Let's admit it. We Love Disasters.

We Love Disasters.

How could I say, er write, such a thing? It's utterly horrible, terrible, and absolutely inhuman! There is absolutely no way it's true. But think again. Think about it before you click the arrow to get out of this blog. I bet you one-hundred-ish percent that you can relate to this. You can because,


you have felt that excitement before a storm

you have video-taped a storm

you're a storm chaser

you love thunderstorms

lightning excites you

you watch "disaster vids" or "disaster movies" (like "2012") because they fascinate you

when you look at this pic

or this one

or this one

you think WOW, golly, goodness grief! Look at that, look at that, look at THAT!


But then, sometimes, I think about the reality. Somewhere, someone got hurt or many people got hurt. The river is swollen! WOW! but then...someone may have drowned!

Yet, we are still so fascinated by disasters. The force of natural nature doing its natural nature things.

The number of disaster movies is so huge there is a movie genre called "disaster movies".

Remember this one?

The question is why. Why do these things fascinate us? Even though we don't see dead people, it IS kind of morbid when you think about it. It is still associated with someone else's potential suffering.

How can that be that we can be fascinated by something such as this?

I did a little bit of research and found that there doesn't seem to be too much out in the world of the Internet that actually gives us a believable and solid answer. Some were like "meh :/" but I did find this quote:

"Reading about another’s misery, being engrossed in a big-screen hard-luck story – how can you not emerge feeling a sense of relief about your own lot?" (Psychologies, Aug 9, 2011).

So the idea this person has, whoever he/she is it doesn't really say (so secretive!), is that we watch disaster movies because we unconsciously (I hope) feel relieved it's not about us and our world is safe and sound.

Here is that linky link to that article with the invisible author: LINKY LINK


But that's just about movies. What about in real life? What about all those documentaries about wars that happened a long time ago or about natural disasters that shook a whole country (like Japan, though Idk if a movie was made or not) or terrible terrible disasters people have encountered or YOU have encountered?

This link goes to an article in the Harvard Business Review. You can't get any better than that.

This link here.

But there's a problem. It doesn't answer my question. It only says that the reason we are interested in stories of disasters is because we sort of idolize the "heroes" or those people who were saved and wonder what we would do if we were in that situation but heck, we don't have to worry because it'll NEVER happen.

But as Mrs. Frizzle says,

I spent about 30min or more looking for this scene in the vid
when I realized it would've been faster if I didn't skip the beginning
because of course it was in the beginning that I skipped.
Arnold has swallowed the gum that Wanda wanted him to chew for a world record
so that they could both get free tickets to some intestine-themed ride.
He tells her he is sorry and says, "I told you record breaking makes me nervous,
I told you I never wanted anything!" And Mrs. Frizzle says,
"Never say never, Arnold," and winks to the Liz who winks back.
I chose that funky font called "Boyz R Gross NF" because it's Mrs. Frizzle, duh!

And that, was the world's longest caption on a picture. Just kidding :P But I wish it could be.

So then, if it's not "never" going to happen and we could one day be those people almost drowning in that flood, why do disasters still interest us? Why the morbidity, guys?

Since the Internet is too selfish to talk about its views on that matter, I guess I'll have to give my own speculations. These are just speculations meaning that none of them are right or wrong, or true or false. These are just ideas. Just ideas so don't jump on me if they seem pretty extreme.


The Three Little Speculations (The Three Little Pigs reference)

1. We are, in actuality, extremely selfish and stupid people who only see we are safe RIGHT NOW and believe that it will continue that way.

This idea is has two things in it. First, we are selfish in that we only care about ourselves no matter how nice we are to other people, deep down in the abyss of our hearts, we only care about ourselves.

Second, we only care about ourselves in our current situation where we are safe or relatively okay. This means that we are too stupid to see that terrible disasterous things might happen to us. We can say, "Oh yeah it might one day," but we don't really believe it. We're just saying it because it's only moral to say so.

But really, taking a look at our current safe situation, we only see that we are safe and we believe that this safeness will continue to be and can't sincerely imagine that any of the disasters of other people will happen to us. Simply put, because we think this safeness and comfort and okayness will continue to be, we can't sincerely imagine that any of the floods happening to people we don't know will ever happen to us.

Okay, that wasn't simply put but you get the idea, right? Basically, we are selfish and stupid.

If you're smart, you'll get it. If you're stupid, you'll probably
just laugh and pretend you got it. If you're a genius, you'll
probably think about the infinity impossibility of the universe.
If you already knew this quote, you'll go, "AH! That quote."

2. Extreme things are just so fascinating especially if it isn't happening to us. This applies to natural disasters and just other extreme things happening to other people.

Even if it MIGHT happen to us, we are always intrigued by the extreme. Extreme obesity, extremely thin, extreme floods, extreme hoarders, extreme thunderstorms, extreme parenting, extreme poverty, etc. These are not good things AT ALL and we acknowledge that. We also acknowledge that these things are real and some may even be happening in our neighborhood. Some may even have happened to us.

But because it happened to us and isn't happening to us, we feel detached from it and we can look at it with fascination BECAUSE it is extreme.

Perhaps it's a sort of thrill. Like how some of you might enjoy roller coasters or rides that swing you upside down in the air from your waist.





3. Related to No. 2, because it is extreme it seems so unreal that it is fascinating especially in the case of natural disasters.

Like fantasy. In a sense disaster movies are fantasy even if they COULD happen. If that's the case, anything really COULD happen even an alien invasion. But that's going off topic.

If the lightning never hits us, if we all survived the flood and it has been years and years, if we are not the ones living in poverty, if it was us a long time ago or if it's not us ever, we can look at it as sort of a real world fantasy.

That's it. A real world fantasy. It is a fantasy to us because it is extreme. And because it is fantasy to us it feels unreal but then, it IS real because somewhere it is REALLY ACTUALLY happening.

This isn't an extreme example but in some countries where they have underdeveloped technology, the idea of escalators ("moving stairs") is unreal. It's a fantasy. When people who have never seen an escalator ride it for the first time, they are scared, fascinated, surprised, and it's thrilling to them.

So the idea here is this: something like a flood is extreme. But floods happen in the real world and we see pictures of it. We might even see a river in our own area flooding over. This fascinates us. It is like a fantasy scene in real life. To see this extreme phenomena in real life is fascinating. It is a real fantasy! WOW!




Okay, my brain is fried. That's all the speculations I can give for now. If you have any ideas, let me know! I always want to know what you guys think :) Even extreme opinions...because they fascinate me :P

See ya later, alligators! :D