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An article on page 11 of the Wed 21 May New York Times raises an issue I haven't quite seen raised here before. It's only partly related to automation, but that relation is a threatening one. The article is titled ``Consequences Weighed of Meteorite Explosion'' and reports on the semi-annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Baltimore. The article is by Walter Sullivan and is too well-written to condense satisfactorily, but I'll try: ::::: Meteoric explosions on the scale of the 1908 event in Siberia (12 Megatons) are expected about once per century, and somewhat smaller (but still in the range of nuclear explosions) events should happen more frequently. Although the US, USSR and Europe could ``probably'' detect that the explosion was non-nuclear, and thus avoid an inappropriate reaction, this would be less true in, say, the Middle (Near) East or India & Pakistan. ``Also, [specialists] said, the response of highly automated systems, such as the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, could not be predicted.'' Even without a military response, the after-effects could be devastating: filling the atmosphere with sun-blocking particles and curbing food production. Currently, there is roughly a 70-day supply of food on hand in the world [which surprises me — LW] but a very large meteor could reduce sunlight for two years. Further, the most energetic explosions will come from those meteors travelling the fastest (and sometimes coming from outside the solar system), and thus the most difficult to predict. ``The discussion took place at a session on natural hazards ... Presiding was Dr. Joseph V. Smith of the University of Chicago, who has been calling for an Internation Decade for Hazard Reduction that would begin in 1990. That effort would be aimed at reducing loss of life, particularly from catastrophes that are on a very large scale but sufficiently rare to have been largely ignored. The plan was first suggested in 1984 by Dr. Frank Press, now president of the National Academy of Sciences.'' ``Dr. Smith .... also urged the initiation of an International Decade on Stockpiling for Survival, including development of new techniques for effective, economical storage of ... foods'' Various methods of dealing with a meteor were mentioned, including nuking it and firmly pushing it aside. The main problem is being prepared and being able to reach the meteor in time. ::::: Hope this hasn't gone too far afield from the focus of this mailing list... Larry West USA+619-452-6771 Institute for Cognitive Science non-business hrs: 452-2256 UC San Diego (mailcode C-015) La Jolla, CA 92093 USA ARPA: <west@nprdc.ARPA> or <west@ucsd.ARPA> DOMAIN: <west@nprdc.mil> or <west@csl.ucsd.edu>
Larry West wonders whether his Meteorite contribution has strayed too far
afield for RISKS. I think not. One of the biggest risks of using computers
in critical environments is that we tend to trust them blindly — even if
the models on which the systems are based are incomplete. In connection
with an article on the 46 US Senators who are seeking to cut back the SDI
budget, Senator William Proxmire is quoted in the Washington Post of Friday
23 May 1986:
"Challenger and Chernobyl have stripped some
of the mystique away from technology."
Some of the blind trust naively placed in technology may lessen for a while
after such incidents as the Challenger (together with the other recent NASA
difficulties) and Chernobyl. But it always seems to return fairly rapidly,
and the lessons are quickly forgotten — by those who use, depend upon,
operate, administer, and regulate the technology. Anticipating the events
that might follow the appearance of such a giant meteorite is vital [to
avoid administering last Meteor-Rites?]. (This possibility recalls the old
case of BMEWS at Thule "recognizing" the moon as an incoming missile.)
As another example of blind trust, the WashPost of Sat 24 May had an article
reassessing the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant emergency shutdown last
June. "[E]xperts say, Davis-Besse came as close to a meltdown as any U.S.
nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident of 1979. Faced with a
loss of water to cool the reactor and the improbable breakdown of FOURTEEN
separate components, operators performed a rescue mission noted both for
skill and human foible: They pushed wrong buttons, leaped down steep
stairs, wended their way through a maze of locked chambers and finally saved
the day last June 9 by muscling free the valves and plugging fuses into a
small, manually operated pump not designed for emergency use." [Emphasis on
FOURTEEN is PGN's.] The article goes on to describe prior power-company
foot dragging and bureaucratic wrangling, despite the lack of a backup pump
having been identified as an intolerable risk long beforehand.
The WashPost of Thursday, 22 May 1986 shed a little more light on what
happened at Chernobyl. (In case you could not guess, I was in DC for the
week.) Could an experiment have gone awry? Human error and/or system error?
The Soviet Union was conducting experiments to check systems at
Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor when a sudden surge of power touched off
the explosion last month, a Soviet official said ... Soviet officials have
said that the explosion happened when heat output of the reactor suddenly
went from 6 or 7 percent to 50 percent of the plant's capacity in 10
seconds. The power had been reduced for a prolonged period in preparation
for a routine shutdown... "We planned to hold some experiments, research
work, when the reactor was on this level," Sidorenko [deputy chairman of
the State Committee for Nuclear Safety] said today [21 May]. "The
accident took place at the stage of experimental research work."
Peter G. Neumann
The other day I saw a headline that said the London Stock Exchange had been disrupted by a system crash. There were no more details. Does anybody know anything more?? Lindsay F. Marshall, Computing Lab., U of Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, UK ARPA : lindsay%cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa JANET : lindsay@uk.ac.newcastle.cheviot UUCP : <UK>!ukc!cheviot!lindsay
What is needed here is a service that will automatically come
into your computer at 4 a.m., or whenever, look around inside your hard
disk, make a record of the bytes that have changed since the previous
night's checkup, and download those to some off-site storage device.
Such a system would have the double advantage of being totally automatic
and of storing backups off-site, safe from the effects of user stupidity,
which is a much better reason for off-site backups than fire or burglary.
People worried about security can have the system encrypt everything
before the service is allowed in.
[The Get-Rite Backup Company provides an off-the-shelf program that you
might want to try. Unfortunately, they were the lowest bidder, and
took a lot of shortcuts — the most important of which is that nothing
is ever actually saved. Of course this never bothers you unless you need
to retrieve something. Unfortunately, the program was sabotaged by
Get-Rite's competitor, Trojan-Horses-for-Stud (to whom "backup" has an
entirely different meaning). They lived up to their name, and managed
to install a Trojan Horse that, upon first request by you to retrieve a
file, simply deletes ALL of your on-line files and then disappears into
the woodwork. I hear that they will also take large bribes if you want to
wipe out other users' files on demand. PGN]
Re: Management monitoring of backups.
I have a feeling that in educational institutions where the choice is given
between hiring someone to do backups for people and "forcing" people to do
the backups themselves, hiring someone (undergrad student) will get the nod.
Just a small thought.
bruce (zwbeo@vpfvm.bitnet)
[A THIRD choice usually wins: Do nothing at all until after
you get wiped out. PGN]
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