Which Natural Disaster is the Worst?

Living in southern California, we have the opportunity to experience earthquakes on a somewhat regular basis. We usually notice one every couple of months. Last week, however, we felt the biggest one yet since we've moved here. It was a 5.4 in Chino Hills which is about 30 miles away. The rumbling lasted about 5 seconds, after which I checked on Jordan who was sound asleep in his crib. I had my hands on his doorway and noticed that I could still feel my whole house gently rocking back and forth like a boat. This lasted for about a minute. Since we rent our home and don't really have any expensive possessions, I can honestly say it was a pretty cool experience.



This reminded me of a conversation I had with a faculty member at school a few weeks ago. She had mentioned not wanting to live on the east coast because of tornadoes. This struck me as odd for two reasons. First, I didn't think the east coast had tornadoes, and second, earthquakes seem much more intimidating to me, and we're right in the heart of earthquake country. This made me realize that we don't all view natural disasters the same. Since childhood, my wife has had nightmares of tornadoes and would rather take on an earthquake than a tornado any day.



So, I set out to do some research on which disasters are the deadliest and therefore warrant the most fear. This table compares the single deadliest event of each of the natural disasters. For those of you too lazy to click the link, here's the list of deadliest to least deadly:

Pandemic
Drought
Flood
Earthquake
Tropical cyclone
Tsunami
Volcano
Heat wave
Landslide
Blizzard
Wildfire
Limnic Eruption
Tornado
Hailstorm
Avalanche

However, I don't think there necessarily needs to be a correlation between "deadliest" and "scariest". Even though the worst avalanche has killed a mere 96 people, that doesn't detract from the terror an approaching avalanche would instill.

So, I urge you to cast your vote in my little poll to the right - which of the disasters listed do you fear most? You have 1 week to vote.



Update: Polls showed Drought running away with the title of scariest, getting twice as many votes as the 2nd place disaster. There was a 5-way tie for the #2 spot involving Earthquake, Flood, Limnic Eruption, Tornado, and Tsunami.