They remind me of the Clever Bangladeshis. Venezuela, like many large land masses, has a few major faults running through it where tectonic plates meet. Like Los Angeles, which sits smack on top of the San Andreas Fault. You can see the Fault easily, where roads cross it and more easily from the air, where creeks take sudden sharp jogs and hills are cut in half.
In Venezuela they just had some more nasty earthquakes, this time they don’t know, maybe 1000 dead, maybe 100,000. Venezuela has a lot of earthquakes so of course not one high rise, many-storied building is built to withstand them and the biggest cities are the closest to the worst fault lines. But it was over a century ago that over 30,000 died in one, so what’s to worry, right?
Everyone knows a massive earthquake is going to rip that San Andreas Fault a good one, and most of the length of California and mostly in Los Angeles but hey, maybe not today and besides, many of the new buildings are on massive springs to absorb an earthquake. What fun. This is going to be like being inside a fruit jar glued to a rubber stick while someone shakes the stick, when that fault finally pops. Clever like Venezuelans.
The Bangladeshis have a different claim to fame and genius as they breed so rapidly that living space is at a premium. But Nature takes care of that every so often, as they have regular typhoons there. This matters because every time there’s a typhoon, the coastal lowlands are washed clean of people and all that living space opens up. They swarm all over it, staking claims where they start building homes and farming. In another 7 or 8 years, on average, a typhoon will wash them away but in the meantime they get to have some space to live. It’s a lot like living in Florida and waiting for the next hurricane.
People in Indonesia are always building villages on mud slopes that come sliding down during a really wet winter and the entire village always ends up somewhere under a massive heap of sticks and mud, that rapidly hardens in the hot sun. I’m not sure if this is worse or better than living on one of the volcanic islands and it erupts and kills everyone who doesn’t escape, ala Pompeii. I’ve been to Pompeii, it’s a trip, really is. Went down inside Vesuvius, not when it was erupting of course. Just venting gas.
I live in a high fire danger area, as do the thousands that also live up in these hills. In fact I shook hands with an insurance agent who came by to take a photo of the house, for insurance purposes, that was last Monday and today is Thursday night and I’ve never heard back from him. This is not a positive result that promotes an optimistic mindset within me. Yup, looks bad. At least there’s no major faults here. I think.
The point to this rant is that the best and safest places to live are fully occupied by the wealthiest among us and this is because there’s so many of us compared to what’s available, and there’s always going to be mass catastrophes from earthquakes and floods, fires and stampeding feral pigs, bubonic plague, toe fungus and the Morning After Pill.
I’ll tell you the one I’m really looking forward to is when Yellowstone blows up again. That’s gonna be a world shaker. Like the one that sank Atlantis. It’s going to leave a serious hole in the countryside, and if you haven’t heard about it you should look it up. It’s gonna be a gasser.