The Time magazine article didn't provide any great revelations, but disheartening nevertheless.

Excerpts: "We know exactly — exactly — where the major disasters will occur...but individuals underperceive risk."

"[Disasters] are made much worse by our own lack of ambition — our willful blindness to risk as much as our reluctance to work together before everything goes to hell."

"...the past year in disaster history suggests that modern Americans are particularly, mysteriously bad at protecting themselves from guaranteed threats...in times of crisis, our greatest enemy is rarely the storm, the quake or the surge itself. More often, it is ourselves."

Uniquely American, or a global phenomenon?