The question comes up regularly, "Where's the safest place to live?" At least as far as natural causes are concerned, here's one news article about one group's systematic attempt to answer that question in the United States. According to this study, California is a safe place, so I'll just stick around where I already am, thank you very much.

It's good to see some attention given to the real problems--"simple" problems like heat kills more people than any other single natural cause, and flooding causes the most monetary damage, yet neither are rarely "sexy" enough to warrant 24-hour, round-the-clock news coverage like a hurricane or a wildfire are apt to do.

My ONLY question as to weather killing people is, HOW do they calculate it? For instance, here in new england, if someone is out driving in inclement weather, loses control, and dies as a result, is that attributed to a car crash, or weather? If weather, I would break it down a little further; did that person NEED to be out (ie; going to the hospital)? Likely not.
One other thing; most people who live in those environments have learned to cope with them. Again, here in NE, we have access to good cold weather clothing, shovels, snow blowers, etc. So, the equipment is there, it comes down to someone using it.
I think the LEAST safest place to live is among people who simply are oblivious to their environment! The safest? Probably a hue commune where we can all gather together

I would think that the book, "Prudent Places" by Stan and Holly Deyo; would be a source of intelligent considerations to be looked at.

You can find more info on the book at: www.standeyo.com

See what you think about it.

Usual disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Stan or Holly Deyo, EXCEPT that I bought Holly's book, "Dare to Prepare", and found it to be an excellent primer for the prep minded individual just starting out.

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Quote from the article:
'"California is lucky because "we don't have lots of severe weather," said Kimberly Shoaf of UCLA's Center for Public Health and Disasters. "Although we have heat, it is constant heat.

"It's not the temperature itself but the difference between the average temperature and the heat extremes" that is dangerous because it catches people unprepared, she said."'
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Yup.
I am in Alberta.
I see people hop in their cars wearing light clothing when they are going to drive 100 miles across the prairie in minus 40 degree weather all the time.
If they had any sort of a problem, even just a flat tire, they stand a good chance of becoming a statistic.

Now, were they a victim of the weather or of their own stupidity?

We just had the news of 8 snowmobile enthusiasts lost to an avalanche in Fernie B.C. and then 2 skiers to avalanches at the Whistler Mountain ski resort at Vancouver. There had been avalanche warnings where the eight were lost and they knew that they were taking a risk.
The 2 skiers got caught by their stupidities by skieing on slopes that were posted as closed because of avalanche conditions.

I think an awful lot of these people are killed from their own stupidity and not from the natural hazard at all.

Edit added:
Yes to the comment about sexy news stories.
It seems a death has to be sudden, horrible, bloody and painful to be reportable. It seems to help if it is a movie star that does the dying too!
The same thing with property damage.
A flood is just not the same sort of earth shaking event that an earthquake is.

The UK should be pretty safe. No serious volcanoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes, or fierce or poisonous wild animals. We have serious tornadoes but they hardly register on most people's radar. We have flooding but that ought not kill you nowadays. We have occasional cold weather but nothing that can't be dealt with easily. We have terrorists, but they aren't statistically significant. The biggest cause of death, other than old age, is probably traffic.

Sadly, I suspect that phone call would work almost anywhere in this day and age.

It often surprises me that folks tend to be acclimatized to the threats in their region and adjust accordingly.
I was once in Pasadena, California during a very minor thunderstorm (maybe 1 or 2 lightning strikes per 5 min.). The local folks were freaking out, but three days latter when a small shake happened in the earth I was outside before the door automatically closed. (The locals were laughing, but you would be shocked how fast a fat man can run!)

Many from California would never think to live on the Gulf Coast due to hurricanes, but I haven't noticed a mass migration from the coast recently.

I guess if one is making a final move to an area this study works, but I look at some threats like a pin prick on the map and some like a shotgun blast. Geographically tornados damage a relatively small area compared to earthquakes and hurricanes. I think I will just stick with what i've got.

Okay, I'll reveal my little secret, since it looks like I won't be capitalizing on it anytime soon.

Southeast Oregon

No strategic value. Moderate weather year round. Surface and ground water. Plenty of game. Arable land. Prevailing winds preclude fallout drift.

Okay, now you know. Land is still pretty cheap out there.

This is a valid question since death certificates don't necessarily mention the weather. The death certificate may say "blunt force trauma to the head" but anyone reading it might not know that the person died when a chunk of concrete jarred loose during an earthquake fell on their head. Or the cause of death might be "heart failure" but doesn't mention that the person had been enduring a heat wave. However, there are various methodological ways to try and estimate the numbers. It may not provide an exact number, but at least if the methods are applied fairly, the resulting numbers for the different phenomena are useful.

For example, the heat wave that hit Europe in 2003 can have widely varying numbers regarding the death toll due to the way causes of death are recorded and reported in the different European countries. One later attempt to sift through the records to find heat-related deaths indicated over 50,000 deaths attributed to that one long heat wave. Fifty thousand!

And to that I say:



Stop worrying. Live here, now, while you can, where you want. This is the the life we're given, we get our time, short or long, on this earth, and we can cower like an insect under a rock or we can walk in the sun, rain, snow or highly acidic volcanic ash-storm.

Some of the best things I've ever done were "dangerous" - some of the best places I've ever gone were "dangerous" - some of the smartest people I know are "dangerous".

Most of those red areas are recreational destinations. Take a bunch of people who don't know beans about survival in the wilderness, and turn them loose wearing shorts and a t-shirt with their cell phone, headset, 16 oz water bottle into an area with trails, cliffs, bears, cougars, loose surfaces, exposed roots, etc.

They get lost, fall off a trail, break their leg, twist their ankle, hit their head, and die of exposure. So, the weather KILLED them, right?

Live in SoCal, huh? I was born and raised there. Want major problems? Turn off the water.

Sue

that is, of course, the Yellowstone volcano zone of explosion.

Perception of safety is a funny thing.

I was down in Panama a few years ago,couple of weeks post invasion, working as a photographer. My traveling companions and I were doing a tour around Panama City, talking to residents, seeing the damages up close etc.

At one point, we came across a group of folks who were basically living on the sidewalk of an apt building, the building itself had been shelled so badly it was no longer safe to be in. Huge holes in the walls, no utilities. We stopped and spoke to these folks for a while, heard their stories, I took some photographs. When we got ready to leave, they all asked us where we were going, when we told them our next destination, they implored us to not go there, it wasn't safe for anyone to go to that part of town they claimed. So we asked about going back the way we'd come, no, no, don't do that either, it's not safe there either. Apparently the only safe place for 3 American journalists to be was right there with them.

I'm still struck by how those folks kept up their own sense of what safety means, to them it meant staying in the shadow of their former homes, to us it meant not knowing where the unsafe places for us to be were in advance. We left them there, made our way to the "unsafe" parts of the city and back to our hotel that night unscathed.

It's a funny thing, perception.

JohnE

Yes, that is the ideal blast fallout footprint. On a more realistic basis, the prevailing winds and the Rockies, Blues and Steen mountain ranges should aid greatly in preventing most of the worst of it from reaching quite that far into Oregon and Washington. When St. Helens blew, I wasn't living that far away, and yet the only ash exposure I received was what went around the planet once. I was less than 80 miles from the eruption at the time. Granted there's a lot more energy expected from the Caldera eruption, but that is still going to be a whole lot of atmospheric energy to have to overcome. Given that Nuclear fallout maps from GZs all along the west coast show virtually no plume extending into SE Oregon, I'd say it is a fair trade-off. Given the sheer volume of ejecta that would be put into the atmosphere, I would think that what gets deposited in Oregon will be not much greater than average global depositions in the northern hemisphere anyways.

There's always a chance that large destructive media might make it that far, but I think propogational losses will be great enough at that range that it should be negligible compared to the general hemispherical threat of coverage of fine particulates. 1200 cubic miles of ejecta, most of it being fine particulates able to stay suspended in the atmosphere, will be the most likely hazard to deal with.

However, the caldera is only one factor of many to consider, and given that most of the others are relatively so low in occurence and effect in that region, especially the most frequent sort, I concluded SE Oregon would be a relatively safe, if not inconvenient, haven.

"...it's been 360,000 years since it's last eruption..."

I wonder who marked the calendar back then???

I assume you mean Dec 1989 / Jan 1990. The local folks may have meant safe for them for you to stay not for you. I noticed once the "Dignity Battalions" were reduced, The local populace figured out bombs and artillery were NOT falling where the Americans WERE standing. Go figure, but they may have been covering their own butts.

When I was in Panama City (mid-60's), the DingBats didn't exist. The "LaGuardia National" were the army/police/everything. Most drove around in battleship grey '57 Chevy P/U's with tin "camper shells" over the bed, open ended. Inside were Browning M1919's pointing out the rear. I was there 18 months, they had about two coups during that time, so there was a lot of .30 cal flying around. When that went on, there was no safe place outside of the Canal Zone...

The "DingBats" were real good at being a pain in the donkey. (Mostly abusing their own countrymen.) Oddly, one well placed 7.62 NATO round in the group tended to deflate the machismo. Amazing how folks don't want to stand around when the pink and grey mist starts falling.

And that gentlemen, is where the signature line came from.

"...were real good at being a pain in the donkey. (Mostly abusing their own countrymen.) Oddly, one well placed 7.62 NATO round in the group tended to deflate the machismo..."

Sounds just like the LGN...

Was the LGN official or just a bunch of dirt bags somebody organized?

I think I deciphered what you wrote Desperado, but no, it wasn't about the local folks feeling safer when we were there. The shooting was pretty much over by then, although there was a grenade attack that occurred while we were there.

My point was that the folks there in Panama City had a perception of safety that was incongruent with the reality of the situation, they weren't any "safer" camping out near what remained of their homes than they would have been elsewhere. Given that many of the buildings were near ready to collapse, one could make the argument that they would have been safer in leaving. But they, like people everywhere, were clinging to a notion of safety in familiarity.

Much like those of us who live in California live pretty much in denial about earthquakes and those who live in hurricane zones do about storms. Better the disaster we know than the one we don't.

JohnE

Who knows. The always had the standard grey uniform, with a 50 mission crush on their caps...

DingBats were local dirt bags and criminals that the government rounded up and gave weapons ranging from clubs to grenades. When they were abusing their own countrymen they were men of steel. When faced with real soldiers, not nearly so tough.

No surprise there. Someday I may tell the story of going to the Panama City Jail (aka dungeon) for missing a thrown baseball...

This may be a repeat but has anyone discussed the safest locations to survive a nuke strike? Or as likely a major event (meteor strike causes nuclear meltdowns at multiple locations)

Looks like the prevailing winds would screw most of the midwest and east coast...

http://www.endtimesreport.com/pictures/aacont2.jpg

This other site lists the states

http://www.webpal.org/d_resources/list.htm

Having learned enough in the military about nukes, I want my house to be at ground zero. That way it's quick.

No pain...

Just like a well placed head shot from an M21 rifle.

Yeah i can see that but what about reactors destroyed during a major eathquake...

Then we get back to one of the options that is also available during unarmed self defense. Run

LOL. RUN FOREST!!!

I don't live in London.

Also, if you look at something like the recent Mumbai, that lasted 3 days and was quite a big deal, it only killed 170 people. I don't mean to minimise the hurt for those involved, but it's not very significant statistically, compared with, eg, deaths from traffic accidents.

I'm also not going to give much credence to fear-mongering rumours without more references. Certain parties have a vested interest in maximising the apparent threat. I'm more concerned about the UK government's use of terrorism to justify loss of civil liberties than I am about terrorism itself.