> Western Europe, at least

Western European cities flood, most recently in 2021. The short list of low-risk high-GDP countries is limited to city states and the likes of Hungary, Czechia, Qatar, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Finland and Iceland [1]. Worldwide.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural...

You can probably strike Hungary off that list.

https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-surveillance-e...

Hungary is quite nice though. Also, I'll take the Balkans over Western Europe any day. Not Bosnia or Kosovo, but the other EU countries, maybe even North Macedonia or Serbia. Or Southern Italy if you also want to be sophisticated.

Western Europe is about to get so fucked by climate change. The area is basically unlivable without the North Atlantic Current - geographically the UK/France/Germany are at about the same latitude as Alberta and the Siberian Taiga, Scandinavia is the same latitude as Alaska and the Yukon. They would have similar climate if it weren't for warm Gulf water circulating in the Atlantic.

There's evidence that the current is already slowing [1], and the midpoint of estimates for when it might collapse is at 1.8C warming, something we seem pretty likely to blow past within a decade or two.

It'd be bad for Australia and the Southwest US as well, since collapse of the AMOC would bring permanent La Nina conditions.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/14/1041321/climate-...

> I'm drawing a blank

Because it doesn’t exist. You don’t build a city where you fortress. The oceans that give rise to natural harbours and ports also bring risk of floods and tsunami. Similarly for fertile riparian. The same seismology that raises the mountains which squeeze rain from clouds and provide stunning vistas also level badly-built homes.

The risks can be mitigated, but never eliminated. Look at the list of natural-disaster safe cities in America, and find a sea of low GDP per capita [1]. In an unexpected place we find the old adage reaffirmed: risk and reward come together.

[1] https://www.rockethomes.com/blog/housing-market/safest-place...

> Pretty much all of the mid-west is susceptible to tornadoes.

And some good sized earthquakes too.

https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/new-madrid-... // https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34701813

And from https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/cool-earthq...

> Earthquakes occur in the central portion of the United States too! Some very powerful earthquakes occurred along the New Madrid fault in the Mississippi Valley in 1811-1812. Because of the crustal structure in the Central US which efficiently propagates seismic energy, shaking from earthquakes in this part of the country are felt at a much greater distance from the epicenters than similar size quakes in the Western US.

And yes, while the entire west coast is red in the risk category... there is a good sized blob in the midwest.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-131-02/CUShazard.html

Midwest and northeast have flooding, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, etc. Maybe not earthquakes (or wildfires), but I worry about earthquakes and wildfires much less than I used to worry and have to deal with frozen pipes and snow removal and humidity.

The great appeal of San Francisco is that you don’t have to think about what you’re going to wear at least 300 days of the year. If you’re outdoorsy at all it’s very hard to go to the rest of the US and feel trapped inside. Unfortunately for me, family moved there after I moved to be close on the west coast, so I get to experience that 2 weeks every year.

I would also dispute “no natural disasters”. There are serious winter events in those regions (and crazy floods depending on where you are in the Midwest) that happen basically yearly.

I don’t think any part of the world is without significant tradeoffs, you just have to find the ones that matter to you.

Native New Englander here, married a Californian. My wife likes to say that "Every winter in New England is a natural disaster" whenever I bring up moving back.

Where there are only four months that with average highs >10 degrees Celsius? Where there are was a tsunami with 7m waves less than 100 years ago?

I love Nova Scotia but I don’t think it’s the perfectly safe and livable paradise people should apparently move to.

When you’re “work-from-underground-bunker” the weather woes of the surface dwellers are not your concern.

IMO, Phoenix is stretching the definition of "livable"

Phoenix and Albuquerque don’t have water

I was living in Georgia when CNN's building in downtown was hit by a tornado. They're not nearly as bad as in the midwest, but they certainly happen. Mind you, it's a perfectly reasonable place to build up, but the likelihood of getting killed in a tornado over the past 100 years looks to be worse than the likelihood of dying in an earthquake in California over the past 100 years (slightly lower numbers from what I could gather, but dramatically lower population).

Phoenix (and Albuquerque but I'm less familiar with the specifics) is in the desert; both the water it gets and the ambient temperature are getting worse due to climate change. There are already legal fights over water rights in the greater Phoenix area, and it's just going to get worse. That is not a place to be building up.

Cheaper than Hawaii but with roughly the same risks, i.e. your home turning into a lava field.

And Redwood City!

https://www.rwcpulse.com/blogs/portal-to-our-past/climate-be...

https://www.kqed.org/news/11889712/can-redwood-city-really-b...

> "Henry C. Finkler was a bicyclist. And he became, I have to say, fanatically interested in weather. And he recorded, every day he rode down the hill, what the air temperature was, what the winds were, the number of days of rain," Svanevik said.

> It’s Finkler who first claimed there were only three parts of the world that had perfect weather: the Canary Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa, North Africa's Mediterranean Coast, and anything within a 20-mile radius of Redwood City.

You've died of dysentery.