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Error comments on Don't Build Fallout Shelters - Less Wrong
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It seems to me that if you can make a reasonable estimate of where to live so as to avoid the brunt of the likely disasters and live there without much loss of utility, that's the way to go.
That might be possible in this age of telecommuting, though still difficult. The trouble with safe places is that part of the reason they're safe is that there's nothing there worth nuking...or living near.
I'm not sure if that generalizes to natural disasters. Are they more common in desirable areas, perhaps because geographical features that invite disaster (e.g. faultlines) correlate to features humans tend to live and build near (e.g. rivers, coastlines)?
Hmm. Well, earthquakes and volcanoes tend to correspond to active plate boundaries, and those often coincide with coastlines although not every plate boundary is active and not every coastline is near a plate boundary. Volcanic soil is often fertile, too, and high (i.e volcanic) islands are a lot more attractive for human habitation than low (i.e. coral) ones in places where the distinction is meaningful. Floodplains are good for farming but are also vulnerable to disaster; the clue's in the name. And of course semitropical coastlines are exactly where you'd expect to find hurricanes.
So yeah, it seems plausible that areas which are attractive for dense human settlement are also more disaster-prone on average, though the variance is pretty high.
I'm trying to think of a biome that isn't disaster-prone...
Once the world warms a bit over the next few centuries, with the poles warming quite a bit more than the equator, much of central Canada along the Hudson bay could have rather nice weather and pretty much zero tectonic risk of any kind. Depends on how the tornado belts shift though.
That sounds more like a recipe for a gigantic fugging swamp to me. Have you seen the mosquito populations in Alaska? I hear they're already getting widespread strains of avian-specific malaria up there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storrs,_Connecticut
Would the most logical strategy of nuclear war be to nuke the places that would be the most worth living near in a post nuclear war situation, or to destroy epicenters of civilization(cities) and strategic enemy military outposts? A major city wouldn't be a very desirable place to live, since they rely upon the complex of infrastructure to be destroyed in nuclear war. A river and a wooded area may not be worth nuking in a strategic sense, but running water and a natural food source is definitely worth living near.
I don't think faultlines are necessarily attractive, but the harbors and rivers are, and the ocean may be becoming more of a hazard. On the other hand, you don't want to be someplace that's seriously drought-prone, either.
The big issue is that population concentration is a risk factor in itself if the infrastructure takes much damage. If you can only be happy in a big city, then you can't get much out of trying to avoid disasters, though some thought about which cities are most at risk might be in order.