The United States with it’s increasing population could suffer a simalarly traumatic disaster (on the level with the lists above) if the conditions were right–but natioanlly high building code standards, combined with the wealth, and mobility of the average american family usually results in a low loss of life no matter how much property is losts. But, in many other countries… the circumstances are very different, and if people’s homes get swept away or collapse, the people living there usually share the same fate.

So, yeah, it seems a reasonably afluent and free citizenary with mass mobility enjoying the benifits of a strong central government (which provides funding for things like interstates and weather satalites, and geological surveys, and public emergancy response organizations) is a good thing to have on your side when the earth shakes, or the waters rise, hurricanes or tornado’s hit, terrorists attack, or rocks fall from the sky. I mean, if we didn’t have all the things we already have, set up in our nation, events like Katrina would be monumentally worse than they ended up being. (It is our poor that have suffered most in that storm.) And in other countries where the majority of people are desperataly poor, and the perfect disaster takes shape around them, they usually don’t have the option of getting out its way.