What if coordinated undersea-cable cuts sever the global internet?
Coordinated cable cuts are a connectivity/operational-risk shock: VIX bids, high-beta tech and crypto sell on settlement/messaging fear, and gold catches a reflexive geopolitical haven bid. Behavioral analogue is the 2024 Red Sea / Baltic cable incidents and the June-2025 geopolitical vol spike — sharp but quickly faded once rerouting was confirmed. Forward angle: the financial system's SWIFT/clearing redundancy means the equity hit is more sentiment than substance; the durable trade is in subsea-repair and satellite-backup names, not a broad index short.
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. Coordinated undersea-cable cuts disrupt global internet and financial messaging. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Risk appetite ▼ · Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.