Gulf Oil Crisis Illustrates Murphy's Law

The recent explosion at a BP oil drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico is a tragic illustration of Murphy's Law (that if anything can go wrong it will and at the worst possible moment) in operation and also the need to create a continuous assessment, planning and action program in order to deal with emergencies of all kinds.

With modern technology it would have been too difficult or design and create working models of that oil right coping with all kinds of natural or man made disasters from tropical storms and hurricanes to disasters such as the one which resulted in many deaths as well as the continuing destruction of animal and bird life in the Caribbean.

If they had any it doesn't appear that it included a plan to cope with things like explosions and how to deal with them. This has left BP having to play a desperate catch-up game which does not appear to be working.

Ideally one of the most critical things they should have done – and on a smaller scale – every person should do – is make it a practice to not only develop a plan to assess problems, plan effective responses and take the most effective action as they are erupting but also to make it a practice to anticipate problems -- before -- they happen so an effective solution can me put it place immediately instead of experimenting in the hope that something will work.

Maybe some of the game developers so preoccupied with creating war games could divert a little of their attention to creating a few games with possible solutions to such problems if nobody else can dol it.



See the report from AP  on the Google News  page Saturday, June 26, 2010 for a good illustration or example of what I mention here. Click on "Little Spent on  Oil Spill Clean Up Technology"