This is both a factual & opinion question so here goes~ what are the safest areas to live in America in terms of weather & other natural disasters? A friend asked me & I’m at a loss. Tornadoes & hurricans don’t worry her, but quakes, volcanoes, calderas & anything explosive & flammable does. Also nuclear targets. Do you know of any maps on safest places from these disasters? Thanks!
Tornadoes are ok, and hurricanes? I believe she will find there are far more storm related deaths than volcano ones. Really. that open up pretty much the eastern 2/3s of the US. What about hurricane-related flooding?
If she’c concerned about tsunamis. stay 50 miles or more inland to be extr safe.
Oh yeah, locations in the US or the world?
As far as tornados, earthquakes, bad hurricanes, weather disasters, etc. we’re pretty good here in (central) NJ. We are, however, close to NYC which is pretty much a major nuclear/terrorist target, IMHO.
This article took those things into account using data from bestplaces.net
Ah, found a site for her: http://2012base.com/Survival_Plans/Safe_Locations/
Let’s see some future maps for after the 2012 apocalypse, Australian hazard maps, etc. Even has a piracy map!
This is also a cool map, showing disaster declarations for the U.S. from 1964 to 2007:
Or snowstorms. I’d bet more people die from snow-related accidents than from any natural disaster.
According to this article, it’s heatwave which kills the most folks. Winter weather is in the top though.
Here’s anothe nice map: County-level hazard induced mortality, 1970 to 2004.
You’re friend’s premise is flawed.
Even in the heart of Torndao Alley, any given house-sized location is hit by a tornado only once every few hundred years.
Even in Florida, any given house-sized location is exposed to a hurricane only once every few decades, if that often.
Anywhere in the eastern US, any given house-sized location is destroyed by the Yellowstone supervolcano only every few hundred thousand years.
The map in NinetyWt 's post above is presumably accurate history, but only over a 35 year period. A map of the true statistical likelyhood would require hundreds of years of history.
And here comes the real flaw in the OP’s premise. Even if that map existed with perfect accuracy, you don’t really want to know the true statistical likelihood; you want to know what will happen in the next 50-ish years (i.e. during your remaining life.)
When dealing with rare events, being (un)lucky has a much larger influence than the relative likelihood of a one-in-100,000 vs a 1-in-1-million occurrence.
Once side effect of the 24 hour news cycles is we can begin to believe that every square inch of Florida is destroyed by a hurricane 2 or 3 times per year. Or that all of Oklahoma is eaten by a tornado at least annually, if not more often. Balderdash.
If you look closely at that map, you can see adjacent small counties where one has >1.5 SD mortality and the adjacent county has <1.5 SD. That’s rought a 3x difference in mortality for locations which are geographically, economically, and culturally very similar. Why the huge difference? One county got unlucky in the last 35 years; the other didn’t.
Finally, to determine your personal hazard exposure, you need to consider government & quality of emergency services. As we’ve just seen with Haiti, the likelihood of any given person being injured / killed in any given natural hazard has a lot to do with the society. Had the Haiti quake occurred under downtown Los Angeles instead of downtown Port Au Prince, the death toll would have been in the dozens, not the many tens of thousands.
So even if Los Angeles is, say, 10x more likely to have a magnitude 8 earthquake than Port Au Prince, you’re still better off choosing LA if yuo’re trying to avoid dying in an earthquake.
Haiti of course is kind of the limit-case of unpreparedness for anything, even a nice sunny day.
But just within the United States there are large differences in social & gvernmental readiness to deal with disaster, particularly large-scale disaster.
Anecdotally, I have heard that New Mexico is the safest place to be if one wants to avoid Natural Disasters
Seismic: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3038/images/seismic-hazard-map.jpg
Tornado: http://www.greatplacestoretire.com/tornado-hazard-map.jpg
Landslides: http://nathazmap.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/nathazmap_landslide_hazard_map.186191323.jpg
An interesting thing I note with NinetyWt’s map is that it’s the places with the fewest hazards that have the most hazard mortalities. Essentially, you’re safer off to be somewhere that can deal with emergencies than someplace free of most emergencies.
Yes, it throws off any empirical analysis one could make with respect to the statistical occurance of natural disasters. Density of population does too. Note for example that there were fewer deaths on the Mississippi coast from Katrina than there were in New Orleans, even though the storm hit MS directly.
Yeah - was going to say much the same for where we live (Northern Virginia) - the recent blizzard aside, on average our weather isn’t too awful either winter or summer, and the spring / fall can be downright nice. Tornadoes are extremely rare (every couple of years we’ll hear of one “probable”); we’ve had exactly one hurricane-force storm in the 21 years I’ve lived here, never had an earthquake…
… but being so near Washington DC, well…
A bit further away (west/south or even north/northwest), the winter weather can be worse but the summer won’t be that much different, and you’re further away from that big red target painted on the map.
Slate picked Storrs, CT as the safest place in the US from natural disasters.
The Detroit area is very safe from natural disasters. We don’t have hurricanes, earthquakes or have to worry about tornadoes. Poisonous snakes are rare. So are poisonous spiders. Tornadoes are rare and weak. Is is a big deal when a couple trees get uprooted. The Detroit area also has much less snow than the rest of the state. If someone can make us safe from corrupt politicians we will be OK.
You don’t want much, do you? 
What about western PA? No hurricane worry. Mountainous enough that I don’t think tornatoes are a concent. AFAIK, no earthquakes. Pittsburgh is unlikely to be a prime nuclear target.
Hey! I didn’t know you were in central Jersey!
FWIW, we do get some tornadoes here, especially below the Watchung Mountains. I remember back in th '90s, there were several in East Brunswick that did some real damage. (Okay, it’s not like Kansas, but whatevs)
And we definitely have problems with hurricanes. Even if you’re inland, the high winds can be really destructive.
True, but being so boring, suicide is a real risk.
Yes, But who would want to live there. It’s right oustide Hartford.
New Haven, Ct. is a great college town 
NH, ME, Vt.
I can’t think of anything that would trouble us here in Vermont except the occasional blizzard. And, of course, the threat of rampaging Canadians invading.