I'm not really a 'Prepper' but the normalcy bias began to wear off around 10-15 years ago. Normalcy bias seems to becoming ever more entrenched as I have found, even when dealing with many many business people. People in general seam to becoming ever more stupid and moronic. Being around and having to deal with stupid people is highly stressful. There are folks out there who will call a Sparky to change a light bulb, folks who don't know that eggs comes hens and that chips (french fries) are made from potatoes and that you can heat up microwave food without a microwave oven.

For example I was discussing a problem with the IT manager of a well known London Investment Bank called Lehman Brothers, which famously initiated the Global Wide Banking crisis of 2008 when it became bankrupt. This would have a been a few years earlier. Her Internet connection wasn't working due to her router not having the correct login information for her PPPoA connection. I explained this to her and asked her to login in to her router via the Routers IP address and enter the correct login information Username and Password, to which she responded 'What's an IP address?'

This has happened many many times from even Company directors of large Multinational communications companies, such as 'You should be able to connect if you turn your router on' to then get a response that it was my fault that no-one had told her previously to turn on the router box.

Nepotism, greed, laziness, incompetence, dulled reasoning, criminality, arrogance and stupidity by those in positions of authority i.e. such as the leaders of the corporate, business and governmental world are much, much, more dangerous than poor inclement windy weather or wobbly ground, simply because they generally will trade societal resilience and safety (whether Technically or Economically) to external natural perturbations to climb their own greasy pole. Basically the bean counters have taken hold.

Population normalcy bias is particularly insidious as it dulls the individuals senses for the potential of dangerous events (even dangerous events driven as Government/Business Policy) in which in events are highly predictable and makes folks belittle risks and the consequences of inaction.

For example when you explain to some one that a Commercial Nuclear reactor could become a national disaster due to a local rodent problem and to invest in an on site cat would be prudent, folks generally regard you as a nutter..

Yes I know, just about as crazy as building 6 Nuclear Reactors (with designs that were inherently unsafe) on a major earthquake fault line on the coast of a country with a known history of Tsunami's.

Pointing out normalcy bias will usually just get you a verbiage of abuse and derision and over time I have decided to just prepare. Of course if they know what the meaning of the acronym PPPPPP is, a meaningful discussion can usually be had.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem

Black Swan events are probably rarer than the Main Stream Media would have you believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Theory

probably due to wide acceptance of Normalcy bias.