The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake occurred in the early morning of Jan. 23, 1556 in Huaxian, Shaanxi during the Ming dynasty. Modern estimates put the direct deaths from the earthquake at over 100,000, while over 700,000 migrated away or died from famine and plagues, which summed up to a total loss of 830,000 people in Imperial records. It is one of the most fatal earthquakes in China, in turn making it one of the top disasters in China by death toll. Call me Nostradamus, but if this event happened on Jan. 23, 2023, it would be almost universally blamed on “climate change.” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Disasters
There’s No Perfect Place to Live
Orange County isn’t in a flood zone like Houston but it may be within range of a North Korean missile . . . Read more →
Thoughts on a Turbulent Flight
I can’t sleep on planes. I’m afraid the damn thing will crash and I’ll miss it. I don’t believe in anything. I wish I did. It seems comforting to imagine holding the plane aloft with prayer. I’m not a good person. Why shouldn’t something terrible happen to me? Read more →
The Titanic Effect
The thought that disaster is impossible often leads to an unthinkable disaster. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Airline Pilots No Longer Know How to Fly the Planes
Over the decades, airliners have been built with increasingly automated flight-control functions. These have the potential to remove a great deal of uncertainty and danger from aviation. But they also remove important information from the attention of the flight crew. While the airplane’s avionics track crucial parameters such as location, speed, and heading, the human beings can pay attention to something else. But when trouble suddenly springs up and the computer decides that it can no longer cope—on a dark night, perhaps, in turbulence, far from land—the humans might find themselves with a very incomplete notion of what’s going on. They’ll wonder: What instruments are reliable, and which can’t be trusted? What’s the most pressing threat? What’s going on? Unfortunately, the vast majority of pilots will have little experience in finding the answers. — Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript – What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 – Popular… Read more →
Twitter: 2010-09-09
RT @fakerahmemanuel: Why leave the White House to be mayor of Chicago? The same reason that guy from White Star got the fuck off Titanic. # Read more →
Don’t Send a Community Organizer to Do a President’s Job
My fellow Americans — I’m angry. Not just because the southern coastline of our nation — including Louisiana, which I purchased from Napoleon in the sweetest deal of 1803 — is being destroyed. Read these pathetic remarks from our president, Barack Obama: The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue. “Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our… Read more →
President Nero
Last weeks jobs report tanked the stock market; the president took weeks to assert control of the oil spill that threatens doom on the Gulf Coast — but at the White House the Gatsby-like parties roll on as if happy days were here again. — John Gibson – NYPOST.com Read more →