Society & Frontier risk-off · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if a compound climate disaster fails crops and infrastructure at once?

A compound climate event is a soft-commodity shock first: wheat and corn rally on yield loss, feeding food CPI, with water-intensive fabs a secondary disruption. Closest grain-spike analogues are the 2010-11 Russian heatwave/export-ban surge and the 2012 US Midwest drought, both of which sent wheat and corn sharply higher. Forward angle: the semis-via-water-stress link in the cascade is thin and over-broad — the actionable, high-conviction leg is grains and fertilizer, not the chip complex, which water scarcity affects only at extreme localized stress.

14%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 14% · 90% range 2–26% · 17 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

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…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A compound climate event causes simultaneous crop and infrastructure failures. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.