I checked “other”.
When I was little, we lived in the mountains next to a dormant volcano. Try explaining to a seven-y-o kid what “dormant” means. Keep in mind that the kid in question’s sole other experience with volcanoes are the ones on cheesy sci-fi movies, where volcanoes erupt for no other reason than the writer wanted it to. Until we moved away from the volcano, I was a nervous kid.
I’m over that now. My main worries are dinosaur and/or landshark outbreaks, followed by Gojira attacks.
Wildfires, any asshole can start one anywhere by flicking a cigarette out a car window.
Volcanos have to be at the edges of plates same as earthquakes, you need to be near an ocean and towards sea level for tsunamis, rockslides need mountains, same as avalanches but they also need snow. Tornado, thunderstorm, blizzard are things you can take precautions about - dont stand under a tree with the lightening, don’t go out if you cant see through the snow and if the sky turns yellow green head for the basement.
But any asshole can start a wildfire. Randomly. Like by flicking a butt out his window into my field in the middle of the night and drive off, leaving it to burn my place down.
I’ve lived through many tornadoes and hurricanes but NOTHING has scared me as badly as a relatively minor earthquake. There is no place to hide from them.
I voted tornadoes, because, goddamnit, it’s just wind! Wind has no fucking right to be that deadly and destructive. Tsumanis are a close second, and for similar reasons. Wildfires, by the same logic, aren’t that scary. Because it’s fire. Fire’s *supposed *to be dangerous. Burning to death in a wildfire and burning to death in an electrical fire seem about the same to me - certainly not how I’d want to go out, but the possibility of dying in a fire is just one of those things you know is a possibility, and doesn’t generally keep me up at nights.
Earthquakes are nothing. Fact is, it’s pretty hard to be killed in by an earthquake. It’s the shoddy construction that’ll do you in.
I voted for wildfire because it’s the only one I have experience with, and because death by fire can be prolonged and excruciating.* I imagine (possibly wrongly) that a tornado, the only other natural disaster I’m likely to experience where I live, would kill you pretty quickly.
*Although being trapped under rubble after an earthquake is a very close second.
I suspect I did not vote for earthquakes because I do not live or work in the city.
My mindset is that if there is an earthquake that is bad enough to make my house unsafe, all I have to do is…go outside. That’s it. Just stand in my yard and I will be unscathed by an earthquake. It actually took me a minute to figure out why someone would be so afraid of earthquakes. Then I realized that in some places even if you stand outside, you could have stuff fall on you and trap you.
Wildfires seem super scary but to me they seem like they’re always very slow moving and there is plenty of warning that they’re coming. I’m not attached to my house or my stuff so the thought of everything burning while my dog and I are far away doesn’t upset me.
Tornadoes actually do tend to have some warning, but they don’t seem as slow as wildfires. You also can’t hide from them inside or outside. The idea of my dirty laundry being picked up and strewn across my neighborhood makes me pretty scared too 
Anyway I voted for tornadoes. If I lived in a city or in a place closer to wildfires, I bet I’d change my tune.
I put Tsunami as the most horrible. The thread title says frightening, but the poll title says horrible…
To me, if I was in the situation of a natural disaster, a volcano would be pretty damn frightening. I’ve been through tornadoes and hurricanes, so those wouldn’t bother me. I haven’t been exposed to much about earthquakes, but seeing the sheer destruction of the tsunamis over the past few years is horrific.
So, in a nutshell:
Terrified of: molten rock spewing from a mountain, aimed at me.
Most horrible: wall of water that erases a city.
I really can’t conceive of anything worse than an earthquake. I saw a documentary where they interviewed an earthquake survivor who was in the hospital in the same room as her husband at the same time the event occurred. The building collapsed on them and they were both pinned. They passed the time talking to one another. Then he died. While she lay there starving to death over a period of several days, she could smell the stench of her husband’s rotting corpse. When she was finally rescued, she learned that seven of her family members had been killed as well.
Tornadoes are frightening, but they usually take you out in a heartbeat. People caught in earthquakes are buried alive.
I voted “other”. I’m not particularly terrified of natural disasters because they aren’t “personal”. The fury of hurricanes or tsunamis are awesome to behold and cause untold death and destruction, but they’re random events they’re not “targeting” me.
The only one posted above that’s actually likely to affect me personally is a tornado (blizzards happen 'round here too, but they’re unlikely to kill anyone).
But the idea of a tsunami horrifies me to the bone. A moutainous wall of water, moving at ~100 miles per hour… shudder.
I’m gonna go with famine (other).
Earthquake!
Mainly, as others have said, because it’s rare to have any warning.
I went for volcanoes just because of the horrible and inevitable death that occurs when caught in the path of a pyroclastic flow. Now, there aren’t any volcanoes right around here, but I spend time up at Mammoth Mountain and could conceivably be caught in one, although there are typically warning signs of an impending eruption.
We get earthquakes around here, and I’ve been through a couple of big ones. The earthquakes themselves are actually kind of interesting so long as your house doesn’t get destroyed and you don’t die. I’m not much in danger of a huge tsunami due to the Channel Islands and lack of a major fault west of here (The San Andreas Fault is east). The tsunami that hit here because of the Japan quake was not even a trickle even though it fucked things up in Santa Cruz. In any case, I’m actually expecting a really huge 8.x along the San Andreas sometime as we are overdue. It’ll be interesting to see how our vaunted building codes hold up in San Francisco or LA when the really big one actually hits. I think Seattle is in more of danger due to the Cascadia subduction zone which can cause a tsunami of epic proportions.
Now fire is actually the biggest risk around here. i don’t live in a particularly dangerous zone, but I’ve live through several that were very destructive. Some times the fires burn at 60mph so you can’t even out drive them. If worse came to worse, and the entire neighborhood burned down, I could still walk down to the beach.
I’ve lived through volcanoes and earthquakes. I probably should have picked earthquake, but I picked volcanoes because I knew it wouldn’t be popular and needed some more support.
I voted for tornadoes. I live in California and lived through the Loma Prieta in 1989, so even though I know big Japan-level earthquakes can cause a whole lot of devastation, they don’t scare me that much because at least I’m familiar with their little brothers.
Tornadoes are scary and unpredictable and there’s nothing you can do about them.
Volcanoes are scary but pretty geographically limited. Blizzards (caveat: have only even seen snow in person twice in my life) seem fairly survivable if you have some warning they’re coming and stock up on food and heating material.
I voted for earthquakes, but tornado was close. I don’t have much need to fear a tsunami because I’m far from the ocean, and I’m not likely to be incinerated by a volcano here either (unless the giant one in Yellowstone blows).
Tornadoes can also trap people under buildings. Cite.
Well, I imagine they can. But their respective death tolls are pretty disparate, thus earthquakes win in my book.
(FWIW, I’m terrified of tornadoes. I was once at an amusement park where we got two massive funnel clouds and three water spouts (tornadoes on water). And you could see 'em all at once, with nowhere to go.)
I voted for tornadoes. An asteroid strike or a massive tsunami may be more catastrophic but at least you are in it with a large number of people. Tornadoes are seem like personal vengeance from a higher power. I had near misses with the growing up and could see them moving and bouncing around not knowing what is about to happen and it is terrifying. A tornado could leave your neighbor completely untouched while it sucks your family and everything you own straight into oblivion. The church I grew up in was once a stout brick building. It got called back home in a tornado itself and there was little left although most of the general area was fine. That can’t be a good sign.
Earthquake are deadly, but if you are lucky, you can escape without much trouble. Tsunamis, that usually follow major earthquakes, are usually an order of magnitude more deadly and destructive than earthquakes! So, I voted tsunamis.
By the way, I have been in an 8.7 earthquake!
