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comment by cgod
cgod  ·  2417 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The real villains in Harvey flood: urban sprawl and the politicians who allowed it

No you didn't come off that way at all.

I was trying to comment late at night and didn't have it in me to express nuance, thought I hit save draft but I either hit publish or the draft feature bug hasn't been stomped yet.

I have and aunt who is a prepper. She spent a lot of time deciding where to settle down a few decades ago. She ended up living in far northern Wisconsin because it was the one of the few places she could find that didn't have a fault line or severe weather and a bunch of other problems. It's pretty hard to stay totally out of harms way.

I live down stream from the Hanford nuclear cleanup zone. I live on a fault line that promises to unleash a big one. We have a federally managed waste cleanup on the river twelve blocks from my house. I'm a little bit prepared for a big earth quake but not the extent I should be. There are other risks that I can't mitigate by anyway except by moving.

None of this stuff is some peoples heads. They aren't capable of worrying about risk on this level. There were two people in my neighborhood that were taken by surprise when the eclipse happened. Portland has been in a haze of wildfire smoke for most the week. It was only today when it started to rain ash from the sky that one guy asked me if there was a fire somewhere. People are about as prepared for this stuff as government is, which is, not that much..