Society's Influence on Perception of Disasters

I never realized how society and culture frame incidents can determine whether it was a disaster or just something that happened somewhere. Like it was mentioned in the chapter about the Sultana when that happened it was on the heels of the end of the Civil War and right after the assassination of President Lincoln. I honestly did not know about that. I had read about the Sultana in high school history class but it was just mentioned once then never heard from about again. Whereas the Hindenburg, 9/11 and even the more recent Boston Bomber are talked about everywhere in this country and very well known to us. Not only does society and culture decide what gets turned into a disaster it also effects everything from politics to economics. After 9/11 the United States was transformed into a security state and anti-Muslimism grew exponentially and going to war in the Middle East became a political driving force. It also effected the economy air travel

The article mentions how we never really thought through how we would get rid of nuclear waste which is still deadly from a thousand years from now. So we place spent fuel rods near the nuclear sites in cooling pools. This is something I do not agree with the chapter says that in 2003 we had 108 million pounds of nuclear waste concentrated at these sites and that in thirty years it will be doubled. This is an absolute disaster waiting to happen I think that we need to find a better way of disposing of nuclear waste than just concentrating millions of pounds at sites near urban populations otherwise we are going to have another 3-mile island disaster on our hands. Especially if they keep putting the waste near presumed dead volcanoes, what if an earthquake happens and reawakens the volcano that was not dead but just dormant and all that molten lava goes rushing towards all that