Free Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley

safe by driving instead of flying. But had the rod snapped just a few minutes earlier, when they were on the highway, the truck would have been uncontrollable at 80 mph. “There’s no question we would have been dead,” he says.
    After his near miss, Klabin decided to do something radical. He took flying lessons. He thought he might feel better about flying if he understood the mechanics. So he went up in a Cessna plane (which is far more dangerous than a commercial jet). Surprisingly, he felt absolutely fine. He wasn’t scared!
    Why wasn’t Klabin terrified? People who drive because they fear flying are not really looking for physical safety, explains Tom Bunn, a former commercial airline pilot who now counsels people with a fear of flying. “What they’re looking for is emotional safety.”
    In the Cessna, Klabin felt in control. The dread factor plummeted. But he had no control on commercial planes. So he remained just as frightened as ever. When we spoke more than five years after 9/11, Klabin still had not set foot on a passenger plane.
    “Hazards have personalities,” says Paul Slovic, the risk expert, “kind of like people.” In the mid-1980s, Slovic was studying the potential impact of building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The more he talked to people about their concerns, the more he realized that anything with the word nuclear in it disturbed people—regardless of what the actual dangers were. The same goes for chemicals. When people are asked what comes to mind when they hear the word chemicals, the most frequent response by far is “dangerous”—or a synonym, like “toxic,” “hazardous,” “poison,” “deadly,” or “cancer.” Up to 75 percent of the public agrees with the following statement: “I try hard to avoid contact with chemicals and chemical products in my everyday life.”
    Some of the most common disasters are the least feared. Fire, for example, usually kills more Americans each year than most other disasters combined. There is, at this point, very little we don’t know about fires. We know where and when they happen. We even know how to prevent them. Most fatal fires happen in people’s homes in December and January and are caused by arson or smoking. Deaths peak from midnight to 5:00 A.M . In 2005, according to the National Fire Protection Association, 3,675 Americans died in fires. If all homes had sprinklers and smoke detectors with working batteries, that number would probably drop by at least a third.
    Lightning is another underappreciated threat. It may be the most dangerous natural hazard in rich industrialized countries like the United States. About one hundred lightning strikes hit the earth every second, and in many years, these bolts of fire kill more people than any other kind of weather. But lightning is not something most of us worry about very much.
    Ironically, the most destructive single disasters are usually the least surprising. Hurricanes, for example, happen at the same time every year in the same general locations. And yet we are shocked at the devastation, every year. Between official declarations of emergencies, we build and rebuild, upping the ante for the next storm season. By 2010, an estimated 70 percent of Americans will live within a hundred miles of a coast—where hurricanes, floods, and tropical storms are annual rites. Floridians, in particular, live dangerously. But they aren’t alone. Texas and California are the country’s other riskiest states. (The least hazardous are Vermont, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Fabulously boring places.)
    Now think back to Patrick Turner, the man who refused to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina even though he had the means to do so. Turner was quite capable of feeling dread when it came to hospitals or doctors. But hurricanes did not move him. Why? For one thing, most of us fear natural threats less than those created by humans. Even though most of the devastation caused by