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"Disasters - history"
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A story of civilization in 50 disasters
\"The earth shakes and cracks open. Volcanoes erupt. Continents freeze, bake, and flood. Droughts parch the land. Wildfires and hundred-year storms consume anything in their paths. Invisible clouds of disease and pestilence probe for victims. Tidal waves sweep ashore from the vast sea. The natural world is a dangerous place, but one species has evolved a unique defense against the hazards: civilization.\"--Publisher's description.
Book
Global Crisis
Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses-the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and extent. The effects of what historians call the \"General Crisis\" extended from England to Japan, from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa. The Americas, too, did not escape the turbulence of the time.
In this meticulously researched volume, master historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who saw and suffered from the sequence of political, economic, and social crises between 1618 to the late 1680s. Parker also deploys the scientific evidence of climate change during this period. His discoveries revise entirely our understanding of the General Crisis: changes in prevailing weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.
Parker's demonstration of the link between climate change, war, and catastrophe 350 years ago stands as an extraordinary historical achievement. And the implications of his study are equally important: are we adequately prepared-or even preparing-for the catastrophes that climate change brings?
eBook
Inventing Disaster
When hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters strike, we count our losses, search for causes, commiserate with victims, and initiate relief efforts. Amply illustrated and expansively researched,Inventing Disaster explains the origins and development of this predictable, even ritualized, culture of calamity over three centuries, exploring its roots in the revolutions in science, information, and emotion that were part of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe and America. Beginning with the collapse of the early seventeenth-century Jamestown colony, ending with the deadly Johnstown flood of 1889, and highlighting fires, epidemics, earthquakes, and exploding steamboats along the way, Cynthia A. Kierner tells horrific stories of culturally significant calamities and their victims and charts efforts to explain, prevent, and relieve disaster-related losses. Although how we interpret and respond to disasters has changed in some ways since the nineteenth century, Kierner demonstrates that, for better or worse, the intellectual, economic, and political environments of earlier eras forged our own twenty-first-century approach to disaster, shaping the stories we tell, the precautions we ponder, and the remedies we prescribe for disaster-ravaged communities.
eBook
Disaster, death and the emotions in the shadow of the apocalypse 1400-1700
In late medieval and early modern Europe, textual and visual records of disaster and mass death allow us to encounter the intense emotions generated through the religious, providential and apocalyptic frameworks that provided these events with meaning. This collection brings together historians, art historians, and literary specialists in a cross-disciplinary collection shaped by new developments in the history of emotions. It offers a rich range of analytical frameworks and case studies, from the emotional language of divine providence to individual and communal experiences of disaster. Geographically wide-ranging, the collection also analyses many different sorts of media: from letters and diaries to broadsheets and paintings. Through these and other historical records, the contributors examine how communities and individuals experienced, responded to, recorded and managed the emotional dynamics and trauma created by dramatic events like massacres, floods, fires, earthquakes and plagues.
Book
The Disaster Experts
In the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, many are asking what, if anything, can be done to prevent large-scale disasters. How is it that we know more about the hazards of modern American life than ever before, yet the nation faces ever-increasing losses from such events? History shows that disasters are not simply random acts. Where is the logic in creating an elaborate set of fire codes for buildings, and then allowing structures like the Twin Towers-tall, impressive, and risky-to go up as design experiments? Why prepare for terrorist attacks above all else when floods, fires, and earthquakes pose far more consistent threats to American life and prosperity?The Disaster Expertstakes on these questions, offering historical context for understanding who the experts are that influence these decisions, how they became powerful, and why they are only slightly closer today than a decade ago to protecting the public from disasters. Tracing the intertwined development of disaster expertise, public policy, and urbanization over the past century, historian Scott Gabriel Knowles tells the fascinating story of how this diverse collection of professionals-insurance inspectors, engineers, scientists, journalists, public officials, civil defense planners, and emergency managers-emerged as the authorities on risk and disaster and, in the process, shaped modern America.
eBook
Eruptions and explosions : true stories : real tales of violent outbursts
Eruptions and Explosions: Real Tales of Violent Outbursts recounts the history of five blowups that continued to rattle the world long after the smoke had cleared and embers cooled. From a mountaintop in Indonesia to an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, the explosions explored here caused widespread peril and destruction. The Mystery & Mayhem series delves into fascinating tidbits of history to provide kids with a jumping-off point into a lifelong habit of appreciating history.
Book
All Shook Up
Earthquakes, nuclear accidents, and floods were among the many unexpected tragedies that struck the Soviet Union over its history. Requiring the immediate mobilization of vast resources and aid, and embedded within a specific context and time, these catastrophes provide critical insights into the nature of the twentieth-century Communist state. All Shook Up takes a close look at the representation in film, the political repercussions, and the social opportunities of large-scale catastrophes in separate Soviet epochs, including the 1927 earthquake in the Crimean peninsula, the 1948 earthquake in Ashgabat, the Tashkent earthquake in 1966, the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, and the Armenian earthquake in 1988. Juxtaposing various disaster responses and demonstrating the ways both Soviet authorities and citizens molded them to their own cultural needs, Nigel Raab highlights the radical shifts in disaster policy from one leader to the next. Given the opportunity to act outside regular parameters, Soviet residents not only rebuilt their devastated cities, but also experimented with new values and crafted their own worldview while the state struggled to return the situation to normal. Based on archival research conducted in Russia and Ukraine, All Shook Up fills a gap in a global literature and challenges stereotypical representations of the Soviet Union as a monolithic state.Earthquakes, nuclear accidents, and floods were among the many unexpected tragedies that struck the Soviet Union over its history. Requiring the immediate mobilization of vast resources and aid, and embedded within a specific context and time, these catastrophes provide critical insights into the nature of the twentieth-century Communist state. All Shook Up takes a close look at the representation in film, the political repercussions, and the social opportunities of large-scale catastrophes in separate Soviet epochs, including the 1927 earthquake in the Crimean peninsula, the 1948 earthquake in Ashgabat, the Tashkent earthquake in 1966, the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, and the Armenian earthquake in 1988. Juxtaposing various disaster responses and demonstrating the ways both Soviet authorities and citizens molded them to their own cultural needs, Nigel Raab highlights the radical shifts in disaster policy from one leader to the next. Given the opportunity to act outside regular parameters, Soviet residents not only rebuilt their devastated cities, but also experimented with new values and crafted their own worldview while the state struggled to return the situation to normal. Based on archival research conducted in Russia and Ukraine, All Shook Up fills a gap in a global literature and challenges stereotypical representations of the Soviet Union as a monolithic state.
eBook
Inventing disaster : the culture of calamity from the Jamestown colony to the Johnstown flood
\"When hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters strike, we count our losses, search for causes, commiserate with victims, and initiate relief efforts. Amply illustrated and expansively researched, 'Inventing Disaster' explains the origins and development of this predictable, even ritualized, culture of calamity over three centuries, exploring its roots in the revolutions in science, information, and emotion that were part of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe and America\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A comparative assessment of major international disasters: the need for exposure assessment, systematic emergency preparedness, and lifetime health care
Background
The disasters at Seveso, Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Chernobyl, the World Trade Center (WTC) and Fukushima had historic health and economic sequelae for large populations of workers, responders and community members.
Methods
Comparative data from these events were collected to derive indications for future preparedness. Information from the primary sources and a literature review addressed: i) exposure assessment; ii) exposed populations; iii) health surveillance; iv) follow-up and research outputs; v) observed physical and mental health effects; vi) treatment and benefits; and vii) outreach activities.
Results
Exposure assessment was conducted in Seveso, Chernobyl and Fukushima, although none benefited from a timely or systematic strategy, yielding immediate and sequential measurements after the disaster. Identification of exposed subjects was overall underestimated. Health surveillance, treatment and follow-up research were implemented in Seveso, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and at the WTC, mostly focusing on the workers and responders, and to a lesser extent on residents. Exposure-related physical and mental health consequences were identified, indicating the need for a long-term health care of the affected populations. Fukushima has generated the largest scientific output so far, followed by the WTCHP and Chernobyl. Benefits programs and active outreach figured prominently in only the WTC Health Program. The analysis of these programs yielded the following lessons: 1) Know who was there; 2) Have public health input to the disaster response; 3) Collect health and needs data rapidly; 4) Take care of the affected; 5) Emergency preparedness; 6) Data driven, needs assessment, advocacy.
Conclusions
Given the long-lasting health consequences of natural and man-made disasters, health surveillance and treatment programs are critical for management of health conditions, and emergency preparedness plans are needed to prevent or minimize the impact of future threats.
Journal Article