Natural Disaster

Posted on 15 January 2010

It only seems right and fitting for me to talk about natural disasters right now, all things considered.  I’ll try to not be as harsh in my treatment of the subject matter as a certain televangelist as well, although I don’t think that is hard.  Especially since I won’t be talking about anything in particular, as I am wont to do.

So, two parts, meta-writing, then some personal musing.  The natural disaster by itself is one of the great “villains” that isn’t really evil.  An entire sci-fi story can be told about the trials and pains of surviving a disaster, either immediately or even from that past that has just had lingering effects.  One does not even really need a sentient villain, although adding one in for spice never hurt.  Just be sure the villain has a reason for being, you know, villainous.  Depending on the disaster, this might be harder than it sounds.

I have noticed that writing about these kinds of things is becoming far more popular.  I don’t know if it’s the growing presence of climate change in the global discourse (holy crap, I got to use that phrase non-ironically!) or just a “vampire” phenomenon, but I’m not the only one to notice this.  Anthologist John Joseph Adams said in his collection of post-apocalyptic stories Wastelands that there seems to be a reemerging fascination with the end of the world.  In olden days, the Cold War was on everyone’s mind, and the prospect of nuclear holocaust.  The stories Mr. Adams selected for his anthology were actually quite different, from bio-terrorism to climate-change disasters, it showed plenty enough in the way of how a disaster can be responded to on both sides, the observing and the experiencing.

Which gets to my personal side.  See, I have observed a goodly number of disasters.  I am natively from the Midwest, where tornados are taken in an easier stride than Florida does hurricanes, but oddly enough, I have never been directly in one.  I’ve had some near misses, but never even a hit on my community.

Likewise, since moving to the east coast, I only have experienced one hurricane and one tropical storm, neither of which did much of anything to the area around me.  Honestly, my town spazzed out more over the threat of snow flurries than they did for either of those summer-storms.  So I have a very uninformed outlook on natural disasters.  Yeah, I can look at the pictures of flooded streets and crumbled buildings, of despairing citizens and brave rescue workers, but I am still just that, an observer.  Our society, while in the most recent incident seems to be doing well, tends to commercialize and go for rating and entertainment in even the most dire of situations.  And by entertainment, I do mean that “can’t look away from the train wreck” mentality we all have.  There are those admirable souls that would run up and pull the conductor out, but honestly, I think that most of us would just stand there and stare like deer in headlights.  Myself, I don’t know.  I’d like to think that I would not be a victim (mentality wise, not fact-of-life wise), but, as the song says “I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested.  I’d like to think that if I was I would pass.”

So, I hope the best of those who are caught in natural disaster.  I hope they are having the most uneventful, non-story worthy time of getting out of it they can, because stories are fun to read, not to live.  I know that probably isn’t the case, but when one is a starving artist, there is only so much one can do.  If you aren’t, though, please, give what you can to help.  Keep the stories in the fiction section as much as we can.