What if an anti-satellite strike knocks out GPS and comms?
An ASAT strike that degrades GPS/comms/financial timing is a clean risk-off tail: VIX gaps, Nasdaq and the S&P sell, credit spreads widen and vol-target funds deleverage mechanically. Rhymes with the Jun-2025 Israel-Iran strike and other geopolitical shock-gaps that spiked vol before mean-reverting. Forward angle: GPS underpins timestamping for trading and payments, so the novel second-order risk is settlement/operational disruption - making defense/space-resilience and alt-PNT names a structural long, beyond the initial beta selloff.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. An anti-satellite weapon strike disrupts GPS, comms and financial timing. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.