Disaster Management

[meteorite]

How much meddling can wizards do when confronted with major natural disasters? Are they limited to after-the-fact helping, like insuring, say, that after a hurricane wrecks the water supply, that contaminants don't ruin the remaining potable water? Or can they be more proactive, like "suggesting" to a bad virus that it tone its virulence down, from Ebola-like to merely a 3 day flu? And how aggressively? I imagine that averting a big earthquake might be nearly impossible without almost all the area wizards working together, but could it be done? And how much of a price, and what type, would need to be paid? There needs to be a balance, between harming as few as possible, and the need for natural processes to play out...

"Thus is Balance maintained." A Wizard of Earthsea
"Condensing fact from the vapor of nuance." Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

[Birdhead]

Interesting.

... I'm of the (utterly unfounded) opinion that wizards must have quite a lot of leeway: actually, I guess it comes from Ronan's Ordeal, and the idea that the sinking of Atlantis/Afalone was caused by a major wizardry going wrong. If wizardry can affect the environment so adversely it seems to me the reverse must be true: and Ronan was able to "take the sea in" to prevent loss of life.

On the other hand we have Kit's Snow Problems. It's clear that you can't just meddle with the weather for your own means, no matter how much more convenient it would be for all concerned (Snow ploughs, students, etc...) However, I find it hard to believe that wizards would be stopped from preventing somethign on the scale of, say, the Napier Earthquake, or the potential Wellington Earthquake (the one that hasn't happened yet.) Or, for that amtter, teh recent fires in America. However, soemtimes this stuff is important/useful... wonder where you draw the line? After all, if wizards had prevented the first-ever flooding of the Nile.... *snickers*

Or the earthquake here around the 1900 mark where Wellington gained a LOT of ground (to the extent that tyhe shoreline used to be where one of my favourite bookshops is now, about a kilometre from the sea!)... it cused damage, too, but Wellington would be very different now.

My opinion, I guess, would be that it would depend on the predicted loss of life, and the ability of the earthquake/flood/fire/etc to be redistributed in a more safe way. Obviously you can't just stop them, because of the aforementioned balance. However, what you might be able to do is... redistribution is I think the right word. So that, in the case of an earthquake (I'm using earthquakes as my example because it's what I'm used to) you could spread it out, maybe make sure that instead of land falling into the sea it fell out...

Furthermore, we know that playing with the weather isn't _all_ verboten, because in A book of Night With Moon they mentioned using a storm, I think it was, in an attempt to clear up an oil spill (Must check that and get moer details.)

More later, I must go.
T

"We are philosophical geniuses [sic] who will one day rule the world!"
--Agent M
Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha!

[This message was edited by Birdhead on 22 November 2003 at 19:46.]

[PK]

There's definitely quite a lot of leeway, I think -- but it does seem to depend on what you're doing it for. Stopping the universe's expansion was pretty drastic, but important. (Though I do suspect there was a Complex State going on there, now we've been introduced to the term.) Certain large-scale interventions require special authorization -- some time-patches more than others, for example, and I seem to recall there being something about diverting the path of a hurricane (not because of the oil spill), but I think I might be imagining that.....

[meteorite]

I'm thinking of a short story by Spider Robinson, Fivesight, where the protagonist is gifted with a nasty type of precognition: he can see the crisis coming, but is unable to prevent it, just gains the ability to do damage control for later. I.e., (a paraphrase) you know that you are going to burn your hand later while making tea, but you can't just decide not to make tea. You are, however, allowed to have a pot of cold water on hand with ice to minimize the damage.

Sometimes, it seems like wizardry is compelled into this type of cleanup-only situation. Preventative maintenance costs less, but is much harder to properly apply, and having to intervene directly is very expensive, indeed.

"Thus is Balance maintained." A Wizard of Earthsea
"Condensing fact from the vapor of nuance." Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

[Quill]

Originally posted by Birdhead:


My opinion, I guess, would be that it would depend on the predicted loss of life, and the ability of the earthquake/flood/fire/etc to be redistributed in a more safe way. Obviously you can't just stop them, because of the aforementioned balance. However, what you might be able to do is... redistribution is I think the right word. So that, in the case of an earthquake (I'm using earthquakes as my example because it's what I'm used to) you could spread it out, maybe make sure that instead of land falling into the sea it fell out...

[This message was edited by Birdhead on 22 November 2003 at 19:46.]

Heh. Have you read The Door Into Shadow? Redistributing earthquakes, indeed!

[Birdhead]

Ha, ha, and also, ha.
Different series.

"We are philosophical geniuses [sic] who will one day rule the world!"
--Agent M
Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha!