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.
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.
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.
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