Found 2353 Natural Disasters Products.
Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe, he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness.Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us.The Next Catastrophe is a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready? In a new preface to the paperback edition, Perrow examines the recent (and ongoing) catastrophes of the financial crisis, the BP oil spill, and global warming.
Price : $19.15
$19.15
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Fighting fires since 1965, veteran smokejumper Murry Taylor finally retired from his legendary career after last summer-the worst fire season in more than fifty years. After three decades of parachuting out of planes and battling blazes in the vast, rugged wilderness of Alaska and the West, Taylor recounts in Jumping Fire, with passion and honesty, stories of man versus nature at its most furious and unforgiving. He shares what it's like to hear the deafening roar, to smell the acrid burn, to feel the intense heat, to breathe the thick fumes, and to finally run for your life with exploding flames two hundred feet high and a mile wide licking at your heels.Written with a keen eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, "Jumping Fire is a tale of love and loss, life and death, and sheer hard work, set in an unforgiving and unforgettable landscape, that's second only to Norman Maclean's classic Young Men and Fire" (Publishers Weekly).
Price : $9.87
$9.87
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The true story of how five monks saved the oldest Zen Buddhist monastery in the United States from wildfire. When a massive wildfire surrounded Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, five monks risked their lives to save it. A gripping narrative as well as a portrait of the Zen path and the ways of wildfire, Fire Monks reveals what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind. Zen master and author of the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi established a monastery at Tassajara Hot Springs in 1967, drawn to the location's beauty, peace, and seclusion. Deep in the wilderness east of Big Sur, the center is connected to the outside world by a single unpaved road. The remoteness that makes it an oasis also makes it particularly vulnerable when disaster strikes. If fire entered the canyon, there would be no escape. More than two thousand wildfires, all started by a single lightning storm, blazed across the state of California in June 2008. With resources stretched thin, firefighters advised residents at Tassajara to evacuate early. Most did. A small crew stayed behind, preparing to protect the monastery when the fire arrived. But nothing could have prepared them for what came next. A treacherous shift in weather conditions prompted a final order to evacuate everyone, including all firefighters. As they caravanned up the road, five senior monks made the risky decision to turn back. Relying on their Zen training, they were able to remain in the moment and do the seemingly impossible-to greet the fire not as an enemy to defeat, but as a friend to guide. Fire Monks pivots on the kind of moment some seek and some run from, when life and death hang in simultaneous view. Novices in fire but experts in readiness, the Tassajara monks summoned both intuition and wisdom to face crisis with startling clarity. The result is a profound lesson in the art of living.
Price : $10.38
$10.38
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In the midst of the Blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals in Salem Sound off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard heard the Mayday calls and immediately dispatched a patrol boat. Within an hour, the Coast Guard boat was in as much trouble as the tanker, having lost its radar, depth finder, and engine power in horrendous seas. Pilot boat Captain Frank Quirk was monitoring the Coast Guard's efforts by radio, and when he heard that the patrol boat was in jeopardy, he decided to act. Gathering his crew of four, he readied his forty-nine-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard.Using dozens of interview and audiotapes that recorded every word exchanged between Quirk and the Coast Guard, Tougias has written a devastating, true account of bravery and death at sea.
Price : $10.87
$10.87
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Prairie fires have always been a spectacular and dangerous part of the Great Plains. Nineteenth-century settlers sometimes lost their lives to uncontrolled blazes, and today ranchers such as those in the Flint Hills of Kansas manage the grasslands through controlled burning. Even small fires, overlooked by history, changed lives--destroyed someone's property, threatened someone's safety, or simply made someone's breath catch because of their astounding beauty. Julie Courtwright, who was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie of Butler County, Kansas, knows prairie fires well. In this first comprehensive environmental history of her subject, Courtwright vividly recounts how fire--setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it--has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries. She traces the history of both natural and intentional fires from Native American practices to the current use of controlled burns as an effective land management tool, along the way sharing the personal accounts of people whose lives have been touched by fire. The book ranges from Texas to the Dakotas and from the 1500s to modern times. It tells how Native Americans learned how to replicate the effects of natural lightning fires, thus maintaining the prairie ecosystem. Native peoples fired the prairie to aid in the hunt, and also as a weapon in war. White settlers learned from them that burns renewed the grasslands for grazing; but as more towns developed, settlers began to suppress fires--now viewed as a threat to their property and safety. Fire suppression had as dramatic an environmental impact as fire application. Suppression allowed the growth of water-wasting trees and caused a thick growth of old grass to build up over time, creating a dangerous environment for accidental fires. Courtwright calls on a wide range of sources: diary entries and oral histories from survivors, colorful newspaper accounts, military weather records, and artifacts of popular culture from Gene Autry stories to country song lyrics to Little House on the Prairie. Through this multiplicity of voices, she shows us how prairie fires have always been a significant part of the Great Plains experience--and how each fire that burned across the prairies over hundreds of years is part of someone's life story. By unfolding these personal narratives while looking at the bigger environmental picture, Courtwright blends poetic prose with careful scholarship to fashion a thoughtful paean to prairie fire. It will enlighten environmental and Western historians and renew a sense of wonder in the people of the Plains.
Price : $29.95
$29.95
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Right now, somewhere in America, a storm has knocked out the electricity. With Apocalypse Chow! Jon Robertson delivers a very practical guide to eating with elegance even when the refrigerator, stove, and microwave are rendered powerless. With simple tips on how to shop, store, and prepare gourmet food, this book will help anyone who is forced to dine in the dark. Discover how the right nonperishables and a little creative heat can turn into renowned chef Robin Robertson's savory Almost-Instant Black Bean Chili, Pantry Pasta Salad, and Fire-Roasted Blueberry Cobbler, among many others.Apocalypse Chow! is a valuable resource for anyone who feels (or maybe really is) powerless in the kitchen but still in search of culinary delight.
Price : $5.18
$5.18
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On an ordinary spring day in 1925, folks in the Midwest were going about business usual: attending school, preparing the fields, mining coal, and attending their stores. Little did they know that between 1 and 4:30 p.m. on March 18, their lives would be changed forever in an event that defined the weather in the central U.S. From the hills of the southeastern Ozarks to the plains of the Hoosier heartland and across the developing communities of southern Illinois, the Tri-State Tornado destroyed cities, devoured whole farms, and set the record for the most deaths, injuries, and monetary damage, a record which remains standing to this day.This is the story as told directly by nearly four dozen survivors and eyewitnesses, in the most comprehensive account of the Tri-State Tornado ever to be compiled. Many of the survivors were only children when that killer storm swept down from the sky and carved a path through the lives of thousands of individuals linked by this singular event.More than simply an account of the events of March 18, 1925, this is the story of the resolve and the spirit of the American people, who, with little in the way of organized relief, emerged from this great disaster and pulled together for themselves, their families, their neighbors and complete strangers-many of whom were left with nothing, not even the clothes on their backs-and who left an example of endurance in the face of hardship, and an inspiration for all in the decades to come.
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An exciting suspense novel about energy and healing. When Timespace tears, who takes the 911 call? Cindy, a lifetime ahead of "String Theory", has always seen Light Threads - everywhere. But that's a universe apart from watching Earth unravel in front of her. Can she fix the fabric of time?
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Tipping Point The Coming Global Weather Crisis is an indepth examination of weather conditions over the last 400,000 years, examining volcanic eruptions and the effects of both Carbon Dioxide and Methane gas on the environment and on the history of mankind.Only from the past can we forecast what the future may bring and four times in the last 400,000 years as soon as it has reached maximum temperature an Ice Age has rapidly started. The melting of the Arctic Ice Pack is the tipping point that throws us into another ice age. So What happens after the Arctic Ice pack melts? Does it just keep getting so hot that the earth melts down? I don't think so. We are very near the end of the current warm period that has lasted 16,000 years, the end is long overdue and only lasted this long because man learned to use fire and the resulting smog cooled the atmosphere slightly - prolonging the current warm period.In the depths of the last Ice Age, over 8 million square miles of ice covered the continents. This changed the very geography of the Earth and many shallow seas now covered by ocean were above sea level. The then mostly dry Aegean Sea in the Eastern Mediterranean was likely habitable and a Garden of Eden for over 80,000 years - giving man a safe haven from both beasts and massive volcanic eruptions. I theorize on the meteorological and oceanographic conditions that allowed glaciers to form and last for 100,000 years, plus what effect miles of ice had on continents, oceans and man. What is was like for men and animals living next to a glacier and how did we survive eruptions that destroyed the Earths Ozone layer? Abrupt weather changes have occurred in the past, when conditions existed almost exactly like they are today. Data from Ice cores taken from glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have shown us that transition into the next Ice Age comes very rapidly after the warm peak is reached. Granted this is rapid on a geologic timeframe. But it is also true that one day in Canada and Eurasia, the winter will bring a solid freeze and this ice will not melt for 36 million days (approximately 100,000 years).
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An investigation of the connection between ancient world catastrophe myths and modern scientific evidence of a galactic destruction cycle • Provides scientific evidence of past Earth-wide catastrophes and their galactic superwave origins • Decodes the ancient message encrypted in the zodiac constellations and symbolism of the Sphinx • Describes how explosions of our Galaxy’s core pose a threat to humanity in the future Many ancient myths from around the world tell of catastrophic destruction by fire and flood. These ubiquitous legends are so extreme that they are often dismissed as imaginative exaggerations. In Earth Under Fire, Paul LaViolette connects these "myths" to recent scientific findings in astronomy, geology, and archaeology to reconstruct the details of prehistoric global disasters and to explain how similar tragedies could recur in the near future. Compelled by his decryption of an ancient warning hidden in zodiac constellation lore, LaViolette worked with information from many scientific sources, including astronomical observations, polar ice core measurements, and other geological data, to confirm that our Galaxy’s core exploded near the end of the last ice age. This explosion unleashed a barrage of cosmic rays and enveloped the solar system in a dense nebula, which led to periods of persistent darkness, frigid cold, severe solar storms, searing heat, and mountainous floods that plagued mankind for many generations. Linking his scientific findings to details preserved in the myths and monuments of ancient civilizations, he demonstrates how past civilizations accurately recorded the causes of these cataclysmic events, knowledge of which may be crucial for the human race to survive the next catastrophic superwave cycle. This information reveals the intelligence and ingenuity of our ancestors who, when faced with extinction, found the means to warn us that the apocalypse that destroyed them could occur once again.
Price : $24.91
$24.91
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