The Nuclear Option: What if ... the volcano?

Something approximating normality is beginning to return, though normality will only resume when tourists start coming in and are not departing - finally.

These have been extraordinary days. And their impact will slowly diminish, as the ash starts to fade or heads off in the direction of Canada. Sorry, Canada, but you shouldn't feel that you can escape the problems. The good news is that tourists tend to have short memories and to not be deterred by extraordinary events. Except. Whereas an extraordinary happening, such as 9/11, brought chaos, such an occurrence is somehow manageable. There is a degree of control that can be brought to bear. It's not the same with nature. It is the sheer unpredictability, with no hope of control, that heightens a sense of uncertainty.

April is going to be a wash-out, despite the good weather. May? The hotels, we understand, will be making "super" offers, largely because the tour operators are forcing them to. To get confidence back, there has been a grand meeting involving the tourism minister, hoteliers, tour operators, travel agencies, airlines and other transport operators, from which will come a concerted spate of PR to get the British and the Germans to travel. Let's just hope those memories are indeed short.

Someone said yesterday that it's like last year. The volcano is this year's swine flu. By implication, the effects of the ash - on jet engines - have been exaggerated, just as the flu's impact and diffusion was. Maybe it has been, and I guess we can be assured that any way in which planes can be kept in the air will be being looked at, in the event that there is another eruption, but you wouldn't count on there being a solution. The comparison with swine flu isn't valid. That didn't stop people flying. And the effect was minimal.

The good news is that volcano Katla shows no sign of doing a copycat eruption. We can but hope that it doesn't. While the airline engineers study the data and ways to mitigate the effects of volcanic ash, we have to suppose that there is some serious consideration being given, in governmental circles, to what would happen if the worst case did happen. Now that the effects of one, not-that-massive eruption are being digested, the scenario planning for something altogether more cataclysmic has to be undertaken. Gloomy would be an understatement as a prediction.

Were the worst case to occur, God forbid, and were it prove impossible to fly, except perhaps intermittently, for months, then the prognosis would be dire. The tourism market would collapse, along with what currently remains of the property market and much of the island's economy. Unemployment would be unprecedented. It might be possible to enjoy the sun - and the roads - untrammelled by hordes of tourists, tourists buses, rented cars, but the reality, for all but those with plenty stashed away, would be horrendous. Businesses failing. People on the streets. Soup kitchens. Riots. Curfews. Initially, people would doubtless help each other, but a time would come when they wouldn't; when survival takes over. Society would, if not collapse, then be deeply and angrily polarised. The centre would be unable to hold.

It would be the nuclear option, or rather the nuclear possibility. It might not be nuclear winter, because the sun would still shine, but then when winter returned, it would be colder and wetter because of temperature cooling caused by the ash clouds, and there would be even less work and even more on the streets or leaving to head back to what would be uncertainty elsewhere.

One can over-exaggerate, but foolish would be the Mallorcan politician who isn't having sleepless nights as to what might happen and who isn't establishing contingencies. Of course nothing might happen. Or not for many, many years. But the fact is that it has happened; just that we may have got away with it.

There would be one solution. Oh, that there were. "Beam me over to Mallorca, Scotty." Or there's another one - that all the panic over the ash was just that, panic, and that there was not the need to be as cautious, as the British Government now seems to be admitting.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.