We are built to find one cause for one effect, and the harm that matters most rarely works that way.

The off-ramp on most disasters sits upstream, in a domain no one thought was theirs.

Whether a buffer stops a cascade or speeds it depends on where in the chain it sits.

In September 2023, a cluster of rainstorms settled over the Libyan desert—inches of rain where inches of rain are no one’s idea of normal. The storms gathered into Storm Daniel, a Mediterranean cyclone that reached eastern Libya on the 10th. Over the next 24 hours, parts of the region took five to nine inches. The water funneled into the dry valley running through Derna, a place little troubled by rain. One resident later said the valley was completely dry at sunset. By 2 a.m., the water had topped the Abu Mansour Dam, working at its clay and rock until it gave. When it collapsed, and then a second dam behind it, the valley filled. Thousands were killed or swept away.

You can tell the Derna story as a single thing—a flood. But it was never one thing. The rainfall was extreme, and climate scientists have since judged it intensified by a warming Mediterranean; under ordinary weather, the dams would have held. The dams themselves were failing—built in the 1970s, cracked for years, flagged repeatedly—but without the loaded storm, the cracks would have stayed cracks. And the deferred maintenance traced back further still: a divided........

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