the competition for finite resources, that is the most
reasonable focus.
Does this list help you make a more reasoned judg-
ment? Is a reasoned judgment even realistic? If so,
does it change your risk analysis to know that 35,092
people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United
States in 2015 alone?
THESIS
I contend that shooters and bombers, regardless of
their motivation or nationality, are Black Swans in the
live event industry. After reading the preceding list
and clicking on some of the links, I hope you agree
that any of these occurrences are extremely rare.
However, they deserve our attention because they
have the most extreme possible impact on the vic-
tims. My concern is that they are only retrospective-
ly predictable.
Let’s focus on this last element of the Black Swan
concept, retrospective predictability. The obvious
problem for people charged with planning for ven-
ue and event security is that improbable events are
inevitable only after they have happened. No one
leaving Ariana Grande’s show had any idea they
were a very soft target until after the bomb deto-
nated outside the arena.
I would add that even with the benefit of hind-
sight, confirmation bias still makes us slow to apply
the tragic lessons of other venues to ourselves. I
teach risk management using schadenfreude (tak-
ing pleasure in other people’s misfortune), in or-
der to make professionals see themselves in their
peers’ mistakes, but history shows that I am swim-
ming against the tide. Indiana was the third Mid-
western outdoor stage roof collapse that summer,
so you wouldn’t think the need for a severe weath-
er action plan would come as a surprise; Kiss was
one of many well-publicized nightclub fires around
the world caused by a combination of ignored fire
hazards, overcrowding, and unsafe or locked exits;
Pulse was only the latest demonstration of the ease
of acquiring and using high-powered semi-auto-
matic weapons designed for combat against civilian
targets.
ly improbable events, and not so much better at ap-
plying the lessons of other incidents to ourselves,
what should a reasonable person do? I began this
discussion by listing some of the proposed safety
and security measures getting attention these days.
I’m not opposed to any of them per se. But I’m
thinking that choosing new security enhancements
by looking back at the last security disaster is the
wrong way. If these incidents are improbable, then
there is no point to solving the last one, because it is
not likely to happen again, much less to you.
THE ALL-HAZARDS APPROACH
Rather than planning security around keeping the
last big attack from happening again, better to use
an all-hazards approach to assess risks and assign
resources. The U.S. Department of Homeland Secu-
rity makes the argument clearly enough:
The planning process should take an “all hazards”
approach. There are many different threats or haz-
ards. The probability that a specific hazard will im-
pact your business is hard to determine. That’s why
it’s important to consider many different threats and
hazards and the likelihood they will occur.
While it may be contrarian these days to suggest a
primary focus on routine risks and threats, the or-
dinary white swans, I think it is both alarmist and
wasteful to do otherwise. With that in mind, here
are a few ideas that are not as shiny as a new piece
of technology, but which may be more effective in
an all-hazards security plan.
This memorial, one of too many, was outside Pulse.
So if we are understandably bad at predicting high-
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