While watching coverage of the earthquake yesterday, I got to thinking, which would I rather deal with, earthquakes or tornadoes? We do have somewhat of a decision since most of the earthquake activity seems to be on the west coast of the United States. However, the Midwest did have an earthquake, but its rather rare for that to happen. After thinking about both the downside of each I came up with a decision in my own mind. However, I think I might be biased.

Earthquakes are scary. There's really no where to run. Just get under your desk and start praying. We really don't know when they're going to strike and only have a general region. Also, the damage is never focused, its typically widespread. However, they don't hap pend that much and they also are weak when they do happen. Yesterday was a moderate earthquake and from what I can tell things weren't that bad.

We all know about tornadoes because we live in the Midwest. They can be very separated and happen relatively often (when compared to earthquakes). However, we typically have gotten better with warnings. We have outlooks up to 8 days in advance of where severe weather might occur. Once the severe weather happens, warnings come out over ten minutes on average. That in my opinion is plenty of time to get to a shelter.

So with those arguments I can't say I'd rather live in a earthquake area. However, I've never really lived in one so I might be biased toward the tornado areas. Of course, after the earthquake that happened earlier this year in the Midwest may just be the first of many as there is some seismic activity in that area now. I guess I'll just move to Caribbean. Oh wait, Hurricanes! Great.