If you lean towards pessimism and a doomsday flavor of conservation, you likely think of nature as fragile – fragile rainforest, fragile coral reefs...fragile, fragile, fragile. If you lean towards optimism and a progressive view of technology, you tend to think we humans will cleverly figure it all out and nature can recover if we do damage it. In tribute to Nate Silver: data matters. I present a resilience index that can be applied to field studies and use it to suggest a path forward with respect to resilience that is science as opposed to storytelling and opinion.