Ah didnae ken that.
Well, Ah ken noo.
I’d say in some ways America is the natural disaster capital of the developed world, at least. There are so many of us, and as a rule are so spread out, our vulnerability seems a magnitude greater. It seems reasonable to assume that you would be much more vulnerable to a flood, hurricane, or tornado if you live out in the middle of nowhere; by contrast, a city apartment building seems less likely to be blown to smithereens by a tornado. On the other hand, for earthquakes the opposite may be true. L.A. being so spread out, the damage from the 1994 earthquake was considerable, but a lot of areas were intact. The hills that run through the city separating the SF Valley from the L.A. Basin consist of decomposing granite. “Decomposing granite” sounds like the last thing you’d want, but it’s actually about the best thing you can build a house on. My parents lived there at the time and their house was absolutely intact. A more compact city might be more vulnerable.
When it comes to earthquakes, the worst effects of all seem to be in developing countries. Due to poor or ignored building codes, whole cities or districts can be devastated by, say, a 5-point earthquake that probably would not even wake up a Californian.
I’ve lived in Canada my entire life (42 years) and I tend to take for granted the fact that ‘no real bad shit’ happens here.
It just got me wondering if there are more countries than not that fit into this category.
The worst thing that happens to us is we freeze our nuts off all winter and bust our asses shovelling the snow.
i’ve often wondered how there are any people left in that country. the floods there are horrendous.
We have wildfires, floods, landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions (think Tambora and Krakatau), and the 2004 tsunami was located off the coast of Sumatra and killed more Indonesians than any other nationality, by a lot. We also have the world’s largest number of reported cases of bird flu.
You might want to peruse this site:
There is a lot of stuff going on out there. As I said in the earlier post, it’s a matter of what gets reported. You say, “anytime I turn the television on” so that’s where you are getting your news. American broadcasters trying to get viewers. The air safety record in the Congo is abysmal but how many plane crashes in the DRC do you hear about? Consider your sources.
It all to do with perspective.
Yeah, but how many countries have had A Great Molasses Flood?
And drop bears. Don’t forget the drop bears.
I wouldn’t necessarily go by casualty figures to assess disasters or an area’s propensity for them. To a large degree, “disasters” are socially and economically abetted or exacerbated, and even on occasion constructed, by the governments concerned. The same tremblor that kills 200 in California could kill hundreds of thousands if it happened in Egypt, Turkey or Iran, due to the substandard quality of construction tolerated there. The disasters that befall the U.S. generally exact a low death toll [Katrina flooding notwithstanding] because of the country’s overall level of prosperity and its relatively tech-savvy disaster preparations and responses, as well as costly civil engineering projects.
By contrast, the huge death tolls associated with the earthquakes, famines and floods in Burma, India, Bangladesh, and China in recent decades could just as accurately be assessed as “crisis sparked by [insert natural disaster], inadequately prepared for or responded to by a [dictatorial and xenophobic/Maoist/socialist/corrupt and ineffectual] government of an impoverished society”.
Along similar lines, I was wondering if my own country, the UK, avoids such natural disasters out of pure luck, or entirely because of it’s geographical location?
Have you considered that it is free of em because it is “Merlin’s Isle of graymairey”? 
That’s what I chalked it up to.
So that’s what all those ley lines and standing stones are for. Merlin must have set them up as a weather defence system. Arthur was lucky to have a guy like that on his side!