When disaster strikes, what is at stake for the authorities is no longer a space which must be cordoned off, but an interval of time which must be occupied, intensified and put to work in the service of a manageable scenario. If this is a nuclear power plant meltdown, how far will the radioactive cloud spread given the prevailing winds? What if the wind speed changes? The differential equations must be made in split seconds. How many people can be evacuated? Which evacuation routes carry the least risk? How far is this likely to change over time? The probabilities must be calculated before a decision is made, before even a perception of events can take hold. The disaster, in fact, first emerges as a stochastic model within a powerful computational system. It is algorithmic before it is real. For more on the algoworld, check the recent comments on Kevin Slavin’s notorious TED talk: http://new.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world