Black-Swan Preparedness

batch: Batch 19

slug: foresight

slug: antifragility

slug: robustness

slug: redundancy

slug: modularity

slug: buffering

slug: optionality

slug: adaptation

slug: recovery

slug: equity

components: Epistemic Humility and Surprise Boundary

components: Exposure, Concentration, and Irreversibility Map

components: Impact Cascade and Second-Order Consequence Map

components: Modularity, Firebreak, and Blast-Radius Control

components: Redundancy, Diversity, and Independence Design

components: Optionality, Reversibility, and Exit Portfolio

components: Weak-Signal, Anomaly, and Sentinel Network

components: Trigger, Escalation, and Emergency Authority

components: Decentralized Improvisation and Local Agency

components: Continuity, Mutual Aid, and Substitution Network

components: Recovery, Reconstitution, and Adaptive Rebuild

components: Legitimacy, Equity, and Safeguard Governance

mechanisms: Emergency-Authority Activation and Sunset Gate

essence_one_line: Prepare for consequential surprise by protecting survival floors, reducing concentrated exposure, preserving slack and options, limiting cascades, enabling bounded improvisation, and rebuilding adaptively without pretending to predict the unknown event.

compression_statement: Black-Swan Preparedness designs for failure of the forecast set. It defines critical functions and survival floors; records model limits and unknown dependencies; maps exposure, irreversibility, tail dependence, and cascades; protects reserves; adds modularity, firebreaks, genuine diversity, options, sentinels, bounded emergency authority, local agency, continuity and mutual aid; governs recovery and adaptive rebuild; learns without hindsight overfit; and protects legitimacy, equity, rights, and emergency-power expiry. It substitutes general survival and adaptation capacity for false precision about event probability.

core_intuition: Unknown events cannot be listed reliably, but their consequences are shaped by system architecture. Concentration, tight coupling, zero slack, irreversible commitments, common-mode dependence, centralized authority, and brittle recovery turn surprise into catastrophe. Reducing those vulnerabilities creates value across many shocks without claiming prediction.

canonical_formula: surprise_resilience = survival_floor + slack + modularity + diversity + optionality + local_agency + mutual_aid + adaptive_recovery + legitimacy - concentration - tight_coupling - irreversible_exposure - common_mode_failure - permanent_emergency_power

structural_problem: A system is optimized around ordinary variance and a trusted scenario set, leaving critical function dependent on concentrated resources, correlated defenses, tight coupling, thin reserves, centralized decisions, and recovery plans that assume the event is known. When an unmodeled high-impact event arrives, probability estimates and scripts provide little help while cascades, authority ambiguity, inequitable triage, and irreversible loss dominate.

trigger_conditions: forecast error could threaten critical or irreversible outcomes

trigger_conditions: tail dependence or common shocks can defeat diversification

trigger_conditions: systems operate near full utilization with little protected slack

trigger_conditions: failure can cascade across technical, ecological, financial, or institutional boundaries

trigger_conditions: central coordination may be unavailable or too slow

trigger_conditions: emergency authority and resource triage affect rights

trigger_conditions: recovery could recreate the same exposure

symptoms: reserves repeatedly used for routine demand

symptoms: rebuild plans that restore concentration

root_tension: Efficiency and prediction favor concentration, utilization, and tailored plans, while survival under deep uncertainty requires slack, diversity, modularity, options, distributed agency, and preparedness that looks inefficient before the shock.

anti_signatures: the event is frequent and well modeled enough for ordinary risk control

anti_signatures: the task is to preserve rare cases within routine service

anti_signatures: the primary need is financial risk transfer only

anti_signatures: the task is to explain a deviant case after occurrence

anti_signatures: the aim is to predict a named scenario precisely

anti_signatures: the system has no high-impact or irreversible exposure

structural_intervention: Reconfigure exposure and response so critical functions survive model failure: protect minimum service and slack, reduce concentration and blast radius, diversify dependencies, preserve options, detect anomalies, predelegate bounded authority, enable improvisation and mutual aid, govern adaptive recovery, and retain rights and legitimacy.

decision_rules: Design from unacceptable consequence and survival floor, not only estimated probability.

decision_rules: Treat unknown dependencies and model boundaries as first-class risk evidence.

decision_rules: Prefer structural robustness that helps across events to scenario-specific prediction theater.

decision_rules: Protect reserves from routine utilization pressure.

decision_rules: Require genuine diversity rather than copies with shared failure modes.

decision_rules: Predelegate only bounded emergency authority with trigger, log, review, and sunset.

decision_rules: Equip local actors to improvise toward shared objectives.

decision_rules: Do not rebuild the same exposure without explicit review.

target_invariants: protected rights and vulnerable populations

expected_outcomes: recovery that reduces repeated vulnerability

expected_outcomes: general learning without last-event overfit

prose_essence:
Black-Swan Preparedness builds survival and adaptation capacity for high-impact events that lie outside the trusted forecast set. It does not claim to predict unknown unknowns. It asks which functions and rights must survive model failure, which architectural features turn surprise into catastrophe, and which reserves, boundaries, options, authorities, local capabilities, and recovery paths remain valuable across many shocks.

The archetype shifts attention from event enumeration to consequence architecture. Concentration, common-mode dependence, zero slack, irreversible commitment, tight coupling, centralized bottlenecks, and fragile recovery magnify almost any surprise. Modularity, genuine diversity, protected reserves, optionality, sentinel networks, bounded improvisation, mutual aid, and adaptive rebuild reduce that amplification.

prose_when_to_use:
Use it when critical or irreversible outcomes depend on models that may omit event classes, when tail dependence can defeat diversification, when cascades cross boundaries, or when ordinary scripts and central coordination may fail. It is appropriate in infrastructure, finance, health, supply networks, digital systems, governance, ecology, and community resilience.

Do not use black-swan language to excuse foreseeable negligence. Frequent, well-understood failures still need ordinary prevention and response. Nor should preparedness become a promise of prediction, a permanent emergency regime, or a dramatic scenario exercise without tested capacity.

prose_structural_problem:
Systems optimized for ordinary variance often remove the very capacities that make surprise survivable. Reserves look idle, diversity looks expensive, modularity looks redundant, and local discretion looks inconsistent. Forecast confidence then encourages concentration and irreversible commitments. When the model fails, defenses fail together and response authority arrives late.

The central tension is efficient specialization versus general survival. Preparedness has visible carrying costs before an event and uncertain attribution afterward. Yet catastrophic exposure is often created precisely by treating unused capacity and alternative paths as waste.

A mature intervention makes survival floors, model limits, cascade paths, reserve rights, emergency authority, equity, and recovery choices inspectable before the shock.

prose_intervention_logic:
1. **Critical Function and Survival Floor.** Defines the people, functions, rights, assets, and minimum service states that must survive even when the initiating event was not predicted. Preparedness cannot protect everything equally. A survival floor makes consequence, equity, and restoration order explicit before crisis bargaining begins.
2. **Epistemic Humility and Surprise Boundary.** States what models omit, where probabilities are unreliable, which dependencies remain unknown, and which claims must not be treated as complete. Black-swan preparedness is not a promise to enumerate unknown unknowns. It designs for model failure and surprise without pretending surprise has been predicted.
3. **Exposure, Concentration, and Irreversibility Map.** Locates concentrated value, single points of loss, irreversible commitments, fragile dependencies, and conditions under which ordinary recovery becomes impossible. Large impact often comes from exposure architecture rather than event frequency. Reducing concentration and irreversible coupling can matter more than refining probability.
4. **Tail Dependence and Common-Mode Review.** Tests whether nominally diverse assets, regions, suppliers, models, or defenses fail together under stress. Ordinary correlation can understate crisis dependence. Shared infrastructure, incentives, climate, finance, software, or governance can collapse diversification when it is most needed.
5. **Impact Cascade and Second-Order Consequence Map.** Traces direct shock, propagation, feedback, substitution, behavioral response, legitimacy effects, and delayed consequences across system boundaries. The initiating event may be unknowable while cascade pathways remain designable. Mapping consequence structure avoids scenario-specific tunnel vision.
6. **Slack, Reserve, and Capacity Floor.** Maintains protected financial, material, staffing, attention, time, and infrastructure capacity for shocks outside the forecast set. Reserve must be real, accessible, and protected from routine consumption. Idle-looking capacity is an option against model error.
7. **Modularity, Firebreak, and Blast-Radius Control.** Partitions systems so failure, compromise, shortage, or misinformation cannot propagate without limit. Boundaries should allow isolation and graceful degradation while preserving essential exchange and avoiding abandonment of vulnerable parts.
8. **Redundancy, Diversity, and Independence Design.** Creates genuinely different ways to perform critical functions, with explicit dependency and correlated-failure checks. Copies are not resilient when they share the same platform, geography, model, supplier, authority, or failure assumption.
9. **Optionality, Reversibility, and Exit Portfolio.** Preserves multiple viable courses of action, delayed commitment, rollback, substitution, and escape routes before uncertainty resolves. Options have carrying cost, but they prevent one forecast from locking the whole system into an unrecoverable path.
10. **Weak-Signal, Anomaly, and Sentinel Network.** Monitors distributed anomalies, boundary violations, near misses, local knowledge, and emerging conditions without requiring a known event template. Signals are used to shorten surprise and response delay, not to claim reliable prediction of the event class.
11. **Trigger, Escalation, and Emergency Authority.** Defines who may declare exceptional conditions, release reserves, isolate components, suspend rules, and coordinate response, with evidence and limits. Ambiguous authority wastes the brief period when containment and survival actions remain possible; unbounded authority turns preparedness into abuse.
12. **Decentralized Improvisation and Local Agency.** Equips local actors with objectives, boundaries, resources, communication, and permission to adapt when central plans are obsolete or unreachable. Surprise invalidates detailed scripts. Local agency must be competent and bounded, not abandoned without support or accountability.
13. **Continuity, Mutual Aid, and Substitution Network.** Prearranges alternate suppliers, reciprocal support, manual modes, cross-training, temporary facilities, and interoperable handoffs. Mutual aid works only if capacity, priority, activation, reimbursement, and dependency assumptions are tested before simultaneous demand.
14. **Recovery, Reconstitution, and Adaptive Rebuild.** Restores critical function in stages, preserves evidence, prevents repeated exposure, and decides what should be rebuilt, redesigned, or retired. Recovery is not automatic return to the fragile baseline. The shock can reveal new constraints and opportunities for safer structure.
15. **Learning Without Story Overfit.** Extracts structural lessons while resisting hindsight certainty, single-cause stories, false universality, and preparation for only the last event. Black-swan narratives can make the improbable look obvious after the fact. Learning should improve general capacities and boundaries rather than rehearse one screenplay.
16. **Legitimacy, Equity, and Safeguard Governance.** Protects rights, priority fairness, transparency, appeal, vulnerable groups, emergency-power expiry, and accountable burden allocation before, during, and after surprise. Preparedness that saves aggregate capacity by abandoning low-power groups or normalizing permanent emergency authority is not mature resilience.

The lifecycle is deliberately event-agnostic but not consequence-agnostic. New evidence can change exposure maps, reserve levels, authority, and recovery design, but it cannot erase the survival floor or safeguards without explicit review.

prose_key_components:
### Critical Function and Survival Floor (`critical_function_and_survival_floor`)

Defines the people, functions, rights, assets, and minimum service states that must survive even when the initiating event was not predicted.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"critical_function_and_survival_floor","name":"Critical Function and Survival Floor","role":"Defines the people, functions, rights, assets, and minimum service states that must survive even when the initiating event was not predicted.","notes":"Preparedness cannot protect everything equally. A survival floor makes consequence, equity, and restoration order explicit before crisis bargaining begins.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Epistemic Humility and Surprise Boundary (`epistemic_humility_and_surprise_boundary`)

States what models omit, where probabilities are unreliable, which dependencies remain unknown, and which claims must not be treated as complete.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"epistemic_humility_and_surprise_boundary","name":"Epistemic Humility and Surprise Boundary","role":"States what models omit, where probabilities are unreliable, which dependencies remain unknown, and which claims must not be treated as complete.","notes":"Black-swan preparedness is not a promise to enumerate unknown unknowns. It designs for model failure and surprise without pretending surprise has been predicted.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Exposure, Concentration, and Irreversibility Map (`exposure_concentration_and_irreversibility_map`)

Locates concentrated value, single points of loss, irreversible commitments, fragile dependencies, and conditions under which ordinary recovery becomes impossible.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"exposure_concentration_and_irreversibility_map","name":"Exposure, Concentration, and Irreversibility Map","role":"Locates concentrated value, single points of loss, irreversible commitments, fragile dependencies, and conditions under which ordinary recovery becomes impossible.","notes":"Large impact often comes from exposure architecture rather than event frequency. Reducing concentration and irreversible coupling can matter more than refining probability.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Tail Dependence and Common-Mode Review (`tail_dependence_and_common_mode_review`)

Tests whether nominally diverse assets, regions, suppliers, models, or defenses fail together under stress.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"tail_dependence_and_common_mode_review","name":"Tail Dependence and Common-Mode Review","role":"Tests whether nominally diverse assets, regions, suppliers, models, or defenses fail together under stress.","notes":"Ordinary correlation can understate crisis dependence. Shared infrastructure, incentives, climate, finance, software, or governance can collapse diversification when it is most needed.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Impact Cascade and Second-Order Consequence Map (`impact_cascade_and_second_order_consequence_map`)

Traces direct shock, propagation, feedback, substitution, behavioral response, legitimacy effects, and delayed consequences across system boundaries.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"impact_cascade_and_second_order_consequence_map","name":"Impact Cascade and Second-Order Consequence Map","role":"Traces direct shock, propagation, feedback, substitution, behavioral response, legitimacy effects, and delayed consequences across system boundaries.","notes":"The initiating event may be unknowable while cascade pathways remain designable. Mapping consequence structure avoids scenario-specific tunnel vision.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Slack, Reserve, and Capacity Floor (`slack_reserve_and_capacity_floor`)

Maintains protected financial, material, staffing, attention, time, and infrastructure capacity for shocks outside the forecast set.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"slack_reserve_and_capacity_floor","name":"Slack, Reserve, and Capacity Floor","role":"Maintains protected financial, material, staffing, attention, time, and infrastructure capacity for shocks outside the forecast set.","notes":"Reserve must be real, accessible, and protected from routine consumption. Idle-looking capacity is an option against model error.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Modularity, Firebreak, and Blast-Radius Control (`modularity_firebreak_and_blast_radius_control`)

Partitions systems so failure, compromise, shortage, or misinformation cannot propagate without limit.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"modularity_firebreak_and_blast_radius_control","name":"Modularity, Firebreak, and Blast-Radius Control","role":"Partitions systems so failure, compromise, shortage, or misinformation cannot propagate without limit.","notes":"Boundaries should allow isolation and graceful degradation while preserving essential exchange and avoiding abandonment of vulnerable parts.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Redundancy, Diversity, and Independence Design (`redundancy_diversity_and_independence_design`)

Creates genuinely different ways to perform critical functions, with explicit dependency and correlated-failure checks.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"redundancy_diversity_and_independence_design","name":"Redundancy, Diversity, and Independence Design","role":"Creates genuinely different ways to perform critical functions, with explicit dependency and correlated-failure checks.","notes":"Copies are not resilient when they share the same platform, geography, model, supplier, authority, or failure assumption.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Optionality, Reversibility, and Exit Portfolio (`optionality_reversibility_and_exit_portfolio`)

Preserves multiple viable courses of action, delayed commitment, rollback, substitution, and escape routes before uncertainty resolves.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"optionality_reversibility_and_exit_portfolio","name":"Optionality, Reversibility, and Exit Portfolio","role":"Preserves multiple viable courses of action, delayed commitment, rollback, substitution, and escape routes before uncertainty resolves.","notes":"Options have carrying cost, but they prevent one forecast from locking the whole system into an unrecoverable path.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Weak-Signal, Anomaly, and Sentinel Network (`weak_signal_anomaly_and_sentinel_network`)

Monitors distributed anomalies, boundary violations, near misses, local knowledge, and emerging conditions without requiring a known event template.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"weak_signal_anomaly_and_sentinel_network","name":"Weak-Signal, Anomaly, and Sentinel Network","role":"Monitors distributed anomalies, boundary violations, near misses, local knowledge, and emerging conditions without requiring a known event template.","notes":"Signals are used to shorten surprise and response delay, not to claim reliable prediction of the event class.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Trigger, Escalation, and Emergency Authority (`trigger_escalation_and_emergency_authority`)

Defines who may declare exceptional conditions, release reserves, isolate components, suspend rules, and coordinate response, with evidence and limits.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"trigger_escalation_and_emergency_authority","name":"Trigger, Escalation, and Emergency Authority","role":"Defines who may declare exceptional conditions, release reserves, isolate components, suspend rules, and coordinate response, with evidence and limits.","notes":"Ambiguous authority wastes the brief period when containment and survival actions remain possible; unbounded authority turns preparedness into abuse.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Decentralized Improvisation and Local Agency (`decentralized_improvisation_and_local_agency`)

Equips local actors with objectives, boundaries, resources, communication, and permission to adapt when central plans are obsolete or unreachable.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"decentralized_improvisation_and_local_agency","name":"Decentralized Improvisation and Local Agency","role":"Equips local actors with objectives, boundaries, resources, communication, and permission to adapt when central plans are obsolete or unreachable.","notes":"Surprise invalidates detailed scripts. Local agency must be competent and bounded, not abandoned without support or accountability.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Continuity, Mutual Aid, and Substitution Network (`continuity_mutual_aid_and_substitution_network`)

Prearranges alternate suppliers, reciprocal support, manual modes, cross-training, temporary facilities, and interoperable handoffs.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"continuity_mutual_aid_and_substitution_network","name":"Continuity, Mutual Aid, and Substitution Network","role":"Prearranges alternate suppliers, reciprocal support, manual modes, cross-training, temporary facilities, and interoperable handoffs.","notes":"Mutual aid works only if capacity, priority, activation, reimbursement, and dependency assumptions are tested before simultaneous demand.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Recovery, Reconstitution, and Adaptive Rebuild (`recovery_reconstitution_and_adaptive_rebuild`)

Restores critical function in stages, preserves evidence, prevents repeated exposure, and decides what should be rebuilt, redesigned, or retired.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"recovery_reconstitution_and_adaptive_rebuild","name":"Recovery, Reconstitution, and Adaptive Rebuild","role":"Restores critical function in stages, preserves evidence, prevents repeated exposure, and decides what should be rebuilt, redesigned, or retired.","notes":"Recovery is not automatic return to the fragile baseline. The shock can reveal new constraints and opportunities for safer structure.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Learning Without Story Overfit (`learning_without_story_overfit`)

Extracts structural lessons while resisting hindsight certainty, single-cause stories, false universality, and preparation for only the last event.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"learning_without_story_overfit","name":"Learning Without Story Overfit","role":"Extracts structural lessons while resisting hindsight certainty, single-cause stories, false universality, and preparation for only the last event.","notes":"Black-swan narratives can make the improbable look obvious after the fact. Learning should improve general capacities and boundaries rather than rehearse one screenplay.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

### Legitimacy, Equity, and Safeguard Governance (`legitimacy_equity_and_safeguard_governance`)

Protects rights, priority fairness, transparency, appeal, vulnerable groups, emergency-power expiry, and accountable burden allocation before, during, and after surprise.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"legitimacy_equity_and_safeguard_governance","name":"Legitimacy, Equity, and Safeguard Governance","role":"Protects rights, priority fairness, transparency, appeal, vulnerable groups, emergency-power expiry, and accountable burden allocation before, during, and after surprise.","notes":"Preparedness that saves aggregate capacity by abandoning low-power groups or normalizing permanent emergency authority is not mature resilience.","component_type":"required_structural_component","reuse_scope":"cross_domain","maturity":"provisional","host_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"not_a_mechanism_because":"This is a persistent preparedness responsibility, not a particular reserve, drill, contract, dashboard, or emergency tool."}

prose_common_mechanisms:
### Reverse Stress and Failure-Budget Test (`reverse_stress_and_failure_budget_test`)

**Type:** `stress_test`

Starts from unacceptable system loss and asks which combinations of failure could reach it without assigning a trusted probability.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"reverse_stress_and_failure_budget_test","name":"Reverse Stress and Failure-Budget Test","mechanism_type":"stress_test","role":"Starts from unacceptable system loss and asks which combinations of failure could reach it without assigning a trusted probability.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Minimum Viable Service Floor (`minimum_viable_service_floor`)

**Type:** `service_standard`

Defines critical outputs, recipients, restoration order, and tolerable degradation under severe disruption.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"minimum_viable_service_floor","name":"Minimum Viable Service Floor","mechanism_type":"service_standard","role":"Defines critical outputs, recipients, restoration order, and tolerable degradation under severe disruption.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Protected Contingency Reserve (`protected_contingency_reserve`)

**Type:** `reserve`

Maintains releasable capacity with access, replenishment, anti-raiding, and audit rules.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"protected_contingency_reserve","name":"Protected Contingency Reserve","mechanism_type":"reserve","role":"Maintains releasable capacity with access, replenishment, anti-raiding, and audit rules.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Modular Isolation and Firebreak Drill (`modular_isolation_and_firebreak_drill`)

**Type:** `exercise`

Tests whether components can be isolated, degraded, or disconnected without collapsing critical function.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"modular_isolation_and_firebreak_drill","name":"Modular Isolation and Firebreak Drill","mechanism_type":"exercise","role":"Tests whether components can be isolated, degraded, or disconnected without collapsing critical function.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Common-Mode Dependency Red Team (`common_mode_dependency_red_team`)

**Type:** `review`

Challenges claims of diversification by tracing shared suppliers, infrastructure, data, models, geography, incentives, and authority.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"common_mode_dependency_red_team","name":"Common-Mode Dependency Red Team","mechanism_type":"review","role":"Challenges claims of diversification by tracing shared suppliers, infrastructure, data, models, geography, incentives, and authority.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### No-Script Adaptive Response Exercise (`no_script_adaptive_response_exercise`)

**Type:** `exercise`

Withholds the familiar scenario and tests objective-based local improvisation, communication loss, authority, and escalation.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"no_script_adaptive_response_exercise","name":"No-Script Adaptive Response Exercise","mechanism_type":"exercise","role":"Withholds the familiar scenario and tests objective-based local improvisation, communication loss, authority, and escalation.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Sentinel Anomaly and Near-Miss Register (`sentinel_anomaly_and_near_miss_register`)

**Type:** `monitoring`

Aggregates unusual events, boundary breaches, local reports, and near misses while preserving uncertainty and dissent.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"sentinel_anomaly_and_near_miss_register","name":"Sentinel Anomaly and Near-Miss Register","mechanism_type":"monitoring","role":"Aggregates unusual events, boundary breaches, local reports, and near misses while preserving uncertainty and dissent.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Emergency-Authority Activation and Sunset Gate (`emergency_authority_activation_and_sunset_gate`)

**Type:** `governance`

Requires bounded triggers, logged actions, independent review, expiry, renewal, and restoration of ordinary authority.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"emergency_authority_activation_and_sunset_gate","name":"Emergency-Authority Activation and Sunset Gate","mechanism_type":"governance","role":"Requires bounded triggers, logged actions, independent review, expiry, renewal, and restoration of ordinary authority.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Mutual-Aid and Substitution Agreement (`mutual_aid_and_substitution_agreement`)

**Type:** `contract`

Predefines interoperable assistance, priority, capacity, reimbursement, liability, activation, and simultaneous-demand limits.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"mutual_aid_and_substitution_agreement","name":"Mutual-Aid and Substitution Agreement","mechanism_type":"contract","role":"Predefines interoperable assistance, priority, capacity, reimbursement, liability, activation, and simultaneous-demand limits.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

### Post-Shock Boundary and Rebuild Review (`post_shock_boundary_and_rebuild_review`)

**Type:** `review`

Reexamines exposure, cascade, survivor bias, safeguards, and whether restoration should reproduce or redesign the prior system.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event; protect critical functions and vulnerable groups; retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"post_shock_boundary_and_rebuild_review","name":"Post-Shock Boundary and Rebuild Review","mechanism_type":"review","role":"Reexamines exposure, cascade, survivor bias, safeguards, and whether restoration should reproduce or redesign the prior system.","maturity":"provisional","instantiates_archetypes":["black_swan_preparedness"],"selection_constraints":["strengthen general surprise capacity rather than predict one event","protect critical functions and vulnerable groups","retain authority limits, traceability, and recovery"],"not_an_archetype_because":"This is a concrete standard, reserve, drill, review, monitoring process, gate, or agreement used inside the broader preparedness lifecycle."}

prose_failure_modes:
### Scenario Capture

**Cause.** Preparedness optimizes for a vivid named scenario and remains fragile to different surprise.

**Mitigation.** Prioritize general capacities, reverse stress, and no-script exercises. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Probability False Precision

**Cause.** Unreliable tail probabilities are treated as decision-grade certainty.

**Mitigation.** Use consequence thresholds, ranges, model humility, and survival requirements. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Reserve Raiding

**Cause.** Slack and reserves are consumed by routine efficiency pressure.

**Mitigation.** Protect purpose, access authority, replenishment, and audit. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Correlated Redundancy

**Cause.** Backups share the same supplier, platform, location, model, or governance failure.

**Mitigation.** Map dependencies and require meaningful diversity. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Brittle Emergency Script

**Cause.** Detailed plans fail when event structure differs from rehearsal.

**Mitigation.** Train objectives, boundaries, agency, communication, and improvisation. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Central Authority Bottleneck

**Cause.** Local actors wait for decisions from a center that lacks information or connectivity.

**Mitigation.** Predelegate bounded authority and resources with escalation paths. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Permanent Emergency Power

**Cause.** Exceptional authority survives after the trigger or becomes a vehicle for abuse.

**Mitigation.** Use activation evidence, expiry, independent review, appeal, and restoration. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Inequitable Survival Floor

**Cause.** Aggregate continuity is preserved by abandoning vulnerable or low-power groups.

**Mitigation.** Define rights and minimum service by affected population, not only totals. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Recovery To Fragile Baseline

**Cause.** Restoration recreates the same concentration and cascade pathways.

**Mitigation.** Require boundary review and adaptive rebuild decisions. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Hindsight Overfit

**Cause.** One surprising event is retold as obvious and becomes the template for all preparation.

**Mitigation.** Preserve uncertainty, rival explanations, and general structural lessons. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Warning Fatigue

**Cause.** Weak signals and anomaly monitoring generate noise until real escalation is ignored.

**Mitigation.** Tier evidence, diversify sentinels, calibrate escalation, and retire low-value signals. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

### Preparedness Theater

**Cause.** Plans, drills, and dashboards exist but reserves, handoffs, authority, and recovery are untested.

**Mitigation.** Test failure, release, substitution, withdrawal, and restoration end to end. Re-test critical function, equity, authority, and recovery after remediation.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
### `tail_risk_preservation`

Protects important rare cases from common-case optimization; black-swan preparedness protects whole-system survival and adaptive response to unmodeled high-impact events.

### `risk_pooling_reinsurance_layering_strategy`

Transfers quantifiable correlated or tail financial layers; preparedness also addresses nontransferable technical, institutional, ecological, and legitimacy shocks.

### `correlation_structure_analysis_for_pooling_effectiveness`

Analyzes pooling dependence; common-mode review is one evidence component inside broader preparedness.

### `deviant_case_analysis`

Uses an observed anomaly to refine theory; preparedness acts before, during, and after surprise to preserve function.

### `scenario_portfolio_planning`

Explores named plausible futures; preparedness builds capacities that survive failure of the scenario set.

### `weak_signal_triage`

Prioritizes emerging signals; sentinel monitoring is one input and does not replace reserves, modularity, authority, recovery, or safeguards.

### `robust_solution_selection`

Chooses options performing acceptably across modeled conditions; preparedness also governs unknown model failure and emergency response architecture.

### `antifragile_experimentation`

If present, seeks gains from volatility through bounded experiments; preparedness first protects survival and rights.

### `graceful_degradation`

Maintains reduced service under failure; it is one system behavior within a larger surprise lifecycle.

### `fault_tolerant_distributed_consensus`

Maintains agreement under bounded fault models; preparedness addresses failure beyond trusted models and across broader functions.

### `business_continuity_design`

If present, restores named business functions; preparedness emphasizes model failure, unknown cascades, local improvisation, and adaptive rebuild.

### `crisis_response_coordination`

Coordinates an active crisis; preparedness also restructures exposure and capacity before shock and learning after it.

The strongest frozen boundary is Tail-Risk Preservation. Its legacy source prime `black_swan` should normalize to canonical q44, but its intervention protects important rare cases from common-case optimization. Black-Swan Preparedness instead reorganizes whole-system survival, response, and recovery under deep surprise.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
### Infrastructure

A utility defines minimum service, isolates network sections, preserves manual modes, stocks repair capacity, and tests cross-region mutual aid. Survival floor, blast radius, reserve, local agency, and staged recovery interact. The design documents survival floor, model limits, common modes, reserves, authority, equity, and recovery evidence.

### Finance

A fund reverse-stresses liquidity, common counterparties, margin calls, and correlated exits while preserving capital and operational options. Tail dependence, concentration, reserve, optionality, and governance dominate. The design documents survival floor, model limits, common modes, reserves, authority, equity, and recovery evidence.

### Public Health

A region preserves surveillance, local authority, reserve supplies, interoperable staffing, and rights safeguards for an unmodeled outbreak. Sentinels, capacity, improvisation, mutual aid, legitimacy, and adaptive learning are required. The design documents survival floor, model limits, common modes, reserves, authority, equity, and recovery evidence.

### Digital Systems

A platform limits tenant blast radius, diversifies critical dependencies, tests control-plane loss, and preserves independent recovery paths. Common mode, modularity, redundancy, local control, and evidence-bearing recovery matter. The design documents survival floor, model limits, common modes, reserves, authority, equity, and recovery evidence.

### Community And Governance

A community builds trusted local response cells, accessible reserves, communication substitutes, fair triage, and emergency-power sunset. Central scripts may fail while legitimacy and local agency determine survival. The design documents survival floor, model limits, common modes, reserves, authority, equity, and recovery evidence.

### Extended regional-water example

A regional water system begins with a survival floor for drinking, sanitation, fire response, and medically vulnerable users. It maps concentrated treatment dependencies, shared power and communications, irreversible contamination paths, and common-mode suppliers. Protected reserves, manual operating modes, modular isolation, alternate treatment, and cross-region mutual aid are tested through a no-script exercise in which the initiating event is withheld. Local operators receive bounded authority to isolate and substitute; central authority releases reserves and coordinates public information under logged emergency rules. Recovery preserves evidence, restores minimum service first, reviews equity and rights effects, and decides which dependencies must be redesigned rather than simply rebuilt.

Across domains, the event differs but the intervention is stable: reduce catastrophic exposure, preserve options and capacity, enable legitimate adaptation, and learn without rebuilding fragility.

prose_non_examples:
- Assigning exact probabilities to every unknown unknown
- Buying one insurance policy and calling the system prepared
- Protecting rare users from common-case optimization only
- Explaining an anomaly after it occurs
- Maintaining unused reserves with no release or replenishment rule
- Running a scripted drill whose scenario and answers are known in advance

An unlikely event is not automatically a black swan, and a risk register is not automatically preparedness. The archetype requires consequence-first architecture, tested adaptive capacity, bounded authority, equitable survival, and recovery.

prose_tradeoffs:
- **Efficiency versus slack:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Prediction investment versus general capacity:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Central coordination versus local agency:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Standardization versus diversity:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Integration versus modularity:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Reserve availability versus routine utilization:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Rapid emergency action versus procedural safeguards:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Recovery speed versus adaptive redesign:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Information sensitivity versus warning fatigue:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.
- **Option carrying cost versus irreversible exposure:** the balance depends on irreversible consequence, model confidence, response latency, reserve carrying cost, and the rights affected by failure or intervention.

Preparedness costs are distributed. Redundancy, reserves, and insurance can raise prices; emergency exercises consume time; modularity can reduce scale efficiency. Those burdens should be compared with who bears catastrophic loss, not only with aggregate expected value.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
- Critical survival floors and protected populations remain explicit.
- Model limits and unknown dependencies remain visible.
- Reserves are real, accessible, protected, and replenishable.
- Redundancy is tested for common-mode dependence.
- Failure blast radius remains bounded.
- Options and exit paths remain usable before irreversible commitment.
- Local actors retain bounded agency, communication, and support.
- Emergency authority is triggered, logged, reviewed, appealable, and temporary.
- Recovery does not silently recreate the same exposure.
- Learning preserves uncertainty and avoids hindsight overfit.

Preparedness must preserve legitimacy as well as function. A system that survives technically by abandoning rights, vulnerable groups, or ordinary accountability has failed an essential invariant.

prose_target_outcomes:
- critical function survives forecast failure
- smaller and more isolatable blast radius
- genuine diversity and lower common-mode risk
- protected capacity under sudden demand
- faster bounded action despite missing scripts
- effective substitution and mutual aid
- legitimate triage and temporary emergency authority
- adaptive recovery instead of fragile restoration
- general lessons without last-event fixation
- lower irreversible exposure to unknown event classes

Success is not proof that every shock was anticipated. It is evidence that surprise produces bounded degradation, preserved agency, legitimate decisions, and recoverable systems rather than catastrophic cascade.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
- **Survival floor:** The minimum services, rights, people, and assets protected.
- **Shock horizon:** How long the system must operate before external support or recovery.
- **Reserve depth:** Protected capacity relative to demand uncertainty and replenishment time.
- **Modularity:** How much failure can be isolated without destroying essential exchange.
- **Dependency diversity:** The degree of independence across suppliers, platforms, geography, models, and authorities.
- **Option portfolio:** The number, quality, reversibility, and carrying cost of alternative paths.
- **Authority decentralization:** How much local action is predelegated and within which boundaries.
- **Escalation sensitivity:** Evidence needed to release reserves or exceptional authority.
- **Emergency-power lifetime:** Expiry, renewal, review, and restoration constraints.
- **Sentinel breadth:** Coverage of boundaries, local knowledge, anomalies, and near misses.
- **Mutual-aid capacity:** Real assistance available under simultaneous demand.
- **Recovery objective:** Return, temporary continuity, transformation, or retirement.
- **Equity floor:** Minimum protection and access for high-risk or low-power groups.
- **Learning breadth:** How strongly lessons generalize beyond the last event.
- **Exercise ambiguity:** How much scenario information is withheld to test improvisation.
- **Rebuild threshold:** Evidence required before restoring prior concentrated structures.

These parameters interact. Greater modularity can reduce pooling benefits; more local authority can speed response but require stronger safeguards; deeper reserves can be raided by routine demand; tighter triggers can delay action; broader sentinel networks can create warning fatigue. Tune for survival and legitimate adaptation, not maximum control.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
### Infrastructure Surprise Preparedness

Protect critical physical or digital services against unmodeled disruptions through isolation, manual modes, reserve capacity, and staged recovery.

Centers minimum service, blast radius, alternate operations, and restoration sequencing. It uses the same humility, exposure, cascade, reserve, authority, improvisation, recovery, and safeguard structure.

Use it when service interruption has cascading harm; and infrastructure dependencies are concentrated; and manual or alternate modes are possible. Characteristic risks include hidden shared dependency, manual-mode decay, restoration bottleneck, vulnerable-area abandonment.

### Financial and Capacity Tail-Shock Preparedness

Preserve solvency and operational capacity through heavy-tail, correlated, liquidity, and counterparty shocks that exceed ordinary variance assumptions.

Makes capital layers, liquidity, calls, counterparty dependency, and claims priority load-bearing. Survival floors, common-mode review, reserves, optionality, authority, and recovery remain shared.

Use it when loss distributions are heavy-tailed; and correlation rises under stress; and liquidity or capacity failure cascades. Characteristic risks include liquidity illusion, counterparty concentration, reserve raiding, procyclical response.

### Institutional Legitimacy-Shock Preparedness

Maintain legitimate decision, communication, rights, and accountability when surprise overwhelms ordinary governance arrangements.

Makes emergency authority, transparency, appeal, burden, and sunset governance central. The same surprise, reserve, improvisation, recovery, and learning lifecycle applies.

Use it when emergency powers may be invoked; and trust is a critical response resource; and resource triage affects rights and vulnerable groups. Characteristic risks include permanent emergency power, opaque triage, misinformation, loss of local trust.

### Ecological and Sociotechnical Cascade Preparedness

Prepare for shocks whose impacts cross ecological, technical, organizational, and social boundaries through coupled cascades.

Centers boundary-spanning cascade maps, distributed sentinels, mutual aid, and adaptive rebuild. Exposure, common mode, reserves, modularity, agency, continuity, recovery, and learning remain shared.

Use it when dependencies cross sectors; and feedback changes behavior and exposure; and no single authority controls the cascade. Characteristic risks include boundary blindness, authority fragmentation, cascade amplification, rebuilding old exposure.

`extreme_event_preparedness`, `unknown_unknown_resilience`, `tail_shock_preparedness`, and `surprise_robustness_design` are near names. Reserves, insurance, backups, scenario plans, drills, and dashboards remain mechanisms or neighboring specialties.

Infrastructure Surprise Preparedness

distinct_from_parent: The parent also covers financial, institutional, ecological, and social surprise.

use_when: infrastructure dependencies are concentrated

example_domains: energy water communications cloud_services

failure_modes:
hidden shared dependency
manual-mode decay
restoration bottleneck
vulnerable-area abandonment

name: Financial and Capacity Tail-Shock Preparedness

distinct_from_parent: The parent is not limited to quantifiable financial loss or transferable risk.

use_when:
loss distributions are heavy-tailed
correlation rises under stress
liquidity or capacity failure cascades

failure_modes:
liquidity illusion
counterparty concentration
reserve raiding
procyclical response

distinct_from_parent: Other settings may be governed mainly by technical or capacity controls.

use_when: resource triage affects rights and vulnerable groups

failure_modes:
permanent emergency power
opaque triage
misinformation
loss of local trust

name: Ecological and Sociotechnical Cascade Preparedness

distinct_from_parent: Some shocks remain bounded within one organization or system.

use_when: no single authority controls the cascade

failure_modes:
boundary blindness
authority fragmentation
cascade amplification
rebuilding old exposure

near_names:
Extreme-Event Preparedness
Unknown-Unknown Resilience
Tail-Shock Preparedness


Blinding and Expectancy Bias Reduction

type: archetype

source: generated

batch: Second Iteration/Batch 04

aliases:
blinding
masking
experimental masking
expectancy bias control
blind assessment
double-blind design
single-blind design
condition identity masking
assignment masking

slug: confounding

slug: randomization

slug: validation

slug: causality

slug: uncertainty

slug: transparency

slug: accountability

slug: calibration

components:
Condition Identity Mask
Role-Specific Information Boundary
Expectancy Pathway Map
Credible Comparator Experience
Masked Assignment Interface
Blinded Assessment Channel
Blind Integrity Checkpoint
Authorized Unblinding Exception
Unblinding Audit Record
Analyst Masking Layer
Script and Interaction Standardization
Sham or Placebo Similarity Requirement
Post-Blind Debrief Protocol

mechanisms: Central Randomization and Masking Service

essence_one_line: Hide condition identity from the roles that could be biased by knowing it, while preserving safety, correct operation, and auditable exceptions.

compression_statement: An experimental-validity pattern that maps which roles could be influenced by assignment knowledge, masks condition identity or expectation-generating cues for those roles, uses credible comparators and neutral labels to keep the mask intact, installs integrity checks and authorized unblinding exceptions, and records blind breaks so outcome differences are less likely to be produced by expectations rather than the intervention itself.

core_intuition: People do not merely observe or receive interventions; they interpret them. A patient who knows they received the active drug may report improvement differently, a teacher who knows a class is in the new method may invest extra effort, a rater who knows the source may grade more generously, and an analyst who knows the favored condition may resolve ambiguous decisions in that direction. Blinding interrupts those pathways by separating what a role needs to know from what would bias the role.

canonical_formula: Expectancy-resilient comparison ≈ role map + condition identity mask + credible comparator + masked assessment + blind-integrity check + controlled unblinding record.

structural_problem: A comparison, trial, review, or evaluation depends on unbiased behavior or judgment, but roles involved in the process can infer which condition, source, treatment, or variant they are handling; that knowledge can alter experience, delivery, reporting, measurement, analysis, or interpretation.

trigger_conditions: Participants, providers, raters, reviewers, data collectors, adjudicators, analysts, or sponsors have expectations about which condition should work or be preferred.

trigger_conditions: Outcomes are subjective, behavior-dependent, judgment-dependent, or sensitive to interaction quality.

trigger_conditions: The active and comparator conditions differ in labels, procedures, sensory cues, side effects, prestige, institutional source, or metadata.

trigger_conditions: A comparison is intended to isolate the effect of the intervention rather than the effect of being told which intervention one received.

trigger_conditions: Implementation staff could provide unequal attention, reassurance, troubleshooting, enthusiasm, or scrutiny if they know assignment.

trigger_conditions: Outcome assessors could rate ambiguous evidence differently if they know treatment group, applicant identity, vendor, school, site, time period, or hypothesis.

trigger_conditions: Analysts have discretion over cleaning, exclusion, model choice, or coding and could be influenced by knowing which label corresponds to the desired condition.

trigger_conditions: The design allows condition identity to be hidden or neutralized without unacceptable risk, deception, or operational breakdown.

symptoms: Participants or recipients report different experiences because they know they received the active, placebo, new, prestigious, or control condition.

symptoms: Staff behave differently across groups even when the protocol formally requires equal treatment.

symptoms: Reviewers, graders, inspectors, or adjudicators show systematic differences once source or assignment is visible.

symptoms: Outcome assessments include comments or decisions that reveal knowledge of treatment group or expected direction of effect.

symptoms: A sham, placebo, dummy interface, or comparator condition is visibly distinguishable from the active condition.

symptoms: Side effects, timing, packaging, metadata, or workflow artifacts let participants or evaluators correctly guess assignment.

symptoms: Analytic choices change after true condition labels are revealed.

symptoms: Blind breaks are rumored or informally known but not recorded in the final interpretation.

root_tension: Valid comparison requires enough information for safe and competent action, while expectancy control requires withholding or neutralizing information that would change behavior or judgment. The design must hide what biases without hiding what protects participants, ensures correct implementation, or supports accountability.

anti_signatures: Condition identity cannot ethically be hidden or incompletely disclosed, and the remaining design cannot meaningfully mask outcome assessment or analysis.

anti_signatures: The outcome is fully objective, automatically measured, and insulated from participant, provider, assessor, and analyst discretion; blinding may add little beyond ordinary data-integrity controls.

anti_signatures: The main validity problem is failed randomization or baseline imbalance rather than expectancy after assignment.

anti_signatures: The problem is attrition or missing follow-up after exposure, not condition-knowledge bias.

anti_signatures: Participants must actively know and choose the intervention for the intervention to function, such as informed training, negotiation, or self-management programs.

anti_signatures: The design would require harmful deception, unsafe withholding of information, or denial of a necessary safety response.

anti_signatures: The aim is open deliberation, transparency, or accountability where hiding source or condition would undermine legitimacy more than it improves validity.

structural_intervention: Install role-specific masking around the comparison: identify expectancy pathways, decide which roles can be blinded, hide or neutralize condition identity and expectation-generating cues for those roles, keep comparator experiences credible and comparable, separate assessment and analysis from condition labels where possible, monitor blind integrity, and document any authorized or accidental unblinding.

action_logic: Define the comparison, target outcome, and roles whose behavior, reporting, assessment, or analysis could be changed by knowing condition identity.

action_logic: Map expectancy pathways for each role: participant experience, provider enthusiasm, staff interaction, rater judgment, reviewer prejudice, analyst discretion, sponsor pressure, or stakeholder interpretation.

action_logic: Classify each role as blindable, partially blindable, unblindable but separable, or necessarily unblinded for safety and operation.

action_logic: Design a role-specific information boundary that reveals only the information needed for safe and correct action.

action_logic: Create neutral labels, coded assignments, standardized scripts, blinded case packets, masked data fields, or comparator experiences that hide condition identity from selected roles.

action_logic: Make active and comparator experiences sufficiently credible and similar where participant or recipient expectations are a threat.

action_logic: Separate delivery, assessment, adjudication, and analysis roles when direct blinding is impossible for some part of the workflow.

action_logic: Install blind-integrity checks that detect whether roles guessed assignment from cues, side effects, metadata, behavior, or informal communication.

action_logic: Specify authorized unblinding triggers for safety, ethics, technical failure, or legitimate operational need, and limit information release to the smallest necessary scope.

action_logic: Record blind breaks, suspected leakage, integrity-check results, and implications for interpretation before final claims are made.

decision_rules: Blind the role whose knowledge can plausibly affect the outcome pathway; do not waste effort blinding irrelevant roles while leaving influential roles exposed.

decision_rules: Prefer outcome-assessor blinding when participant or provider blinding is impossible.

decision_rules: Treat side effects, sensory differences, timing, metadata, documentation style, and interpersonal cues as potential unblinding channels, not merely formal labels.

decision_rules: Use placebo, sham, dummy, or attention-control mechanisms only when they are ethically acceptable and do not create a stronger confound than the one they prevent.

decision_rules: Do not let blinding prevent necessary informed consent, risk disclosure, clinical care, safety escalation, or accountable oversight.

decision_rules: Record and analyze blind breaks rather than pretending the design remained masked.

decision_rules: Do not equate allocation concealment with blinding; concealment before assignment prevents selection bias, while blinding after assignment reduces expectancy and assessment bias.

decision_rules: Lock major analytic choices before unmasking condition labels when analyst expectancy could affect results.

decision_rules: When the blind cannot be maintained, qualify claims and shift emphasis toward objective outcomes, blinded assessment, robustness checks, or transparent nonblinded limitations.

target_invariants: Masked roles cannot reliably infer condition identity from labels, packaging, workflow, metadata, side effects, or communication unless legitimate effect patterns themselves reveal it.

target_invariants: Each role receives enough information to act safely, ethically, and competently.

target_invariants: Comparator conditions preserve the intended contrast while avoiding unequal attention, credibility, or procedural burden that would create a new confound.

target_invariants: Outcome assessment is insulated from condition knowledge whenever assessor judgment could influence measurement.

target_invariants: Authorized unblinding is narrow, documented, and tied to explicit safety or operational criteria.

target_invariants: Blind-integrity evidence is interpreted alongside outcome results rather than ignored after the fact.

target_invariants: The masking design does not become a cover for withholding material information or avoiding accountability.

target_invariants: Condition labels are revealed only after the relevant role has completed the decisions that blinding was meant to protect.

expected_outcomes: Reduced placebo, nocebo, enthusiasm, disappointment, allegiance, halo, source, reviewer, and observer-expectancy effects.

expected_outcomes: More credible isolation of treatment, intervention, variant, source, or condition effects from knowledge-of-assignment effects.

expected_outcomes: Less differential care, encouragement, scrutiny, grading, adjudication, troubleshooting, or analytic flexibility across groups.

expected_outcomes: Greater trust in subjective, judgment-dependent, or interaction-dependent outcome measures.

expected_outcomes: Earlier detection of mask failures through blind-integrity checks and audit records.

expected_outcomes: Clearer interpretation when full blinding is impossible because remaining blindable pathways are explicitly protected.

expected_outcomes: Better ethical balance between methodological rigor, participant safety, and transparency through defined unblinding exceptions and debriefing.

prose_essence:
Blinding and expectancy-bias reduction is the pattern of hiding condition identity from the people whose expectations could change the result. The hidden information might be treatment assignment, source identity, supplier, reviewer target, software variant, intervention status, or which option the sponsor hopes will win. The goal is not secrecy for its own sake. The goal is to keep a comparison from being contaminated by what participants, implementers, raters, reviewers, or analysts believe they are seeing.

The archetype is strongest when outcomes are subjective, behavior-dependent, interaction-dependent, or judgment-dependent. It is also valuable when a role has discretion: how much encouragement to give, how closely to inspect, how to classify a borderline case, whether to exclude a noisy observation, or how to interpret an ambiguous result.

prose_tradeoffs: Blinding costs effort. It can require special packaging, role separation, coded data flows, sham conditions, standardized scripts, central assignment services, and emergency procedures. It can reduce transparency during participation and may require debriefing. It can also reduce realism: real-world use may involve people knowing exactly what intervention they are receiving. These costs are justified only when expectancy pathways are plausible and consequential.

Participant Blinding

short_definition: A variant that hides assignment or condition identity from recipients, participants, users, or subjects so their expectations do not change experience, compliance, reporting, or behavior.

distinctive_feature: The protected pathway is the participant or recipient expectation channel.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers all roles; this variant focuses only on the subject or recipient side.

still_same_parent_because: It uses the same masking logic to block condition knowledge from influencing results.

use_when: Participants could behave, report, comply, or experience outcomes differently if they know their assigned condition.

use_when: A credible comparator or neutral framing can be provided without unacceptable deception or safety risk.

use_when: Self-reported outcomes, effort, adherence, or subjective experience are central to the evaluation.

example_domains:
clinical trials
psychology experiments
consumer-product tests

domain: Clinical trial

example: Patients receive visually identical capsules so symptom reports are not driven by knowing active versus placebo assignment.

failure_modes: Side effects or procedural cues reveal assignment even when labels are hidden.

Provider or Implementer Blinding

short_definition: A variant that hides condition identity from the people delivering, administering, facilitating, or interacting with participants.

distinctive_feature: The protected pathway is differential behavior by those delivering or facilitating the condition.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes participants, assessors, and analysts; this variant focuses on delivery-side expectations.

still_same_parent_because: It prevents condition knowledge from changing treatment, attention, or implementation quality.

use_when: Implementers could treat groups differently if they know which condition is active, prestigious, risky, or expected to perform well.

use_when: Care, encouragement, troubleshooting, follow-up, or interaction style could influence outcomes.

use_when: Implementation can be standardized enough to hide or neutralize assignment knowledge.

example_domains:
medicine
education
workplace interventions

domain: Education

example: Tutors receive coded lesson packets and standardized scripts so enthusiasm does not differ by experimental condition.

failure_modes: Implementers infer assignment from visible materials or participant reactions and unconsciously treat groups differently.

Blinded Outcome Assessment

short_definition: A variant that masks evaluators, raters, inspectors, adjudicators, or reviewers from condition identity while they judge outcomes.

distinctive_feature: It protects the measurement and rating channel rather than the participant-experience channel.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes all expectation channels; this variant focuses on outcome ascertainment.

still_same_parent_because: It prevents condition knowledge from distorting evaluation of evidence.

use_when: Outcomes require human judgment, coding, diagnosis, grading, inspection, or adjudication.

use_when: Participant or implementer blinding is impossible, but assessor blinding remains feasible.

use_when: Prior expectations about a treatment, source, supplier, applicant, or group could affect ratings.

example_domains:
clinical endpoint adjudication
grading
quality inspection
peer review

domain: Manufacturing

example: Inspectors evaluate defect photos without knowing which supplier or shift produced the part.

failure_modes: Records, timestamps, handwriting, documentation style, or case notes reveal source or assignment.

Analyst or Label Blinding

short_definition: A variant that masks condition labels during data cleaning, model choice, coding resolution, or preliminary analysis so analytic discretion is not outcome- or sponsor-directed.

distinctive_feature: It protects the interpretive and analytic discretion channel after data collection.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes direct participant and assessor blinding; this variant focuses on downstream analysis choices.

still_same_parent_because: It still reduces expectancy bias by blocking knowledge of condition identity.

use_when: Analysts have discretion over exclusions, transformations, model specifications, coding rules, or robustness checks.

use_when: Condition labels could reveal which result is favored by sponsors, investigators, or prior theory.

use_when: Data can be coded, permuted, or neutrally labeled without compromising safety or correctness.

example_domains:
clinical statistics
A/B testing
policy evaluation

domain: A/B testing

example: Analysts prepare data quality rules while variants are labeled A and B with no indication of which is the new design.

failure_modes: Outcome patterns, sample sizes, or metadata make labels obvious before analytic choices are locked.

Sham or Placebo Masking

short_definition: A variant that uses a credible inactive or alternative procedure to keep recipients from inferring assignment through perceptual or procedural differences.

distinctive_feature: It protects the blind by engineering experience similarity, not just by hiding labels.

distinct_from_parent: The parent is the general masking pattern; this variant focuses on comparator-experience design.

still_same_parent_because: The purpose remains preventing condition knowledge and expectancy from changing outcomes.

use_when: The intervention has a physical, sensory, procedural, or interactional experience that would otherwise reveal assignment.

use_when: A credible comparator can be designed without excessive deception, harm, or burden.

use_when: Placebo, attention, ritual, or procedural expectation effects are plausible.

example_domains:
drug trials
device trials
psychological interventions
interface testing

domain: Device evaluation

example: A sham device mimics interaction time and sounds without delivering the active signal.

failure_modes: The sham produces its own active effects or creates ethical concerns that overwhelm the value of masking.

near_names:
Masking
Double-Blind Design
Single-Blind Design
Expectancy Bias Control
Blinded Outcome Review
Allocation Concealment