A few weeks ago, I was in South Florida for some meetings.
After they ended, I walked along the beach one morning. The sky was blue, the breeze blew off the ocean and the sun was warm.
Up ahead, I saw a group of kids creating one of the most magnificent sand castles I’d ever seen. It had turrets, high walls, and decorative shells covering it.
And, in a moment of prudence, the kids decided to build it far up the beach, at least 10 feet away from the high-water mark.
Once I’d walked fifty feet past the castle I heard a shout.
Turning around, I saw that a rogue wave had traveled further and higher than any other wave that day and swept away the beautiful sand castle.
Why did I tell you this story?
It illustrates an important point about our world that we’ve been talking about all week.
Just like the boys’ sandcastle, a single “rogue wave” or random event could take the entire power grid down…faster than you can imagine.
And you know what, on a long enough timescale the likelihood of a “rogue wave”-event is 100%. It’s unavoidable. It might happen tomorrow or it might happen years from now.
But when that happens – our way of life will grind to a screeching halt. The lights will go out. The tap stops running. The gas pumps no longer work.
Nervous families will empty the supermarkets. And millions of people will have difficult decisions to make. Those desperate multitudes will be out of luck. They’ll wait for hours and hours in breadlines or be forced into refugee camps like the people of New Orleans after Katrina.
But a select group of people will survive and thrive when this fragile system is disrupted.
And I hope you will be part of that group.
