Lack of natural disasters in Europe.

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Apart of Pompeii, natural disasters seem to be almost unheard of in the old continent’s relatively new history; especially massively destructive disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. It seems to be the safest zone on earth when it comes to natural disasters; surely there’s the occasional harsh winter and perhaps avalanches in some areas but that’s it. I would take a harsh winter over earthquakes anytime. Compare this to Asia the Pacific islands and the two Americas, good lord.

Old buildings of old towns like Prague or Paris or even London are hardly quake resistant; they would probably collapse completely; but yet they still stand.

Don’t you think this was a HUGE contributing for the advancements of European civilizations over the rest of the world (Modern US/Canada/Australia don’t count now, all these are offshoots of european civilizations)?

Think about it, earthquakes and volcanoes wiped out entire civilizations in the past like the Mayans and Troy (which is in Turkey) - surely such cyclic destruction disrupt civilizations. Surely Japan is considered very advanced now, but it wasn’t before the contact with the Europeans.

Europe is very lucky (except maybe Italy and Greece).

There was also the big earthquake that more or less destroyed Lisbon, Portugal, in the 18th century (estimated at 7.7, though it obviously occurred before modern measurements).

That said, the continent as a whole does seem milder which I imagine did contribute.

Japan was pretty developed for much of its history, at least on par with other polities of the time. The reason it fell behind was because the Tokugawa Shogunate elected to almost totally block out the rest of the world. It was a policy decision, not related to natural disasters (at least, not in any significant way).

The Mayans actually rose and fell several times. One thing that confuses people is the term "Mayan Empire". There was never a unified empire that incorporated all or most Mayan peoples. It was always divided into city-states. There was the Classic Maya collapse of the 9th century (no one's exactly sure what happened), but new city-states still arose in the centuries after. Had the Spanish not arrived, I am quite sure the Mayans would have eventually bounced back (and after that, collapse, then return, then collapse again, and so forth and so forth).

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.

It's probably cos we're f*****g awesome.

Well, jokes aside, I presume it allowed us to concentrate on science more.

But Europe is well known for having had bad diseases like Spanish flu,the plague, mumps, and polio.

It's also worth noting that China was on par with, or more developed than, Europe for much of its history, but gets hit with a lot of natural disasters. My guess is that the size and wealth of China may have blunted the impact of a lot of natural disaster. Though one or two cities might be lost, there are still many others. The various dynasties could also be quite wealthy, so they could rebuild the damage (though every dynasty also declined, and as it did, found itself unable to manage disasters as well).

China also fell behind but, as was the case with Japan, this was due more to policies than natural disasters.

The black pest was probably the worst natural disaster there, but it originally came from China too.

I never studied history properly but just looked it up and it seems China and India were hit hard by the plague. I'd only heard of its effects on Europe really.

There wasn't a Wuhan Lab back then.

The problem, particularly in Turkey, was sub-standard buildings, so they are saying in the news.
They are going after contractors.

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.

Last edited by Dengashinobi on 13 Feb 2023, 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

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

Yes. All of the major civilizations of Eurasia, orient, and occident, were hard hit.

It started as as a flea born bacteria disease among marmots on the Russian Steppe (prairie woodchucks) of central Asia that didnt effect humans often. But then the Mongols conquered their empire...which resulted in secure trade routes across central Asia...which resulted in rats catching the disease from the marmots ... which resulted in the human traveling marchants and armies catching it from rats...resulting in the worst plague in human history spreading the whole length of Eurasia...resulting in 75 million deaths ( a third being in Europe).

+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"?

Yes, devastating warfare in recent years has destroyed more cultural heritage in middle east than centuries of earthquakes combined.

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

They’re animals, no?