"Given the involvement of individuals considered deities in some cultures (Thor, Loki), there is even the potential to classify the event as an 'Act of God', although that designation would be subject to strenuous theological and legal debate."
The new Avengers movie may have been insufficiently realistic for the U.S. military to be willing to lend its resources but it's also apparently not so fantastic that it can't be subjected to real world damage assessment.
The Hollywood Reporter enlisted a company called Kinetic Analysis Corporation to figure out the actual money cost of the damage done in the course of the Avengers defending Earth. (I noticed their seismic computer model is called MIDGARD, so I'm guessing someone there already had an eye for Thor.)
The report itself (pdf) is mostly hilarious with serious treatment given not only to The Avengers movie, but citing other monster movies as if they're real-life precedent.
While gratitude over repelling the invasion will persist in the short term, in the longer term the events leading up to the opening of the portal will in all likelihood be examined in detail, and that immunity probed for legal weakness (recall the regulatory and legal consequences to the Ghostbusters over the Gozer incident of 1984).
At the same time, Kinetic Analysis Corporation's real world business is literally deadly serious. Included in the report are references to lessons learned on 9/11, for example about the damage a collapsing building can do to underground infrastructure. As whimsical as the exercise is, to see the damage evaluations listed alongside the real cost of Japanese tsunamis and earthquakes and Hurricane Katrina is sobering.
By the way, their final number on the economic impact?
KAC expects the physical damage from the invasion to be $60 to $70 Billion Dollars, with secondary economic impacts from cleanup, loss of business, disruptions to commerce and services, etc. causing an additional $90 Billion dollars. Casualties are undoubtedly in the high thousands. Therefore, we estimate the total economic impact to be at least $160 Billion dollars
"In addition, there was considerable collateral damage of questionable necessity by at least one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives (Hulk)."
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Bush and Cheney had that beat easily first term and the economic impact of their second term is still being assessed.
I think Loki was Cheney, not Bush.
Now THAT is funny. Will must be having a fun day ! (Is Rachel mixing ?? LOL)
I love it that the Maddow Blog folks always try for something humorous on Friday.
Perhaps I should leave no more comments today? It's your call. Beam me up Scotty, There are alien signs all over in Northern Arizona I don't know about other states.
Do those signs point in the direction of the Gov's mansion?
That's neither here nor there.
This reminds me of an obscure Marvel title called Damage Control.
Of course the pails terrifically in comparison to the cost of the loss for humanity of its global hegemony and the cost of our species-wide enslavement to an alien invading force. Just sayin.
RM, Some undisclosed details of ongoing alien invasion:
Financial: British whale attempts to swallow Skipper Diamond, whole. Chokes. Very high cost...causing the harpoon to move a notch closer to Volker Rule. Second event: Another Hollywood sequel...North American release: "OCEAN'S 15"...Clooney franchise sets record. $40.000 per seat to preview OBAMARAMA, then watch OCEAN'S 15 strike gold. Bottom line cost to be revealed Nov6. Third occurrence: Alien success...invade VP body, causing Biden to talk involuntarily, uncontrollably, by committing other people to too-early positions on issues. At this point, cost unknown, but guesstimate...about 1% on the maypole.END, to be con't. All above fictional. Any similarity to real person(s), event(s), and/or place(s) coincidental. Not responsible for errors. Good catch.
So how much is our co-insurance, and will our premiums go up? Will Mitt write an op-ed piece entitled "Let the Earth Go Bankrupt?"
Most policies have a specific exclusion for losses caused by acts of war such as invasion, insurrection, revolution, military coup and terrorism.
So you would have no coverage and would be on the hook for 100% of your own damages. Of course you could try to sue the Chitauri to recoup the cost of your damages...but good luck with that.
Speaking from an underwriting standpoint (yes I underwrite personal insurance), there would be no increase in premiums....but I would send you a letter asking that you submit proof of repairs by your policy renewal to avoid having your policy non-renewed.
The hardest part of course is actually getting a picture of spiderman as proof a superhero battle wrecked your house.
NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT!
Costs like that are why the Marvel Universe is host to the first superhuman-act-covering insurance and repair company, known as Damage Control! Got Hulk on the rampage? Dr. Doom making Midtown look like a warzone? The Wrecking Crew living up to their name? No problem, Damage Control is on the job! :D http://marvel.com/universe/Damage_Control
Why are most UFO sightings in red states?
Because the laws in those states mandate or at least encourage probing. Duh.
Because rednecks are two-fisted drinkers
What they fail to consider is the effect of cheap energy. The availability of energy from oil drops the cost of commodities on earth, so why would an energy dense earth not have even lower costs for commodities? Some estimates place a barrel of oil as being roughly a year of labor. Well OK, then what is the economic impact of the nuclear reactor in Stark's chest? In the first Iron Man he said it put out 3 Gigajoules/sec, or about 833 MWH. For comparison, the current generation C-130H runs about 18,000 HP at full bore (which is roughly 14MW). So a single arc reactor could fly an awful lot of bricks, say roughly 60 C130s, carrying 36 tons each, nonstop, forever, for free... The same applies to concrete cement production, the process is pretty energy intensive, you are basically creating calcium carbonate which degrades chemically as the cement cures. There is every reason to believe cheap energy would drop the cost of it to near zero.
If you want to be silly, go all the way.
Yep. Remember in "The Watchmen" when Dr. Manhattan constructed energy reactors that supplied the planet with all the energy it needed, thus eliminating any wars over scarce resources like oil, natural gas or even water (water can easily be purified with enough energy). Of course Ozymandias had other ideas what to do with them, but that was just a lame way to make the story dramatic.
Stark's reactor would change the world in a way not even the comic book writers could even dream about.
There we go! The point that War is far too costly for any Government, or organization to wage on a physical playground. It can now be seen as an anthropological gene defect, from somewhere in the Family, when things got too scary, and a progenitor carried the Fear Gene across to us, in too acute a form, and hence, we have witch hunts, crusades, and a kill 'em first attitude, that has squandered our National Treasures, and forward the political belief through the Media they own, that Peace cannot be productive, and profitable. Someone has their ACTG bent out of shape!
Thanks for the Sabbath Blog Rachel xoxoxo
I have to agree with this one. Stark Industries' new business seems to be clean energy. If he was already powering factories with the Arc Reactor in Iron Man, presumably by the time of the Avengers and the creation of Stark Tower, the availability of Arc Reactor powered clean energy is higher. In addition to whatever other things they have in R&D.
This is also the universe that is full of mutants with various abilities and the Damage Control crew (and you can't tell me the X-Men weren't somewhere on the other side of the city fighting the aliens too) so assuming you recruited them, I'm sure cleanup would be both faster and less costly-- it's much easier to clear streets when you have someone who can levitate chunks of debris the size of a plane, for example.
You're thinking of the wrong version of the Marvel Universe.
The one that the Avengers set of movies takes place in does not yet have Damage Control, (although they may be about to come into existence), nor does it have the X-Men and their cast of supporting characters[1].
[1] A very good thing: The X-Men's world background is not really compatible with most of the other Marvel superheros. OK we have two guys with murky backgrounds, the populace loves one and hates the other because one of them got his powers by being the reincarnation of a Roman wizard and the other happens to have a particular gene, (even though no one actually knows this).
The economic impact of Bush and Cheney did not stop in America. It dragged the entire world down with it. The mess Europe is in is, basically, that Europe imitated America and removed all regulations from their Financial Institutioons. Reagan strted deregulation and all went down hill from there.
The end result: bad thing made MUCH worse by Bush and Co.
And NOW, the GOP is against bringing back regulations. In other words what saint Ronnie did was OK!! Let's leave it that way.
Yea! Let Detroit go bankrupt! Fortunately, Obama didn't agree.
"Seismic" is spelled with an "s", not a "z".
oops. Got it. Thanks.
"Seismic" is spelled with an "s", not a "z".
"(I noticed their seizmic computer model is called MIDGARD,)"
"Seismic" is not spelled with a "Z".
Apologies for the multiple posts, the validation system seems to have gone plum loco. In other words, and to quote Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, "It's not my fault!" D:
It's ok. I have a six-year-old, so I didn't even notice. ;)
No problem, the middle class and poor would foot the bill.
Good thing they can save money by not paying Jack Kirby diddley-squat.
You know, when you have a Hulk, you need to expect collateral damage.
I want an arc reactor built into my chest.
Hulk, smash this story.. Loved the movie.
160 billion? That's all? The Bush administration gave way more than that just to Wall Street.
Shades of "Hancock" where the superhero was causing more damage than the criminals.
oh, so The Avengers wasn't real enough for the military but "Battleship" was? ROFL. :)