After Hurricane Ian, a low-lying Florida city starts to rebuild. Should it?
HURRICANE IRENE
Southeast Florida, November 2018
Hurricane Irma, the most- powerful hurricane to hit the United States in a century, makes landfall in Florida with sustained winds of 185 miles per hour. By the time it had passed by Bonaire and Barbados, it was considered to have caused $50 billion in damage. (See accompanying story: Hurricane Irma and Bonaire aftermath).
On October 4, 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall in the Carolinas with sustained wind speeds of 125 miles per hour. Florence brought death and devastation in three states. Some residents have never recovered from the hurricane.
What caused this damage? Why were the storms so destructive?
If the hurricanes that hit Florida during the “prepper” movement of the late 1970s (see “Is the 1970s Prepper Movement Over-hyped?,” The Survivalist, vol. 1, no. 1, November 1977) are any indicator, it is not a matter of a “bad economy.” It is that these storms are more dangerous and destructive than the hurricanes in the 1950s and early 1960s. These storms, after all, were smaller and more localized.
This is not to say that the economy of the 1970s prepper movement has been a failure. On the contrary, it is a success. The movement has been a tremendous and positive force on our thinking, and it has made us see that while we do have the resources for a “prepper,” we do not have to “be preppers.” There are many solutions that would not require one to take on that role.
The problem, however, comes in the fact that there are too few people taking advantage of the resource opportunities that the movement has offered. The movement has not reached everyone.
The “prepper” movement is a myth
While