The author also has a long history of working at many places that aren't defense contractors, and a great book on working with large legacy systems (read: Cobol, mainframes, et al but relevant to all developers) https://www.amazon.ca/Kill-Fire-Manage-Computer-Systems/dp/1...
Seismically active regions (e.g. California) absolutely have more earthquake experts than other places... I am not sure why that metaphor is singled out when the rest of the article is pretty clear its about finding the difference between a burning building and a building-set-on-fire.
Firefighters don't just read about fires, they practice with actual flames, too.
Firefighters don't just read about fires, they practice with actual flames, too.