This applies to the San Francisco area where I live but others could use it as an excuse to exercise some prudent paranoia.
On April 18th, the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake people would be reminded it's earthquake day. Merchants would run sales on emergency food store packages, bars would advertise earthquake themed drinks like the "Earth Shaker".
Parties city wide with a message: Be prepared, then party down.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 18 2010 Protect and Survive http://en.wikipedia...Protect_and_SurviveDisconcerting reading [8th of 7, Apr 18 2010] They have "earthquake" and "volcano" training days in Japan - they take civil defence quite seriously. Probably having two atomic bombs dropped on them did the trick.
In the Good Old Cold War days, public buildings in the USA were frequently "designated shelters". In the UK, public buildings were provided with copious supplies of an informative, if notorious, leaflet called "Protect and Survive" <link> which was jam-packed with things like calcualtion tables to allow the reader to work out at a glance how quickly they were going to die, based on their radiation exposure.
Earthquake zones would be excellent places to have an Affirmative Action programme for hiring paranoids into significant positions in the local administration; thus when disater strikes, they would be happy, and could run around amid the debris and devastation shouting, "We told you so ! We told you so ! And did you listen ! HAHAHAHAHA !"
It would of course be more logical to replace Civil Defence with Civil Common Sense, such as "Don't build major poulation centres in very close proximity to known zones of seismic or tectonic activity, like the one where your recently demolished city was."
Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Tokyo, Kobe, Mexico City, Managua, Naples, Lisbon, blah blah blah ...-- 8th of 7, Apr 18 2010 [8th_of_7] Why limit that list to cities threatened by earthquakes? Expand it to include other natural disasters. If, in addition to flooding, volcanos, mudslides, tornados, etc., you'll allow air pollution, water shortage, and rising sea levels, I bet you could get half the major cities in the world onto the list. You're leading up to some scheme where all un-assimilated humans are sent to relocation camps in central Asia, right?
By the way, the idea of making this a festival is clever, and deserves a [+].-- mouseposture, Apr 18 2010 Sounds like a good idea to me. [+]-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 18 2010 // relocation camps in central Asia //
Australia, actually. But you'll thank us when the Asteroid hits.
What ?
Sorry, excuse us for a moment.
...
Apparently it's not an asteroid - it's a moonlet, which we've pulled out of Jupiter's orbit. We just thought you would like us to be clear about that.-- 8th of 7, Apr 18 2010 Every day is asteroid preparedness day if you have the right cocktail to go with the occasion.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a cocktail called an "asteroid" on the web. It's like were living in the dark ages here.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 18 2010 May we suggest a course of leeches, then ?-- 8th of 7, Apr 18 2010 Listen 8th, I for one think this a very respectful and lovely idea..now! Hahahaha...before I thought it would have been nice to have a hurricane day..!-- blissmiss, Apr 19 2010 random, halfbakery