I grew up in Tornado Alley (Oklahoma). There is a lot that I philosophically agree with here, minus a few small nits. We took tornado warnings very seriously.

I grew up in Tornado Alley (Oklahoma). There is a lot that I philosophically agree with here, minus a few small nits. We took tornado warnings very seriously. But the thing is, by the time a warning arrived, it was usually too late to make significant changes. The challenge was rather tornado watches. Watches were called rather frequently, well in advance of a storm, and covered expansive parts of the geography. We wouldn't make a lot of behavioral changes because of the watches except to be more vigilant with observing the sky and having a television or radio near to switch on in case the weather did change suddenly. So life essentially has to go on when watches were forecast a day in advance. There really was no other choice; society wouldn't let you operate on your own pace here. I don't want to liken tornado preparedness/cognizance with a choice to be a smoker or not, because there are a lot of factors that go into it. Education level, risk tolerance, economic standing (e.g., ability to afford a dedicated shelter — few basements in the part of Oklahoma I grew up in), and socialization. There were a lot of folks who were just blase about hazards around them to a fault. I like to think that refinery infrastructure in West Tulsa (https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1248523,-96.027147,7915m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1248523,-96.027147,7915m/dat...) is a good example of this. This infrastructure belched so much pollution into the local environment, yet nobody gave a damn. The days one could experience the River Parks System (https://www.riverparks.org/ https://www.riverparks.org/) without the overwhelming odor of petroleum refinement were rare. Folks were just used to this kind of thing — a damning case of relative deprivation. Probably carries over to the weather, too. But thanks to being so far inland, storms were usually very clear on the radar well before they came (100s of kilometers away). The real hazard were storms that developed spontaneously. OTOH, tornadoes arose plenty in storms that never had announced watches, so it often meant a warning came "out-of-the-blue." To this day, I remain hyper vigilant around any storm that develops even though I live on another continent and in an area without much tornadic activity. Maybe I'm a neurotic outlier. Probably these neurotic genes have better survival fitness than the others, or at least I'll keep fooling myself into believing this …