The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation

by Stephen Flynn

Book Overview

"The truth is, acts of terror cannot always be prevented, and nature continues to show its fury in frighteningly unpredictable ways. Resiliency, argues Flynn, must now become our national motto. With... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400065518
• ISBN13: 9781400065516
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Natural Disasters or Terrorists: the Greater Threat?

Stephen Flynn travels a lot --- and everywhere he goes he finds crumbling bridges, inadequate highway systems, overtaxed hospitals, parochial politicians, obsolete communications gear, neglected or nonexistent planning, and a citizenry that does not seem to give a damn about any of these things. This book --- his second on the subject --- is his strident wake-up call, a plea that something be done before the inevitable disaster strikes. His case rests on two major premises: that more 9/11s and Katrinas are a certainty, and that of the two, future Katrinas are the more to be feared because they will be more frequent and will impact more people directly. Our present political and popular fixation on terrorism alone he finds shortsighted and foolish. He calls for measures to deal with both at the same time. Flynn's method is to construct hypothetical scenarios --- a terrorist attack on a ship carrying liquefied natural gas in Boston Harbor, a catastrophic earthquake that devastates north-central California --- and then to demonstrate the inadequacy of existing means to either prevent the event or minimize the damage they cause. His scenarios are generally based on authoritative sources as well as his own observations. In every case his conclusions are dismal: inability to respond quickly and efficiently, widespread panic, enormous casualties, government ineptitude. Yet the general public, he says, lives in an "almost adolescent sense of denial," preferring to just keep fingers crossed and hope that such things will not happen, or if they do happen, it will be somewhere else. Flynn tries gamely to be nonpolitical about all this, but his indictment of the Bush administration and the small-government fetish of many politicians is plain. He deplores the Iraq War as a diversion of funds and resources from the place where real threats are much more evident --- here at home. Some of his strictures are hardly new (e.g., the governmental passion for secrecy that keeps bureaucrats from sharing vital information, the inability of "first responders" and "first preventers" to communicate with each other, the absence of true collaboration between public and private agencies at times of crisis, the unfortunate preference for pork-barrel politics over meeting really urgent needs). But he goes well beyond these obvious truths, condemning public indifference or even ignorance of what needs to be done urgently. Our nation is "brittle," he says, and needs to be made more "resilient" before it is too late. Flynn obviously sees himself as Paul Revere on a coast to coast midnight ride. There is a strain of special pleading in the book. Flynn, himself a long-serving officer in the Coast Guard, tells again the familiar story of how well that agency performed in New Orleans in 2005 --- then goes on to propose that it be given the leading role in domestic disaster response, with FEMA demoted to secondary status. It may well be a good idea, but Flynn is not exactly an imp

Steve Flynn, Warnings about THE EDGE OF DISASTER

Steve Flynn has been trying to get us to pay attention for a few years now. This is his second book; AMERICA THE VULNERABLE was the first. This book takes a broader, more practical and more troubling view. Flynn points out that disasters, whether terrorist caused or natural, impact our complex social and economic systems in the same way: they generate paralyzing disruption. In each case, the remedy is the same: develop resilient individual and collective response capablities in order to endure the disruption. Whether we face hurricaines, plagues or weapons of mass destruction, each disaster faces us with the need to endure and recover. A former Coast Guard officer, Flynn brings a perspective on survival preparedness that comes from practical training and experience. This is the perspective that we must all adopt as we find ourselves enmeshed in ever more complex and tightly-linked systems subject to the risk of cascading catastrophes. Give this book to people you care about. You may save lives.

What we need to know

Stephen Flynn writes factually and with passion. America has neglected it's infrastructure and is not prepared for coming disasters. Great countries always fail from the inside. We should heed these warnings.

Major Contribution That Congress is NOT Paying Attention To

This is a major contribution to national security & prosperity that is being actively ignored by Congress. We must all buy the book and force the issue. HR 1 from the House purports to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission but does so in a shoddy, incomplete, and largely anti-democratic fashion, imposing the secret stovepipe model of one-way federal to state communications, without any respect (or understanding) of what this author recommends instead, which is to add the public to the loop, and also create localized means of facilitating communications among all the leaders--county government, law enforcement, business, academic, labor, religious, etc. This book is every bit as good-even better--than the author's first book, "America the Vulnerable," which I reviewed and rated very highly. I recommend that both be bought, and then waved in every public meeting possible. The major leap forward in this book is the juxtaposition of localized resilience to disaster of any kind (not just terrorism), with the very pointed and strong dismay about how we are wasting $700 billion a year on a heavy-metal military to fight (and anger) people overseas, while spending less than $70 million a year on key infrastructure and homeland defense needs. While the Department of Homeland Defense now has roughly $36 billion a year (perhaps even more), they are giving waste, fraud, and mismanagement a completely new meaning, taking pathological irrelevance to new heights. This is especially true of their antiquated approach to intelligence and not sharing information nor being receptive to bottom up non-secret information. I especially respect the author's detailed cataloguing of our infrastructure vulnerabilities that are of our own making. Badly patched dams, high-rises built on sand, hospitals with no excess capacity, power grids over 50 years old that a single tree can bring down, waterways that are broken, and that if broken any more cannot deliver coal to run power plants essential to Middle American commerce, the list goes on. Especially frightening in the concept of the firestorm, which I first encountered in the 1980's when a newspaper looked at the NYC water mains, most built in the 1920's (that's the nineteen TWENTIES). If they break in a certain way, and a fire starts, NYC gets burned to the ground. The author is gifted as both a former Coast Guard officer, and as a serious and articulate scholar that has done his homework. Especially valuable to me was his citation of a 2005 series of studies done by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in which our Nation received 4 C's, 10 D's, and one Incomplete. That alone is grounds for the impeachment and dismissal of every Governor and every Senator and every Congressman. These people are not minding the public interest in a substantive sustainable way. I have the word "holistic" written in my notes. This author provides in this book both a "big picture" and a whole range o

Excellent--A must read

This is an exceptional book. This should be required reading at FEMA, in Congress, and the White House. I've admired Flynn ever since I read America the Vulnerable a few years ago, and he continues to impress me with his pragmatic approach to homeland security. While his first book dealt primarily with hardening America against terrorism, this one takes a wider view and deals with the full spectrum of disasters--man made and natural--that could befall us. His basic arguments are simple--that most measures taken since 9/11 have been largely for psychological benefit and that major vulnerabilities still exist because of failing infrastructure, misallocated funds, poor city planning, lack of leadership etc. He argues that the federal government has missed an opportunity to lead a national effort to prepare for future disasters (instead it has passed responsibility to state/local officials), failed to engage America's most important resource--its citizenry, and avoided working with the private sector. His arguments are well-supported and convincing. Flynn is also highly critical of the current administration's "the best defense is a strong offense" strategy. Here he will be criticized by some, but as the Islamic terrorist threat continues to evolve from the 9/11 model (foreign groups with direct connections to key leaders) to the 7/11 model (homegrown radicals who are simply inspired by foreigners), his argument will become all the more prescient. Flynn represents the other end of the spectrum--"the best defense is a good defense"--and perhaps there is room for a more balanced approach. Maybe: "The best defense is both a strong offense and a strong defense"? In the final chapter he presents ten ideas that should be adopted to strengthen the country. Some of these will sound familiar to those who read his first book. This is less an indication that Flynn can't come up with new ideas. Rather, it is proof that the government simply isn't acting.