Hacker News Reader

Comment by procaryote | Hacker News Reader

The article for example mentions MRI macines, aerospace engineering, fiber optics and semiconductors, so I guess it depends on if you want those things to still be available in a crisis

View on HN

That does sound kinda minor? A worst-case scenario of a month or two without MRI machines or "aerospace engineering", whatever that means doesn't sound particularly scary. And that is making some pretty unrealistic assumptions like there is literally no helium, hospitals don't have private reserves that can last a few months and there are no replacement gasses or alternative options of any sort. And people can make do with limited fibre-optic or semiconductor manufacturing. We have crisises in various computer components every few years (I can think of HDD, RAM & GPU supply shocks over the last few years). Doesn't seem to be a major problem. A couple of months of disruption isn't a strategically interesting event.

It all depends on what you care about. People dying waiting for an MRI doesn't end society as we know it, but someone will probably be sad about it

If you're worried you can keep your own helium reserve? Then if there is an emergency and it turns out that you don't need an MRI you can sell the helium to whoever does and feel really good about your foresight.

I'm not seeing any need for a strategic reserve here. There aren't any strategic issues. It is a bit far-fetched that a helium shock will even lead to the end of MRIs.

Everyone also could keep their own supply of gas and their own batteries for electricity but it turns out that is not expensive and foolish compared to centralizing such backups.

A month or two without an MRI is a lot of dead people.

A lot of people die every month. We're talking about a probability near-0 event where I imagine it'd be difficult to pick that deaths out from general background mortality - admittedly just based on the fact I don't recall anyone I know who needed a life-saving MRI but I know a few who died. That isn't much of a justification for a strategic helium reserve. Some level of risk just has to be tolerated, we can't afford to have a contingency for every possible hypothetical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com