On 1/7/2016 2:56 PM, Eagle wrote:
Don Y was thinking very hard :
On 1/7/2016 2:23 PM, Eagle wrote:

Doesn't shake you up about a twister hitting your home? I think I'd have a BIG
room in the house that is twister proof. I'd prolly spend most of our time in
that room durring tornado season!
Earthquakes don't scare Me, but tornadoes do. :-? Maybe because we live in a
earthquake prone area?

I think a lot of it has to do with *familiarity* with a risk.

Things with which you have no first-hand experience can conjure up
all sorts of nightmarish scenarios, in your imagination. OTOH,
practical exposure allows you to more accurately gauge those
risks in a REAL context.

Interesting thought. )

Folks who've never encountered a cougar, rattlesnake, tarantula,
gila monster, poisonous spider, etc. might cringe at the thought.
In practice, you realize they aren't going to CHARGE you but,
rather, will shy away -- unless you provoke them! So, instead
of thinking that they are "lying in wait" for an unsuspecting "you"
to come along, you realize they're going to ignore you -- unless
you force them NOT to!

I'm thinking I wouldn't want to be anywhere NEAR a Grizzly bear!

Coming to this realization WITHOUT direct experience is difficult.

I'm not sure I would agree with that.

Seeing the devastation of a "natural disaster" leaves your imagination
unconstrained to IMAGINE what it must have been like. In practice,
I suspect the appraisal is very different.

Try living through a BIG tornado, or something like Hurricane Catrina, or an
earthquake that does several BILLION dollars in damage and think that Don. :/

But most of the consequences of those events are related to how
well the support systems addressed the AFTER EFFECTS or failures
of man-made structures brought about by the event. E.g., had NOLA
been ABOVE sea level, most of the fatalities there would not have
occurred. The storm, itself, didn't kill those people; the failure
of levees meant to keep the sea water out of the low-lying wards
did!

How often do you see *bodies* littering the area of a storm/disaster?

Last year, ~30 people died as a direct result of tornados. Despite
all the *power* that they unleashed! 1000 times more people died in
the same period due to automobile accidents -- almost the same
number as lost their lives to guns! Bundle up the energy expended
in all of those car crashes (or gunshots) and compare it to the
energy in *one* tornado...

What you *see* in the media is the devastation that these events
leave behind. And, *imagine* that the "human cost" must have been
tremendous! It is -- but in the *aftermath*, not the event itself!