What if a unilateral solar-geoengineering launch sparks geopolitical conflict?
Unilateral stratospheric-aerosol injection that actually cools the surface is mildly bearish grains (better yields) and eases power-burn gas demand, the inverse of a heat shock. There is no clean market analogue; the real risk is geopolitical (a downwind monsoon failure read as an act of war), which markets would price as event/geopolitical risk, not as the tiny ag moves shown. Forward angle: the tail is a retaliation spiral, not the cooling itself.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
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 (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 3–10 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. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A unilateral solar-geoengineering deployment triggers geopolitical conflict. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wheat WHEATon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.28–+0.21% |
| 2 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.27–+0.29% |
Probable recommendation
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d +0.2% | 57% | 40 | 0.12 | · |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +0.3% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 55% | 39 | 0.09 | · |
| CORN CORN | LONG | +0.4% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 53% | 39 | 0.05 | ⚠ differs |
| WHEAT WHEAT | LONG | +0.3% · 5d +0.1% | 42% | 39 | 0.00 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d +0.3% ↺ fades | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +3.0% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | · |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.2% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | · |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +5bp · 5d +2bp | 48% | 40 | 0.00 | · |
Why this probability
Unilateral geoengineering deployment is novel and untested; conflict trigger even rarer. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.