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Comment by Gibbon1 | Hacker News Reader

I keep coming back to an observation that the places where civilization tends to exist are geologically and climatologically 'interesting'. If it's not one thing it's another.

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I suppose so - if you ignore the whole continent of Europe.

Italy is pretty interesting geologically, Greece is not bad, Istanbul is amazing.

Italy (Pompeii), Greece (Thera), and Iceland (Eyjafjallajokull) are all in Europe. Africa, most of Russia, and Northern Europe are volcano-free as they're not near fault lines (except the ones in the atlantic ocean and meditteranean sea)

Comment I read about Pompeii was the soil was really good because of Mount Vesuvius.

How soon we forget the Great Lisbon Earthquake.

North Sea flood of 1953 killed 2500 people.

I suppose there are some happy places unaffected by earthquakes, volcano's, floods, extreme weather. I'm dubious we can all move there.

> Africa, most of Russia, and Northern Europe are volcano-free as they're not near fault lines (except the ones in the atlantic ocean and meditteranean sea)

The East African Rift Zone is both an emerging plate boundary and a locus of volcanic and seismic activity.

There are plenty of places without any particular natural risks, e.g., New York City and London, both of which standard and dull four-seasons temperate climates and dead geology.

There was significant flooding in NYC just a few years ago due to Hurricane Sandy.

A large part of London is built on floodplain though, hence the need for the enormous Thames barrier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier). Flooding is a pretty big natural risk here.

Living in Ontario the only thing I'm worried about is minor flooding, nothing on the scale that you see on the coasts. Storms (Nothing like in the US), Snow, Rain, Sun. No real major catastrophes possible.

I'll point out that weather related deaths in Ontario are higher than earthquake related deaths in California.

NYC earthquake risk is on-par with the Bay Area because while the magnitude of the quakes would be lower, the bedrocks transmits the energy better, the buildings are under-engineered for earthquakes, and it has a higher population density.

NYC is not close to any major geological activity. The east coast, unlike the west coast, has been quiet for, what, 60 million years? The Appalachian mountains are worn-down nubs. The closest seismic zones are, what, the Caribbean and the New Madrid area of Missouri, IIRC.

Depending on how you define “major” (I just saw a Twitter status arguing that San Francisco does not get “truly big” earthquakes because it’s a transform boundary and not a subduction zone), New York has a bunch of faults and does get significant geological activity. https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1183984933733158913 https://nypost.com/2017/09/09/new-york-city-is-overdue-for-a...

> There are plenty of places without any particular natural risks, e.g., New York City

I suspect New York City has more deaths per capita over time from the combination of natural environment events (earthquakes, weather, etc.) than California.

It's certainly not free of natural risks.

Blizzards (including Nor'easters) are a valid, natural danger for NYC and the rest of the Northeastern U.S.

Part of it is we like building on water. Part of it is that a lot of the world has interesting natural disasters.

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