If you handle small issues, it’s similar to handling small fires and not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest.
> not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest
Funny enough, small fires are very healthy for many forests and even _necessary_ for some. For example, Some trees do not drop seeds until there are fires. EG: "Giant sequoias are the largest trees on Earth. They can grow for more than 3,000 years. But without fire, they cannot reproduce." [1]
Further, the clearing of underbrush can be good for animals as they can move around more easily, hunt, gather, etc.. [2] Though, what is really not good for them are the mega-fires that burn so hot that it burns trees & everything 100% up to the top of the tree (killing it) and also several feet underground.
So, perhaps another analogy is that every year is like adding gunpowder into the forests. Setting this alight every now and then is good, but let it build up too long and it becomes a bomb. Areas that have burned in the PNW tend to look really healthy 1 to 3 years later. On the other hand, areas that have "over" burned in California with mega fires are drastically impacted, as if a nuclear bomb had went off and killed everything.
At the end of the day, prescribed burns is an amazing tool to create a defensive patch work of lower-combustion areas that help prevent fires from becoming mega-fires that are super-impactful to everyone and everything.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/giant-sequoia-needs-fire-gro... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/explainer-how-wildfires...
Example: An Oregon sheriff arrested a USFS employee supervising a burn that got out of hand and torched private property. The FS was crying foul and saying it was an act of god, but there were warnings for burning that day because they conditions were so unfavorable (the county may have had an outright burn ban). The only reason the FS employee decided to burn is because that's what he was supposed to do that day. And he was legally okay, since it was federal property, but then it got onto private property next door...
For some reason the FS in particular has this problem. Most of them are alright people but the institution and culture needs serious reform.
https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Estrada-...
I don't want my {critical infrastructure} to "fix things quickly and break things" at a critical moment, where I would have really needed that system.
Those things can be scheduled and announced, so I can plan ahead and expect outages at that time.
Sure.
But the problem is that there are incentives to keep pushing the middle ground closer towards eventual system collapse.
It's never the right time to see if the backup generators can take the building load. But during real emergencies, it's amazing how common it is for the backup generators to not work for one reason or another.
How about a test outside normal working hours?
It is possible, to meassure the power output before and then plug in enough stuff, that draws roughly the same.
But yes, it is more convenient to not do it and continue buisness as usual and hope for the best.
My point is, that in most cases, you can test and fix critical stuff and also fix problems created by your fixes, if you make it an important issue and plan accordingly. However, I did not say it is necessarily easy.