No, but I like near disasters–winter storms and funnel clouds around here. Once our power was out for three days after a brutal ice storm-we managed, and it was invigorating to have to figure out how to keep things together.
Except for the losses of life and personal and property damage, I absolutely love extreme weather events. Have you guys ever seen a documentary on mega-tsunamis? Wow. Talk about your destructive power of nature. A wall of water half a kilometer high (taller than any skyscraper), that goes many kilometers inland. There is apparently a cliff that is going to fall into the ocean on La Palma Island in the Canary Islands that will probably wipe out the east coast of the U.S. when it goes sometime in the next thousand or so years.
If we ever go to Hawaii, I don’t care what else we see, but I’m going to look at the volcanoes. Volcanoes rock!
[QUOTE=featherlou]
If we ever go to Hawaii, I don’t care what else we see, but I’m going to look at the volcanoes. Volcanoes rock!
[/QUOTE]
I’m with you. Screw the beach! Show me some liquid hot magma!
[QUOTE=kunilou]
On the other hand I distinctly remember a news conference during the Flood of 1993 where a disaster official said “Hydrologically speaking, the entire state of Iowa is now a lake.” So yeah, there’s a certain feeling of awe.
[/QUOTE]
I remember that. The joke at the time was:
“What’s the difference between Minnesota lakes and Iowa lakes?”
“Minnesota lakes don’t have towns in them.”
[Quote=Antigen]
I’m with you. Screw the beach! Show me some liquid hot magma!
[/quote]
My son and I took a helicopter flight over Kilauea a couple of years ago. The pilot followed the magma downhill to where it spilled into the ocean.
Yep, that rocked.
Natural disasters are awesome. One part of my brain doesn’t want to see suffering and death. That part of my brain is compartmentalized from the other part. That part says, “bring it on!” Blizzard, earthquake, flood - yee hah!
There’s something about a natural disaster which temporarily breaks down civilization. It makes you feel alive, and human. Who cares if you’re a lawyer or an accountant. A disaster lets you feel important, and real.
After a disaster, people seem to reveal their true character. People come together and help each other sometimes just to survive. Others become the looters.
I totally want to be the guy helping people escape their homes and helping them to safety. I totally want to be the guy who rescues your cat or your dog or kid or your grandma.
When I’ve lived in places where it snows, there are always these guys with four-wheel-drive trucks with snow plows. You just know they sit there praying for “the big one.” When it comes, these guys are immediately slapping chains on their tires and they’re out there plowing all the side roads, clearing peoples’ driveways. For free. They get off on it.
A disaster gives the average person the opportunity to be a hero. There’s nothing sociopathic about that at all.
[QUOTE=delphica]
You sound like my dad, he is thrilled by natural disasters. He genuinely feels bad about the hardship they cause for other people, but is still sort of giddy with the excitement of it all when they happen to him. I think he’s impressed by the Power of Nature, or something like that.
A few years ago, he lived right on Long Island Sound when it was hit by a particularly bad nor’easter. The news was reporting that some houses on the shore had already been torn up by the storm, and the entire area was being evacuated. I called him as he was driving home from work, he was so excited and kept repeating all the weather factoids about wind speed and water surges. Then he said “I think my house was swept away!” like he just won the lottery. I asked him how he knew this, and he said “I just passed our couch floating down the street!” This was the most excited he has been about anything since the Blizzard of '77.
[/QUOTE]
I’m that guy. Er…gal. Seriously! I hate the human toll, but goddamn it…gimme a 8.5 earthquake, a hellacious tornado, or 20 feet of snow and I’m a happy camper. The more drama, the bettah.
Just listen to George Carlin’s last track on his latest album
[Policeman thru a bullhorn]
Attention Shagnasty: Step away from the butterfly. Repeat. Step away from the butterfly.
[/Policeman thru a bullhorn]
[QUOTE=Mahaloth]
Just listen to George Carlin’s last track on his latest album
Coast To Coast Emergency
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, when I saw that on TV I was like “FUCK YES BRING IT ON.”
The Tashaboy was looking at me a little oddly.
~Tasha
No, I’ve seen too many Houston weather guys get stiffies about impending hurricanes. Or possibly impending hurricanes. Or simple flooding. Or potential flooding.
Touring the wreckage after Hurricane Carla tought me why people shouldn’t build fine homes on the Gulf. (Beach shacks–maybe.)
Hurricane Alicia was not very strong but did pass directly over Houston. Since I was in a fairly strong building far from any water, I rather enjoyed it. The lightning made the night sky emerald green. (And I only lost power for a few hours–much of the city waited weeks for power to be restored.)
Watching an 18-wheeler, or a house, floating down the road after a flood/hurricane/whatever is one of the most amazing things .I have personally seen- y’know that freaking water can have that power.
In an effort to be a better person, I am trying to temper my misanthropic tendencies, so let me state uncategorically that I deplore the loss of life and property associated with natural disasters.
That being said … WHEEEE!
I lived in L.A. for a long time and rode out a number of quakes. Always dug 'em, though. During the first one I turned over in bed just in time to avoid a huge tome of Michaelangelo prints from smashing onto my head. Disconcerting.
When the reasonably large one hit in '93 my cat magically and instantaneously became airborne. As my building shuddered and shook I remember thinking “… so this is how it ends for me …” The shaking seemed to last forever. Time is a strange thing when the world is stretching.
I think it may be a measure of the importance of my existence that in those moments it wasn’t my life that flashed in front of me, but that of a house painter in Altoona, PA.
In a not so unlikely stretch of Heinleinian logic: humans are natural, therefore events arising from their behaviour which are catastrophic may be construed as natural disasters.
With that in mind; during the riots following the Rodney King beating I was working in an office on Wilshire across the street from the Korean consulate. The National Guard had half-tracks and armed personnel stationed out front. The buildings owned by Koreans had draped tarpaulins over their signage, and debris skittered down the nearly empty boulevard like tumbleweed on the dirt streets of a 19th century border town in breathless anticipation of a showdown.
I walked home to my place near Melrose and Highland a couple of times during this tense period and was pleasantly surprised by the civility exhibited by those I encountered. Koreans, blacks, Mexicans, Maylay pirates - all seemed to be walking on eggs. I don’t list whites in this account on account of they were not very thick on the ground at the time. I did pass out folding money to those I ran across.
So … WHEEEE!
Oh, hell yeah. I’ll sit on the porch and watch thunderstorms, I love snowstorms…I used to go outside when it was stormy and DARE the sky to give me a monster storm. Katrina, tsunamis, elephant stampedes, whatever the SciFi Channel offers I’m taking!
…grumble grumble grumble…damn hamsters…
What I was going to say was that for me, it’s the facination with the power of Nature. It’s an amazing opportunity to see Nature at her worst.
Yep, I’m with the OP. I love seeing first hand how little we have control over things. The power and oblivious nature of, well, nature, is awesome.
Wouldn’t this all depend on where the disaster / nuclear strike occurs and whom it affects?
The aftermath of the tsunami over here was not pleasant to watch on the news. The earthquke that generated it actually made our windows buzz, and if you look at a map, you’ll see how far that is. Impressive! We could not figure out why they were buzzing, then they stopped, so we forgot about it. That was about 8:30am; close to lunchtime, reports started coming in from the South about the tsunami. It was reported that up in the Northeast, water levels in all of the wells dropped suddenly, too.
I watched some some show on The Tsunami, and that may have been the freakiest thing - the water all drawing back from the beaches in anticipation of the coming wall of water. I’m guessing that even if you didn’t know what that meant, your instinctive response would be, “Oh, shit, this is not good.”
[QUOTE=featherlou]
I watched some some show on The Tsunami, and that may have been the freakiest thing - the water all drawing back from the beaches in anticipation of the coming wall of water. I’m guessing that even if you didn’t know what that meant, your instinctive response would be, “Oh, shit, this is not good.”
[/QUOTE]
heh…not me. Perhaps I don’t have a very strong self-preservation instinct, but I would have been one of those poor souls standing on the beach wondering “what the hell??”. Being born and raised in Indiana, we’re so land locked that I don’t have a single clue about the ocean and it’s idiosyncracies. I may have just thought that it was one helluva low tide…
[QUOTE=mr. jp]
Yeah I certainly do. I particularly like earthquakes. Heavy destructions and casualties, that rules. I don’t think I will get as excited anytime soon, as I was during the Rwandan genocide.
[/QUOTE]
I didn’t get any further than this in the thread, but are you serious?
I like lightening storms, tornados, hurricanes, tsunami’s, blizzards, etc., when I don’t have to think of the body count. But IMO, the Rwandan genocide wasn’t a natural disaster at all. I hope you were being somehow sarcastic, but I’m too depressed and fucked up on drugs to know the difference.
Yeah, that’s my natural disaster, but carry on.
I’m a hurricane nerd; I used to study all I could about them (Galveston and The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 are my favorites), and I still get ridiculously excited about them. When Floyd was approaching, my uncle in Jacksonville (a fellow doomophile) was eagerly e-mailing me updates and photos until it turned and missed him.
Katrina, not so much.