Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

I’ve been thinking about why it is we are so obsessed with predicting disasters—over and above preventing them. What is so magical about a forecast? The answer may have something to do with the way the brain is wired. The brain loathes uncertainty. It’s a survival skill, except when it isn’t. We like patterns, which helps explain why we like music and storytelling. But we fear things we can’t predict. So we read horoscopes or watch CNBC—or sell all of our stocks when the market is low—just to stop the itch of the unknown.

In 1990, a scientist named

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Last week’s magnitude 6.3 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, triggered a flurry of earnest but confused conversations around the world. Why, TV reporters asked the experts, can’t we predict earthquakes by now? And the scientists humbly explained, as they do after every earthquake, that it remains impossible to know exactly when and where the earth’s plates will slip. Despite millions of dollars and decades of research, it’s very hard to do.

Then came alarming news: an Italian scientist did indeed predict last
Monday’s quake, it turns out! But no one listened to him. Gioacchino
…

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Today’s New York Times claimed that the intensity of yesterday’s 6.3 magnitude earthquake was “rare” for Italy. Um, really? What is rare in earthquake terms?

In the last century, over 130,000 people died in Italian earthquakes. Just seven years ago, 30 people died in a 5.9 quake in southern Italy. Rare?

We tend to think in human time. To make matters worse, human time has been getting faster ever since…

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Once again, California is proving itself way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to disaster resilience. Check out my Time.com story on the Great Shakeout here.

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Scientists have now determined that the chance of one or more maginitude 6.7 or larger quakes happening in California over the next 30 years is 99.7%. That is to say, it’s definitely going to happen. Put it on your calendar, and start shopping for shoes.

So then what? Earthquake survival is not intuitive. Running outside (which some research has shown men might be more likely to do than women) is a bad idea. Doorways are not necessarily the sweet spot we once thought they were. And after the shaking stops, turning off the gas to your house may…

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