value here is in tracing how our approach to damage control/Plan C ends up defining the outcome: assuming that anything that throws off Plan A will be handled by Plan B leaves us exceedingly vulnerable to making ill-prepared and potentially catastrophic decisions should multiple crises overlap. In other words, not having a Plan C greatly increases the odds of disastrous outcomes.
Until relatively recently, the narrative of the June 1942 naval battle was simple: U.S. Navy cryptographers had broken the Imperial Navy’s communication code, revealing the outline of Japan's Midway offensive to American commanders. In the chaotic fog of war, American dive bombers performed a "miracle at Midway," sinking all four of the Japanese aircraft carriers in a matter of minutes.
Recent scholarship revealed the Japanese backstory, and this shed a considerably more nuanced light on the pivotal battle. Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. (book)
In early 1942, Japan's Imperial Navy prepared for the invasion of the strategically critical Midway Island north of Hawaii with numerical and qualitative superiority. Its doctrines, tactics, leadership, crews, ships, aircraft and institutions had been tested in battle and emerged victorious. From the perspective of Imperial Navy leadership, every victory had provided more evidence of their superiority and offered little reason to focus on damage control.
Dissent within the Imperial military was frowned upon for cultural and political reasons, and so few voices raised concerns about the overly complicated order of battle the General Staff prepared to occupy Midway and destroy America's three remaining aircraft carriers.
Japanese doctrine and ship construction optimized offense with the goal being decisive battles that would defeat the enemy and end the war on favorable terms. This was the lesson drawn from Japan's naval victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, which featured a surprise attack on the homeported Russian fleet to launch the war and a decisive engagement, the Battle of Tsushima, that effectively ended the war on terms favorable to Japan.
Japan's plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor was to destroy most of the capital ships of the U.S. Pacific fleet in a decisive air attack, but the American aircraft carriers happened to be at sea and escaped destruction. The occupation of Midway was intended to draw the three American carriers into a defense of Midway and destroy them, forcing America to sue for peace on terms favorable to Japan, as the Russians had done in 1905.
Preparing for battle damage was viewed as defeatist and had therefore played a limited role in constructing Japans aircraft carriers and training its crews.
While the U.S. Navy was similarly hidebound in many ways, it had institutionalized damage control. The fuel lines used to refuel aircraft below decks were shielded, for example, and damage control crews were routinely drilled to take rapid, effective action to contain fires and flooding from enemy bombs, shells and torpedoes.
In terms of offensive doctrine, junior officers had greater leeway in the U.S. Navy to take whatever initiative was necessary to take the fight to the enemy.
From the Japanese leadership’s perspective, the Imperial Navy had an unbeatable system: the best equipment, training, leadership, esprit de corps and doctrines. Due to the structural weaknesses outlined above, the fatal flaws in its institutions and doctrines were invisible to the leadership. They would only become visible after the catastrophic loss of irreplaceable assets (Japan's aircraft carriers).
As a direct result of unrecognized doctrinal flaws, a five-minute American dive bomber attack led by junior officers left three of Japan's four main battle carriers aflame, lost along with the battle and the tide of war. (Japan's fourth carrier in the conflict was destroyed by another wave of U.S. dive bombers later in the day.)
Meanwhile, the American carrier Yorktown suffered three bomb hits but its damage control crews put out the fires and restored power, enabling the ship to resume operations. When a second Japanese attack struck the Yorktown late in the afternoon, its pilots reported hitting a second carrier because the Yorktown appeared undamaged; the first attack's pilots had reported the carrier was burning, and the Japanese presumed it had been fatally crippled.
The Yorktown's story reveals the importance of damage control.
The Yorktown had been heavily damaged in the May, 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea in the South Pacific, but rapid action by its damage control crews had limited the damage and the ship returned to Hawaii for repairs. 48 hours of hasty work in Pearl Harbor had managed to make the ship seaworthy enough to join the battle for Midway. (The repairs had been estimated to take 3 months.)
Multiple bomb hits within a matter of minutes manifested as overlapping, mutually reinforcing crises for both Japanese and American damage control teams. Lacking the equipment and doctrines required to quickly suppress fires and flooding, the Japanese carriers were soon engulfed by firestorms that left these irreplaceable assets burning hulks. The American crews, more self-directed and better equipped and trained for worst-case scenarios, managed to suppress the fires and resume operations, turning into the wind to land and launch afternoon air strikes against Japan's remaining capital ships.
The Yorktown's damage control story becomes even more remarkable, as the second Japanese air attack struck the Yorktown with two torpedoes that cut all power and caused a severe list that threatened to capsize the ship. The crew was evacuated but the damage control crew managed to limit the list and prepared the ship for towing to safety.
The Yorktown had absorbed three bombs and two torpedoes, but remained afloat and was under tow when a Japanese submarine launched four torpedoes, two of which hit the Yorktown, causing the ship to roll over and sink.
Many of the battle's critical events were influenced by happenstance and decisions made in rapidly shifting situations with the barest shreds of semi-reliable data, all blanketed by a thick fog of war. Even though U.S. Navy cryptographers had broken the Imperial Navy’s code, there was nothing pre-ordained about the outcome of the battle. Had luck favored the Japanese in sighting the American carriers earlier, the results could have been the crippling of the three American carriers and an overwhelming victory for the Imperial fleet.
That said, Japan's doctrinal weaknesses turned bad luck (being exposed to the American dive bombers without adequate fighter coverage and suffering multiple bomb hits) into disaster. If Japan's carriers had been built with equivalent damage control measures and the crews routinely trained in damage control, the bomb hits (a single bomb ended up destroying the flagship carrier) might not have led to the destruction of all four main battle fleet carriers.
What lessons can civilians draw from this? How we prepare for damage control and overlapping crises will define how successful we are should an unexpected series of crises unfold around us.
In civilian life, making more money is offense, slashing expenses and getting by on less is defense. Offense assumes victory goes to those who make more money, but the essential first step to victory is surviving the inevitable slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Planning to get by on 50% of your current income is being prepared to take some hits rather than assuming victory is assured.
Damage control is a useful way to look at preserving one's essential assets, and thinking through how to do so if the situation around us (our economy and society) deteriorates rapidly.
Consider how prepared we are to deal with crime. Crime is rising in many (and possibly most) metro area in the U.S., and most comfortable people in middle-class neighborhoods are unprepared to deal with crime. "It can't happen to me" is a common assumption.
The tumult of the 1960s led to fast-rising crime in the 1970s, and those of us who experienced that first-hand remember how sketchy American cities became. Wariness and situational awareness became essential skills.
The goal of damage control/Plan C is to avoid the assumptions and lack of planning that turn bad luck into a disaster from which there is no recovery.
Plan C can be viewed as a series of responses to each additional challenge. At some point triage becomes necessary, and some elements that were considered essential in Plan A and B are jettisoned to preserve the core assets: health, agency, and enough capital to preserve options/agency.
Plan C is a way of preparing to recognize thresholds that require bold departures from Plan A & B. At some point, both plans A & B are no longer viable, and the unprepared household will be tempted to indulge in wishful thinking rather than take the bold action required to save essential assets and retain control (agency) of options.
Chaos reveals the fragile nature of the social order. It's basically impossible to think clearly in chaotic circumstances where it's unclear what's in play and confusion reigns.
Having a Plan C that anticipates the possibility of multiple overlapping crises, chaotic uncertainty, incomplete information and the necessity for bold departures and drastic triage is "cheap insurance" because the planning doesn't cost any money but could make an absolutely consequential difference in the outcome. Having "trained" for such eventualities is the difference between bad luck and irredeemable losses.
Highlights of the Blog
A Couple Things About Inflation 6/4/21
(Not) Living Large on Social Security 6/2/21
Why the Minimum Wage Should Be $18/Hour 5/31/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Portuguese soup (Caldo Verde) made with our homegrown Portuguese cabbage and Portuguese sweet bread (plenty of eggs and milk).
From Left Field
Somber Truths Behind 'Bright Green Lies' (via John D.) -- review of an important new book...
The American infrastructure, ancient Rome and 'Limits to Growth'
How America Went From Mom-and-Pop Capitalism to Techno-Feudalism -- Ellen Brown, spot-on yet again...
San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge (NYT.com)
The ice cream owner who tried, failed – and now owes $200,000 -- a classic San Francisco story... how does this end? Badly--very badly....
Preconditions for a general-purpose central bank digital currency (federalreserve.gov)
Crypto Crackdown: Only the Beginning? -- see above...
Headed for a Collapsing Debt Bubble -- Gail T. in top form...
A World Without Work? Don't Hold Your Breath -- as I've been saying for years...
The Stanford geospatial network model of the Roman world (via Maoxian) -- fascinating analysis of the costs embedded in hundreds of ancient trade routes...
How a ranger stumbled upon one of the largest fossil finds in California history
In 1999, Prince Warned Us About the Internet and the Battle for the Soul (via GFB)
"Too much freedom can lead to the soul's decay." Prince
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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