Because I have nothing useful to blog about today...

[plumtreeblossom]

[Poll #1210260]

Comments

[vanguardcdk.livejournal.com]

Umm..you really need to start looking at different house ads. (Low Price! 3 Bedrooms! Tarantulas and Snakes! No wendigos!)

[eclecticavatar.livejournal.com]

No wendigos? Is someone moving to Canada? =P

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I had to google "wendigo." That would deter me from buying!

[vanguardcdk.livejournal.com]

Ah but this place has no wendigos! A steal..as long as you don't mind the tarantulas of course...

[eclecticavatar.livejournal.com]

Having the dense population of poisonous snakes and/or tarantulas might be a problem for my pets, but it wouldn't deter me.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Yep, pets come to mind when I think about these things. My cat's don't have a healthy fear of things like that. I, on the other hand, do! (more the poisonous snakes, really)

[moonshadow.livejournal.com]

Earthquakes are where I draw the line.

Oh, another question you didn't ask, which is slightly different - I would not want to live in a house where there had been a murder. I am okay with ghosts and sprites though.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

That would be something I'd want to know about a house. I don't actually believe in ghosts because I've never seen/heard one with my own eyes/ears (we Agnostics need our satisfactory evidence :-)), but if a house had a creepy feel, I'd not be likely to want to own it.

[moonshadow.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want to live in a house where there'd been a murder, even if it didn't "feel creepy." I think it would just freak me out.

[minkrose]

For that last question... I realised I checked "yes" but... just to be clear - I'm using YES to mean I would avoid tarantulas. I'm not sure if I filled that out correctly or what.
I do know at least one person for whom that would be added incentive!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I know a few tarantula fans. :-) I don't mind them when they're in a cage, as a pet. Running around loose would be a different matter, though.

That poisonous snakes would be a total deal-breaker, though.

[androidqueen.livejournal.com]

Personally, I wouldn't mind tarantulas, but the hubby doesn't like 'em much.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't like being surprised by them. But then, if there was a heavy natural population, I guess you would stop being surprised after a while.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

As a Northerner, I couldn't live in a place that was very hot and humid most of the year (I love dry heat, like in Vegas, but not soggy heat). I just deal with the snow. But some folks love it.

The reason I posted the poll was because I was thinking about the thousands and thousands of homes that have been lost to hurricanes and tornados over the years. After a while I have to wonder, why would a person invest money in a home that is directly in a busy hurricane avenue, as so many do? I guess they all have their different reasons, but I don't think I could risk it myself.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Well, if you rent, you're still homeless after the hurricane/earthquake/tornado/zombie invasion, but your net loss is probably less. You'd take what you could salvage and go, but the house would be the landlord's loss. (unless they had the appropriate natural disaster insurance).

I like Boston. Such low weather drama that a simple thunderstorm gets everyone excited. But I've always heard there's an earthquake fault running from New York to northern Maine, and we're squatting right on it. So I better not speak too soon.

[vanguardcdk.livejournal.com]

It should be noted that Boston has a small but definate possibility to be hit by hurricanes.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

I was going to buy a condo built into the inside left cheek of the gaping maw of Yos Thorog in The Pit of Elder Gods, since the view is just totally worth it and the realtor said that Yos only chews once a century anyway. Then I found out the neighborhood covenant required pink flamingo decorations on the porch so I decided not to.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

FTW!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

This is what's hard about living in a geek community when I'm not very geeky. I don't get any of those references, and once again I need it 'splained to me.

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

I hadn't really thought about it, but the states I've lived in--Maine, Ohio, VA and MA--have been very very low-risk when it comes to natural disasters. Ohio had a north wind off the Lake that just would not ever quit, and VA had humidity and kudzu, but that's about as bad as I've had it. After being spoiled for sp long, it's hard to even imagine living in a more dangerous place.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, we had tornado warnings and watches, but they never turned into real tornados, and this was much to my disappointment. We'd get a tornado watch and I'd think "Yeah right, can we have a REAL one for a change?" During thunder storms, my grandmother would be praying for our eternal souls' delivery from danger, and I'd be praying that the basement would totally flood 3 feet deep so we'd have an indoor pool. That also never happened.

I've never been in an earthquake or seen a tornado. Even pictures of tornadoes scare me, now that I'm an adult who has conceded that I am indeed martal and breakable. An indoor pool would still rock, though.

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

My theory is that everyone lives somewhere that has "natural disasters", and each person is comfortable with some of them. For instance, I grew up in a town that flooded a lot, hurricaines every 5 years or so and you'd take a rowboat down Main Street. I didn't understand why the people who used to sit on their roof with their feet in the water kept living where they lived; we lived on a hilltop and just got an inch or two of water in our basement (filtered thru the concrete, so it was "clean" water). I know how to deal with hurricaines: don't live in low lying areas, and get flood insurance. Now I live on a hill in a city that is defined as a Flood Plain. But the water would have to completely cover Boston before reaching my back door. I was a wreck living in California: earthquake central. If I lived in an area where tornadoes were common I don't think I'd ever live in a Trailer Park, and I'd make pretty danged certain I had a safe basement thingie that was comfortable to sleep in regularly, should a tornado hit. And I'd get insurance.

New England has blizzards; we don't think much about them. But they are a Big Deal to people who are from Atlanta or Hawaii. Yet Hawaiians don't really give a hoot about earthquakes and lava flows.

Thus, every part of the world has their preferred natural disaster.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'm totally desensensitized to snow, having lived on the Great Lakes most of my life. Even 3 feet wouldn't make me not go to work (but I would call to see if work is closed). For the life of me, I can't classify a blizzard as a natural disaster. But that's because I live in an area that has snow plows, therefore rendering blizzards just a mess to be cleaned up.

Ice storms, however, are another matter. I've survived a giant one, and several little ones. Not fun.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I thought about this some when I was living in California. My housemate was thinking about moving out and I mentioned to an East Coast friend that she had looked at a really cute cabin on a hill by a rushing stream up in the Marin Woods, but decided that it was just too dangerous. He was surprised, since his impression of Marin is of a fairly upscale, low-crime area and I said "Forest fires. Mudslides." and we laughed about the very different definitions of "dangerous" one develops in different areas.

I might have bought a house out there, despite the earthquake thing--major quakes happen rarely enough and most places have been reinforced, so if you're willing to live in the area (largely accomplished by just not thinking about it) then buying a house there isn't a big leap. But I have always been puzzled by people who buy on floodplains, or especially on beaches in areas that experience frequent hurricanes. My relatives have places on the beaches in North Carolina and seem to lose them about every ten years--not their primary residences, but still.

One of the reasons we chose our house is its location very near the top of the highest hill in the Boston area. Yesterday I was especially glad of this, as I tried to make my way home through the severe flooding of the lower-lying areas.

And yeah, we get snowstorms every year and major, destructive blizzards fairly often, but we just don't have the kind of damage that other places have. As a friend puts it, we amortize our natural disasters.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

It's amazing, how little weather drama we have here. Last summer, the Davis Square neighborhood got hit with a horrible storm that took out trees and cracked a hole in a street, but that was the worst of it.

[beowabbit]

I would be perfectly content to live in a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake zone, but I would want the house to be designed and built with that in mind! Living on the Massachusetts coast, I’m in a low-probability hurricane zone as it is, and the part of the Midwest where I grew up is tornado zone, and most of California is earthquake zone. I’d need to go over a map pretty carefully to find someplace with no natural disasters! But building code in California knows about earthquakes, and building code in the Midwest at least pays some attention to tornadoes (probably not enough) and flooding (definitely not enough), and I don’t know about building code on the Massachusetts coast, but I feel like the kinds of hurricane remnants we get here are not a threat to my house.

(The real problem is keeping up with changes in climate, at this point. My house was built for the kind of storms Quincy got in 1840, not for the kind of storms Quincy may get in 2040 or 2140. At least earthquakes aren’t likely to change much, so maybe that’s an argument for California. :-) When I bought this house, I looked at the elevation and thought about rising sea levels and looked at estimates of prehistoric sea-level variability and thought it was probably safe. Since then I’ve heard stuff that suggest that maybe it may not be.)

Ditto dangerous pests. Poisonous snakes or spiders wouldn’t deter me, but I would factor in (e.g.) the need to wear shoes and long pants to go outside into my decision about the place.

Realistically, of course, the likelihood of me leaving the northeast is extremely small.

[evilshell.livejournal.com]

I grew up in tornado-prone area, so I wouldn't hesitate to buy a house there (but I think I'd avoid a mobile home ;) )

My two houses I owned were on Long Island, and we did get some hurricanes there.

Where I live now has earthquakes now and again...half the city fell into the Rhine in the 1300s!

I figure what the hell, no place is perfect ;)

[rdcf.livejournal.com]

When we had that big snow storm in 2005 (I think it was 2005), I posted pictures on our website and my mother's first comment was "I would have to move."

I've seen a number of tornadoes, luckily from a distance. That's some seriously scary stuff.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

I've owned homes in hurricane zones and tsunami zones, and (theoretically) active volcano zones.

(For the record, MA is an active hurricane zone-well, the sea end, in any event. HI is pretty much *all* an active volcano (for long dormant values of 'active'), and is a *very* active tsunami zone (and I had to buy flood insurance because of it), and an active hurricane zone. For paradise, it's an exciting place).

Sometimes you can't help living in those places-if you want to live in HI *at all*, you have to deal with nature's fury, at least in prospect (we got lucky and never had to deal with an actual tsunami, and could drive a comfortable distance to see the volcano, rather than having to evacuate while it was coming to eat us :-)). OTOH, if you build a home right on the edge of the ocean, I say you either pay the real insurance cost of living in those places (which will *rapidly* make it unaffordable-on Hilton Head there are houses which have been rebuilt 3, 4 times in the past decade), or you simply own the risk of having the house blown down. Guam (which is *very* hurricane prone) has dealt with this problem by adopting an architecture which is best described as 'modern blockhouse'; it is possible that a Really Big Hurricane can blow them down, but the hurricane would know it'd been in a fight.

Snakes and tarantulas don't bother me. Because I try, by and large, not to bother them. If by 'tarantulas' you mean 'large spiders', I 'spect beowabbit has a picture of a cane spider from HI-ask him to show it to you, or describe one. They're everywhere on the islands, they're very pretty, and they never bothered me at all.