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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
We need to learn from these disasters and not set ourselves up for such things to happen again. And by learn I dont mean build stronger or better - I mean learn that there are forces of nature, and human nature, that we will never be able to control.
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It's all about risk vs reward. Every time your car pulls out of your driveway, there's a chance that your neighborhood's crazed Hummer driver will flatten you. The reward for using your car outweighs the risk. There's also spicy food. If it burns coming in, it'll burn going out. That doesn't stop most people though.
If you're living in a place that will be leveled every few years or so, that seems questionable to me. In contrast, a big earthquake hits California every 50+ years. A massive one hits every 100+ years. There's plenty of time to enjoy yourself before a 7.5+ destroys your house. Although, I figure that some sort of underground, bunker-like habitat that's suspended with giant springs could probably survive an earthquake that's short of powerful enough to open up the ground and swollow everything. But, I also figure that it'd be obscenely expensive. That's why nobody does it.
Bringing this example back to New Orleans, it should be easy to build a levee to survive a category 5. What we have to ask is whether or not it's worth the money and resources. This is only the third category 5 to hit the US in recorded US history. I think the other two were in Florida. Should we spend some billions of dollars to prepare for an event that only comes around every 200+ years? While we're at it, let's build a giant laser so we don't have to send Bruce Willis to destory the asteroid. It killed off the dinosaurs a some millions of years ago, it put a big dent in Jupiter a few years ago, it's only a matter of time before it comes for us...
I also agree with you that building below sea level is blatantly bad. It's like knowing that the crazed Hummer driver lives on your street and depending on the stop sign at the corner to keep him away from you as you pull your car out. This isn't the same as living at the base of a dormant volcano and building a lava wall (I doubt these exist, but let's assume they do for the sake of argument) or living in an earthquake zone and using special building techniques or even having levees to stop flood waters during a storm. In these cases, you're depending on your measures to keep you safe in the event something goes wrong. Building below sea level next to a lake and a river is depending on your measures to keep you safe period. If your anti-lake/river levees fail, you
will be flooded. If your lava wall fails, it won't be a problem as long as its failure doesn't coincide with an eruption.