Let's Rank Natural Disasters, Shall We?

Greetings, all.

After our most recent “Mickstape” somehow went off the rails and we ended up talking natural disasters, Coley held me over a Manhattan fire escape by my ankles until I agreed to kindly recommended I rank them as some sort of blogged written content. With my life in imminent danger, I agreed. Without further ado, I’ve ranked natural disasters on a scale of “If this is how it ends, so be it” to “I would not want my shit to be fucked up by this”. More after the jump.

10. Droughts

I’ll be honest, droughts don’t really sound that bad. No rain means you’ll get your monies worth out of that car wash, you can leave that coat in the closet and there are no rain puddles for you to lay your jacket down to have your old lady walk over for some reason. I know what some of you will say: the crops will die and food will be scarce. To that, I say who the fuck are you? Johnny Appleseed? Shut up.

9. Slides of some sort (mud, land, snow or as our friends to the north would call them “avalanches”)

I agree portions of the Earth deciding to slide elsewhere is bad. You’ll get no argument from me there. But these seem like a case of knowing what you’re getting into when you move to a place. You thought that mud/snow was going to stay that way forever? And “Landslide” is too strong of a song for them to be any higher on this list.

8. Volcanoes

Volcanoes are admittedly bad news. I concede that point. However, they’re extremely stationary and pretty hard to miss. You knew you were rolling the dice when you decided to inhabit land near a volcano. Also with modern science, they can predict the timing of most volcanoes. A 48-hour “heads up” feels like more than enough time to uproot your family and all substantial belongings before they are swallowed in liquid fire. Lastly, they look really cool when they erupt and the lava burns through several villages. Like REALLY cool.

7. Blizzards/Floods

The “flood” part alone of this category keeps this from being higher here. Personally, anything over half an inch of snow is a blizzard by my standards. They’d easily be number one if they stood alone, but I felt I had to rank torrential downpours of water in some form together. Floods on the hand, not too shabby. Best night of sleep you’ll ever have is a little night time raining/flood action. You’ll wake up with your car and your kids’ basketball goal swept several miles away but boy did you get a good eight hours of shuteye.

6. Hurricanes & 5. Tsunamis

Let’s tackle these waterbeasts together. I gave tsunami’s the nod because they are more unpredictable than hurricanes. Hurricanes are predictable enough that meteorologists have already come up with VERY unintimidating names for them by the time they even reach shore (I think we all recall Hurricane Broomhilda in ’98). From what I’ve gathered reading several crudely written articles on the internet, hurricanes are just bad storms + water. Tsunamis, however, are earthquakes/volcanoes/landslides + water. They’d be much higher but again they’re only limited to places where water is and as we know, water only covers 3-5 percent of the Earth. Bummer.

4. Wildfire

Wildfires are slightly scarier to me as the only ingredients you appear to need are trees and fire. Some of these are even caused by the most natural of disasters to ever exist: humans. We know this because there is a topless bear that yells at us to stop dicking around and start preventing wildfires. The rest of the items on this list have no real “cure” but thankfully, we still have airplanes dropping gallons of water over wildfires in order to stop them. I imagine this was a quality innovation in 1944. In 2018? Not so much. Still, the lingering effects of wildfires and how long they can last put them #4 on my list. To my knowledge, a majority of California has been on fire since Reagan was governor.

3. Sinkholes/Quicksand

I have to say, these would be higher but I honestly don’t know which ones are real and fake from the internet images so I will assume they are all real. Of all the disasters listed, I think these have the most potential to climb the charts. Years ago, it felt like they only happened in places that were not America and thus did they REALLY exist? Now, they’re popping up across the States and this man is terrified. I did have to dock them a few points for also looking very cool.

2. Earthquakes

I almost had these #1 as earthquakes alone can cause many of the other disasters listed here (landslides, avalanches, fires, floods, tsunamis) but I couldn’t for a couple of reasons. First, there are earthquake resistant structures designed to help out in a pinch. In some places, “earthquake resistant” buildings are required and there are earthquake-proof beds:

Those are pretty terrifying but seem relatively effective. Also, the actual earthquake itself rarely lasts longer than 30 seconds. I understand that 30 “earthquake” seconds is different than 30 “regular” seconds, but it can’t be much longer than 30 “waiting on the microwave” seconds, can it? Didn’t think so. Which leaves…..

1. Tornadoes

Tornadoes check in at #1. There are no tornado resistant beds and unless you plan on living in a completely concrete windowless building reinforced with steel, tornado-proof buildings seem like a myth too. And if a shelter is designed to protect you from a tornado that can last upwards of 10 minutes, surely it can protect you from a measly 30 second earthquake. The only tornado-proofing we had in my day was getting in the elementary school hallway with our heads down as if THAT is what scares off a tornado. With earthquakes, you can more or less predict where they’ll be due to the tectonic plates and whathaveyou. With tornadoes, you can predict where they’ll start and then they might just decide to go door to door like they’re selling steak knives. You hear a knock at your door and next thing you know, you and your refrigerator are in Timbuktu. For these reasons, tornadoes get my top slot.

**Please do not get angry if I left your favorite natural disaster out, it was not intentional. Also, please do not recommend very obscure ones (Limnic eruption guy, I’m looking at you).**