The concept of black swan events was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
In it, Taleb describes rare events that seem impossible to predict, carry extreme consequences, and only appear obvious in hindsight. Black swans fall completely outside of any expectations and force us to rethink what’s possible.
A black swan has three defining features.
- It is rare and unpredictable, lying far beyond what most risk models or planners anticipate.
- It has a severe impact, often reshaping industries, economies, or entire societies.
- Once it happens, it is rationalized after the fact, as if it should have been obvious all along.
This tendency to “explain away” the unimaginable highlights what Taleb calls a failure of imagination – an inability to think of risks until they’ve already materialized. ‘
This gap – between what we think can happen and what actually does – is what makes black swan events so dangerous. They catch everyone off guard, magnify vulnerabilities, and expose weaknesses we didn’t realize were there.
Lessons from History
One does not have to look far into the past to see examples of such disruptive events occurring. History offers sobering reminders of how a single, unanticipated event can upend multiple systems overnight.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States were a true shock that shattered the assumption that large-scale attacks on civilian and economic centers were unlikely to occur on home soil. The aftermath reshaped global security frameworks, aviation protocols, and counterterrorism strategies, but those protections only emerged after the first strike. This tragedy, forever etched into memory, shows how sudden, unexpected, and devastating such incidents can be.
The 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan demonstrated how multiple crises can converge in devastating ways. A massive earthquake triggered a tsunami, which in turn caused a nuclear meltdown. Each element was catastrophic on its own, but together they created a cascading polycrisis with humanitarian, environmental, and economic consequences that stretched far beyond Japan’s borders, and highlighted how polycrises often contribute to black swan events. Similarly shocking to the Japanese nation as 9/11 was to the United States, this disaster reshaped national energy policy, profoundly altering Japan’s stance on nuclear power, while also transforming regulations and safety protocols around disaster preparedness.
Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic was novel in both scale and nature. While pandemics were not new to history, the speed of global transmission, combined with the disruption of interconnected supply chains and modern economies, revealed vulnerabilities few had anticipated. What had once been considered a remote public health risk became a prolonged global crisis affecting every sector of society, with consequences that continue to reverberate to this day.
These examples underscore a critical truth: once a black swan occurs, organizations and governments can adapt and prepare for similar events in the future. But the first occurrence is always the most destabilizing, because it emerges from outside our frame of reference.
Why Black Swans Matter More Today
Several different factors make modern organizations and societies more vulnerable to rare but high-impact disruptions, which is why preparation for the unknown is now more urgent than ever.
- Geopolitical instability is one such factor. Conflicts, cyberattacks, drone incidents, and trade disruptions can emerge suddenly, often with global ripple effects. Events that once might have seemed isolated, such as regional tensions or localized cyber breaches, now have the potential to destabilize entire supply chains, markets, or critical infrastructure. The interconnectedness of modern economies means that a single geopolitical shock can cascade far beyond its origin.
- Climate change is another accelerating driver of black swans. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe. When combined with human systems – energy centers, industrial operations, and other critical infrastructure – the impact can be catastrophic. Draught, landslides, flooding in major urban areas, and increasingly intense wildfire seasons illustrate how climate-driven events compound traditional risks, creating scenarios that once seemed implausible.
- Interconnected systems amplify vulnerability. In a globalized economy, local disruptions can quickly trigger international consequences. Financial markets, transportation networks, supply chains, and communication systems are all tightly linked, so small failures can cascade into larger crises. A single factory shutdown, port closure, or power outage can ripple across continents, creating systemic shocks that no individual organization can fully control.
The combination of these factors, along with the ever-increasing complexity and interdependencies of the modern world, makes it increasingly difficult to anticipate what might happen. Many incidents and events occur completely outside the scope of our expectations. Black swan events can impact every sector – from finance and logistics to energy and healthcare. Organizations that ignore these evolving dynamics, risk being not just unprepared, but entirely unequipped to face new threats or crises.
Today’s world is more volatile, more interconnected, and more prone to extreme surprises than ever before, and acknowledging this reality is the first step toward preparing for the unknown.
Turning Uncertainty into Readiness
By definition, black swan events are impossible to anticipate – that’s what makes them black swans. Often, when such an event occurs, there is no ready-made solution or continuity plan, but rather responses must be created from scratch under extreme pressure. However, while prediction is out of reach, preparation can significantly improve an organization’s ability to respond, adapt, and recover.
One key strategy is increasing response time. The faster an organization can assess a situation and act, the more effectively it can contain damage. Preparing for individual risks – even if they seem isolated – can also pay dividends in a polycrisis scenario. When a complex disaster involves multiple overlapping elements, being equipped to handle each component individually makes managing the overall crisis far more feasible.
Strengthening decision-making agility is equally critical. Leaders and teams must be able to make informed decisions under uncertainty, pivot quickly, and deploy resources effectively. This requires clear communication channels, empowered teams, and a culture that encourages rapid problem-solving.
Other practical measures include:
- Contingency planning and building redundancy into critical operations, ensuring that essential functions can continue even when parts of a system fail.
- Fostering a culture of imagination, where employees are encouraged to think creatively, challenge assumptions, and explore unconventional solutions on the fly.
- Maintaining a strong baseline in security management, crisis management, and business continuity, providing a framework that can be adapted to unexpected scenarios.
The goal is not to eliminate black swans, as they are, by nature, unpredictable, but rather to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience. Organizations that invest in preparation, build flexible systems, and cultivate a problem-solving mindset are better positioned to turn uncertainty into readiness. In a world defined by volatility and interconnected risks, this proactive approach can mean the difference between collapse and recovery.
About Human Risks
Human Risks is a comprehensive security risk management platform designed to help security teams drive effective engagement with asset owners from the ground up.
Across eight core modules, Human Risks helps organisations proactively embed security risk management into everyday business processes: providing clarity on risk accountability, streamlining collaboration, and supporting a dynamic, living risk assessment approach.
Interested in learning more? Connect with the team to see how we’re working with leading organisations to foster proactive security cultures and drive strategic engagement.
