Network Disruption Bingo

by | Feb 21, 2009


One thing all serious experts on disasters and resilience agree on is the need to keep your morale up while everything you thought you could rely on is crumbling around you.

Brian Clegg’s Global Warming Survival Kit , for instance, has checklists to see if your outlook is flagging under the pressure. “Everything seems pointless” – check! “Always feeling sad, or simply blank” – check! “Feeling worthless and without value” – check!  

Fortunately, help is at hand.  The final chapter of his book offers a range  of techniques for keeping chirpy: from ‘relaxation by breathing’ (Amanda Ripley‘s keen on that one too), making music, or – best of all – simply playing games. As Brian so rightly observes,

A stash of games is very useful if you have to entertain yourselves, and they will make good bartering objects too.

Well, here at Global Dashboard we know good advice when we see it – and of course it also goes without saying that we’re dedicated to helping our readers through these turbulent times as well.  So we’re proud to unveil our own special game: Network Disruption Bingo.

During an exhaustive mapping process undertaken over a period of nearly 45 minutes, we’ve identified the key networks we all depend on but rarely stop to consider. Then (here’s the science part – concentrate), we’ve allocated points to each one depending on how bad it would be if it crashed, and put them on a special scorecard.

Print it out, and keep it safe for the dark nights ahead.  You never know, you may be able to barter it for something useful.

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.


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