Applied risk management

The risk analysis process in overview is:

1. Generate a list of risks through brainstorming and fears
2. Generate a list of responses to risks
3. Investigate responses for dependencies, determining any planning and execution lead-times
4. Apply responses to the list of risks, you will absolutely change your mind about what risks are worth considering
5. For each risk with a response requiring a long lead time (such as "relocate out of state") determine the dependent chain leading to that risk. This eliminated many risks from the brainstorm list.
6. For the remaining risks, group risks into those with common dependencies, or are outright duplicates using different wording
7. For grouped risks with long lead times, build dependent event chains for each, with an eye towards which events to watch out for as a herald that it is time to plan or go.
8. Build an aggregated list of events to keep an eye on before you start actively disaster-planning

That's a lot of steps, but I'll walk you through some examples to help you figure out what I'm talking about. As computer professionals in the disaster recovery space, it's extremely easy to jump to the worse case scenario ("organized murders of my minority in my area," also known as an organized genocide) and base all of your planning around that. Doing so will turn you into a giant ball of anxiety, so going through the above process will give your limbic system a break.

1. Generate a list of risks

You probably already have specific fears, like the "organized murders of my minority in my area" one I used above. Write that down, and write everything else that may push you out of "ignore/fight" and into "do something." This will be emotional work, just get things on the page. We'll qualify the risks later on, but we need a starting set to even begin the analysis.

2. Generate a list of responses

For the analysis I ran regarding when "flee" becomes a good idea, I came up with the following response menu:

• Endure it - it's fight I can afford to lose
• Fight it - It's a problem, and it's important that I stand up and take action to make it stop
• Domestic move - My local area is unsafe, it's time to move somewhere else
• International move - Nowhere in the country is safe, time to get out however possible
• Overnight evacuation - Specific threats have been received, time to be somewhere else within 12 hours

3. Investigate response dependencies

Most of this work is identifying which responses have lead-times, and determining how much time you need. This is a dependency analysis, so it's safe to get into the weeds a bit regarding procedures and lead-times. For international relocation, there ended up being a huge menu of ways to do that, multiple for each country and this one response ended up taking the majority of the time for me to qualify.

You're looking for two lead-times:

1. Planning time, how long it takes to set the conditions up to do the response
2. Execution time, how long it takes to execute the response

I also learned a few things. For the Domestic move option, there is a difference between ASAP and Planned move cases, and for a same-state vs different-state relocation. An ASAP move would involve moving into short term housing, such as a hotel, and then deciding if house-hunting or apartment-hunting needs to happen next. For a planned move, you can do the apartment/house hunt before executing the move. If you're employed, your employer may place restrictions on interstate moves! Find that out, because it'll affect your ability to relocate to another state.

Interstate moves as a remote employee

Due to how tech employers in the US do geobanding, each state and city is sorted into typically three geobands. The geobands are in broad agreement due to the common use of Radford services to assess market salary bands, and run from Tier 1 (SF/NYC) to Tier 3 (cheapest places). Employers typically want you to move within a band. Or better, down a band which will let them pay you less. You might even get relocation cost-support by moving down a band.

Many companies will require approval to move to a new state. This has to do with how employment taxes are computed in America. Your employer needs to have an entity in your state in order to pay you. Smaller employers may be willing to set up an entity just for you. Larger ones are unlikely to do so.

International moves have a menu of possibilities, especially if you're a late career technical professional who has been reaping great big RSUs for a while and has significant taxable savings:

• Employer sponsored - The easiest method, but requires you working for an employer with international operations who is willing to let you do it. This is also the most reliable method to get into places like Canada, Australia, or Ireland.
• Digital nomad visa - Designed to allow people to visit a country while working remotely for a few months, before moving on. This is needed because it is illegal to do work, even for a foreign employer, while in-country on a tourist visa. Most useful for people doing 1099 work, as that puts the tax burden on you. In theory you could hop to different countries when your visa expires, but it makes your tax situation extremely tricky.
• Investment visa - You drop a large amount of money, ranging from €250K (Latvia) to several million and get a long term residency permit. This lets you work in your target country. This is the same vehicle used by Russian and Chinese oligarchs, so there is absolutely stigma attached to using this option.
• Retirement visa - You prove enough passive income (rents-received, interest earned, pensions earned) and they give you a long term residency permit. This does not let you work in your target country. The goal is to prove to your target country that you earn enough to not require social supports. Provable amounts range from $15K/year (Panama) to €100K/year (Ireland) in passive income. Many of the countries that have investor visa programs also have retirement visa programs.

Your financial situation will tell you how many of these are viable. This may require you to change employer in order to gain the possibility of an internal transfer to another country. If so, add this to your "prep" time. If the investment or retirement visas are viable, now is the time to look at countries and where you can go and how many of them will allow you to be you.

Of the above, the Employer Sponsored is probably the fastest to execute once things get going. Your employer probably has professionals to work on obtaining the visa. Even so, it could take up to 6 months for you and your stuff to get to your target company. The Investment Visa option requires vetting by your target country's consulate, which can take up to a year. Or more, in the case of Portugal who is seeing a huge influx of applicants. Retirement visas are easier to get, but they require enough passive income so fewer people under IRA mandatory distribution age will qualify.

The right-wing rise is everywhere that speaks English

Everywhere English-speaking is having a bad time of it right now. Everywhere. The UK fell to right wing extremism before the US did. New Zealand has a right wing government. India has had a right-wing government for years. Australia has major anti-immigrant sentiment. Canada was following the US until the US pissed them off enough they decided to fight, so there may be hope there; but they're also increasingly likely to cut off immigration from the US as a result of the hostilities.

If you're like me, and a member of the trans community, the US of March 2025 is still one of the best places around to be. That spot is actively degrading, but be aware that where you jump to may not be better. Your affordable hope may simply be "won't get as bad," and will be actively worse until the US catches up.

The most extreme response, Overnight Evacuation, is a special one because it tells you what the execute time needs to be: 12 hours. The big work for Overnight Evacuation is planning and prep, such as maintaining go-bags and having a plan for where you can run. Go-bag maintenance takes time, especially if you're middle-aged and have a lot of prescribed medications. Depending on your circumstances, you may have to run evacuation drills to refine your procedures. For the Overnight Evacuation option you'll likely need to decide when you want to start actively prepping the 12-hour evacuation capability, because maintaining that readiness for two plus years will be a lot of work.

After assessment, my response table revised somewhat drastically.

The international moves have incredibly long lead-times! In the absence of refugee lanes for Americans fleeing dictatorship, an international relocation simply can't be the response to an emergent problem. Knowing this tells us that any risk with "international move" as a response needs to be analyzed for what events heralding the need for an international relocation will happen 6 to 18 months beforehand.

4. Apply responses to risks

Now that we've gone through all the work of qualifying our responses and understanding lead times, now we look at our list of risks and apply responses to them. This is a judgment call based on vibes. If you want to get scientific about each risk and diagram out dependency chains, do whatever makes your brain happy.

One thing to note: risks rated Evacuate Overnight are likely part of a rising pattern of risks. Step 5 is where we analyze these dependencies, and Step 6 is where we start grouping risks. Don't get too hung up on dependencies here, you want to get your brainstorm list completed. Feel free to evict risks if you find any that you don't feel merit response any more, or add new risks should thinking about others remind you of risks you missed.

5. Determine dependent chain for long-lead risks

For the risks with responses having a long lead time, we need to analyze those risks to identify what sort of events are upstream of the risk, things that need to happen before our risk happens. Such analysis will let us know which prelude events we should track before entering planning. For example, let's look at the extreme option I opened with, "organized murders in my area," which is an Evacuate Overnight risk. One dependent chain could be:

1. President repeatedly calls for murders
2. Right-wing media echoes calls for murders
3. Right-wing militias begin harassment campaigns
4. Regular media reports calls for murders, without condemning murders
5. Organized murders in other areas
6. Organized murders in my area

This list demonstrates an escalation from a call for action to action in my area. This also elides probabilities, which is analysis you will have to do yourself. America is a huge place. The areas most at risk for a rapid escalation from 1 to 6 are deeply red areas in Republican controlled states, where State authorities are less likely to investigate murders of disliked minorities. The areas least at risk are blue cities in Democrat held states, where State authorities are quite likely to investigate coordinated murders; making it harder for murder militias to safely operate.

For blue state residents, violence will rise in neighboring red states before it starts leaking across borders. This affects timing. After judging the dependent chain, we can assign risks to higher levels of the chain.

1. President repeatedly calls for murders
2. Right-wing media echoes calls for murders
3. Right-wing militias begin harassment campaigns
4. Regular media reports calls for murders, without condemning murders, plan domestic relocation to bluer state
5. Organized murders in other areas
6. Organized murders in my area, evacuate overnight

We have a new risk: regular media reports calls for murders, without condemning the murders. This new risk is a herald of the much more severe murders in my area risk.

Repeat this exercise for each of your long-lead risks. Now is the time to get into the weeds.

One risk on my brainstorm list was "ACA is repealed," which was removed from my brainstorm list due to finding discussions about how the right widely views ACA as settled (their electoral drubbing in 2018 was earned by being too aggressive about repealing ACA) and attacks are focusing on Medicaid block-grants. Such grants don't affect me, so "ACA is repealed" was drop from the risks list. Taking its place was, "Coverage of trans-related care banned for ACA plans," the court-cases for which are already underway.

6. Group risks with common dependencies

Your dependency chain analysis likely revealed a few risks that share a dependent chain, or are actual precursors to risks with higher severity levels of response. In my analysis I was able to condense the huge brainstorm list down to four risk-types, and eliminated several more risks that weren't eliminated in Step 5. My risks were pretty broad, but cover similar themes.

• Coordinated murders of trans people in my area
• Militia-style groups disappearing trans people in my area
• Mass secret-order detention of citizens
• My state goes fascist in the 2026 election

Murder, kidnapping for ransom/torture, state disappearance squads, and my state losing safe-haven status. This was a far shorter list than I started with. This list is also extremely dark. The good thing is we're no where near anything on this list as of March 2025. Now the work turns to figuring out the joined dependencies and coming up with prelude events.

7. Build dependency chains for each grouped risk

This is repeating step 5, but using the merged risks. I found diagramming flow-charts to be quite helpful. While doing your work, consider what events would constitute the trigger for the following stages of response:

• Plan - Time to pick a destination and start working the details of what a relocation would require
• Prep - Time to start working through reversible steps of the plan, such as starting conversations with lawyers, consulates, and employers
• Go - Execute the move

8. Build the aggregated list of events to watch out for

Now that you've done all of this work, it's time to build the summary. This aggregated list is the one to check back on once a week or so to see if any lines have been crossed. My list is highly personal, but has 10 different events on it. We are no where near any of those 10 events I identified as significant heralds of greater danger.

Then refresh your analysis once a month to square your analysis with what has happened in the previous four months. My March analysis involved a major rewrite because my February one failed to identify the mass secret-order detention of citizens risk, in spite of it being the number one thing dictators want above all else.

Whenever you feel an anxiety spike watching the news, and the urge to flee begin to take root, review your list of events. It calms me down, and once in a while I make notes for the next monthly refresh. This methodical approach absolutely did get me out of a doom-spiral, all thanks to a career in planning for disasters.