Just got my new airplane insurance policy. Several pages in the front are devoted to excluding coverage for a nuclear attack on the U.S. If a big bomb is dropped on the hangar in Bedford they don’t have to pay: “the radioactive, toxic, explosive or other hazardous properties of any explosive nuclear assembly or nuclear component thereof”. Not do they have to pay for a dirty bomb set off in a shipping container in the harbor: “ionizing radiations or contamination by radioactivity from … any other radioactive source whatsoever.”
11 thoughts on “Insurance Companies Planning to Survive a Nuclear Attack”
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If there is a nuclear attack this will be the least of your worries. In any case, I seem to remember that this has been standard on many insurance policies for some time. If insurance companies didn’t exclude warfare, nuclear attack, and other catastrophes that would create in excess of a trillion (10E12 for silly Europeans) dollars of damage there would be no way they could pay off, though liable.
Your AR-15 and potassium iodide insurance may be more effective in case of this sort of attack, if you survive the first few seconds.
Insurance companies get out of anything they can, for any amount of money. I can’t get a camera insurance policy that doesn’t state I need an immobalizer fitted in my car when I leave the gear in there. So how is an immobilzer going to save my camera from a smash-and-grab?
Insurance companies are just a neccesary evil…
Insurance companies assess and price risk, spreading its cost across their customer base, minus a fee for their trouble. Car accidents happen randomly, so they can easily absorb and distribute the cost. A nuclear attack will probably affect a lot of people, making it harder for any one company to distribute the risk and cover the damage.
And don’t you think it better that they specify up-front what risks they will not accept, than default in a time of need? A lot of the complexity of our laws is there to catch all the odd exceptions discovered through history.
It’s easy as a consumer to see insurance companies as an unwanted, greedy evil. But they also contribute a lot toward making our lives consistent and less susceptible to tragedy.
The dirty bomb option isn’t nearly as catastrophic, yet the insurance company won’t cover that either? That is the part that concerns me.
Dirty bombs are a myth, here’s why:
1) Terrorists like a big bang with the shock effect of killing many people in one go. DBs kill people slowly over time.
2) You need a lot of material for a dirty bomb. Think a thermo-nuclear device is big and heavy? Try carrying the ammount of nuclear dust to have any effect at all.
3) Even chemicals are pretty useless. Remember the Tokyo subway attack? That was a fair bit of gas. Imagine the damage a briefcase full of C4 would have done there compared to that! And this was in a confined space; on the open air battlefields of WWI, it took 1 tonne of gas to kill 1 soldier.
Dirty bombs are scarry and scarry sells newspapers and draws in television audiences. That is the only reason they are in the media so much.
The problem is that is impossible to estimate the damage for this type of attack. It’s hard to know how far the fallout will travel Unlike other attacks, it isn’t limited in geographical area to the area immediately around the attack. It’s almost impossible to insure for something that’s so unquantifiable.
Dirty bombs are a greater possibility because their manufacture by idiots is a greater plausability. Atomic weapons are very difficult to make because of the precision of the devices and the level to which the nuclear fuel needs to be purified. To create a dirty bomb all one needs is a few spent fuel rods from any one of the hundreds of nuclear reactors (past or present) around the world and some smokeless powder ($15/lb, Walmart).
If it is so simple and effective, then why are terrorists still strapping themselves with C4 and getting onto busses?
I remember my homeowner’s policy from 10 years ago that excluded anything nuclear. I am more concerned with an accident at the nuclear power plant 8 miles away and found out that the plant operators aren’t responsible for my loss either. But the bank that holds my mortgage still expects me to pay on time. So there will be massive loan defaults which will require federal bailout of the banks. The only ones left out in the cold are the people, those pesky entities that the government is supposed to represent.
I wonder if anyone sells Nuclear insurance, like you can buy separate Flood insurance.
nuclear : has been !
a lawyer, and friend of mine, told me his firm has been asked to write exclusion clauses relating to going-wrong-nano-tech stuff for an insurance group…
A few weeks ago, I got an update for my homeowners policy. Guess what? I’m no longer covered if any nuclear waste spills near my home on it’s way to Yucca Mountain.