Just left my apartment, was watching the morning show and obviously the Earthquake in Japan is dominating the news. Today looks like an excess of 3000 people are declared dead, there are numerous unaccounted and to make it worse is that another earthquake erupted again today, the effect of which is unknown right now. So I'm thinking, now that this has happened - what are the futures preventative measures? Looking to disasters in Pompeii in the wake of mt Versuivius and the supreme disaster then, also there has been major tsunami hits in the Phillipines(if I'm not mistaken), Sri-lanka and disasters Australia(massive flooding) not forgetting Huricane Kateina in New Orleans.

The interesting thing is twofold - are these disasters linked to a common cause and what do civallizations/communities react and plan their future. Do they just re-settle with some preventative measures? And in this instance how can we prevent or predict the force of nature? We may know that it will impact us at certain location but nott when, so why do we try to protect ourselves at these locations when we know we can't. Is the 3000+ lives lost a suitable loss compared to the time we've had to stay in a profitable or advantages location that we knew could go wrong in the future? Will people leave? I don't think so, because we're opportunists and we'll stay for as long as we can and see how long our run goes... until day a tsunami wipes us out for our cheekiness and arrogance. We are somewhat prepared for the inevitable, and re-exercise our instincts all the time. We will rebuild our cities, New Orleans will stand again, Japan will rebuild etc... and I can't help to think how ridiculous this is. Our great scape clause is that in the future we'll have better technology to detect early disasters.... Case in point : we've been to the moon, what now? What other plans do we have for the moon? fact is we're not planning anymore expeditions to the moon. Wow we've progressed. Same with early warning detection technology(fair due, there has been major improvements in this area). We plan to do more but we don't and sometimes can't. That doesn't help the 3000+ get their lives back.

The other contentious issue is that we don't know were a earthquake will hit? yes we do - on the outlined tectonic boundries!! Ok so I'm being a bit stupid here but if we continue to rebuild and act like we'll be better off next time round we need better restrictions to building height, proximity to risk etc... but with all this, which we may already have - it can still go peared-shape as it has done. What can be done.

basically we could leave the area and never come back. We won't. We understand that 3000+ lives will be lost again. Is this human nature or am being grouchy and pessimistic?

Sure let's not forget about how humans pull through and adapt but that's not the point - life and death is the point, isn't it?

Also, the average Joe doesn't consider this stuff - they just want infrastructure and resolves to survive in, which the government facilitates and provides, but how much of them are informed of the risks of such areas governed by governments? The government should protect, inform mighty Joe obvious. I doubt they do. Why would they, if they did population would not rise. This Is human nature and it's normal - make do with what you got - we won't leave so well just deal with what we can't prevent. This way we get maximum yield and a wipeout will not impact on the yield we'll achieve once were back on our feet - at a cost of lives but we can make those up again.