I’m not talking about small rumbles or tornadoes that will take the roof off a few unlucky people. I’m talking aboit the places where every year entire blocks are destroyed.

Why do people still live there? The US of all places has more than enough room, there must be more peacefull regions.

38 comments

  3. It’s cheaper to stay and most of the time, those areas are still pretty safe to be in. That and those areas aren’t nearly as affected to the point of massive deaths as it may seem.

    It’s like in Japan where earthquakes are common, yet people stay where they are because it’s cheaper and it doesn’t actually harm people majority of the time thanks to better technology and disaster means.

  4. There really aren’t many such places. Most events are a few unlucky people, “small rumbles”, etc… And folks are prepped for it in the same way snowy places people have appropriate clothes, snow shovels and requirements that rooves be able to handle the weight.

    Yes, there’s a region that gets more tornados than most of the world but… I’ve lived in that region for over 30 years and the most impact it’s had is keeping an interior space available and helping a neighbor clean up a downed tree. Sure, tornados hit my general metro every year but you’re talking about 10,000ish square miles and a few million people there, it’s not like the same person gets hit over and over.

    BIG earthquakes are similarly rare and there are building codes to handle small ones.

    The stuff just doesn’t affect specific people with anything like the regularity you’d expect from the news.

  5. >I’m talking aboit the places where every year entire blocks are destroyed.

    I don’t know of anywhere you could say this about

  6. Most people on the planet live somewhere with natural disasters. It’s really just Europeans living in a weird little place on the globe with temperate weather and very few natural disasters.

  7. Because that’s most if not all of the country.

    >I’m talking aboit the places where every year entire blocks are destroyed.

    No such place in the country.

  8. Realistically, there are no places where entire blocks are destroyed every year because of natural disasters. Natural disasters are almost always highly geographically dispersed. Something like an individual tornado only affects a *very* small geographic area, even if its very destructive in that area.

    Everybody in, like, the entire lower midwest and south is theoretically at risk of a tornado. It’s unlikely that entire states are going to be emptied of people just because there is a small risk every year of a damaging tornado that might hit your specific location.

    Similarly, with earthquakes – when was the last really destructive earthquake in the US? The risk of earthquakes much more frequent than we have here doesn’t stop people from living in Japan.

    People live where they live for countless reasons, and they move for countless reasons. It’s not easy or affordable to just find a new job, leave your friends and family, and pick up and move to somewhere other than the place you’ve lived your whole life. Sometimes it is necessary and totally unavoidable, but it’s still hard.

  9. I think your premise is more than a bit hyperbolic. I don’t know if a single place in the world where every year entire blocks are destroyed.

  10. I think you’re overestimating how common stuff like this is to specific areas.

  11. It’s a matter of picking your favorite disaster. We get hurricanes here. They are notoriously slow-moving, which gives people time to evacuate. (No such luck with tornadoes, for example.)

    Some years the storms are devastating; most years they aren’t. I can live with that.

  12. The same way people live in Asia where typhoons and earthquakes are common. Build to the appropriate code, have systems in place to respond to emergencies, and rely on the fact that major disasters are rare and don’t usually strike one specific location over and over again without years or even decades between them.

  13. The places that aren’t prone to earthquakes are prone to tornadoes. The ones prone to neither get hurricanes. There are few places that get none of that at all. Our weather is wild.

    In your mind, overlay these three maps and see what’s left:
    [US earthquake risk map](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/11/22/2B4727DF00000578-3194241-image-m-12_1439326939787.jpg)
    [US tornado risk map](https://free-printablemap.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/us-tornado-alley-maps-show-the-tornado-risk-regions-in-the-usa-throughout-tornado-alley-states-map.jpg)
    [US hurricane risk map](https://images.mapsofworld.com/answers/2017/09/usa-hurricane-how-to-help-victims.gif)

  14. Indiana is in tornado alley and I’ve had to take cover in central Indiana once about 8 years ago. Even then it didn’t land in my immediate area, but got close.

    Before that I don’t remember the last time it really concerned me.

    Worrying about something that might happen once a decade really isn’t something I’m going to factor in too much.

    And if we look beyond the rare tornado, much of the Midwest is ideally situated for climate change trends. Both in that we can handle the impacts of climate change, and that many of our cities were built to handle far more people than they currently handle.

  15. >I’m talking aboit the places where every year entire blocks are destroyed.

    Where are those places?

  16. Once you add them all together, you’re talking about the whole country. The west coast gets earthquakes and fires, the center of the country gets tornadoes, the east coast gets hurricanes and nor’easters.

  18. I mean I could ask why people live under volcanoes …

    Mount Vesuvius for instance

  20. How many people do you think were killed by tornadoes last year? I’ll give you a hint, its less than the amount of countries in Europe.

  21. I prefer my home next to a supervolcano. I’m gonna get a front row seat if she blows.

  22. I think you underestimate how much of the country has risks of such events.

  24. Considering the vast majority of the county is susceptible to some combination of tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, floods, or blizzards there would be no place to live.

  26. First, even living in Tornado Alley doesn’t mean you are going to get a tornado that is going to level entire city blocks or the better part of a small town with any sort of regularity. Tornadoes are usually hyper localized with their destruction, especially in comparison to floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, etc. They can quite literally take out a house on one side of the street and leave the neighboring homes untouched as they move around. Weaker tornadoes are just causing property damage rather than outright carnage as well.

    Second, even though Tornado Alley has traditionally been focused on the plains states, it has been drifting eastward thanks to climate change. Tornadoes are not unheard of from the Rocky Mountains all the way over to the Appalachian Mountains these days. That’s the majority of the United States in terms of actual land.

  29. > I’m talking aboit the places where every year entire blocks are destroyed.

    There is nowhere like this.

  30. Earthquakes don’t happen very often, and tons of people globally live in earthquake zones. Hell, almost everyone in Turkey, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, Peru, Taiwan….

    Tornadoes are a complete crapshoot, but they’ll destroy a handful of unlucky blocks in the Midwest every year. There’s such a huge area that there’s very low risk of any particular person being impacted.

    Now floods, people *do* live in flood prone areas year after year, and that’s because the government regulates flood insurance in such a way that it’s actually pretty cheap to live in a place that gets regularly flooded. There’s around 50,000 houses or so that are repeatedly flooded to the extent they make up around 30% of all flood claims nationwide, due to bad government policy, and while people occasionally try to fix this, the people living in those beach houses hate the idea of not having their house rebuilt every couple years on the public dime.

  31. Because besides Northridge, I’ve never experienced an earthquake so bad that anything around me was affected.

  32. Can you explain to an ignorant American why you keep living on the continent where world wars start?

  33. I lived in Moore, OK during the 2013 tornado where an entire block was really destroyed. It made national news because it was so rare. I’m not saying your descriptions can’t happen, but it’s very rare when something like that does, even for Oklahoma or California.

  36. Pretty much all of the US is subject to some form of natural disaster. There’s nowhere you can go where you don’t have to worry about blizzards, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, etc.

    This is a bit like asking why people live in Japan if it’s earthquake prone. Well…they’re just used to it and they can’t really go anywhere where that’s not an issue. So they deal with it.

    Plus, we’re just used to it. Like this is part of why we build our homes the way reddit enjoys oversimplifing so much. Our homes are built with adaptations for weather extremes. Disasters that go beyond their tolerances for more than a small number of homes at a time are actually very rare.

    Like, I’ve lived through blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. But mostly I and the people around me were fine. The news just likes to sensationalize literally every aspect of our lives here. “Midwest town quietly waits out 3rd blizzard this year” just doesn’t get reported internationally. “Oklahoma City gets hit by tornado, minor damage to a few roofs reported” won’t get reported internationally. “Person on 15th floor felt jiggled harder than people on the ground in recent quake” also won’t make the news.

    Just, things happen a lot here where life just carries on and no one makes a fuss about it. The outside looking in only wants to hear about the terrible times though, so that’s what they get shown.

  37. There’s a reason the east coast has so many people. Lots are asking the same thing – but when you speak to people who live in tornado alley, or along a fault line, the answer is generally the same. If you grow up around it, it’s not a big deal. You take precautions. And it’s unlikely for you to die in a natural disaster, unless you’re unlucky – or stupid.

    As well, most natural disasters of that severity aren’t hitting the same spot multiple times. Exceptions are for flooding areas in the US hurricane range. Many neighborhoods in Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico get hit at least every five years. But those areas are also typically lower income and folks just get used to it, can’t afford to move.

  38. Greece, Turkey, and Italy have been dealing with earthquakes since… forever. Those countries are in Europe.

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