What if an anti-satellite weapon test scatters debris through orbit?
An ASAT debris cloud is a vol event, not a supply event: the clean trade is long VIX / short Nasdaq beta on the headline, fading the move within days as no physical asset is destroyed. It rhymes with the Nov-2021 Russian ASAT test, which spiked Kessler-syndrome headlines but left equities unmoved. The Taiwan-fab leg is a mis-mapping — orbital debris does not touch TSMC output; the real second-order trade is long space-insurance and launch names (debris remediation capex), not short semis.
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 6–18 months 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. A nation tests a kinetic anti-satellite weapon, scattering debris that threatens commercial and reconnaissance constellations. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.