The Next Crisis Wave Approaching?

(click to enlarge)

Back on 24 February, we posted our observation that globally, the risk for violence and war was on the rise.  It seemed somewhat preposterous, as the news was all about diplomacy and cooperation (Iran negotiations, Syria destroying weapons, etc.).  Yet, that is what the patterns in social mood were displaying.

On 28 February, we posted World in Crisis, U.S. government and people not immune.  Hours later, the Ukraine crisis was in the news.  There were indications in our data of an approaching major disaster in scale, but little to no U.S. casualties were projected as likely accompanying this.  For that reason, we called it a crisis, not a disaster.  Also, from the social mood pattern, we determined the type of crisis projected is type NE.  From the post: "The most likely types of events that show up with type NE are an economic disaster, an attack from another geopolitical entity, or if a natural disaster, a winter storm.  It’s also associated with anxiety and risk aversion."

By 5 March, we noticed that the charts were showing that this crisis had still not had a substantial U.S. impact, and did not get the telltale "disaster pressure" relief indicated by orange lines on the chart above.  We posted the date information of 6-13 March as the likely time-frame for this.  During the period of 7-14 March, markets were down in what may be the initial warnings of a much larger decline.  The relief of "disaster pressure" has shown up in the charts, yet the crisis is not over, nor has it yet had a substantial U.S. impact.  During the time period under watch, background disaster-type events were showing up, yet they were not of major U.S. impact: a Malaysian airliner disappeared over the ocean, a U.S. building exploded from a gas leak, several people were killed when someone crashed their car into a stage, and earthquakes in Northern and Southern California not causing much damage, but causing concern and making headlines nevertheless.  The scale of all of these events appear to be "disaster precursors."  They show up near major disasters or crises, but aren't the main event.  For this reason, we have colored the area of 7-14 March yellow on the chart.

If there are much larger U.S. impacts still developing in this very complex pattern, we would expect the line on the chart to turn up over the next few days, and to remain above the horizontal black line at the right side of the chart.  Things would tend to get really bad as the curve reached its top again, likely in another week or two.  Stay tuned.