CB, the underlying problem is the incompetence of governments. There are catastrophes, known knowns, which are just waiting to happen.
The NZ government preparation is to run silly "civil defence" hobby programmes, telling citizens to have a torch [flashlight], radio, some bandages, some water and maybe a few other things. Which will be useless when a tsunami comes rolling in from the Pacific Ocean, destroying vast swathes of east coast New Zealand, when an earthquake wrecks Wellington [shutting down the government, which will be no bad thing], when Taupo erupts again, destroying electricity and water supplies to half of NZ, and a LOT more besides, including about 100,000 people or maybe 200,000.
The government will have not a clue what to do. Yet those events are known knowns [in Donald Rumsfeld parlance]. They are not known unknowns or unknown unknowns.
Meanwhile, the great security operations around the world continue unabated, hassling millions of airline passengers who might have nail clippers or even, god forbid, box-cutters, gasp, in their carry-on baggage. Completely ignoring where the next Islamic Jihad attacks will take place. They won't be doing another airliner hijacking. The passengers won't allow them, for a start. The pilots will prevent it too. They can shake a plane up pretty well just with some smoothly quickish up and down movements of the joystick [sending loose stuff and people onto the ceiling, then banging them down again].
I'm sure the USA governments are no better. It's the nature of government bludgers to collect big salaries and achieve very little, or even substantial counterproductive results.
Mqurice
PS: They do give reasonable suggestions to do okay in an emergency: aucklandcity.govt.nz But they ignore volcano, tsunami and insurrection: <where to shelter in an earthquake, flood or storm >
They do mention them on another page though: aucklandcity.govt.nz [though not insurrection] They omit to say "Do not have a property near sea level, meaning below 50 metres above sea level". They treat it as a minor risk. Which it is not. They pretend there will be a warning! |
