Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [127]
The Personalities of Hazards
Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk.
Fire Deaths
The National Fire Protection Association has a wealth of information on fires—when they happen, why, and what would prevent them from happening. It’s all on their website at www.nfpa.org.
Least Hazardous States
This list comes from Dennis Mileti’s Disasters by Design, which was published in 1999. The list can be expected to change with time.
Three Mile Island
See Robert A. Stallings, “Evacuation Behavior at Three Mile Island.”
The Lake Wobegon Effect
The data on Hurricane Floyd drownings come from: “Morbidity and Mortality Associated with Hurricane Floyd—North Carolina, September–October 1999,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 49, no. 17 (May 5, 2000): 369–372.
Men are more than twice as likely as women to die during a thunderstorm, according to a study by Thomas J. Songer at the University of Pittsburgh, which is described here: “Seventy Percent of Thunderstorm-Related Deaths Occur in Men,” Public Health (Fall 2003).
The survey of people living in hurricane zones is here: Robert J. Blendon et al., “High-Risk Area Hurricane Survey.”
For more on our tendency toward unrealistic optimism, see Shelley E. Taylor, Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind 10–11; and Neil Weinstein, “Unrealistic Optimism About Susceptibility to Health Problems: Conclusions from a Community-wide Sample,” Journal of Behavioral Medicine. The survey measuring predictions of terrorism risk is here: Jennifer S. Lerner, Roxana M. Gonzalez, Deborah A. Small, and Baruch Fischhoff, “Effects of Fear and Anger on Perceived Risks of Terrorism: A National Field Experiment,” Psychological Science 14, no. 2 (Mar. 2003).
The Connection Between Weather and Stocks
See David Hirshleifer and Tyler Shumway, “Good Day Sunshine: Stock Returns and the Weather.”
Our Dependence on Emotions
For the full story of Elliot, see Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error.
Crafting Better Warnings
The survey of passengers involved in airplane evacuations comes from: National Transportation Safety Board, Emergency Evacuation of Commercial Airplanes. And for more on the suggestions of U.K. civilians, see Lauren J. Thomas, Sophie O’Ferrall, and Antoinette Caird-Daley, Evacuation Commands for Optimal Passenger Management.
Dennis Mileti is one of the foremost experts on warnings in the world. He has published hundreds of reports on the subject. For one of his very helpful primers, see Dennis Mileti et al., “Public Hazards Communication and Education: The State of the Art,” Natural Hazards Informer.
Newspaper accounts of “freak” falling deaths are actually very easy to find. Here are the sources for the two examples I cited: Louise Hosie, “Toddler Dies After Cutting Neck on Vase,” Scottish Press Association, and “Young Polish Man’s Dream of New Life Ends in Tragedy,” Wexford People.
Gambling and the Brain
To understand more about what happens to your brain in a casino, see Camelia M. Kuhnen and Brian Knutson, “The Neural Basis of Financial Risk Taking,” Neuron.
Case Studies—Good Warnings and Bad
The story of Vanuatu comes from Costas Synolakis, “Self-Centered West’s Narrow Focus Puts Lives at Risk,” The Times Higher Education Supplement.
The Bangladesh example comes from Philippa Howell, “Indigenous Early Warning Indicators of Cyclones: Potential Application in Coastal Bangladesh,” Disaster Studies Working Paper 6.
Tilly Smith’s quote about the tsunami comes from Duncan Larcombe’s article in The Sun.
The Personal Strategies of Risk Experts
When I interviewed risk experts, I asked them how their studies had influenced their own behavior. They had different answers, depending upon their lifestyles and the focus of their research. But the one response I heard from at least three different experts was that they do one main