Tornadoes aren’t all Midwesterners should be worried about

With the recent spate of natural disasters and warnings of a flu pandemic, George Will points out in this column, people have a feeling of “pervasive menace from things out of control.”
Simon Winchester — in his book “A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906” — wonders at “humankind’s insistent folly in living in places where they shouldn’t.”
And when it comes to earthquakes, Will reminds us, it’s not just Californians who are living in the danger zone. Earthquakes around New Madrid, Mo., in a few-week period in the early 1800s were strong enough to ring the bells in a Charleston, S.C., church.
And, Will points out, “scores of millions of Americans now live on the unstable faults that shook mid-America in 1811-12.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley

10 Comments

  1. TRACY
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 6:26 am | Permalink

    “humankind’s insistent folly in living in places where they shouldn’t.”

    Why are we talking about New Madrid, when the above line should be about the death-trap on the river delta?

  2. JUSTA GUY
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 6:34 am | Permalink

    Hey, even in the sixties we knew this was coming. Remember Sex, Drugs, and this must be the Rock and Roll. lol

  3. Joe Williams
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 6:56 am | Permalink

    I don’t think there is anywhere in the world that is free of any natural disaster potential.

    It’s called Earth and it’s called Life.

  4. TRACY
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 7:02 am | Permalink

    Intelligent people should at least live in places that are not at higher risk of disaster.

  5. Galahad
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 11:42 am | Permalink

    Every square inch of land one can settle on carries some risk.

    George Will should worry about the needless death that WE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT like the war in Iraq, and not that which we can’t, like an earthquake that might happen in 500 years in the Mississippi valley.

  6. TRACY
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 3:42 pm | Permalink

    So there’s an unjust war going on.WE ALL KNOW THAT.

    Now back to: “humankind’s insistent folly in living in places where they shouldn’t.”Hmmmm…flood plain or high ground?

  7. Ian Santiago
    Posted October 15, 2005 at 10:36 am | Permalink

    Earthquakes, hurricanes and such are trivial when compared to the race war that is coming to America!

  8. TRACY
    Posted October 15, 2005 at 11:00 am | Permalink

    Ian you are not anymore a real American than any other sons of immigrants.Real Americans were already here when our ancestors got here.What tribe are you from, The Idiots?

  9. Ian Santiago
    Posted October 15, 2005 at 11:02 am | Permalink

    Tracy,

    Are you not familiar with Kennewick Man?

  10. TRACY
    Posted October 17, 2005 at 3:57 pm | Permalink

    WHY IS HE A MEMBER OF THE IDIOT TRIBE ALSO?