Earthquakes are the worst
I don’t mean to offend anyone with this post, but it just has to be said: earthquakes are the worst.
Sure, hurricanes are no fun and can kill lots of people, but we can see those coming from miles away. They might shift direction last minute and cause all kinds of destruction, and if given the choice, you’d choose not to be in a hurricane — I was in Hurricane Andrew, and although it left me with a story to tell years later, it isn’t the sort of thing I’d advise people to seek out. But people can often evacuate before a hurricane hits, even if they don’t always do so. I guess on some islands there isn’t anywhere to evacuate to. Hurricanes are no fun. And whatever they call hurricanes on the other side of the world, monsoons, or cyclones, or whatever, those also suck.
And tornadoes are bad. They issue tornado warnings, but there isn’t always lots of time to get into a basement, and tornadoes can lift up houses and throw cars around and cows go flying through the air and land on a person. Tornadoes are bad.
And volcanoes are scary, but usually you know that you’re near a volcano because it’s a mountain with a hole in the top and lots of volcanic stuff going on. So those can be avoided. And usually they rumble a bit before they do their thing so people know to get the hell out of there.
Blizzards can cause all sorts of problems, and even regular snowstorms can lead to deadly car accidents, but most of the time it means a day off of school and sledding. So, though snow and ice often kill, they’re also usually just regular weather and sometimes lots of fun.
Wildfires are terrible and destroy lots of homes. Usually because someone started one on purpose in California. And fire can shift rapidly and kill and people who thought they were safe can lose their homes or their lives. So fire’s no joke.
And there are all sorts of other natural and weather occurrences that can really mess people up, including flooding, thunderstorms, droughts. I guess this last one causes famine, and that kills a lot of people. Famines are bad. But famines don’t happen all in one day, out of the blue. These days they’re caused in large part by politics or war.
Maybe tsunamis can kill as many people, with almost as little warning, as earthquakes. But aren’t tsunamis caused by earthquakes, underwater earthquakes? So earthquakes kill all the people that tsunamis kill plus all the people that earthquakes kill.
See what I mean? Earthquakes are just the worst. They’re no good at all. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
We can point to poverty or poor governance or both or one being caused by the other, as the reasons the hospitals collapsed and the infrastructure to deal with the catastrophe has been wiped out or didn’t exist in the first place in Haiti. I’m no expert on these matters. I only know that earthquakes are no good at all and lots of people want to help the people of Haiti. One place to start might be googling “how to help Haiti earthquake victims.”
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Have you even SEEN War of the Worlds?
I mean the new one.
Earthquakes are bad, but they don’t vaporize stuff with a death ray or pick you up and eat you, usually.
Poster, three points:
1) The list referred to acts of nature, not of volition. If we’re including invasions, wars, things people (or aliens) choose to do to others, then war is worse than earthquakes, though not always as unannounced. But since we are talking about things done by the earth, these don’t count.
2) Even if they did count, that would let in war, but not alien invasion. Until we actually have one — an alien invasion with death rays — it has killed exactly zero people. Movies are movies.
3) I left off disease. Cancer kills lots more people than any earthquake. We add in epidemics, the flu, whatever, and that takes first place by a great distance. I guess these are acts of nature and could count. But these days, in modern nations with functioning economies and societies, disease, while killing lots of people, doesn’t usually do so all at once, in a single day, all in the same city, or disrupt a society’s ability to even function or possibly continue to exist.
So earthquakes remain number 1.
Ok, but:
1) Aliens exist in nature, and are a product of nature, like squirrels. If there was a large-scale squirrel attack, they’d probably call it an “act of nature” even if they flew WWII fighter planes. So aliens ARE nature.*
2) Aren’t we talking about all earthquakes and disasters, including theoretical ones? You mention Hurricane Andrew, but I’m not talking about specific alien attacks. Just that they’re the worst. Or, that they could be.**
3) You could probably catch something really nasty from an alien. Again, theoretical, but like you said, disease doesn’t kill everybody at once, unless we’re talking about some theoretical disease.
*And speaking of theoretical nature attacks, how about that movie where everything freezes really fast? Or the planet’s core get’s microwaved? That could be pretty bad too.
**Like aliens that attack by causing massive earthquakes AND they use killer rays, they eat you, AND they play a tape that taunts you at the same time? I mean, theoretically, not an actual attack that happened or is known to be actually going to happen.
Oh, I just realized you said “things done by the earth”, and aliens, by definition are not.
Sorry, nevermind.
The entire universe contracting in the Big Cunch (what they call the reverse of the Big Bang) would probably be bad, too, but I think natural, earth-bound disasters within the normal range of human existence and experience was the intended topic. Come to think of it, only wildfires not deliberately started by people in California should count. And that movie where the planet freezes really fast was terrible, so we don’t count that.
What about being dipped in a pool full of sharks with frickin’ lazer beams attached to their foreheads?
I meant Crunch, not Cunch.
Mike, the lazer shooting sharks seems unlikely to be realized, but even were Dr. Evil to get his wish, the scale would seem to be a little small to qualify.
I mean laser, not lazer.
Spelling problems today.
Not really. Dr. Evil certainly stressed the “z” sound when he said it.
I’m a lot more scared of the sharks than the sea bass.
Over the course of human history, locust swarms have been pretty devastating.