Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster

How does the government or a business plot for an indescribable disaster-a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, a gigantic oil spill, or a nuclear attack? Lee Clarke examines actual attempts to “prepare” for these catastrophes and finds that the policies adopted by corporations and government agencies are fundamentally rhetorical: the plans have no opportunity to succeed, yet they serve both the organizations and the broadcast as symbols of control, order, and stability. These “fantasy documents” attempt to inspire confidence in organizations, but for Clarke they are disturbing persuasions, soothing our perception that we ultimately cannot control our own technological advances.

For example, Clarke studies corporations’ plans for cleaning up oil spills in Prince William Sound prior to the Exxon Valdez debacle, and he finds that the accepted strategies were not just unrealistic but absolutely flawed. Although different organizations were required to have a cleanup plot for huge spills in the sound, a really massive spill was unprecedented, and the accepted policy was small more than a patchwork of guesses based on (frequently unsuccessful) cleanups after smaller accidents.

Even as we are increasingly skeptical of huge organizations, we still have no choice but to depend on them for protection from large-scale disasters. We guess their specialists to tell the truth, and yet, as Clarke points out, reassuring rhetoric (below the guise of expert prediction) may have no basis in fact or truth because no such basis is attainable.

In exposure the dangers of plotting when implementation is a fantasy, Clarke concludes that society would be safer, smarter, and fairer if organizations may possibly admit their limitations.