Originally posted by sigma:
Quote:

We've witnessed something that hopefully will never happen again in a very long time.



Oh it, and others like it, certainly will.

This really was a very tragic event, but I really don't see why this event in particular is made such a big deal out of. And that's not a complain about this event, but the lack of coverage (and often caring) about many others that go virtually un-noticed.

Bangladesh is hit by cyclones all the time that kill tens of thousands in one fell swoop. About every 20 years a storm will come through that kills hundreds of thousands.

Just last year in Iran 35,000 people were killed and over 200,000 left homeless in an earthquake. It was on the news, but not even close to like this. I would imagine largely just because it happened in Iran.

Flooding kills thousands and leaves millions homeless in China every year.

In the grand scheme of just the last century, this would be a "moderate" event, probably not even in the top 50 singular disaster events. In the span of the last millenia this wouldn't even register on the scale. We can't even begin fathom the earthquakes that killed millions of people 1000 years ago -- and this before people lived as densely as they do today.

I'm not at all trying to diminish this tragedy, just pointing out that this is not an uncommon or rare event. Not in the span of modern history and certainly not in the span of human history.



I think you got it backwards. As the worlds population increases the deaths due to natural disasters increase. Thousands of years ago I highly doubt millions of people died from Earthquakes.

In MODERN history this will go down as one of the worst natural disasters due to the world wide coverage.

Now I hate America? That is a new one to me.