I love to hear about raging bushfires in Australia. I feel some very limited sympathy for folks who lose their houses, but great remorse when our CFA (Country Fire Authority) volunteers (both from here and overseas, especially NZ and Canada at the moment) are hurt or killed while trying to fight the fires, mostly when attempting to save peoples houses and property.
Y’see, fire is a really normal thing in the Australian bush. It’s a natural part of our ecology, and many floral species ONLY propagate after a good fire. When the forest is regrowing (as it does very quickly after a wildfire) it provides a wonderful source of food for the animals that survive. It cleans out the litter and basically refreshes the environment.
But people who build their homes in or near the bush are probably going to get burned at some stage, and many of them whinge and whine when it inevitably happens. And firefighters die trying to protect them.
I just wish people would suck it up. You want to live in the bush? Learn to live with all that the bush has to offer…the marvellous smell of the eucalypts on a hot summers’ day, the sound of the maggies and kookaburras and the marsupials scuttling through the undergrowth, the awe of seeing 60m Mountain Ash’s stretching away into the sky…and the fact that bushfires created all of that wonder some time in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
Caveat: I wish all firebugs (people who deliberately start fires in the bush on high-risk days) would just accidently set fire to themselves first. They are NOT part of the natural system here in Australia, and deserve to fry.
That’s like people who live in a flood plain of a river, and keep rebuilding there. I personally would not insure that. We had incredible flooding here a couple of springs ago, and there were a bunch of people flooded out of their homes in - the town of High River. I don’t think you get to act like this came as a surprise when you live in a town named after flood conditions.
I’m completely befuddled by this thread. I dread even the thought of natural disasters.
At first, I thought that perhaps you meant you enjoyed watching disasters as long as they didn’t happen to you, but your OP specifically says that you enjoyed it even when it was happening to you.
It’s clear that I have much to learn here, so for those of you that are excited by the prospect of natural disasters, could you be a little more detailed about why. Is it like riding roller coasters or something? Cause I hate those too. Is it the adrenaline rush that you like? Or something else?
It is the sense of adventure, Heffalump. To me (and this will sound nerdy), a slightly life-threatening natural disaster is the closest thing I’m ever going to come to having “an exciting quest to survive against the forces of evil.”
I get excited too and not just about natural disasters. Sometimes I find myself turning on the news hoping something really insane has just happened. I don’t really want people to get hurt but it is a thrill for some reason when this kind of stuff happens. Of course if it was happening to me it might be a different story.
Maybe we’re kind of like the survivalist nutcases; we don’t actually look forward to millions of people dying (most of the time, anyway), but the disasters are so damned exciting. I don’t think this is a weird mindset, either - why would the news cover every slightly unusual weather condition if people weren’t interested?
I love it when the weather IS the news. Hurricanes, giant snows, earthquakes. Snow and cold never get as much credit as they deserve for sheer casualty numbers.
There’s nothing more disappointing when they start talking up a blizzard or a hurricane, and it peters out, or blows off course.
A few years back in Baltimore there was supposed some Artic cold coming in, and it looked like some moisture was going to be dumped on us from the Atlantic, and a weatherman was calling it a “Weather Bomb”. We were all so psyched for the Weather Bomb.
Nothing.
Then again, a few years ago, we got those 25 inches in February during President’s weekend. That was awesome, shut this town DOWN.
Back when I was renting, I used to get disappointed when the I found out the various hurricanes weren’t turning in our direction afterall or when the strong thunderstorms petered out before reaching us. Now that I own a house, I find damaging winds less thrilling.
Decidedly, no. I do not “get off” on natural disasters. The fear and dread are not pleasant. About the only thing that I am even slightly fascinated by are Thunder/Lightning storms. I do seem to be drawn to their dark beauty and I dig a good rain. Sometimes I will stand in or near to a lightning storm, but for all the rest I get a knotted stomach and adrenal floods at their thought; nervousness, terror, et al. I have never had a very good endocrinary reaction to adrenaline. I do not feel invigorated or clarified and the afteraffects are quite longlasting and really just lead to an unpleasant pit of obsession and compulsion.
I’ve had the fear of Tornadoes drilled into me ritually, too… so that probably has something to do with it. We would have periodic Tornado drills all through grade school. They would wait for a dark and dreary, rainy day and sound the alarm without warning. Then we were required to shut all the windows, turn out the lights, and file quickly into the basement and lower floors of the school and assume our positions in tight rows. We would kneel down, prostate ourselves, and cover our heads with our hands. Then, to give it that “special touch”, in the red glow of the emergency lights, they would play a record of a real tornado- yea, that’s right, the sounds of a real Tornado in Hi Fi. It was pretty scary for us Kindergarteners and First and Second Graders. As a husky kid, it was doubly hellacious to stay in that Atom Bomb Crunch for fifteen minutes, and they always stressed to make yourself as compact as possible. I’d try like hell to compact my fatbody into a small package, I mean, they made it seem like my life depended on it. But there was always my fat ass sticking up out of the crowd of tiny meatballs. I thought I was going to die because I couldn’t get small enough for that 15 minutes of hell!
I enjoy observing the power of nature as much as the next guy, but after having lived through Hurricanes Hugo (when in Columbia, SC), Floyd and Fran (in Raleigh, NC) and Katrina in New Orleans (where I live now) I’ll take a pass, thanks.
