Nowadays we can watch the earthquake "live" on TV as it is happening, and the earth is more densely populated and built upon.
A century ago, the world population was about 1.6 billion and the majority of the world population lived in rural areas, now it is 6.9 billion (4.3x larger) and the majority of the world population is urbanized. There does exist a small literature on the social impact of natural disasters. See for example: Elena Poniatowska, Aurora Camacho de Schmidt & Arthur Schmidt, "Nothing, nobody: the voices of the Mexico City earthquake". Temple University Press, 1995. What is interesting is that, faced with adversity, people spontaneously invent method of social cooperation and social organization which previously seemed totally impossible and inconceivable. The US National Research Council has provided a number of reports on the socio-economic effects of large-scale earthquakes. J. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
