The Big Ones Quotes

“The last thing any of us will want to do is accept that, sometimes, shift just happens.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“At a primal level, we abhor randomness because it leaves us vulnerable.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“... I came to realise how important it is to maintain a distinction between science and policy. If scientists start making policy, we invite politicians to start making science. By instead empowering politicians with the information to make informed decisions, we create more forceful advocates for the results of our collaboration.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us and What We Can Do about Them

“damage to tunnels in earthquakes is extremely rare. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, the amplitude of seismic shaking underground is only half of what it is at the surface. When a seismic wave hits the surface of the earth, it is reflected back downward, and that reflected wave also causes shaking. So, at the surface, movement is double what you’d find within the earth. Second, tunnels generally have a round or oval cross section, which is a very stable shape.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“St. Thomas argued that the evil of suffering in disasters was necessary for some goodness, such as bravery and compassion, to be realized. It is for this reason that God allows “natural evils” to persist.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“Evolutionary pressure rewarded brains that saw patterns, even in randomness. When we heard a rustle in the grass, we could imagine it was a random breeze and ignore it, or we could hypothesize that it hid a waiting predator and try to escape it. For the many times it was a breeze, the wrong answer made us unnecessarily anxious, but it did not interfere with our survival. For the rare time that it was a predator, the anxious survived, and those who believed it to be random made a fatal error.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“A community divided, whose ideas of preparedness involve procuring guns or fortified bunkers, is at risk. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you treat your neighbor as a potential enemy, you make him one, and in so doing contribute to your society’s collapse.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“The moral philosopher Susan Neiman called it “the beginning of a modern distinction between natural and moral evil.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“St. Augustine called such disasters “natural evils” and believed that Creation itself had been corrupted by the Fall of Adam and Eve, so that natural disasters were reflecting the evil choices of the fallen angels.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“After the adrenaline of the disaster has passed and we face the dreariness of loss, despair lurks around the corner. Unable to attribute our misfortune to random chance, we wonder what we did wrong. Homes gone, dependent on the goodwill of strangers, fearing financial ruin perhaps with loved ones killed, we look for someone to blam, we turn to the outsider. A disaster can alter the behavior of the individual, like one who is part of a mob, divorcing us from our moral compass. We must remember the most dangerous threat in a disaster is the threat to our humanity.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us and What We Can Do about Them

“We must remember the most dangerous threat in a disaster is the threat to our humanity.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“After one rainstorm in 1938 dropped thirty-two inches of rain in five days in the mountains around Los Angeles, putting one-third of the Los Angeles basin underwater, the demand for flood control in the southern part of the state was too great to ignore.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

“Like records of the Lisbon earthquake before it, they demonstrate how a disaster only begins with the natural hazard. During the event itself, damage is inflicted, lives are lost, heroes are needed to rescue victims. But it’s only after the event has passed that the more difficult phase begins, the recovery and reconstruction that requires courage, perseverance, and leadership.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us