Time will tell if the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will kill BP or just severely cripple it, but whatever the case I’ll bet they didn’t see it coming! Will you?

It looks like this spill will be (if it isn’t already) the biggest man-made disaster ever. The extent of the spill, the scope of damage and the resulting impacts on the environment, marine life, economies, and people remains to be seen, but catastrophic sums it up.

BP and all of the other world’s oil companies plan for spills. They build complex risk models, examine alternative worst case scenarios, look at maximum probable losses, and they are generally very good at measuring and managing risk.

But what if the worst case scenario that you imagined turns out to be wrong?