Russia is in the midst of a genuine demographic disaster from which its rulers have no obvious exit strategy. Although the Russia’s fortunes (and the Kremlin’s ambitions) have waxed on a decade of windfall profits from oil and gas, the human foundations of the Russian nation — the ultimate sources of the country’s wealth and [...]

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Mother Nature goes to extremes in the summer, spoiling the gift of good weather with hurricanes, heat waves, fires and floods. This year she started early. On May 2, Cyclone Nargis laid waste to large parts of Myanmar. According to the latest counts, the disaster left 2.4 million people destitute, more than 50,000 missing and [...]

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From the mighty Mississippi to the surging Xijiang, the world’s waterways are bursting their banks and leaving disaster in their wake.
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This is a fascinating article about survival in a disaster. Most people tend to freeze in a disaster, but the thing to do is act. I recommend reading this article.
From the article:
But survival is not just a product of luck. We can do far more than we think to improve our odds of preventing and [...]

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FP: What potential disasters keep you up at night?
ALL: We’re all concerned about major, disastrous earthquakes. In particular, I’m worried about disastrous earthquakes in Asia. Large cities are built near faults, and there are cities that haven’t seen earthquakes in 500 years but are due. It is entirely conceivable that we could see an earthquake [...]

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Uprooted trees, destroyed houses, disease. Burma is in chaos more than a week after Cyclone Nargis, and the real disaster is happening now. Drugs and aid aren’t reaching the people who desperately need it. But the Burmese are helping each other, and anger at the junta is mounting. By our reporter in Rangoon, Burma more…

‘Like [...]

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Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.
Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients would not be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma [...]

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