3 ms·

I wonder how that compares to the stress of knowing that you live on land that's prone to earthquakes and tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people?

• grogenaut 6y ago
  Generally I've found people learn to deal with common systemic risks but have issues with systemic risks they're not used to. Case in point: I moved from St. Louis (Tornado Alley) to Seattle. There are really no earthquakes or volcanos in St. Louis (except from newmadrid which is a dooozy, but rare). I had trouble understanding earthquakes and they scare me a lot. But I was having a conversation with the Northwesties about Tornados. When I explained just how bad they could be, it terrified the Northwesties. There are no bad storms up here; lightning makes the news. To add to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado happened the next day. This terrified all of the northwesties. To me tornados are a part of life, and I'm more ok with them than earthquakes as you "get a warning", and you have a chance to move away from them (it's only a chance). At the end of the day we all, except maybe Ray Kurzweil, have to deal with the ultimate risk of death. Many of us just ignore it for our whole lives as a way of coping. Others stare it in the face and logic it away, which is essentially the same thing. Why are we all not constantly panicked with the existence of death?