What if a lethal wet-bulb heat event strikes northern India?
A lethal wet-bulb event in northern India halts outdoor labor and spikes power demand for cooling — the tradable legs are Indian power/coal stress and a wheat/rice supply scare, not a global food-CPI move. Rhymes with the 2022 pre-monsoon heatwave that cut Indian wheat yields and triggered an export ban. Transmission runs through India's wheat-export stance (it supplies regional importers) and grid strain; the modeled EM-FX leg is second-order.
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 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. 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 wet-bulb heat event crosses human survivability limits across northern India, killing thousands and halting outdoor labor. 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 | ▲ +0.8% hist +0.14–+0.87% |
| 2 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.8% hist +0.08–+0.88% |
| 3 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.17–-0.06% |
| 4 | Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.2% hist -2.13–+4.88% |
| 5 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.2% hist -1.02–+0.34% |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade longs on NG and WHEAT: negatives stem from gold, copper-tariff and egg windows off-channel to a heat-driven power/crop shock; SMH's +2.2% is AI-capex swamping the chip channel.
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 | · |
| NVDA NVDA | SHORT | -0.9% · 5d -4.3% | 55% | 39 | 0.07 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CORN CORN | LONG | +0.4% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 53% | 39 | 0.05 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NG NG | LONG | +4.6% · 5d -0.8% ↺ fades | 53% | 39 | 0.05 | ✓ matches cascade |
| WHEAT WHEAT | LONG | +0.3% · 5d +0.1% | 42% | 39 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SMH SMH | SHORT | -0.0% · 5d -1.9% | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 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
Lethal wet-bulb crossing survivability killing thousands in one season remains rare though warming-lifted. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.