These three are ill-matched, ill-suited, unwelcome partners: Putin in Russia, Assad in Syria, and Erdogan in Turkey.

It’s  sometimes suggested that in a good  marriage 1+1=3. In this case, however, 1+1+1= Disaster.

These three are no more, no less than dictators. What they are doing to their own countries and their own people represents no more than self-indulgence with no respect for others.

But their people (and we in the West) have allowed this.  So many are already paying the price. How many more will have to suffer before the West stops holding the lens to the sightless eye?

1. Don’t trust him.

2. Suspect all his motives.

3. Don’t rely on Russian supplies of gas/oil/anything.

4. Defend our friends who include the Ukraine and the Baltic States.

5. Ignore notional spheres of influence, including anywhere in Eastern Europe which no          longer forms part of the Russian Federation.

6. Remember Hitler in the 1930s.

It’s alright to offer a carrot but don’t let go of the stick.

Syria represents Russia’s presence in the Middle East. But does Russia really need Syria? I would argue: no more than China really needs North Korea. Their leaders  are like recalcitrant children (Kim, North Korea) or debauched desperadoes (Bashar, Syria).

You can see that the Chinese are embarrassed by young Kim but don’t quite know how far to go to rein him in. North Korea is clearly within Chinese sphere of influence, whereas the same cannot be said about Syria with Russia. Putin is a dangerous mixture of shrewdness and megalomania. What will he do if the West unites to destroy the Assad regime?

Follow Stephen Covey’s advice: start with the end in mind. What makes sense?

Assad must go; Syria must be reconstructed with, so far as possible, a neutral government which looks neither East nor West.

Let’s see the West and East both contribute financially with the ultimate objective of encouraging Syrian refugees to return home. Everyone will be a winner, Russia included.

Who cares about the civilian casualties in Syria? Clearly not Assad who wants to retain power; nor Russia, Syria’s long time ally;  nor Turkey, why?

Erdogan is power crazy and dangerous; nor Iran which finances Hezbollah.

Unthinkable why Obama and others have trusted the Iranians.

It is, unfortunately, true that it is much easier to stay aloof than get involved. But in the end we have to. Syria has an important place in the biblical/historical/architectural world. Syria has collapsed. Millions of generally innocent civilians have been displaced. They have become refugees.

And as refugees, they have inevitably disrupted communities, particularly throughout Western Europe. Do you imagine that the long term solution can be satisfactorily reached without resurrecting Syria and Syrian life?

The cost of that resurrection will include the displacement of the Assad regime and the determination to sideline Russian support for that evil regime. Obama wouldn’t have done it. Will Trump have the political will and skill to follow that goal?

Garry Kasparov was an outstanding world chess champion.  He is generally referred to as Russian but he was born in Baku in Azerbaijan.  This is important as he is now recognised as a political activist living in New York and readily expressing himself very negatively about Vladimir Putin.

In his book “Winter Is Coming” (for which the theme is why Putin and the enemies of the free world must be stopped), he writes comprehensively about the Gorbachev period including the following quote ‘It would have been foolish for Gorbachev to take military action in Hungary or Czechoslovakia when he had to worry about stability in the USSR.  When your own house is on fire you don’t send the firefighters to your neighbour’s house’.

In more mundane terms this speaks to me of the need to make sure that one’s own personal and business and financial arrangements are in good shape before experimenting with new ventures.  I have rather a lot of experience of ignoring some of this common sense advice.  Consequently I strongly recommend everyone to pay close attention to their priorities.  Please do not leave undone that which requires your urgent attention.

December 2016 was a good example.  At the beginning of the month we learned that our elder daughter, Emily, is pregnant.  Such excitement as Alessandra has long been longing for a grandchild (subsequently Emily and her partner, Luigi, have been told that she is having a girl – so far as Alessandra is concerned, so much the better).

The next ‘thing’ was Sibu’s & Andile’s wedding which was held in our front garden.  I guess that Sibu is our protégée as we have seen her through school and university and the early stages of her career.  Andile had been her constant boyfriend for about seven years.  That was a very happy event and we continue to be delighted by their progress.

The third ‘thing’ was when Sophie, our younger daughter, announced her engagement to Greg.  Greg is arguably somewhat on the young side but on the other hand how many young people do you know who have spent two years working in the Antarctic and several months, on and off, in some of the less salubrious countries in darkest Africa?  December was a very exciting month.

Have you ever thought what it means to be rational?  I am prompted to write this because of a most interesting article about North Korea which very recently appeared in a Stratfor online communication.  The basis of that article is to argue that North Korea’s ‘dear leader’, Kim Jong-un, is behaving quite rationally in regularly casting ballistic missiles in the direction of Japan.

My wife, who is an extremely articulate and very able psychologist, frequently tells me that I am at the very least irrational.  This irrationality may be expressed by wandering round the house with the words “who’s there?”  She has often threatened to bring in men in white coats to take me away but that does not seem to be an easy call since she would no doubt need to convince them of my generally unpredictable behaviour.

More to the point, have you ever wondered whether you normally behave rationally?  Suppose that you examine your domestic relationships (partner, children, family in general), do you think that your conduct stands up to close scrutiny?  For example, suppose you have young children and you want them to do your bidding.  Suppose they ask ‘why should I?”.  Suppose that you answer “because I say so”.  Do you think that is a truly rational response?  Do you think that it is likely to command respect?

Turn to business, whether it’s your colleagues or employees or customers.  A lot is written about this subject.  In whose interests are you acting?  It’s unfortunate that there is so much evidence that behaviour is, to say the least, irrational.  It may not seem irrational at the time but, for example, when the regulators, who seem to multiply and wax far too fruitful, descend upon a company and its directors or senior employees, raising substantial fines for apparent/proven misconduct, can the behaviour which led to this aggressive response be regarded as rational?

Then, I may be driving along and not in a totally good mood.  The reaction may well be some form of ‘road rage’.  I will then behave in a manner which is completely inappropriate and unjustified.  To what end?  I may be trying to relieve some undesirable tension but am I behaving rationally?  And what about when I am tired?  I may be at the bridge table (one of favourite locations) and my partner may make a bid or a play which I find objectionable.  Is it going to be a rational reaction to berate him or her?  Is that likely to bring out the best in subsequent hands?  Surely not.

Being rational is not so easy.  As for Kim Jong-un, for most of us we probably find nothing about North Korea to be rational.  But he is running a country on a knife edge with frustrated support from the Chinese (is that support rational?).  So long as his family is running the country his behaviour will be rational at least in his terms.

“My wife and her sister own an interesting cottage outside an unlikely location called Gouritzmond.  This is situated on what I describe as the Cape South Coast in South Africa although officially it is part of the Western Cape.  It’s miles from anywhere and most people only speak a strange language known as Afrikaans which is roughly the local equivalent of Welsh.

The property (Seeland) is situated about 5 kilometres outside the village in what is called a conservation area.  This comes with some disadvantage in that the garden and immediately surrounding area are infested by moles.  Irrespective of any official rules about cruelty to animals, we are determined to rid ourselves of these unruly beasts which seem determined to dig up the property and may soon attend to the house itself.  It’s bad enough when we are occasionally invaded by bats, let alone the puff adder which I nearly trod on some years ago.  There are definitely more snakes than ladders.

Having done my best to put you off, let me tell you that the location is in many ways idyllic.  The property has nearly a kilometre of seafront and incorporates about 27 hectares of mainly fynbos which I suppose can be paralleled with heather.  The seafront is essentially rocky but includes its own secret swimming pool which regularly incorporates one or more octopi.  Generally these are not at all troublesome but we have known visitors clearly to be very appealing to these creatures.  The visitors don’t seem to like the attention.

The rocks are home to some lovely birds called oyster catchers and the trees, of which there are not many, sometimes attract Cape eagle owls which one can hear at night and if lucky enough actually see them.  As for the snakes, my problem is that they are not labelled.  The grass snakes are fine.  I have yet to see a cobra although they are there somewhere.  The puff adder is a most annoying snake because it doesn’t move, being a lazy creature, and so it is wise to avoid it.  Then there is the boemslang.  This is back fanged and so, as you may expect, if it is really annoyed and chooses to bite you then you can assume you will shortly be dead.  On that happy note let me leave you to contemplate the glories of no man’s land.

But I would prefer to end on a high note so let me assure you that snakes are not plentiful and are rarely seen while the view from the ‘dress circle’ which overlooks the sea from the back porch is quite magical.”

Once the referendum was promised, if you lived anywhere other than in London or the majority of home counties or in Scotland, it was almost inevitable that the vote would be to Brexit. This is because there was a complete failure by the Government to register the mood of the country and by the ‘remain’ campaign properly to extol the virtues and positives of EU membership.

The impact of globalisation has been to drive an ever larger wedge between those whose jobs are progressing and assets are increasing, and those who are unemployed or whose income is reducing in real value, and whose available income or assets (pensioners and their capital, for example) at least appear to be declining.

Yet again the pollsters and pundits got it wrong, as witnessed by the steady increase in the value of the pound sterling in the last week before the referendum from £1= $1.42 to £1=$1.50, only to drop to as low as £1=$1.29 almost immediately after the poll. Actually, if people had cared to study the data from the bookies, they would have found out that the betting by value of money placed was heavily ‘remain’ while the bets by number were heavily ‘exit’.

It was therefore a foregone conclusion that David Cameron would resign and, even though it has seemed surprising that his successor is not directly in favour of Brexit, the composition of Theresa May’s cabinet appears to lean more towards a liberal, almost centre-left approach recognising the need to capture the support of those who feel disenfranchised. Perhaps the genius of Mrs May’s cabinet is that she has given the Brexit negotiations to Brexiteers (Johnson, Davis and Fox). However, Mrs May is the boss: the buck stops with her.

The fact that one important uncertainty has been removed by the rapid formation of a new Government should not instil too much confidence in the immediate outlook. Article 50 is likely to be invoked sooner rather than later, albeit probably not much before the Spring of 2017, so that the UK can try to take the initiative in negotiations with its European counterparts. Beforehand, we may expect to see Mrs May test the water with several of her European counterparts. Her first meeting, with Angela Merkel, appears to have gone very well. So it should! Mrs Merkel is a pragmatist. Like many other European leaders-probably-she did not expect a vote to Brexit. She must be shaken, others must be shaken, the European tree has been shaken.

The negotiations will start, stumble and finally stratify. What the result will be is difficult to predict. In my view so much depends on whether all sides fight an aggressive divorce or appreciate the value of a mediated settlement. The ‘guru’ Stephen Covey wrote: ‘start with the end in mind’. What should the end in mind be? I can be an optimist when I so choose (where Lloyd’s is concerned I always try to be a realist). So, I look at the EU, I consider the attitude of several leaders-other than Mr Juncker for whom I have no time-and conclude that what the majority should want is for the UK not to leave!

If Europe is to find a way of clearing a path through the mass of bureaucracy, personal pride and arrogance, then negotiators must recognise the value of change and enhancement. Much clearly needs to be done within European structures not least relating to sovereignty and the rule of law, at least that is the UK perception. However, the issue of migration is almost certainly the thorniest of problems. How about tackling that problem at its roots? Solve Syria and more, and encourage potential migrants not to leave and others to return home.

There is an inherent similarity with Lloyd’s. It wasn’t until the chips had nearly been exhausted in the early 1990’s that everyone recognised the need to pull together. Europe is in a similar state now. That situation goes way beyond the UK’s decision to Brexit. It’s about the movement of people, the failure to pay close attention to the legitimate concerns of those who are disaffected and the need to address the varying cultural differences and priorities of all the peoples who make up the European Union.

Some thoughtful and intelligent observers believe that there should be a second referendum to revisit the outcome of the first. But first we need a period of serious negotiation. As below, re Lloyd’s, the analogy may appropriately be: individually there are countries, together there is Europe. It wasn’t at all easy to achieve Reconstruction and Renewal but it was essential, vital to the survival of Lloyd’s. If Europe is to survive and prosper, never before has so much depended on constructive leadership. I hope, I believe that Mrs May is the right person to represent the UK’s interests. It might therefore be that the Brexit vote turns out to be fortunate by enabling a fresh and effective route to achieve critical changes in European structures, changes which Mr Cameron could not obtain.

As for Lloyd’s, we are just one of many pressure groups which will be fighting to retain its personal identity and status. Of one thing I am very confident: Lloyd’s will survive and prosper. I remind myself of the long standing maxim: individually we are members, collectively we are Lloyd’s. There has always been a great deal of ingenuity in the Lloyd’s community. Add to that the level of professionalism which is a large multiple of the 1980’s and it’s reasonable to conclude that individual agents will solve their own problems. So collectively Lloyd’s will continue to be the Lloyd’s of the 21st century which has earned so much international respect and support.

I don’t suppose the snap election called by Theresa May for June 8 will change anything.  However, just suppose that enough MPs vote against the Government so that combined with the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn ends up as Prime Minister.  After all, the Americans have got Trump and the combination of those two could be more than entertaining.  Can you imagine?

This review is divided into three parts.  The first part deals with hurricane experience in the USA over the past 100 years.  The report has been produced by an erudite US analytical firm called Assured Research.  I see all their material and am regularly impressed by the thoughtful approach they take to sometimes rather complex issues.  The hurricane report has been written for interest rather than indications about the future though it’s possible to draw some tentative conclusions.

The second part deals with earthquakes and essentially represents a compilation of material which I have drawn from a number of specialist websites.  If you Google ‘earthquakes’ you will find a myriad of sites and information so perhaps you may regard my compilation as a stimulus to look further into this fascinating and sometimes terrifying subject.

The third part looks at some volcanic experience and underlines the potential impact of an eruption to cause a major catastrophe.  Along with hurricanes and earthquakes, volcanic activity can produce horrendous consequences.  These consequences may range from the destruction of Pompeii to the volcanic ash which significantly interfered with flight patterns five years ago.  My contribution relates to fears which were being expressed last year about the possibility of a volcanic eruption in Yellowstone National Park which might have caused very widespread and very serious damage.  Let’s start then with the hurricane analysis…..

Our Annual Update of Hurricane Statistics

A light year predicted, we add 100 years of historical context

• One-hundred years may not be a long period on a meteorological scale, and we don’t suggest that hurricane statistics presented in this Industry Study can supplant the valuable output of hurricane models.  They can, however, supplement what insurance professionals have learned from hurricane models.  In this, our second annual presentation of hurricane statistics, we use 100 years of hurricane statistics to reveal:
• The number of annual hurricanes is steadily rising, offset by the declining percentage striking the U.S. Consequently, the number of hurricanes making land fall has been reasonably constant over successive ten-year rolling periods.
• Category 1 hurricanes are the most frequent, but Categories 2-4 storms are equally probable based on data from the past 100 years. The percentage of annual storms reaching intense status (categories 3-5) is stable over time, but cyclical over shorter periods.
• The low hurricane forecasts for 2015 are because of the expected presence of El Niño. Forecasts for 3-5 hurricanes with one intense storm might be compared to 5-6 hurricanes and 2-3 intense storms in a ‘normal’ year. We also show hurricane probabilities by state (Figure 15).
• We delve into data on Florida. 44% of all land-striking hurricanes have hit that state with the west coast bearing the majority of the impacts. Interestingly, the intensity of storms making land fall in Florida is about the same as those impacting other states.
• The Assured Research team of dart-throwers takes on the experts. Our predictions are inside. (The full report is attached as an appendix.)

Earthquakes
For me the recent article by Joel Achenbach, writing for the Washington Post, says it all.  His review appears below, just above the explanation of the Richter scale.

What is an earthquake? (This article was written for school children)
Earthquakes are the shaking, rolling or sudden shock of the earth’s surface.  They are the Earth’s natural means of releasing stress.  More than a million earthquakes rattle the world each year. In the USA the West Coast  is most at risk of having an earthquake, but earthquakes can happen in the Midwest and along the East Coast. Earthquakes can be felt over large areas although they usually last less than one minute.

What causes an earthquake?
There are about 20 plates along the surface of the earth that move continuously and slowly past each other.  When the plates squeeze or stretch, huge rocks form at their edges and the rocks shift with great force, causing an earthquake.  Think of it this way: imagine holding a pencil horizontally.  If you were to apply a force to both ends of the pencil by pushing down on them, you would see the pencil bend.  After enough force was applied, the pencil would break in the middle, releasing the stress you have put on it.  The Earth’s crust acts in the same way.  As the plates move they put forces on themselves and each other.  When the force is large enough, the crust is forced to break.  When the break occurs, the stress is released as energy which moves through the Earth in the form of waves, which we feel and call an earthquake.  (Graphic Credit: Wheeling Jesuit University/NASA Classroom of the Future)

What is a fault?
A fault is an area of stress in the Earth where broken rocks slide past each other, causing a crack in the Earth’s surface.  These are the major types of faults: dip-slip normal, dip-slip reverse, strike-slip, and oblique-slip.

What are plate tectonics?
The theory of plate tectonics is an interesting story of continents drifting from place to place breaking apart, colliding, and grinding against each other.  The plate tectonic theory is supported by a wide range of evidence that considers the Earth’s crust and upper mantle to be composed of several large, thin, relatively rigid plates that move relative to one another.  (See plate tectonic graphic above.)  The plates are all moving in different directions and at different speeds.  Sometimes the plates crash together, pull apart or sideswipe each other.  When this happens, it commonly results in earthquakes.

Nepal quake was ‘nightmare waiting to happen’
Nepal has long been bracing for the “big one” but when 50 earthquake specialists gathered in Kathmandu last week for a seminar on how to better prepare for that devastating eventuality, they had no idea how soon disaster would strike.

“I was walking through that very area where that earthquake was and I thought at the very time that the area was heading for trouble,” said James Jackson, head of the earth sciences department at Cambridge University, who was at the meeting.  The combination of ultra-high population densities, lax building regulations and rickety concrete construction has long led scientists to fear that a big quake in Kathmandu would kill tens of thousands of people.

“It’s buildings that kill people not earthquakes,” said Mr Jackson, who is also lead scientist for Earthquakes Without Frontiers, a group that tries to make Asia more able to bounce back from earthquakes like the 2005 Kashmir quake that killed 70,000 to 80,000 people in and around the city Muzaffarabad.  Mercifully, when this weekend’s quake in Nepal did strike, at magnitude 7.8 it was smaller than the 8.1 quake that struck six miles south of Mount Everest in 1934 killing 10,000 people in area of sparse population.

“It was sort of a nightmare waiting to happen,” added Mr Jackson, of the roughly 75-year cycle for major earthquakes in the region, “Physically and geologically what happened is exactly what we thought would happen.”

Earthquakes – What are the long term trends?
The outer shell of the earth is composed of a number of almost rigid “plates” that slowly move against each other.  It is this geological feature that provides the conditions for major earthquakes to occur.  Although they can occur anywhere on the planet with little warning, the most extreme earthquakes occur near the plate boundaries.  Stresses can build up at these boundaries, caused by the general movement of the plates against each other over time, which is “bottled up” at the plate boundaries.  It may then be released suddenly, in the form of an earthquake.  Several boundaries are under deep water but the effects spread for many miles, and so can be felt on land in these cases too.  Tsunamis may be triggered bringing damage to coastal communities in a wide area.  Powerful earthquakes may also initiate volcanoes to erupt in the vicinity or further afield although this is not always the case, as it depends on the state of the magma chamber at the time.

A measurement of earthquake magnitude is the Richter scale.  On a logarithmic scale this measures the size and energy released from an earthquake.  On this scale, there are usually dozens of “earthquakes” occurring daily, with a magnitude of below 2.5.  These are usually not felt by humans.  It takes a much stronger earthquake for damage to occur.  For example, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake is ten times larger than a magnitude 5.0, but it has 32 times the amount of energy released so is more likely to cause damage.

An earthquake registering between 6.0 and 6.9 could be considered fairly major.  Above 7.0, the earthquake is considered more serious, with a larger area of damage anticipated.  The two most important variables affecting earthquake damage are the intensity of ground shaking caused by the quake and the quality of the structures in the region.  The level of shaking, in turn, is controlled by the proximity of the earthquake source and the types of rocks that seismic waves pass through en route.  Thus, any loss of life is dependent on location (close to settlements etc.) as well as whether or not buildings can withstand the earth tremors.  The larger the magnitude, and the weaker the building structures, the more likely fatalities will occur.  The largest earthquake in recent history measured about 9.5 (Chile, 1960), however this did not result in the most fatalities.  People can’t stop earthquakes from happening. People can however significantly mitigate their effects by identifying hazards, building safer structures, and learning about earthquake safety.

Below is a graph showing how the number of all magnitude earthquakes has grown over recent years.  Although we are primarily concerned with long term trends for larger magnitude earthquakes in this report, it is worth noting the trend as it applies to all earthquakes, whether large or small, over a 30 years period or so from the mid-1970s. However, this trend needs to be understood in relation to the increase in seismographs.  Certainly, in the last 25 years, more lower intensity earthquakes have been noticed because of a general increase in the number of seismograph stations across the world and improved global communications.  This increase has helped seismological centres to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier decades.  Therefore, an upward trend is not unexpected in the graph, although the rise in the number of large earthquakes will be of more significance to our assessment of the trend.

Graph above provided by DL Research. – http://www.dlindquist.com

Japan may install toilets in elevators for earthquake emergencies
The country is looking at installing toilets in elevators and providing an emergency supply of drinking water for people trapped by the nation’s frequent powerful earthquakes, an official said Wednesday.

The move comes after dozens of people were left high and dry, some for over an hour, after a 7.8 magnitude quake on Saturday that stopped lifts.

Most of the elevators automatically stopped at the nearest floor and opened their doors, but 14 were stranded between storeys.

2005 Kashmir Earthquake
On October 8, 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook the Kashmir region, along with sections of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. More than 80,000 people perished as a result of the quake, while an estimated 4 million others were left homeless.

The Kashmir earthquake took place shortly after 8:50 a.m. local time and was centered about 12 miles northeast of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Kashmir is located at the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates—the collision of which caused the formation of the Himalaya Mountains—making it prone to intense seismic activity.  The 2005 earthquake was among the worst ever to hit the region.  It caused extensive destruction in Kashmir; Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province; the western and southern regions of the Kashmir Valley and northern Pakistan.  Damage also was reported in northern India and Afghanistan.

In some places, whole sections of towns slid off cliffs and entire families were killed.  The Muzaffarabad area suffered severe devastation, and the town of Balakot in the North-West Frontier Province was almost completely destroyed.  The quake occurred just before the onset of the region’s harsh winter, exacerbating the disaster’s effects.  In addition, landslides wiped out large numbers of the region’s roads, making many of the damaged areas inaccessible to relief workers in the immediate aftermath.  In all, about 80, 000 people died as a result of the quake and an estimated 4 million others were left homeless.

From the Washington Post, April 2015 (by Joel Achenbach)
Writing about seismic risk is frustrating: The experts know that big earthquakes are going to happen, but not exactly when and where. The ensuing articles are laced with hypotheticals.  There is an airy, foamy quality to these stories; as a writer, you long for solid facts and certainties, and wonder whether any of this stuff makes a difference on the ground, in lives of actual human beings who are at risk.  For example, here’s a story I wrote five years ago:

The next Big One could strike Tokyo, Istanbul, Tehran, Mexico City, New Delhi, Kathmandu or the two metropolises near California’s San Andreas Fault, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Or it could devastate Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Cairo, Osaka, Lima or Bogota. The list goes on and on …

For years, earthquake scientists have shouted their warnings about the strong likelihood that a major quake would level an impoverished city and kill hundreds of thousands of people.  They have said, for example, that Kathmandu, where masonry structures expand so haphazardly that some eventually cantilever over narrow city streets, is every bit as vulnerable as the surrounding Himalayas are majestic.

For years, scientists have talked to me about the very high likelihood of a Kathmandu earthquake.  It happened Saturday.  The experts called it.  But being right hasn’t made them any less horrified and saddened by this disaster.  In fact, they sounded dismayed, as if overcome with a sense of powerlessness.  Tectonic forces are massive and implacable, and human societies are often poor and fragile.

If you go back to 1800, the year 1800, there was one city in the world that had a million people, and that was Beijing.  The most recent count I’ve come across is that there are 381 cities with at least a million people.  Of those cities, a lot of them are in seismically very hazardous places like Caracas, Venezuela, or Mexico City or Kathmandu.

And if you’re living in a city, and you are poor, you’re not going to worry about events that don’t happen but once every 200 years or so.

Earthquakes are innately unpredictable, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Skittish birds and snakes are not a reliable indicator. No one knows why a small earthquake can keep breaking and turn into a 1906-style catastrophic rupture.  Sometimes they stop, sometimes they keep going.  The 2011 Japan earthquake was a 9.0 on a fault that, according to the scientific consensus, could generate only magnitude 7 and 8 earthquakes.  On a logarithmic scale, a 9 is 10 times more powerful than an 8 and 100 times more powerful than a 7.

Japan, to its credit, has prepared for earthquakes, and retains cultural memory of the 1923 earthquake and fire that devastated Tokyo.  But what happened in 2011 defied the received wisdom in Japan about where the next big one would be.

Japan has already named its next great earthquake: the Tokai earthquake.  The government has identified and delineated by law the precise affected area — a region along the Pacific coast about a hundred miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo.  After a series of small quakes in the Tokai area in the 1970s, scientists predicted that a major quake might be imminent there.  The Japanese government passed a law in 1978 mandating that preparations begin for the Tokai earthquake.

It hasn’t happened. The Big One turned out to be hundreds of miles to the north.

Here’s a prediction: There will be a huge earthquake in California. The San Andreas Fault will rupture and produce something close to a magnitude 8.0. If you had to bet, you’d wager it would be in the southernmost section, which hasn’t ruptured since about 1680. But who knows?

The seismic hazard maps are useful in designing building codes, and giving us approximations of the likelihood of major ground motion. The maps, however, are limited in their ability to tell us what will happen, and when, and where, exactly. Northridge 1994 (6.7 magnitude) happened on an unmapped fault. The world (and the Los Angeles area in particular) is undergirded by countless unmapped faults. One earthquake can shift strain to another fault that might break in an even more violent way. The Earth doesn’t operate on human timetables. Very large earthquakes can occur on hidden faults with extremely long repeat times of several thousand years or more. Just because a place doesn’t have very many earthquakes doesn’t mean it can’t have a 7.0 magnitude quake or even something stronger.

Richter magnitudes
Because of the logarithmic basis of the Richter scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released, and each increase of 0.2 corresponds to a doubling of the energy released.

Events with magnitudes greater than 4.5 are strong enough to be recorded by a seismograph anywhere in the world, so long as its sensors are not located in the earthquake’s shadow.

The following describes the typical effects of earthquakes of various magnitudes near the epicenter. The values are typical only and should be taken with extreme caution, since intensity and thus ground effects depend not only on the magnitude, but also on the distance to the epicenter, the depth of the earthquake’s focus beneath the epicenter, the location of the epicenter and geological conditions (certain terrains can amplify seismic signals).

(Based on U.S. Geological Survey documents.)

Volcanoes
These quotes are taken from Robert Harris’s book “Pompeii”.

“Prior to AD 79 a reservoir of magma had accumulated beneath the volcano.  It is not possible to say when this magma chamber began to form but it had a volume of at least 3.6 cubic kilometres and was about 3 kilometres below the surface …” (Peter Francis – Volcanoes: A Planetary Perspective)

 “As magma rises from depth it undergoes a large pressure decrease at a 10 metre depth, for example, pressures are about 3 000 times the atmospheric pressure.  Such a large pressure change has many consequences for the physical properties and flow of magma.”  (Encyclopaedia of Volcanoes)

“The surface of a volcano ruptured shortly after noon allowing explosive decompression of the main magma body …  The exit velocity of the magma was approximately 1440 kilometres per hour.  Convection carried incandescent gas and pumice clasts to a height of 28 kilometres.  The thermal energy released during the AD 79 eruption would have been roughly 100 000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.”  (Dynamics of Volcanism)

“During the first phase the vent radius was probably of the order of 100 metres.  As the eruption continued inevitable widening of the vent permitted still higher mass eruption rates … Progressively deeper levels within the magma chamber were tapped until after about 7 hours the more mafic grey pumice was reached.  This was ejected at about 1.5 million tonnes per second and carried by convection to maximum heights of about 33 kilometres.  (Volcanoes: A Planetary Perspective)

Many of us suffered flight delays or cancellations as a consequence of the volcanic eruption in Iceland in March/April 2010.  This is the background.

Why Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano Erupted by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor – November 2010

The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull (AYA-feeyapla-yurkul) burst to life in March 2010 after nearly two centuries of dormancy.  It then erupted in April, spewing a huge plume of ash that created phenomenal lightning displays, colored sunsets a fiery red across much of Europe, and forced flight cancellations for days.

As explosive as Eyjafjallajökull proved, it is actually only a moderately active volcano that is, one that erupts once every few centuries or even millennia.  “There are many such volcanoes in the world, including many on the circum-Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ volcanic belt, including volcanoes in the U.S. West, Kamchatka [in Russia] and the Andes,”  Freysteinn Sigmundsson (Volcanologist at the University of Iceland) told OurAmazingPlanet.

Eyjafjallajökull actually lies away from the rift in the earth that other Icelandic volcanoes spring from and which is ultimately responsible for the island’s existence.  Until now, it was uncertain as to whether, or how “colder,” moderately active volcanoes such as Eyjafjallajökull behaved any differently from their hotter and more active kin during eruptions, since they erupt less often for researchers to study.

Eruption plume above the ice capped Eyjafjallajokull volcano, April 17, 2010. Meltwater floodpath in foreground. Credit: Eyjolfur Magnusson, University of Iceland

When it comes to a typical eruption of highly active volcanoes, scientists have learned over the years that magma chambers within the volcano gradually fill up beforehand and rapidly deflate as pressure is released, deforming the surface.  However, the magma chamber that deflated in Eyjafjallajökull during the explosive April eruption was not the one that filled up right beforehand.

“One of the surprises was the complexity of the plumbing system,” Sigmundsson said.  “There was not one main magma chamber active under the volcano capturing magma in 18 years of unrest preceding the eruption, as is often envisioned in models for the most active volcanoes on Earth.  Rather, two or more discrete magmatic sources were involved, with magma of different composition.”

The cause of Eyjafjallajökull’s explosive eruption seemed to be the meeting of one body of magma, made up mostly of the common volcanic rock basalt, with another type of magma within the volcano, consisting largely of silica-rich trachyandesite.

With these two volcanic eruptions in mind, separated by nearly 2 000 years, I hope you might enjoy the following piece which I wrote in the context of strong rumours that the volcano which lies beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming was about to erupt in July/August last year.

David Newton’s Blog on Yellowstone National Park
Back in the 1970s and 1980s when I was working with the Dugdale Group at Lloyd’s we had a modest commercial relationship with the securities firm, Bache & Co.  I developed quite a good connection with the London manager who occasionally invited me to private seminars.  I remember one in particular in 1981 when the guest speaker was the noted, sometimes notorious, investment guru, Joe Granville.

Some of you in the US will probably recall his name and when I looked on the website there were a couple of quite good obituaries following his death last year.  He had an enormous following of devoted acolytes particularly among private clients.  He had a unique style which included playing the piano and making rude remarks about investment management companies, frequently referring to them as ‘bag holders’.

After he had finished making his pronouncements at the Bache meeting in 1981 he asked the small assembled group if we would like to buy seafront property in the USA at 10 cents an acre.  To a man we reached for our cheque books and in the process thought it wise to ask Joe exactly where this property was located.  The answer was ‘Nebraska’.  We looked a bit surprised, to say the least, and while we were quite happy to recognise our limitations on the geography of the USA we did suggest to Joe that Nebraska was about four states in from the West Coast.

Joe’s response was fascinating.  He referred to what is called the Jupiter Effect.  This was a rare concurrence when the nine major planets, including earth, would all appear in the same arc.  The consequence, Joe said, would be an earthquake which would destroy the San Andreas fault line and create the most enormous tidal wave which in turn would break off the whole of the western part of the USA leaving Nebraska as the seafront.  My personal scepticism was marginally undermined when one of our Names came into the office one day soon afterwards and demanded that he should be taken off all his syndicates except UK Motor.  ‘Why?’ we asked, to which the response was “the nine major planets …”  Such is the ability of man to (mis)interpret scientific data.

This brings me on to Yellowstone National Park.  I subscribe to a daily newsletter called ‘Delanceyplace’ which provides extracts from its choice of books or publications.  One of its most recent articles was an extract from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson about the enormous volcano forming the core of the Park.  Since reading that article I have Googled ‘Yellowstone’ more than once to find that the prospect of a major eruption of this volcano has been attracting a lot of material including an article in the September 4 issue of the New Yorker.  “The geysers, hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles of Yellowstone National Park are the visible face of a vast, seething ocean of molten, magma six miles deep.  The super volcano beneath Yellowstone has so far erupted three times: 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago.  By the crude math of those who have a fearful cast of mind, this means that a fourth eruption is now due.”

You may like to read the whole article which is accessible online.  Doomsday predictions of a specific kind remind me of those guys whom one occasionally sees carrying billboards with the words ‘The end of the world is nigh’.  In this case, however, there is apparently a video on You Tube which has been viewed almost 1.5 million times featuring 26 bison loping along Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road.  The author of the New Yorker article describes the scene as rather cute.  But there’s more, much more, with lots of scary forecasts.  The article concludes with the following observation “The likelihood of it actually happening in the 21^st century remains about one in a thousand according to the US Geological Survey.  So while there is little need to worry about drowning in burning lava during your trip to Yellowstone there might be a need to watch what you read before you leave for vacation.”

So, what’s the point?  As I have often said to our two girls, life is about taking risk.  I believe that if you do not take risk, you take risk.  For example, if you decide to keep your money under your ‘risk free’ mattress it will gradually be wasted away by inflation.  There is a perceived risk of driving at night in ‘violent’ Johannesburg which deters quite a number of bridge players from participating in a game which they love because they won’t go out at night.  There is a risk that your flight might be cancelled because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland which spews ash across northern Europe.  There is a risk in crossing the road, especially if you don’t look where you are going.

The business we are in is about taking risk.  Insurers make a promise to pay in the event of a legitimate claim though sometimes the legitimacy is hard to prove or disprove.  Warren Buffett likes to refer to the float which derives from the premiums paid upfront on which investment returns will be made and will contribute towards paying expenses and generating profits.  As he puts it, the goal is that the float received in any year should exceed claims.  This goal highlights the importance of accurately assessing risk/reward recognising that nature has the power to deceive and will frequently do so.

In our business we rely on underwriters analysing risk/reward, taking account of historical experience and so far as possible ‘what if’ scenarios.  These ‘what if’ scenarios need to be intelligently realistic.  This is not to say that the possibility of an eruption of Yellowstone National Park should be ignored but after careful consideration it might be entirely overlooked.  The same might be said about the possibility of Mount Teide erupting in the Canary Islands creating a tsunami which would sweep over the Atlantic to New York.  On the other hand earthquakes in California, Chile, Japan and New Zealand will never fall outside a good underwriter’s appraisal.

So, underwriters need to look where they are going and we watch over them to make sure that they do.  Those insurers who are careless about the road which they travel invariably lose their way if not ultimately their business.  Our job is, so far as possible, to make sure that they don’t.

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