Collection
When It Breaks
Failure is a system too, and it has rules worth knowing.
Courts and Contracts
What makes a stranger safe to deal with
The machinery that makes a promise enforceable by someone else.
Land and Zoning
A line on a map is a price
The rules deciding what may be built where, and who lives there.
Public Health Delivery
The last mile is the whole problem
Getting proven health measures to the people who need them.
Catastrophe Insurance
Pricing a disaster before it happens
The business of putting a number on rare, enormous losses.
Where Waste Goes
Recycling is a commodity business
The global trade that handles what everyone throws away.
Normal Accidents
Some failures are built into the design
Failures built into a system rather than caused by somebody's error.
The Early Warning
The cyclone did not get any weaker
The forecast, the siren, and the evacuation that has to follow them.
The Regulator
Somebody is supposed to be watching
The bodies that police an industry on the public's behalf.
The Audit
Marking your own homework does not count
An independent check that the numbers say what they claim to say.
The Backup
Three copies, two kinds, one elsewhere
The rule that turns a lost device into a nuisance instead of a disaster.
Antibiotic Resistance
A cure being used up in slow motion
Bacteria learning to survive the medicines that used to kill them.
The Investigation
Ask what failed, not who failed
The method of learning from an accident instead of punishing it.