The reader’s desk / Interactive
Get inside
the story.
The headline is the beginning. Pull a lever, test a claim, see what changes.
01 / A 30-day thought experiment
Can you keep
the fuel flowing?
A fictional region loses part of its daily supply. Reserves buy time. Replacement deliveries and lower demand can help. Change the assumptions and watch the next 30 days unfold.
Illustrative model. Every setting below is hypothetical. This is not an estimate for Moscow or any other real place.
Your scenario / 30 days
Calculating…
Each series uses its own demand level. See the volumes below for a direct comparison.
See all 30 days
| Day | Deliveries | Demand | Reserves left | Unmet |
|---|
How it works—and what it leaves out
Normal demand and normal deliveries are each 100 units per day. An outage starts on day 1 and removes the selected percentage of normal deliveries for the selected number of days. Full normal deliveries return the next day.
Replacement deliveries start on the selected day and continue only while the outage lasts. Demand reduction starts on day 1 and lasts all 30 days. Reserves start at 100 × the selected reserve days, and cannot exceed that initial storage capacity.
Each day: available fuel = deliveries + reserves from yesterday. Fuel used = the smaller of demand and available fuel. Unmet demand = demand − fuel used. Remaining fuel goes into reserves, up to the storage limit; any excess is excluded.
This is arithmetic, not a calibrated forecast. It assumes fuel is interchangeable and can reach everyone immediately. It leaves out refinery yields, transport bottlenecks, product grades, prices, uneven access, panic buying and gradual repairs. A good result here does not establish that a response is feasible in a real place.
Back to the reporting: what a refinery fire can—and cannot—tell us ↗
02 / Three calls at the reader’s desk
Would you
share it?
A striking clip. Three matching headlines. A claim that outruns the facts. Choose the statement the evidence actually supports. All examples are invented.
What did we miss? Bring us your sources, corrections and ideas. We’re here to work through the news together.