51–60 of 64 posts
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I’ve lived in blizzard territory and tornado alley. I have friends in hurricane zones. Parts of the US want to cook you alive. There’s nowhere in the country without something or another trying to kill you.
Michigan is pretty safe. We get tornados but that's about it. Not much poisonous or dangerous wildlife besides bears - just stay out of the wilderness. Not to mention a huge supply of fresh water.
3.7 barely qualifies as an earthquake though.
Let people have their moments together, they don't need you to approve it
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Michigan is pretty safe. We get tornados but that's about it. Not much poisonous or dangerous wildlife besides bears - just stay out of the wilderness. Not to mention a huge supply of fresh water.
> Michigan is pretty safe. > We get tornados but that's about it. those two things seem at odds.
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Michigan is pretty safe. We get tornados but that's about it. Not much poisonous or dangerous wildlife besides bears - just stay out of the wilderness. Not to mention a huge supply of fresh water.
Winter probably kills more people than earthquakes.
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Your commute happens about 250 days every year. A big earthquake happens maybe once ever 30 years. Buying a house takes 30 years to pay off. There's a limited supply of land; if all the houses in safe zones are taken, it may be worth it to some people to roll the dice on a house with natural hazards that's cheaper yet still close to everything. They're optimizing for the common case.
I’ve lived in blizzard territory and tornado alley. I have friends in hurricane zones. Parts of the US want to cook you alive. There’s nowhere in the country without something or another trying to kill you.
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It seems everyone in this thread is forgetting humans only live 100 years. If an event happens every 250 years on average - thats 10 generations of humans. There are stories told by old Indigenous peoples in Canada and the Western USA about the Cascadia Fault which will wreck the PNW west of Interstate 5, estimated to happen every 500 years, last happened in 1700s. But they are just that - vague stories. Who is liste…
If you’re bored, checkout renderings/maps of California during the Great Flood of 1862! My favorite trivia about that event was that the native Americans warned the settlers and relocated their villages to the hills just prior to the atmospheric rivers. If memory serves, Meteorologists / Atmospheric Scientists didn’t even have a name for them until the 1990s. With the increasing frequency of “100 year storm”, “200 ye…
It is pretty unfortunate, but I don't blame people. Imagine your grandfather telling you stories about his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather dealing with a great flood... they would just be legends.
The entirety of SoMa and Mission Bay are liquefaction zones [1], expected to face major damage during the next major earthquake. I wonder if "Drop, Cover, and Hold On" really is good advice for liquefaction zones for a very big earthquake. [1] https://gis.data.ca.gov/datasets/b70a766a60ad4c0688babdd4749...
Question: An earthquake can be dangerous because it is long lasting or because it is short and especially violent. So my question is, are earthquakes usually a consistent intensity? Or can they be moderate intensity for 45 seconds and then flatten me with a pulse that makes me experience 3x my body weight?
https://science8sc.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/7/132773018/publ...
Anecdote, I was in a small earthquake in Tokyo, the initial thump woke me up and I rolled over under the dining table (sleeping on the floor as a guest) then the bigger vibrations arrived a few seconds later. The building was well designed for earthquakes, but in the moment I figured that, not knowing how big the rest of the earthquake will be, it was probably best to get cover anyway. I think cover is just about increasing the probability by some small amount that you could end up alive under the rubble if the building were to collapse.
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Michigan is pretty safe. We get tornados but that's about it. Not much poisonous or dangerous wildlife besides bears - just stay out of the wilderness. Not to mention a huge supply of fresh water.
> Michigan is pretty safe. > We get tornados but that's about it. those two things seem at odds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Winter probably kills more people than earthquakes.
It's a slow danger most of the time. People have time to prepare or leave. Earthquakes are very sudden.
Loma Prieta killed 63 people. Northridge killed 57. The 2011 Christchurch earthquake killed 185. By contrast, about 30 people die every year from cold, 134 from heat, 44 from being hit by lightning, 85 from flooding, 69 from tornadoes [1], 103 from mass shootings, 21K from gun-related homicide, 26K from gun-related suicide [2], 70K from fentanyl [3], and 280K from obesity [4]. For completeness, excluding 9/11 about 15 people die per year from terrorism [5], with median 2 and mode 0.
Note the 3-order-of-magnitude difference between headline-worthy deaths like natural disasters and terrorism, vs. slow dangers like homicide, suicide, overdose, or obesity. You're about 7 times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than an earthquake.
[1] https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Ex...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-...
[3] https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
[4] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192032
[5] https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths...
