Phil Factor (8/9/2009)
When I was working for a national UK bank, a while back, a passenger jet crashed within half a mile of our secure data center (placed outside the metropolis, in open country). It caused a major exercise in working out what would have been the effect on our operations if the plane had crashed a few yards closer. The answer, they concluded, would probably have been the disappearance of the bank.
Bank I used to work for had 2 data centres, 15 km apart, both (mostly) capable of running all the bank's systems. Allegedly the primary data centre was so strong that you could crash a plane on top of it and still carry on processing from there. Fortunately they've never had to test that.
Edit: Missing letters...
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability