The thing about natural cataclysms is that the most deadly ones are the ones you don't expect, because you can prepare for the ones you do expect. CA has been

The thing about natural cataclysms is that the most deadly ones are the ones you don't expect, because you can prepare for the ones you do expect. CA has been preparing for a large earthquake since the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge quakes. Building codes here are pretty strict; anything built or retrofitted since about 1980 should do fine. Lots of money has been spent retrofitting older soft-story apartments, and infrastructure has been shored up since Loma Prieta. Cities are starting to discourage and then ban natural gas in new construction to reduce the risk of fire; when they can't, gas lines are being upgraded to make them more robust. Most families keep an earthquake kit of canned food, campstoves, and potable water. Google at least runs annual drills that simulate all of their Bay Area offices being taken offline (and their employees presumed dead) to ensure business continuity; it'd surprise me if other Silicon Valley companies don't. This is when the two recent M6.8 earthquakes [1][2] killed about 60 people each, and a worst-case scenario [3] predicts about 800 dead. Significantly more people have died from COVID. The natural disasters you really have to worry about are black swans that you'd never expect, like frost in Houston or heat waves in Seattle. If the Bay Area got a blizzard it'd be a disaster, but we've basically got earthquakes covered. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake [3] https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/haywired-scenario-movie https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/haywired-scenario-movie