Homeland Security’s Achilles Heel — Sharknados
It has been about two months since Sharknado 2 — The second one premiered on the Syfy Channel and I have yet to see anyone take the opportunity to point out the obvious: sharknados have the potential to defeat the current homeland security posture. It is homeland security’s worst fear — a scenario combining adversarial and non-adversarial considerations.
This is watershed; a black swan scenario homeland security isn't prepared for. Difficulties and complexities already plague homeland security efforts when these two threat types were delineated. The movie — using the tried and true “kitchen sink” literary license approach — creates the ultimate scenario where people are faced with tornados leveling their city while simultaneously fending off the ocean's’ top predator. Do not let this become lost on you, sharknados embody the ultimate homeland security threat.
A little background for those who haven't had the opportunity view this piece yet. It was an impeccable combination of top notch acting and plot plausibility. Highly recommended for its usefulness as a date night ROMCOM and to remind families to have a disaster plan. I do my best to avoid spoilers; but honestly, at this point you get it. The movie contains sharks embedded into tornadoes… “enough said.”
Now the script was slam packed with important information. Simply following along and capturing all the double entendres and hidden references was a chore. On the premier event, the Sharknado team was kind enough to stand by a dedicated hashtag to point out much of this. Not only was this movie able to bring to light a new homeland security threat, it was able to spark the wittiness of a nation. People were glued to the TV — continuously updating twitter with jokes, pictures, and editorial. Some of you might be saying, “but why should I care at all”? My reply: when’s the last time you have seen our society so focused and interested in homeland security concerns while in a “test environment”?
Seriously, if you are a homeland security practitioner and don't know what Sharknado is, you need to check it out…and soon. With two movies in the bag and popularity trending strongly upwards, it is your responsibility to get spun up — pun intended. We need homeland security representatives responding to the hype in a unified voice!
I did my best to push the homeland security agenda and message during the hype of the premier. I even diligently attempted to craft a witty tweet that could go viral and shift some focus to homeland security — I had already recognized the connection after watching the first movie. Besides, I knew how they stopped the first attack, how were they going to tackle this destructive force again. [Stop reading the next 10 words if you don't want a spoiler alert!] Since the movies, has anyone taken the steps necessary to prestage bombs and freon tanks in tactical locations to “neutralize” the threat if it develops? We already know homeland security forces will have a significant recovery operation on its hands, we may as well be ready to stop it as quickly as possible!
Do you see it? Seriously, a sharknado has the potential to be a homeland security game-changer. The ocean’s apex predator combined with the most fierce winds on land — the scenario literally creates the super-incident; a cerebral adversarial being led by a non-adversarial random leash.
Joking aside, I was perturbed by the lack of homeland security support given to the main character while on his journey to defeat this second round of sharknados. This is the second time this has happened. The best indication homeland security was even involved was a couple scenes where firefighters and police stood guard and a shoutout to the Coast Guard. Otherwise, viewers all saw the same message: you will be left to fend for yourself in case of a sharknado.
I really did consider the strategic messaging in this movie. Was the protagonist left alone to save society simply as a plot decision? Is the absence of homeland security in the movie a concern for us? Does the US really understand how integral homeland security is in almost any threat to safety and security? Made me think, should we consider this a message to us? Maybe we have not only been handed our achilles heel in scenario form, maybe the movie is also highlighting how have failed to sell our value to the public.
Finally, I did take an objective approach to consider the plausibility of a combination threat — analogous to the one offered in Sharknado. Could we experience a scenario that is distributed randomly with intentional actors? Or perhaps the opposite, a threat distributed deliberately but left on its own to destroy. It is scarey to think, but we already have examples of these existential threats operating independently, but what happens if they combine. To give this existential threat a face: look at ebola in African and ISIS in the Middle East. What happens if there was a way to combine them somehow??
This just may be homeland security’s achilles heel. The good news — we have been forewarned and can have the discussions necessary to prepare. The bad news — we have been forewarned yet still operate in a domain with extremely high uncertainty. These are scary but I will leave you with a more comforting thought informed by this risk analyst— your chances of meeting a sharknado face on are slim. By slim, I mean — we have only had 2 instances in all of recorded history. They also prefer cities. LA and now NY have checked it off their list…So in that case, you are probably safe; might be time to move away from Washington, DC though…Just saying.
