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There are risks almost everywhere. I remember seeing a combined risks map that showed there was really only a small patch in the southwest devoid of all types of regional major disasters. There is no "perfect" place to live, and you live in fear, you'll never live. And if you ignore the coming droughts and famines that maybe nearly global and everyday safety, then you're optimizing based on unreasonable, manufactured FUD from watching too much mainstream media rather than taking an active, data-driven approach. I grew up in San Jose in the early 80's through the late 90's. When I was 12, I went through the Loma Prieta which had aftershocks for 2 days. I turned off the gas to every house on the block as a preventative measure. There was a lot of internal contents damage but the building codes worked out fantastically... there was very little actual damage except to poorly-engineered structures and structures on landfill that experienced liquefaction. The only real changes where anchoring bookcases and furniture to studs and Velcroing monitors to furniture. In 2018, I evacuated with my mom from the Camp Fire. As the property had little fuel and large set-backs because of large, water-hungry lawns, the structure survived. What burned: wood fences, a very large shed, ½ cord of wood, almost all of the landscaping and a large blue recycle wheelie bin caught fire and melted into aggregate concrete in a ring. PG&E and the city have so far removed tens of thousands of trees such that a future mega-fire is highly-unlikely for at least 80 years, and they're doing the PSPSes. The worst case near-term is local brush fires. What may lead my mom to move would be if insurance rate go up any more as her CSAA (AAA) premium has doubled. The PSPSes are annoying because maintaining the fuel and oil on a generator is a pain and Xfinity (Comcast) infrastructure shuts-down after the first day. Elsewhere the weather is horrible. You won't find better weather than the Bay Area outside of San Diego, parts of LA or Hawaii. The biggest cases against living in the Bay Area are the cost of living (unless #vanlife) and the majority of people aren't planning on staying and so treat the area poorly and each other not so neighborly. These are compounded by the messy, inconsistent, unpleasant decline of American influence where there's a mass shooting nearly every day, terrible poverty like a third-world country and the largest military white elephant the world has known so far. |