WyzGuys Tech Talk

When I am teaching about risk assessment, we eventually get to a couple of different ways to calculate risk.

The first formula is:  Risk = Threat x Vulnerability x Likelihood.  This is a probabilistic..  This approach that looks at how likely a certainly risk is to occur.

The second formula is : Risk = Threat x Vulnerability x Impact.   This method is used when assessing risk for a Business Impact Analysis as part of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan.

In order to explain the deference between Likelihood and Impact, I often use the illustration of being struck by a meteorite.  A very high impact event with a very low probability.

This week in the Smithsonian newsletter, they published an article about the only known case where a human was actually struck by a meteorite.

Ann Hodges, 34, was napping under quilts on her couch in Sylacauga, Alabama, on November 30, 1954, when a nine-pound meteorite came through the ceiling and bounced off a radio before hitting her in the thigh. It left a deep bruise and catapulted her into both quiet fame and a major legal dispute with her landlady, who thought she rightfully owned the rock…

Sixty-two years after her brush with the heavens, Hodges remains the only well-documented case of somebody being hit by a meteorite. But humans have continued to be affected by space junk. In 1992, a meteorite blazed across the sky in Peekskill, New York, before striking a woman’s parked car. The repair bill probably stung a bit, but she wasn’t injured in the strike. In 2003, a 40-pound meteorite crashed through the roof of another home, this time in New Orleans, though fortunately no one was hurt. And in 2007, a meteorite strike made people sick in Peru when it released arsenic fumes from an underground water source, writes Brian Howard for National Geographic. In 2013, a meteorite exploded over central Russia. The resulting shock wave injured 1200 people and caused $33 million in damage…

As Hodges’s unique case demonstrates, the odds are on our side when it comes to meteor strikes. One scientist found the lifetime odds of dying from a meteor strike near you to be 1:1,600,000—to put that in perspective, your odds of being struck by lightning are 1:135,000. The odds of dying as the result of a meteor strike anywhere in the world—like the kind of rare but catastrophic geologic event that shapes an eon—are 1:75,000.

The odds of winning the PowerBall lottery? 1:195,249,054. Stop buying lotto tickets and watch out for meteorites, folks.