Lack of natural disasters in Europe.

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magz
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13 Feb 2023, 5:21 am

Pepe wrote:

magz wrote:

Pepe wrote:

Would ISIS be classified as a "Natural Disaster"?

+1

South Europe has earthquakes and volcanos but the greatest, repeated damage here is done by human hostilities.

Would the destruction of Germany by allied bombers be a "Natural disaster"? :scratch:

Just like turning Warsaw into a heap of rubble by Germans. And many other examples.
Aleppo wasn't hit by an earthquake, despite being in a tectonic area.

Devastating warfare is doing more damage than natural disasters in Europe and Middle East.

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naturalplastic
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13 Feb 2023, 5:35 am

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

Pepe wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

It's a nice assumption but I don't really think that earthquakes and volcanos where that influential in civilisation building. The reason is that they happen too rarely, especially volcanos. Even the exceptionaly large Minoan eruption did not bring the collapse of the Minoan civilisation.

About the fact that Europe has largely preserved it's historical architecture, thlats more a matter of lack of devastating warfare and a preservation of historical social, economical and political structures. Earthquake ridden Italy is full of perfectly intact medieval settlements. Also there are well preserved Greek and Roman architectural structures that have withstood the milenia of earthquakes.

Would ISIS be classified as a "Natural Disaster"?
They were cultural vandals and destroy a great deal in their rampage.

They’re animals, no?

Syria had already been laid waste by the civil war even before ISIS became a major player. And that includes Syria's architectural heritage. Both the world's oldest Christian church, AND the world's oldest mosque had been destroyed in the first few weeks of the war as accidental collateral damage in the fighting between factions that did not even include ISIS. But destruction of architecture was part of ISIS's ideology - so they added to the destruction- though the impression I get is that was done in cold blood (as part of their ideology) not as a "rampage" done in hot blood. Killing people is easy to do in hot blood. Knocking down statues with sledgehammers takes weeks of hard work. It takes continual inspiration from scripture to keep at it.

Dengashinobi
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13 Feb 2023, 6:12 am

naturalplastic wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

It's a nice assumption but I don't really think that earthquakes and volcanos where that influential in civilisation building. The reason is that they happen too rarely, especially volcanos. Even the exceptionaly large Minoan eruption did not bring the collapse of the Minoan civilisation.

About the fact that Europe has largely preserved it's historical architecture, thats more a matter of lack of devastating warfare and the preservation of historical social, economical and political structures. Earthquake ridden Italy is full of perfectly intact medieval settlements. Also there are well preserved Greek and Roman architectural structures that have withstood the milenia of earthquakes.

Europe has never had a "lack of devastating warfare".

Comparatively to other areas yes. The whole middle ages were relatively peaceful. Also later in the modern era damage to settlements during war was largely restricted. The only one exception of severe damage to historical architecture was during WWII. But even then culturally important areas were spared if possible. Notable is the German bombing of Norwich, York and Canterbury as a retaliation for the British bombing of Lubeck, a site of historical significance that the Germans expected to be spared. That shows the mentality Europeans had regarding cultural heritage during the war. Notable are also the German precautions to save cultural heritage in Italy.

In comparison a relatively minor civil war in Syria and Iraq decimated the cultural heritage there. Same thing in Yemen, Afghanistan and everywhere else you hear about a conflict in the middle East.

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13 Feb 2023, 6:21 am

I wonder if the predominance of Europe was due to access to the sea and favourable trade winds. If you lived right in the middle of a large continent you have to go by foot… or by horse… or by camel.

Also, Europe has a well-defined written history. There were huge civilisations all over the world, but if it’s not written down we know less about it.

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magz
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13 Feb 2023, 6:25 am

Dengashinobi wrote:

Uhm... I think your historical knowledge of war damage in Europe is lacking.
I believe some more study on medieval and early modern Europe would do you a favor. And some reminding that before WWII, there was WWI, and before this, a whole 19th century, dense with unrest from Napoleon to French-Prussian war.
Also, come, visit Warsaw, and learn about everything that happened here since the 1600s.

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Dengashinobi
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13 Feb 2023, 6:39 am

magz wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

Uhm... I think your historical knowledge of war damage in Europe is lacking.
Come, visit Warsaw, and learn about everything that happened here since the 1600s.

I'm talking in a more broad sense. There are of course instances of destruction in Europe like the burning of Magdenburg during the 30 years war that comes to mind. But relatively, such destruction was spread thin throughout history. I know it's counterintuitive to say that Europe lacked frequency of devastating warfare but the mind boggling amount of architectural heritage surviving kind of prooves that.

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13 Feb 2023, 6:42 am

Dengashinobi wrote:

magz wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

Uhm... I think your historical knowledge of war damage in Europe is lacking.
Come, visit Warsaw, and learn about everything that happened here since the 1600s.

Where it survived, it survived. Elsewhere, it did not or it was rebuilt. The whole Old Town here is a 20th century reconstruction. Plenty of European architectural heritage have been rebuilt from ruins at some point.
I don't know where you post from but you seem to confuse the whole Europe with Britain here. There, you really have some original buildings from e.g. 8th century still standing.

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Dengashinobi
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13 Feb 2023, 7:00 am

magz wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

magz wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

Uhm... I think your historical knowledge of war damage in Europe is lacking.
Come, visit Warsaw, and learn about everything that happened here since the 1600s.

I'm talking about western Europe more specifically, yes.

magz
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13 Feb 2023, 7:10 am

A thin strip along the coast of Atlantic exported their wars since the medieval times.
Even this is extremely simplified, like the wars between England and France weren't mild at all.

In general, it's plutocracy. Some Italian city-states like Genoa and Venice did the same. And vikings. Get rich on ploundering and trade, then pay soldiers to fight your wars elsewhere. Who was wealthy enough to do it for longer, won and survived unattacked. Today's tactics of USA.

The rest of Europe was a battleground.

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The_Face_of_Boo
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13 Feb 2023, 8:31 am

naturalplastic wrote:

Dengashinobi wrote:

It's a nice assumption but I don't really think that earthquakes and volcanos where that influential in civilisation building. The reason is that they happen too rarely, especially volcanos. Even the exceptionaly large Minoan eruption did not bring the collapse of the Minoan civilisation.

About the fact that Europe has largely preserved it's historical architecture, thats more a matter of lack of devastating warfare and the preservation of historical social, economical and political structures. Earthquake ridden Italy is full of perfectly intact medieval settlements. Also there are well preserved Greek and Roman architectural structures that have withstood the milenia of earthquakes.

Europe has never had a "lack of devastating warfare".

Surely western europe had its share of wars, in particular Rome conquests, Napoleon wars and WW; but the rest of the world wasn’t exempt of these conflicts either. Anyway, war is not really a natural disaster.

Enjoy!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2iVXPqnoC_A

magz
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13 Feb 2023, 8:43 am

Indeed, wars are man-made disasters.
South Europe is just as tectonic as Middle East.
Here, in the Central European plains, the main natural disasters that happen are floods. The most recent one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods
Obviously pale compared to the recent earthquake and a lot of losses could have been prevented with more realistic land use policies - just like a lot of damage in Turkey could have been prevented if anti-seismic construction rules were actually followed.

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13 Feb 2023, 12:03 pm

The New Madrid fault is in the corner of my state.It would effect St.Louis and Memphis if it goes off.
Last time it happened the area was sparsely inhabited.The Mississippi River ran backwards and areas of land sunk.
The newer buildings are up to code but there are lots of old structures made of brick that would come down.
Tornados and ice storms cause the most trouble here.

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Tim_Tex
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13 Feb 2023, 12:10 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

The Mayans "collapsed" due to soil exhaustion. Not to some earthquake.

Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, get volcanoes and devastating earthquakes.

North of the Pyrenees, and north of the Alps, you're out of the Mediterranean zone of tectonic activity. So yes- central to northern europe is lucky in that way. Europe's climate is not as prone to droughts as China so they dont get as many famines as China and Korea.

Though Ireland became overly dependent upon one strain of potatoes - and in the 1840s a particular strain of fungus destroyed the crop and caused a million to die of starvation, and three million to emigrate (to Liverpool, to Canada, the US, and Australia).

Europe doesnt get hurricanes or typhoons.

AND...have you ever heard of a tornado that was NOT in the USA?

Back in the Eighties a typhoon hit Bangladesh, and as it moved inland it morphed into a hundred tornadoes that continued to spread death and destruction inland. But thats the only time Ive heard of tornadoes outside of the US...except once in an old black and white movie about the guy who built the Suez Canal. It showed a tornado tearing up his digging equipment in the Egyptian desert. But I think that was just Hollywood BS, and not real history.

Europe has had tropical storms hit the mainland, though rarely.

The Azores is hit more frequently, though.

The Bangladesh tornado you mentioned, I believe it was 1989, was the deadliest tornado ever.

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kraftiekortie
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13 Feb 2023, 12:17 pm

Europe gets relatively few “natural” disasters, especially towards the west…..but there have been many man-made disasters.

Really, to those devastated, it doesn’t matter the origin of the devastation—only that the devastation occurred.

A famine in Ukraine is perhaps more “devastating” than an earthquake in Turkey….but that doesn’t matter to whoever was severely affected by these disasters.

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13 Feb 2023, 12:21 pm

One could make an argument, perhaps a loose one, that wars are natural disasters. Humans are biological creatures that emerged from the process of evolution. We have a natural tendency towards tribalism and violent behavior.

It's completely natural for humans to kill each other and that's a disaster!

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20 Feb 2023, 4:53 pm

How the f**k any civilization can strive in this s**t?

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