What if a South African blackout shuts the platinum mines?
An Eskom grid collapse idling Rustenburg shafts chokes ~70% of mined platinum and the bulk of rhodium — the clean move is a PGM supply squeeze (platinum/rhodium up hard), with the broad VIX/Nasdaq risk-off in the cascade overstated for a localized metals event. Rhymes with the 2008 South African load-shedding that spiked platinum to its record and the 2014 Rustenburg strikes. Forward angle: thrifting and EV substitution cap the auto-catalyst pull versus 2008, so the deficit bites jewelry/industrial inventory first.
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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 0–6 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. Eskom grid collapse forces simultaneous shutdown of Rustenburg PGM shafts, choking platinum and rhodium supply for months. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.