Word: cataclysmic
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...Mystery does not sit well with us, nor random tragedy, nor helplessness in the face of a ruthless wind, so we place our trust in better sensors and protocols and reinforced concrete and roofs designed to rebuff the gale. The cataclysm of Katrina has been blamed on everything from SUV drivers to coastal developers to the Army Corps of Engineers, in a strange rite of reassurance: if man has the power to cause these calamities, maybe he would have the power to prevent them. The speed with which the commentariat moved from covering an actual storm to a political...
This tragedy, however, should make us take an account of ourselves. We should not allow the mythic significance of this moment to pass without proper consideration. Let us assess the size of this cataclysm in cultural terms, not in dollars and cents or politics. Americans are far less successful at doing that because we have never understood how our core beliefs are manifest in culture--and how culture should guide political and economic realities. That's what the city of New Orleans can now teach the nation again as we are all forced by circumstance to literally come closer...
...potential risks to humanity are far greater than they have been historically,” Summers said. “The other thing that could be in those history books is the tragic errors that we could make that could lead to global conflict, to global cataclysm...
From his obscure birth to his shocking death, Abraham Lincoln provided all the ingredients for a myth that grows with each passing generation. A hardworking, self-taught farm boy grows up to become President, leads the nation through a wrenching cataclysm and is killed at the moment of victory...
According to Herd, of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Colombians had begun to take precautions when the cataclysm struck. Authorities had established three separate teams of experts to address the volcanic threat: one to monitor the development of the hazard, another to gather information about the likely outcome of an eruption and a third to formulate an emergency plan. As part of that response, the Colombians had produced the so-called hazard maps that so accurately laid out the path of the looming disaster...