A good thought provoking article. We live in Central America and choose to do so with the knowledge that if anything happens we are on our own. So you prepare to the best of your ability for what natural disasters may occur. The one I have trouble preparing for is the event of a tsunami which could happen at any moment. Disasters usually occur at the most in opportune times. On the night of Sept. 7th, there was an 8.2 earthquake off the coast of Mexico. We received our tsunami warning via cell phone from Switzerland 8 minutes after the quake, giving us the time to prepare to leave if we need to. Fortunately, we were at low tide and the predicted wave would be a half meter. No real danager. But if that were to happen in the ocean at our beach, we would feel the quake an need to evcuate. We would litterally only have minutes before the ensuing tsunami hit. That means run for higher ground. You have no time to take anything with you. So being prepared has little value in a case like this.