Real-time dashboard tracking private jet activity as a proxy signal for imminent nuclear apocalypse, scored 1-5 over a rolling 24-hour window.
Key Takeaways
Built by Kyle McDonald; monitors 502 of ~11,482 tracked planes, reporting a current deviation of -0.7 sigma from baseline.
Fleet tracked is exclusively business jets: Bombardier Challenger 300s, Cessna Citations, Dassault Falcons, Embraer Phenom 505s.
Level 5 is calibrated so only the single highest daily peak in the trailing year exceeds it, meaning roughly one alert per year by design.
Offers Telegram notifications and RSS feed for passive monitoring.
Hacker News Comment Review
Core logic is contested: ICBM flight times (~20 min from Russia, less from submarines) likely precede any detectable private jet surge, making the signal arrive too late to be actionable.
Signal reliability is further questioned: transponders stay on by default for ATC coordination, so fleeing elites probably would not disable them, but the data skews heavily US-centric, raising coverage gaps.
Commenters with signal-processing backgrounds noted the fundamental tradeoff: reducing latency to be useful inflates false positives; the current annual-trigger calibration inverts that but makes the warning nearly moot.
Notable Comments
@jandrewrogers: warns that signal construction latency exceeds event onset latency, and tightening it causes false positive rate to skyrocket.
@acidburnNSA: built a multi-factor predecessor in 2007 using Debian mirror uptime mapped by lat/long plus space weather data as a richer signal set.
