Log in Free trial  Nightmare SCENARIO  Article excerpt
Economist, author and university lecturer Dylan Evans discusses
why managing the risk of a nightmare scenario can be
counterproductive in the following passage from his upcoming
book "Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty."  There's
something mesmerizing about apocalypdc scenarios. Like an
alluring femme fatale, they exert an uncanny pull on the
imaginadon. That is why what security expert Bruce Schneier
calls "worst-case thinking" is so dangerous. It substitutes
imagination for rhinking, speculadon for risk analysis and fear
for reason.  One of the clearest examples of worst-case thinking
was the so-called "1% doctrine," which Dick Cheney is said to
have advocated while he was vice president in che George W. Bush
administration. According to journalist Ron Suskind, Cheney
first proposed the doctrine at a meeting with CIA Director
George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in
November 2001 .  Responding to the thought that Al Q