Social Science Disasters

When houses are flattened, towns submerged, and people stranded without electricity or even food, we attribute the suffering to "natural disasters" or "acts of God." But what if they're neither? What if we, as a society, are bringing these catastrophes on ourselves? That's the provocative theory of Catastrophe in the Making, the first audiobook to recognize Hurricane Katrina not as a "perfect storm," but a tragedy of our own making - and one that could become commonplace.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

Este libro es una hermosa exploración de lugares donde la naturaleza florece en nuestra ausencia. Algunas de las únicas reses verdaderamente asilvestradas del mundo deambulan por una isla abandonada desde hace tiempo en el extremo norte de Escocia. En los terrenos irradiados de Chernóbil ha resurgido una variedad de vida silvestre que no se había visto en mucho tiempo.

Ignited by a lightning strike in a remote forest, the Currowan fire was one of the most terrifying episodes of Australia's Black Summer. It burnt for 74 days, consuming nearly 5,000 square kilometres of land, destroying well over 500 homes and leaving many people shattered. In the aftermath, there were questions. Why were resources so few that many faced the flames alone? Why was there back-burning on a day of extreme fire danger? Why weren’t they better prepared?

People say that "you can never be too prepared" for a disaster - and while that is true, there is such a thing as over-preparation. If preparing for a possible disaster in the future significantly impairs your family's quality of life today, you might need to reassess your priorities. Living in a constant state of terror and paranoia is not something I am particularly fond of. I'm not one of those people who has built such an incredible fortress for myself that I'm almost giddy about the idea of getting a chance to use it.

In Americans at Risk, Dr. Irwin Redlener draws on his broad experience as a pediatrician working with mobile emergency units both for children and adults, his time making recommendations to legislators about the vulnerabilities of children to biological and chemical agents and his regular meetings with Tom Ridge of the office of Homeland Security over a period of four years to write this urging a plan for a coordinated plan between government and the private sector.

Can we human beings agree on a set of values which will allow us to confront the numerous threats that we and our planet face? Or will we continue our disagreements, rivalries, and antipathies, even as we collectively approach what, in the not impossible extreme, might be extinction? To answer these questions, A. C. Grayling considers the three most pressing challenges facing the world: climate change, technology, and justice.

On April 18, 1906, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook the San Francisco region, igniting fires that burned half the city. The disaster in all its elements - earthquake, fires, and recovery - profoundly disrupted the urban order and challenged San Francisco's perceived permanence. The crisis temporarily broke down spatial divisions of class and race and highlighted the contested terrain of urban nature in an era of widespread class conflict, simmering ethnic tensions, and controversial reform efforts.

Conquest, Famine, War, Death: the four horsemen are coming, in the form of the national debt, widespread dependence on government, turmoil in the Middle East, and the expansion of the bureaucratic state. In Obama’s Four Horsemen, syndicated columnist David Harsanyi takes a provocative look at how the Obama Administration allowed four big problems to mushroom into looming disasters we can no longer avoid or postpone. In his famous conversational, fact-driven, and humorous tone, Harsanyi argues that President Obama’s handling of both domestic and foreign crises has set the stage for a disaster of Biblical proportions.

Why you should prep.... How to calculate your family's needs.... Tips to keep you alive.... and much, much more.

The prepper's guide with a difference. During the 1940s, Britain suffered a national catastrophe that would become known as "The Great Tribulation" by its survivors. The remnant of His Majesty's Government formed a department known as The Ministry of Survivors, the mandate of this office being to help, guide, and inform the public through the anarchy around them. During the early years, they produced and issued a handbook known as The Citizen Survivor's Handbook.

Kate's school is having their first-ever STEM Night and the prizes are incredible! Kate is determined to win and comes up with the perfect experiment. But as she and her best friend, Birdie, start preparing, they find that Kate's project keeps getting messed up. Will Kate be able to use her science know-how to find out who is behind the STEM night sabotage? And will she fix her project before it's too late?

In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costliest nuclear disasters ever. But Fukushima was not the first, and it was not the worst. In Atoms and Ashes, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy tells the tale of the six nuclear disasters that shook the world: Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

From the climate apocalypse and COVID-19 to double-digit unemployment to Donald Trump and the rise of far-right white nationalists—disasters are everywhere we look. While these disasters often leave us feeling hopeless and withdrawn, scholar Alex Zamalin argues that pessimism cannot be the only response. Silence and inaction only perpetuate mass suffering and inequality. Instead, All Is Not Lost suggests that following every crisis emerges new political opportunity for changing our politics and everyday lives.

In just a few weeks, everything changed. Hopes that we would soon return to normal quickly faded as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. Christian leaders have been forced to deal with the loss of in-person gatherings, devastating financial hits, and the heightened anxiety of facing a future with no clear understanding of what it may look like. Tod Bolsinger has provided a unique resource applying some of his key insights to the current global crisis. Christian leaders will find wisdom and encouragement to provide the kind of resilient leadership that has never been so necessary.

How do we stay safe? Should we? What if our attempts are exposing us even more to the very risks we are avoiding? Would acceptance of danger make us more secure? Is there such a thing as foolproof? In Foolproof, Greg Ip presents a macro theory of human nature and disaster that explains how we can keep ourselves safe in our increasingly dangerous world.

In 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina cut a deadly path along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, researchers J. Steven Picou and Keith Nicholls conducted a survey of the survivors in Louisiana and Mississippi, receiving more than 2500 responses, and followed up two years later with more than 500 of the initial respondents. Showcasing these landmark findings, Caught in the Path of Katrina: A Survey of the Hurricane's Human Effects yields a more complete understanding of the traumas endured as a result of the Storm of the Century.

Después de un desastre, sea provocado por el hombre o por la naturaleza, ¿la gente se vuelve más altruista, ingeniosa y valiente? ¿A qué deben él ánimo las nuevas comunidades que surgen entre las ruinas y en momentos de crisis, con sus nuevos propósitos? ¿Qué revela su alegría sobre la posibilidad y el deseo de cambio social, normalmente insatisfecho? Solnit explora este fenómeno a través de algunas calamidades como el terremoto de 1906 en San Francisco, la explosión que casi acabó con Halifax en 1917, el terremoto de Ciudad de México de 1985, el 11-S en Nueva York y el huracán Katrina, que arrasó Nueva Orleans.

In Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative, author Kate Parker Horigan shows how the public understands and remembers large-scale disasters like Hurricane Katrina, outlining which stories are remembered and why, as well as the impact on public memory and the survivors themselves. This project is rooted in Horigan's experiences living in New Orleans before and after Katrina, but it is also a case study illustrating that survivors' stories should be shared in a way that includes their own engagement with narrative production, circulation, and reception.

No dia 25 de janeiro de 2019, às 12h28, a B1, barragem desativada da Mina do Córrego do Feijão, explorada pela mineradora Vale na cidade de Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, rompeu. Seu rastro de lama, rejeitos de minério e destruição se estendeu por mais de 300 quilômetros, levando torres de transmissão, trens de carga, pontes, casas, árvores, animais e, na contagem oficial da tragédia, a vida de 270 pessoas (ou 272, considerando as duas gestantes entre os mortos).