Treefrog Interactive Inc.

The Worst Case Scenario

Nuclear Disaster vs. Getting Hit by a Bus

Answering the Bus Issue

The Frogs are regularly asked "What happens if you get hit by a bus?" We call this "Getting hit by a bus syndrome". It must be a common affliction amongst web designers, given the number of times a year we get asked the same question.

Typically, we always have the same set of answers when we get asked;

1. We have been in business since 1989. None of our staff has been hit by a bus in that period of time. (Although a certain programmer did hit a busload of baby bunnies once on his way to work. Note: No one, nor animal was injured except for perhaps this programmer's karma).

2. Should one of us be hit by a bus, there would be dozens of Frogs to who weren't hit by a bus. In addition, we typically get 3-4 resumes a day of people looking to replace us. Like zombies, we might return to life anyway unless our heads are completely severed and even then...

3. We have a systematic process to everything we do, and backups for everything. If someone got hit by a bus, we could carry on (in sadness) without the bus over-ridden frog by simply following the process through accordingly.

4. Treefrog's CEO has already been in a serious school bus/truck accident which put several dozen people in hospital. Theoretically, lightening rarely strikes twice in the same place, right?

5. If our whole team somehow was hit by a bus, all at the same time, it is likely that some much greater issue is going on you should be paying attention too. (i.e. there were hundreds of lunatic zombie bus drivers on the loose, of which you should certainly be more worried about than your website going offline).

6. Our developers are Certified Lasso Developers (CLD's), who have third-party continuity assurance that in the event of a disaster, there is always another developer who can take over where they left off with 24 hours notice.

Nuke Theory

Now realistically, since getting hit by a bus is a very unlikely scenario, the much more likely scenario in this day and age is that a terrorist will be involved (albiet through his underpants) or that someone will launch a nuclear attack against Canada.

Now, we Canadians don't have any nuclear weapons to fight anybody with. The US won't let us have them. (Heck, they won't even let us have a good fighter aircraft, probably since we are the only people to ever beat them in a war.)

Now, there are only a few countries who possess nuclear capacity to launch a nuclear attack against Canada which might affect the Frogs (i.e. operational nukes);

1. The United States of America (2623 Weapons) - Unlikely to attack us with nuclear weapons, since they get all their hockey players and comedians from us. (Let alone water and maple syrup).

2. Russia (4718 Weapons) - Unlikely to attack us, since they have the States to focus on, and we have nothing they need (except their hockey players back). If they did take us on, they would probably also get the US upset, and would have to take them on too. Since we are 1/10 the the size of the US, they wouldould probbaly only use 1/10 of their arsenal against us, or 471 weapons.

3. United Kingdom (160 Weapons) - Unlikely to attack us with nuclear weapons, since in a way we belong to them anyway. Plus, they only have 160.

4. France (300 Weapons) - Likely to attack us, based on some historical grudge from kicking their ass several hundred years ago. The French can hold a grudge for centuries. They could easily decide to attack us at any moment.

5. China (180 Weapons) - Unlikely to attack us with nuclear weapons, given how many Chinese have happily have moved here. Welcome!

(Other countries may or may not have a nuclear arsenal, but probably don't have hundreds of them). So based on this logic, we strategically have about 300 nuclear weapons to worry about, at worst, 471.

So if we think strategically, if we were the bad guys, and we had 300-471 nuclear weapons, we would strike the 300-471 most strategically advantageous locations in Canada in order to maximize the damage to the infratructure of the country and prevent retaliation.

The simple fact is, a nuclear bomb only has a specific yield and is only capable of blowing up a given sized area. One atomic bomb will not blow up Canada, for instance.

Having said this, if we take the largest kiloton yield of the operationally deployed nuclear weapons, and we took a stab at the most important components of the Canadian strategic defense, we would probably strike at the the following key points as easily found on wikipedia;
 

488 Things to Nuke Before Newmarket if you are attacking Canada

• 27 Military Bases
• 9 Navy Bases
• 9 Shipyards
• 100 largest cities in Canada (by population)
• 200 hydroelectric dams
• 20 coal plants
• 25 nuclear reactors
• 26 Major Airports
• 72 Major Bridges

Admittedly, Treefrog's primary NOC (hosting center) is in central Toronto, at the primary NOC for Canada at 151 Front St.. However, our backups dynamically happen ever day up to Newmarket, ON. These backups are manually, via sneakernet, removed once weekly to a further remote location (undisclosed, but trust me, far away).

In case of a nuclear attack on Canada, we would hope that lasers and water-melon sized mini-missles would prevent us from being hit at all by any of the nuclear weapons coming our way. However, should some of them make it to the targets, our city wouldn't be a primary target.

Of course - we would have to worry about blast radius - as there is little question that Toronto would be hit by the largest weapon of all. Looking at all of the weapons available to be shot at us, the most likely sized weapon would be the following;

150kT (there are 48 of them)

A quick Google mashup shows us that even the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, fired directly at Toronto for maximum damage, wouldn't hit Newmarket.

(Go here and search for Toronto and play with the nuclear attacks if you are interested in more detail).

As seen above, given the tactically strategic parts of Canadian world, and the largest nuclear weapons available in the world at the moment - no self-respecting terrorist or nuclear power would ever waste their weapon on our backup facility.

No worries! Your website is safe with us!

Sean Stephens

"The web isn't a book, it's a dialogue. Stop waiting for it to be finished and join in."