[pct-l] Probability of Disaster

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good morning, Tortoise,

I’ll second your comments.  Some good examples are presented in Laurence
Gonzales’ book *Deep Survival.*  Other PCT-L contributors have referred to
this book, and it’s a good one.



When reading the case-studies in the book, hardly anyone in their armchair
can fail see the danger as facts are presented.  Unfortunately, those facts
were often also available to the people involved but they were apparently
too close to the situation to recognize the danger.



Steel-Eye

Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09


On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Tortoise <Tortoise73 at charter.net> wrote:

> In accidents there are usually a chain of errors/mistakes which lead to the
> fatality.
>
> for instance -- hiker dies in a blizzard on JMT in summer.
>
> chain of mistakes / errors may be:
> 1.  ignoring weather forecast of incoming storm,
> 2.  ignoring or not knowing weather indications while on the trail,
> 3. lack of experience and/or knowledge of survival in snow storms.
> 4.  leading to not taking proper shelter in the storm, and
> 5. other gear inadequate or not used so as to survive storm.
> 6. maybe inadequate conditioning / stamina to reach safer location such as
> bailing down a side trail.
> 7. good or bad luck (bad luck: feet too sore to travel and caught. / good
> luck: sore feet causing one to leave trail or not even getting to the
> danger zone.
>
> So estimating the probability of a bad occurrence is, as you said, very
> difficult and also very imprecise.
>
>
> Tortoise
>
> <> Because truth matters! <>
>
> On 09/01/10 20:19, Yoshihiro Murakami wrote:
>
> >
> > if bad things happen at probability 0.1 ( assuming events are
> > independent as Jim and Jane said, when events are dependent, difficult
> > to analyze)
> >
> > Assuming
> > bad event1... 0.1
> > bad event2 ... 0.1
> > bad event3 ...0.1
> >
> > The probability of no occurrence of bad events is
> >
> > (1 -0.1 ) X (1 - 0.1 ) X ( 1 - 0.1 ) ..... -->  0.9 X 0.9 X 0.9 = 0.729
> >
> > Then the probability of bad events is
> >
> > 1 - 0.729 = 0.271
> >
> > The intuitive thinking of probability often misleading.
> >
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