1. MURPHY’S LAW:
APPLICATIONS TO
DISASTER
MANAGEMENT
Presented By Jack Abebe
CDM/H/205/12
Masinde Muliro University

2. Outline of the Paper
 Synopsis
Background
 Postulates of the Law
 Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
Conclusion

3. Synopsis
• The law's author was Edward A. Murphy,
Jr., a U.S. Air Force engineer, who, in
1947, was involved in a rocket-led
experiment in which all 16 accelerator
instruments were installed in the wrong
way, resulting in Murphy's observation.

4. Synopsis: Continued
• Murphy's Law is sometimes expressed as
"Anything that can go wrong, will -- at the
worst possible moment."
• In that format, the Law was popularized by
science-fiction writer Larry Niven as
"Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives”
(sometimes known as "Finagle's corollary
to Murphy's Law").

5. Synopsis: Continued
• Extrapolating from the original, we arrive
at Murphy's Laws of Information
Technology, a set of principles that may
seem to be jokes but which events
sometimes prove to be fundamental truths.

6. Background
• According to the book A History of
Murphy's Law by author Nick T. Spark,
differing recollections years later by
various participants make it impossible to
pinpoint who first coined the saying
Murphy's law.

7. Background: Cont.
• The law's name supposedly stems from an
attempt to use new measurement devices
developed by the eponymous Edward Murphy.
• The phrase was coined in adverse reaction to
something Murphy said when his devices failed
to perform and was eventually cast into its
present form prior to a press conference some
months later — the first ever (of many)
conferences given by Dr. John Stapp.

8. Background: Cont.
• From 1948 to 1949, Stapp headed research
project MX981 at Muroc Army Air Field
(later renamed Edwards Air Force Base for
the purpose of testing the human tolerance
for g-forces during rapid deceleration. The
tests used a rocket sled mounted on a
railroad track with a series of hydraulic
brakes at the end.

9. Background: Cont.
• Initial tests used a humanoid crash test
dummy strapped to a seat on the sled, but
subsequent tests were performed by Stapp,
at that time an Air Force captain.
• During the tests, questions were raised
about the accuracy of the instrumentation
used to measure the g-forces Captain Stapp
was experiencing.

10. Background: Cont.
• Edward Murphy proposed using electronic
strain gauges attached to the restraining
clamps of Stapp's harness to measure the
force exerted on them by his rapid
deceleration.
• Murphy was engaged in supporting similar
research using high speed centrifuges to
generate g-forces. Murphy's assistant wired
the harness, and a trial was run using a
chimpanzee.

11. Background: Cont.
• The sensors provided a zero reading; however, it
became apparent that they had been installed
incorrectly, with each sensor wired backwards.
• It was at this point that a disgusted Murphy made
his pronouncement, despite being offered the
time and chance to calibrate and test the sensor
installation prior to the test proper, which he
declined somewhat irritably, getting off on the
wrong foot with the MX981 team.

12. Background: Cont.
• In an interview conducted by Nick Spark,
George Nichols, another engineer who was
present, stated that Murphy blamed the
failure on his assistant after the failed test,
saying, "If that guy has any way of making
a mistake, he will."

13. Background: Cont.
• Nichols' account is that "Murphy's law"
came about through conversation among
the other members of the team; it was
condensed to "If it can happen, it will
happen," and named for Murphy in
mockery of what Nichols perceived as
arrogance on Murphy's part.

14. Background: Cont.
• According to Robert Murphy's account, his
father's statement was along the lines of "If
there's more than one way to do a job, and
one of those ways will result in disaster,
then somebody will do it that way."

15. Postulates of Murphy's Law
• Anything that can go wrong, will go
wrong.
• You will always find something in the last
place you look.
• No matter how long or how hard you shop
for an item, after you've bought it, it will
be on sale somewhere cheaper.

16. Postulates of Murphy's Law
• The other line always moves faster.
• In order to get a loan, you must first prove
you don't need it.
• Anything you try to fix will take longer
and cost you more than you thought.
• If you fool around with a thing for very
long you will screw it up.

17. Postulates of Murphy's Law
• If it jams - force it. If it breaks, it needed
replacing anyway.
• When a broken appliance is demonstrated
for the repairman, it will work perfectly.
• Build a system that even a fool can use,
and only a fool will use it.

18. Postulates of Murphy's Law
• Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that
will not work.
• In any hierarchy, each individual rises to
his own level of incompetence, and then
remains there.
• There's never time to do it right, but there's
always time to do it over.
• When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble,
delegate.

19. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• Murphy’s Law, which states, “Anything
that can go wrong will go wrong,” gained
prominence in 1949 at Edwards Air Force
Base in California.
• According to a letter written by Col. John
Stapp, he overheard Captain Edward
Murphy say, “If there is any way to do it
wrong, he will.”

20. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• He was referring to an unnamed technician
on the base who seemed unable to
complete his tasks correctly.
• From that point forward, Col. Stapp told
his subordinates to prepare every project
with Murphy’s Law in mind, because
anything can go wrong.

21. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• Bad things do happen, even to good
people. Consider, for example, the
aftereffects of the most recent earthquakes
in California several years ago.
• Entire practices were destroyed in a few
minutes. Hard drives, charts, mirrored hard
drives, and software installation disks were
lost forever.

22. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• Of those doctors who wisely kept a backup
of their data offsite, statistics show that
half of them learned that their backup
would not restore or they had been backing
up the wrong data for years.

23. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• Preparation for disaster is the key. As the
saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure.” To prepare for
uninterrupted service a practice would
need to spend five to ten times more than
the typical practice on equipment,
configuration, line and power services,
monitoring, and continued maintenance to
get the job done correctly with Murphy’s
Law in mind.

24. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• Fortunately, there is a solution that
provides adequate protection and is
financially reasonable and sound — the
Cloud provides the overall best business
continuity solution. In the event of a
disaster the practice can regain access to
all of its data in a matter of minutes.

25. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• For example, take the experience of Drs.
Chung and Aurora of Vancouver, who use
a web-based application, Curve Dental, to
help them manage their practice.
• Upon arriving one morning for a new day,
Dr. Aurora discovered that all of his
computers had been stolen during the
night.

26. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• With patients set to arrive soon, Dr. Aurora
called his wife, who brought him his
personal laptop from home. Within
minutes he had access to the day’s
schedule, and he carried on as if it was
business as usual.
• Murphy’s First Law reminds us of the
importance of risk assessment and the
value of investment in risk prevention.

27. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• However hard organizations try and
however much they invest in risk
prevention they never completely identify
and eliminate all risks.
• The rules of mathematics are clear;
regardless of how small the probability of
risk occurrence, given enough time it is
certain to happen.

28. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• So Murphy’s Second Law reminds us of
the need for a Business Continuity Plan,
which is our last ditch defense to enable
recovery once that most improbable and
unforeseen event has taken us out.

29. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• When disasters occur, in spite of all of our
planning and preparation there is always an
impact. If there was no impact then it
wouldn’t be a disaster and we wouldn’t
require business continuity.
• Our job is to put plans in place to make
sure that the impact is contained to a level
that our organizations can accept and
survive.

30. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• We should communicate this level of
residual risk to top management in our
organizations.
• Doing so might help defend otherwise
pressured business continuity budgets and
help dispel the myth that Business
Continuity Plans somehow guard us
against all impact from a disaster.

31. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• the fact is that in most people’s normal
lives they live with potential sources of
accidental death — from unsafe electrical
wiring that can cause fires, to potholes on
roads that can kill, and the consumption of
contaminated water and food.

32. Murphy’s Law and Disaster
Management
• Nothing’s perfect. But it helps make one
cautious, take pre-cautions, and adopt
measures to prevent, mitigate and reduce
the likelihood of disasters.
• Based on this understanding of human
error all modern systems and organizations
have developed methodologies to deal with
potential sources of disaster and death.
Yet, accidents happen.

33. Conclusion
• It is not, therefore, in preventing an
accident that we must judge our ability to
beat Murphy’s Law, but in our ability to
deal with the consequences. If something
will go wrong, because it can, then one
must pay as much attention to preventing
accidents as to dealing with accidents.
Disaster management and response are as
important as disaster prevention.

34. Conclusion
• Disaster management is a human science
— that is, it is as much about systems as it
is about people.
• Systems that can fail, will fail;
• and, people that can make mistakes will
make mistakes.

35. Thank You!