In a 2012 study in the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies, researchers at Japan's Chiba University found that residents of the Kathmandu Valley who had experienced an earthquake in their lifetimes were more likely than those who hadn't to be concerned about the damage earthquakes cause, as well as to report that they were prepared for future ones. That 80-year interval between Big Ones matters, too. And if you're in a poor country you have far more other priorities to take care of rather than speculating as to whether or not there's going to be an earthquake.' Adding 3 percent to construction costs to earthquake-proof a new home can seem, in the moment, like a laughable luxury. 'After all, they hadn't had a major earthquake for 80 years. 'Literally until three days ago it was extremely difficult to get the Nepalese government really interested in this business of preparedness,' Jon Bennett, who has worked with the British government on earthquake preparedness in Nepal, told the BBC on Monday. 'Fatalism arises when problems are so far outside people's control that they can't do anything about it-or rather, they think they can't do anything about it.' 'Fatalism arises when problems are so far outside people's control that they can't do anything about it-or rather, they think they can't do anything about it.' Geological Survey seismologist who has traveled to Nepal, told The New York Times. Nepal's 'population was not ignorant,' Susan Hough, a U.S. It's not unlike the challenge we all face in confronting climate change: How do you chip away at such a remote and massive threat? These attitudes are reflected in the prophesies of the Nepali Times, which wrestle with thinking about the unthinkable.

But why weren't more buildings constructed not to collapse, and why wasn't there a better plan to mitigate the food and water shortages now threatening survivors? There's a variety of explanations, not least Nepal's dysfunctional political system, which has remained polarized since the country's 10-year civil war ended in 2006, and rapid, slapdash urbanization without corresponding government enforcement of building codes.īut there's another factor, bound up in all the others: Nepali attitudes toward the Earthquake That Was Due. It's not as if Nepalis, in government and out, were doing nothing to prepare for the next earthquake due in part to these efforts, the death toll, as far as is known now, is actually lower than the most dire predictions. This week, the Big One finally came, 81 years after the bigger Big One.

Garn slapdash