People seem to have a very vague understanding of what a hurricane is, what is does and why the East Coast is effected more by these things then other areas of the world… let me outline some basics so we can all be on the same page:
1. Hurricanes are usually not deadly and there is little you can do. The only deaths that occur in hurricanes are from people who are not prepared. They didn’t evacuate when they were supposed to, they didn’t stay inside, or they stood under a falling tree. In the east coast we rarely have hurricanes with enough wind speed to rip houses apart and kill people that way.
2. damage: the destructive power comes because the storm is very very large (1000 miles (1600km) across in this case) and slow moving. The storm stays in a particular area for days at a time, dropping absurd amounts of rain with high sustained winds. the large quantities of rain greatly loosen the soil causing trees to blow over in the high winds. Due to the significantly higher density of people and buildings on the east coast as compared to other areas of the world this means every time a tree falls it is almost certain to break something (usually power lines). Since the storm is over such a large area, a massive number of trees fall causing major damage over a very large area. There just aren’t enough power plant workers to fix all those damaged lines. The second form of damage is in the form of flooding. Since rain can exceed 10" of rain in a 24 hour period flash flooding is a major source of damage in hurricanes. Again it is usually not deadly because the floods only reach 5-10 ft deep and people just go to the second floor of their house to await rescue, but everything over huge areas gets flooded 5-10 ft deep causing billions upon billions of dollars in property damage due to the large area.
3. Snow potential: in rural areas if a large storm drops 24" of snow it really isn’t a big deal. Plows come out, shovels come out and you just push the snow away. in places like NYC you get major headlines for anything above 6" of snow. For Rural areas this seems really dumb, but that is because you have somewhere to put your snow. In NYC the layout goes House-Sidewalk-Car-Street-Car-Sidewalk-House. millions of people use the street and the sidewalk every day, they both need to be cleared. However in a rural area where the plow just shoves the snow into the lawn or ditch nearby, in the city there is no lawn or ditch, doing that would literally trap people in their homes. Below 6" of snow you rely on continual salting of the roads to melt the problem away. Above that though it doesn’t melt fast enough and there is nothing to be done with the snow. They put it into dump trucks, bring it to the harbor and start dumping it into the ocean… this takes about a week before you can clear all the streets. So no the city people aren’t being sissies, it is an entirely different problem that people in rural areas don’t have to deal with.
In summary, it is not crazy for people to worry about a video game when they are going to get hit with a hurricane because there is nothing those people can do that they haven’t already done over the last few days. At this point they are just sitting and waiting for the power to go out which is inevitably will.
