Natural Disasters

The world seems like one big mess. There are so many different negative things happening. When you step back a take a look at the big picture, the true nature of what is happening becomes evident

A couple of days ago, there was an earthquake in Pakistan that killed over 20,000 people and made more than 2.5 million people homeless. What’s worse is that most of the people affected were already poor to begin with. These figures are expected to rise.

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was something that many of us have never seen before. Almost an entire city was flooded overnight. The hurricane killed many, but it could have been much worse if mass evacuations didn’t take place before the storm him.

Comparing these two events, an important difference is noticeable. The people of New Orleans were warned ahead of time of the devastation that was heading towards them, but the people in Pakistan received no such warning.

According to my research, it is possible to predict almost precisely when an earthquake would take place. However, as Pakistan is a developing 3rd world nature, it has no warning system to warn people.

The Tsunami in East Asia is by far one of the worst disasters any of us have ever seen. 200,000 people dead, entire cities and villages destroyed, with millions made homeless.

I have learned that the San Francisco bay area of the United States is located in a very bad location in terms of being susceptible to earthquakes. Leading experts in this field have been predicting for years that there will be a very large earthquake sooner or later. Many have agreed with these experts are being taken seriously because the region is facing earthquakes every day; they are just too small to be felt by the average person.

In Guatemala, recent floods have cased massive landslides that have resulted in hills of mud to accumulate. It is believed that literally thousands of people were buried under these tons of mud. People are trying to dig through the mud but to no avail. The people buried inside are simply too far deep for any success. As the country is a developing one, the government is proving hardly any support.

On a more worrying note, the world may just have to face a very serious epidemic. Bird flu has been around for a while and it is spreading rapidly. What’s worrying is that scientists are at a major disadvantage when trying to avoid an epidemic simply because they do not understand the nature of the virus. It is believed that the virus is carried by migrating birds and that a strain of it has mutated and become a human strain.

The major worry is that birds have a habit of migrating around the world. When SARS was about to become an epidemic, it was a little easier to stop its spread as it was humans that were transporting the disease. Birds in Turkey and Romania have been found that carry the virus. So the birds have migrated from East Asia all the way to Eastern Europe. This virus affects all types of poultry: chickens, duck, geese, roasters, etc.

I myself have stopped eating chicken for the time being. My family thinks it’s not necessary as the UAE will not allow the import of affected poultry. But I figure that if the virus is has already made its way to Turkey, it can easily make its way to the Arabian Gulf if it already hasn’t. We in this county are lucky in some sense; birds generally do not naturally migrate here due to the extreme heat that exists.

All of the things mentioned above are occurring naturally. Some have argued that the extreme whether conditions are due to the massive amounts of greenhouse gasses that are emitted from factories and cars everyday.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Mother Nature is proving a point. We are no match for the cataclysmic forces that it possesses. I fear that the world is exploding in on itself. When I try to sum it all up in my head, the only conclusion that I can reach is that all this is the will of the Creator and things will only get worse as has been predicted for so long.