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The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe , he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness. Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us. The Next Catastrophe is a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready?
- GenresNonfiction
392 pages, Hardcover
First published March 26, 2007
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139 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 13, 2021
[I wrote this review on April 12, 2011, and uploaded it to GoodReads on this 13th day of April 2021.]
Having previously been impressed by the author’s 1999 book, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (with a New Afterword and a Postscript on the Y2K Problem), which I used as one of the references for my graduate course on fault-tolerant computing, I approached this book with great anticipation. I was mildly disappointed, but still consider the book a valuable source of ideas and recommend it as required reading for engineering students and tech managers alike.
In his clearly written and well-received Normal Accidents, Perrow had successfully argued that multiple and unexpected failures are built into our increasingly complex systems. Industrial accidents have been with us for more than two centuries. We must accept and live with them, as they can never be totally eliminated. The best we can do is to mitigate their impact, so that they do not lead to disasters. Nature’s fury is similarly unavoidable, but it need not lead to a disaster in every instance. Ironically, we have spent a great deal of money and effort on the third, and the least important of the trio in the book’s title, that is, the terrorism threat.
Economy of scale has led to monstrous buildings and industrial facilities, bigger trucks, rail cars, and ships to carry flammables, and larger storage facilities for hazardous material, intensifying the effects of both natural and industrial hazards, and giving terrorists ever larger targets to attack. Larger targets are more difficult to defend and lead to greater fatalities and economic losses when attacked or impacted by various accidents. Perrow advocates “target reduction” as an effective countermeasure in all three areas.
Decentralization is the key to reducing fatalities and economic impacts of all disasters, yet we have tended to do just the opposite: we have increased population densities in flood-prone regions, often by building over wetlands and other natural buffers that mitigate the impact of floods; we have encouraged, and often even subsidized via low-cost insurance, home construction in coastal regions; we have repeatedly rewarded risky behavior by bailing out people and communities who have made unwise decisions that have jeopardized their own well-being, as well as those of others. A community that erects higher and higher levees, in order to gain more land for development near a river, endangers not just itself, but also other communities downstream, who will experience the river’s surge as a result of the excess water having nowhere to go but up.
We have spent lavishly on an exaggerated view of the terrorist threat that does not even come close to the severity of the other two dangers: disasters arising from organizational inadequacies and nature’s ire. Failure to understand and correct these inverted priorities will doom FEMA’s efforts and those of the Department of Homeland Security. Policies advocated in this book constitute good initial steps for putting our priorities in order.
Having previously been impressed by the author’s 1999 book, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (with a New Afterword and a Postscript on the Y2K Problem), which I used as one of the references for my graduate course on fault-tolerant computing, I approached this book with great anticipation. I was mildly disappointed, but still consider the book a valuable source of ideas and recommend it as required reading for engineering students and tech managers alike.
In his clearly written and well-received Normal Accidents, Perrow had successfully argued that multiple and unexpected failures are built into our increasingly complex systems. Industrial accidents have been with us for more than two centuries. We must accept and live with them, as they can never be totally eliminated. The best we can do is to mitigate their impact, so that they do not lead to disasters. Nature’s fury is similarly unavoidable, but it need not lead to a disaster in every instance. Ironically, we have spent a great deal of money and effort on the third, and the least important of the trio in the book’s title, that is, the terrorism threat.
Economy of scale has led to monstrous buildings and industrial facilities, bigger trucks, rail cars, and ships to carry flammables, and larger storage facilities for hazardous material, intensifying the effects of both natural and industrial hazards, and giving terrorists ever larger targets to attack. Larger targets are more difficult to defend and lead to greater fatalities and economic losses when attacked or impacted by various accidents. Perrow advocates “target reduction” as an effective countermeasure in all three areas.
Decentralization is the key to reducing fatalities and economic impacts of all disasters, yet we have tended to do just the opposite: we have increased population densities in flood-prone regions, often by building over wetlands and other natural buffers that mitigate the impact of floods; we have encouraged, and often even subsidized via low-cost insurance, home construction in coastal regions; we have repeatedly rewarded risky behavior by bailing out people and communities who have made unwise decisions that have jeopardized their own well-being, as well as those of others. A community that erects higher and higher levees, in order to gain more land for development near a river, endangers not just itself, but also other communities downstream, who will experience the river’s surge as a result of the excess water having nowhere to go but up.
We have spent lavishly on an exaggerated view of the terrorist threat that does not even come close to the severity of the other two dangers: disasters arising from organizational inadequacies and nature’s ire. Failure to understand and correct these inverted priorities will doom FEMA’s efforts and those of the Department of Homeland Security. Policies advocated in this book constitute good initial steps for putting our priorities in order.
May 24, 2022
While his idea about concentrations of population and valuable assets leading to increased vulnerabilities is correct, Perrow is almost naively idealistic in his thinking that there are realistic ways to address the problem in the United States (or elsewhere for that matter). He recognized the problem, but did not put forth workable solutions to deal with it. Moreover, the book is repetitive and long-winded. It lacks the novel insight of his masterpiece, Normal Accidents.
October 3, 2013
Charles Perrow has long been a leading thinker about accidents and disasters, what causes them and how people respond to them.
This book has many key insights on these issues. One of the most important is: "Disaster is an opportunity." There are, so to speak, profits of doom.
Unfortunately, the publisher did not serve Perrow and his readers well. The volume needed copy editing: The text seems dense and sometimes redundant. And there are too many distracting typos.
Nevertheless, what Perrow has to say is worth digging into.
This book has many key insights on these issues. One of the most important is: "Disaster is an opportunity." There are, so to speak, profits of doom.
Unfortunately, the publisher did not serve Perrow and his readers well. The volume needed copy editing: The text seems dense and sometimes redundant. And there are too many distracting typos.
Nevertheless, what Perrow has to say is worth digging into.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews