Well now I'm looking at the National Risk Index which is kind of fun when you look at WA because the risk of almost everything in Western WA is "relatively low" or "very low" but then you look at low probability, high consequence events such as Volcanic Activity and Earthquakes and now you are looking at some of the highest risk indices and estimated annual losses in the country. Guess it's time to move to upper New England or Wyoming if you want to live in an overall low risk area, cause the rest of the country looks fairly yellow to red.
Right- but now you're talking a different kind of economics. When the Nisqually quake hit, Puget Sound became a disaster area, Federal money flowed in and everyone rebuilt-ish eventually. The only outfit I know that got profoundly fucked was the club I was mixing at because, irony of ironies, we were in the midst of an earthquake retrofit for the week-and-a-half overlapping Feb 28 2001 so that building got fukt. But by and large? "X% of damage over Y% of area related to Z fault happens every W years" is doable. "X volcano erupting every Y decades doing Z damage" is less doable but still largely doable. And what do you get for your risk? People didn't settle Pompeii because they wanted to live dangerously, they settled Pompeii because recently-volcanic soil raised rippin' wine grapes. Still does. That there's a pretty new tool, by the way. I hadn't seen it before. It's probably worth a post of its own. Hint hint.