Petersburg resident Alexander Zakharov, an engineer who calls himself a crisis analyst, has been forecasting emergency situations for more than twenty years.
Natural and man-made disasters have become regular. Rescue efforts require over a billion dollars a year. Now, if it were possible to foresee the misfortune in advance - how many human lives would be saved, how much money would be saved!
Alexander Zakharov estimates the success of his work from 95 to 98% of accurate hits. Considering that the much less difficult task of weather forecasting has an accuracy of no more than 65%, the prophet's self-esteem should be considered incredibly high. However, if they were engaged in a serious verification of the results of his predictions, then only occasionally and individual departments. So what are the objective data?
At the end of June, Zakharov posted a warning on his website: from 4 to 12 July, there will be severe floods in the North Caucasus or in the Krasnodar Territory, Yakutia, and Altai. On July 3, he confirmed the forecast on the St. Petersburg TV-100 channel.
On July 4, torrential rains began in the Krasnodar Territory, over the next several days, a three to five month norm of precipitation fell, 24 thousand people suffered from floods in the Crimean region, 7 thousand in Gelendzhik, the total number of victims - 172 people.
July 10 on the TV program “X-version. Other news”on the all-Russian TV-3 channel, he reported (and repeated on July 13) about a new flood belt from August 15 to 25 in the same areas of the Krasnodar Territory that suffered in July. On the 22nd, the village of Novomikhaylovskaya was flooded.
In June, the crisis analyst sent the head of the Federal Air Transport Agency Alexander Neradko, in response to his request, with forecasts of plane crashes for the second half of the year. September 12 was listed as one of the most dangerous days. It was on this day that the An-28 plane crashed in the north of Kamchatka.
How do stakeholders respond to these forecasts?
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Usually not. On March 10, 2011, three days before the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Zakharov brought his schedules to the office of the regional branch of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and gave it to the person on duty on receipt. On the eve of the crash of the Polish plane near Smolensk, he arrived at the Consulate General of Poland and handed over his materials, convincing him: they must, they say, do something …
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The researcher does not reveal his know-how. The essence of his explanations is as follows: each catastrophe is accompanied by the release of colossal energy, which is accumulating, and there are signs indicating its concentration. As an elevated temperature indicates inflammation in the body hidden from the eye, so does the mass mortality of birds, the emergence of dead fish, the disappearance of bees, the release of whales ashore and other environmental problems provide a catastrophe forecaster with material for system analysis. With the total interconnectedness of all phenomena in nature, there is nothing accidental: even the side number of the aircraft and the name of the ship serve as initial information for Zakharov for the forecast.
Not only I do not have an understanding of how Zakharov's predictions are made.
Once we together with him visited the Main Directorate for Emergency Situations and Civil Defense of St. Petersburg. We were received by the deputy chief Vladimir Tyra.
“We do not need a forecast of dangerous days in general,” he objected to my companion, “but specifically where, when and what will happen.
- But this requires joint work, - the forecaster retorted, - your statistics, initial data on objects of interest.
- We are a budgetary organization, we do not have a resource for this work. You have already been checked at the fire-fighting institute and emergency department under the government of St. Petersburg. But somewhere people changed, somewhere the work stalled. Therefore, there are no results.
Saying goodbye, Vladimir Tyra wished Zakharov recognition and expressed hope for new meetings. They say, guy, achieve success, but when you are recognized, come, maybe we will use your achievements.
But … you don't even need to be a forecaster to say for sure: with this approach it will not be better.
I was obliged to personally test Zakharov's abilities. On September 26, he wrote me forecasts for the first week of October. In short, their essence: from October 1 to 8, there will be a collapse of man-made disasters, including several aircraft crashes. I've been tracking the news all week. Result: on the 1st, the planes crashed near Anapa and in Switzerland, on the 6th - in Sudan. In the same week, floods occurred in Spain, ships collided in Hong Kong, people were poisoned in Irkutsk and Germany, an oil refinery in Saratov and a food processing plant in the Novgorod region burned down, a landslide in China destroyed a school, and 47 cars collided in California.
To be fair, I must make a reservation, I still have doubts about the high accuracy of Zakharov's forecasts:
a) He marked October 1, 4 and 8 as the most disastrous days. In reality, this was only the day of October 1, the rest were usual for this week;
b) The scale of the events listed is still different: if we discard the fires, where relatively few were affected, the picture will average out;
c) What is the general, "average" background of catastrophes - maybe, before and after the allocated week, about the same happens (for example, on September 29 a plant burned down in Ugra, this fire, according to reports, is stronger than all October ones); What is the general criterion for distinguishing accidents from accidents? If you introduce it, it may turn out that in early October there were no disasters at all;
d) Zakharov assured that after the tragic week, starting from October 9 until the end of the month, there will be no more resonant incidents. However, in the following days, artillery shells exploded in Orenburg, downpours claimed the lives of the inhabitants of Derbent …
Taking into account all these reservations, the reliability of the October forecast may by no means reach the declared value of 95%.
Alexander Maratovich answered these questions of mine: detailing the scale of the incident is a separate big question that we simply cannot discuss in a relatively small newspaper space; the whole of October is generally more saturated with incidents than the previous month, therefore, they say, unpleasant events continue to occur.
Further clarification of the situation for October, according to Zakharov, is as follows: the days of local disasters will be October 15 and five days from October 18 to 22 - there may be earthquakes, landslides, torrential flows, fires, explosions, transport accidents.
