March 4, 2013 1:57 pm
This Might Be Why People Don’t Move Away From Tornado Zones
Every year, tornados tear through the center of the United States, often ripping towns up with them. Some years the destruction is incredible. The Joplin Tornado of 2011 destroyed $2.8 billion worth of property. That same year, there were 358 tornadoes between the days of April 25th and April 28th, killing 325 people. So why does anybody live in tornado alley, a place where year after year tornadoes slide through and wreak havoc?
Well, there are a lot of reasons, but one recent study showed that living through a tornado doesn’t change our optimism about our chances of injury compared to other people. In other words, we don’t learn from our mistakes.
The study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, surveyed populations that had been hit by tornadoes and asked them about their perceived risks in the future. The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) explains the results of the study:
Surprisingly to the researchers, people who lived in neighborhoods that had directly been affected by the storm – having experienced damaged windows, roofs, automobiles, etc. – were actually more optimistic for the first 6 months than people living in neighborhoods that had no visible damage from the storm.
Despite having just been impacted by a tornado, these people feel more optimistic about their chances of not being hit than those who’ve never experienced tornado damage. The study’s lead author, Jerry Suls, has some ideas about why that might be, telling SPSP that “we speculate that for a while, they felt ‘lightning wouldn’t strike twice in the same place…A year later, their optimism was comparable to the people in the undamaged neighborhoods.”
If this doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not alone. This is hard to intuitively understand for Suls as well. In fact, the whole impetus for the study came after he had his own close call with a tornado. “I had dinner as a guest in a home that was destroyed by the tornado the next evening,” he told SPSP. “It was hard not to think about future weather disasters while helping with the clean-up in the following weeks.” And yet while Suls thought a lot about the possibility of future disaster, his subjects seemed to be far more optimistic.
It’s unclear still whether this phenomenon is specific to tornado survivors. Perhaps there’s something about the midwestern ethos or the history of tornados in that region that contributes to the kinds of optimism that Suls found. But it’s also not uncommon for people to stay in all sorts of places that seem dangerous or even stupid to live in and this could be one of the reasons why.
More from Smithsonian.com:
Follow the Tornado Chasers Online
Surviving Tornado Alley
These Communities Decided Not To Rebuild After Disaster
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I live in tornado alley. I’ve never seen a tornado. I’ve never experienced damage to my dwelling place by a tornado.
Does the Smithsonian Magazine like to call people stupid? I find this article offensive.
Comment by Matt — March 4, 2013 @ 11:40 pm
Why do people live in tornado zones? Because they are a heck of a lot safer than flood zones and earthquake zones. We know for a fact that there will be a large earthquake in California, sometime in the next century. It will do billions in damage and will probably kill hundreds of people. (The same earthquake would kill thousands if it were not for California’s exceedingly strict building code.) And yet lots of people live in California because they like it there.
A similar situation holds for the Mississippi River valley. Every year, it floods somewhere along its path and destroys homes and kills people. And yet folks still live there.
So don’t make fun of folks who live in tornado alley unless you are prepared to make even more fun of those who live in earthquake and flood-prone areas.
Comment by JohnD — March 5, 2013 @ 8:50 am
Both you (JohnD) and Matt make good points, and I actually wrote about this in one of the articles I linked to in there. Here’s the link: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/08/why-people-wont-leave-the-town-that-has-been-on-fire-for-fifty-years/
Rose
Comment by Rose Eveleth — March 5, 2013 @ 9:22 am
There is a statistical reason folks feel safer after a tornado….how often do you hear of back-to-back tornado strikes to the same neighborhood? While repeated lightning strikes are regularly seen (eg. Empire State Building), repeated tornado damage of the same house has never been reported as far as I can remember. Even if it has happened, what % of houses are struck twice, vs. % which have only be struck once (so far)? This should have been easy to research, so I conclude that Jerry Suls did an incomplete job. The “foolish folks” are not so foolish after all.
Comment by Brooks Martin — March 10, 2013 @ 11:41 pm
Do people still not know how tornadoes work? It’s not like living on a fault line or an unstable cliffside – Tornado Alley is a huge area of land that covers multiple states, and if you’ve ever seen a map of tornado watches/warnings per year, you may as well call half the continental US Tornado Alley. Not exactly something you can just “move away” from.
As others have said, the damage tornadoes are capable of is terrifying, but their formation, power, and paths are so random that *is* very unlikely to be hit again, not to mention their tiny size compared to other storms. There’s no reason to speculate why locals who have experienced damage are more optimistic than new residents: people who have actually experienced living in tornado zones know just how rare they are, and how much rarer it is for one of the hundreds of reported storms a year to build the power of the Joplin storm.
Comment by Sam — March 25, 2013 @ 11:00 am
I don’t agree with this article! I live in Tornado alley and I have lived in Los Angeles and been through 3 earthquakes. I would not want to live in a hurricane zone either. I have a basement tornado shelter and ample warning when they are near.
Comment by LillyB — April 11, 2013 @ 6:30 pm
Why do people live in Tornado alley? I dunno, why do people live on coasts that are prone to being hit by tsunamis? Or California, a state prone to earthquakes?
The answer is because in the few parts of the world without any real major natural disaster there just isn’t enough room for all of the 7 billion something people currently inhabiting this planet.
If the article writer wanted to write about how people don’t learn from there mistakes there must have been better ways to preface the article than with a stupid question insulting the intelligence of a large group of people.
Comment by Rogi — April 18, 2013 @ 3:45 pm
..
No write attribution? I can see why. This “article” is written for people who live on the East Coast.
“Why do the backwards hillbillies live in the mountains, here’s WHY…”
What a condescending, wholly insupportable argument. Here’s one for you, college boys:
“Why do people get post doctorate degrees when they work at a Subway?”
Is that insulting enough or shall I TRY HARDER?
Comment by Tacitus — May 20, 2013 @ 9:29 pm
Lived in Tulsa Oklahoma all my life. Seen several twisters. That’s why I have insurance. You are statistically more likely to die from a car accident than be killed by a tornado.
Comment by S. Webster — May 21, 2013 @ 8:35 am
As a 5th generation Oklahoman, I can tell you that many of us have very deep roots here. Not many would pack up and leave because they *might* be in a tornado—not many of us can afford to move, either. And yes, there is a cultural optimism here, as well as a great deal of goodwill toward our neighbors; when disaster strikes, we help one another.
Comment by Confucius Jones — May 21, 2013 @ 11:15 am