Defining a crisis, though, is subjective. Some, like 9/11 or the Covid-19 pandemic, clearly fit the bill. But what about the Great Garbage Strike of 1968, when 7,000 sanitation workers refused to collect trash for nine days? Or the summer of 1977, which included an infamous blackout, followed by rioting and looting—while serial killer David Berkowitz (a.k.a. Son of Sam) terrorized the city?
To simplify, I’ll restrict the definition of crisis to a few key categories: epidemics; invasions, revolts, and terrorism; conflagrations; riots; and financial or economic meltdowns. I’ll ignore events such as hurricanes, heat waves, worker strikes, blackouts, vandalism, and even serial killers, phenomena that tend to be isolated in their effects. And I’ll overlook long-term economic, social, and political issues like crime, governmental insolvency, foreign wars, or significant economic restructurings, which can be enormously influential but usually over longer periods, and which don’t normally correspond to our understanding of “crisis.”
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