At the mercy of nature

For all the bluster of how mankind has conquered nature and tamed the earth, the natural world always likes to call mankind's bluff. For one, we haven't exactly figured out how to stop hurricanes (though I hear dropping a nuclear bomb into the eye of a hurricane was proposed by Trump...why not have a radioactive hurricane instead of just a normal one?). Every time one scoots across the Gulf, oil production is impacted and it makes life pretty miserable for people.

Then there's the forest fires. While we don't have a record going this year, they're always dangerous and terrifying. Then there's earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, wild animals, plagues of locusts, and who knows what kinds of disease just lurking in a swamp or jungle someplace. Again, we're pretty much unable to stop all of these things and can only mitigate them.

Civilization has largely figured out what to do with all of these, even if they can't be stopped. The problem arises when civilization doesn't have the capacity or resources to deal with them. Take a covid-stricken, spending-addled, nation where people substitute anger for education, and see exactly how competently things will be dealt with.

Disasters are cumulative, too, and tend to have other ripple effects. Wildfires and hurricanes cost a lot of money, which impacts the insurance industry and is generally like throwing a rock into a pond. It's not talked about much, but Katrina was one of the factors that led to the housing crisis in 2008. What would a hurricane like Ida, or another strong hurricane, do if it inflicted catastrophic damage on a major urban area? How much more defibrillator shocks can be administered to this tapped-out economy before diminishing returns cause inflation to double or triple current prices?

It all goes back to how much capacity there is to buffer damaging events. Shocks from nature can be absorbed for a time, but the buffer is eventually overwhelmed and all hell breaks loose. Hurricanes are notorious for making fools out of forecasters, so who knows what will happened between today and tomorrow, but if it's not this, there will be something else coming along that will push us a bit faster on the downhill slope.