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Devastating tornado in Oklahoma begs the question: Why don't schools and families build tornado shelters anymore?

Tuesday, May 21, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: Oklahoma, tornado, shelters

Oklahoma

(NaturalNews) A mile-wide tornado with 200mph winds tore through the suburbs of Oklahoma yesterday, killing 51 people and broadcasting a rude reminder of the fragility of human life and human civilization. Here at Natural News, our hearts go out to the family members of those killed in the storm, and we hope some lessons can be learned from this that will save other lives in the future.

But wait a second, you can't stop a tornado, right?

Of course you cant. But you can prepare for a tornado, and here's where we get into a discussion that the mainstream media won't dare touch because it's not "politically correct" to have an intelligent discussion about any of this.

But here's the question we need to ask if we're going to save lives: How many of those who were killed in the tornado knew there was a tornado warning in place but did nothing to move to a safe shelter? Obviously this question doesn't apply to all the children who were killed, as they are not responsible for their own actions. (Their parents are.) But how many adults actually took the tornado warnings seriously and sought adequate shelter?

Because here's the simple, raw, undeniable truth of the matter: People who seek shelter vastly reduce their chances of becoming fatalities during any disaster. Tornados and hurricanes, in particular, come with advance warnings. They aren't like earthquakes that suddenly appear without any warning at all. Tornados usually give you minutes or even hours of advance notice. Hurricanes give you days of advance notice.

And yet, even when huge hurricanes are approaching their target, many people deny the danger and take no precautions at all!

Survivability vs. tornadoes is 80% preparedness and 20% luck

To be clear what I'm saying here, you can never control 100% of your risk or outcomes in a natural disaster, but through smart preparedness strategies, you can very often control 80% or more.

Taking tornados as an example, there is a reason why Oklahomans have, for generations, built "storm shelters" where they could retreat to survive an approaching storm. The photo on the right, for example, shows a low-tech, high-survivability storm shelter that can easily be installed in almost any yard.

Storm shelters offer almost 100% survivability against tornados. Tornados cannot penetrate underground, after all. If YOU are underground, even in a small, cramped storm shelter that's just two meters wide and two meters tall, you have an almost 100% chance of emerging from the storm completely unhurt.

Most fatalities in tornados happen because people are killed from flying debris. You might even call it "wind shrapnel." Take a bunch of lumber, aluminum siding, bricks and roof trusses and accelerate them to 200 mph and you have a deadly weapon that will kill almost anyone it touches. But put your body just three feet underground -- in a tornado shelter -- and all that debris flies right past you, harmlessly above your shelter.

America has become a culture of short-term thinkers

Investing in a storm shelter, however, requires forethought. It requires long-term planning, and the culture of America has radically shifted away from long-term planning to short-term thinking. This is evident in our national debt spending, national politics, consumer behavior, education system and everything else.

Housing companies that build homes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Northern Texas and other "tornado alley" zones don't even offer storm shelters. Most home buyers don't want storm shelters because they aren't long-term thinkers. But consider the facts: If you live in Oklahoma, you have to realize the area is going to be struck by devastating tornados sooner or later.

People who buy homes in pine tree forests, similarly, would be insane to believe that forest won't one day burn up all around them. (All forests burn sooner or later.)

People who live in Los Angeles have to be aware they're living in an earthquake zone, and folks who have homes in Florida must certainly realize they are sooner or later going to get hit with category 5 hurricanes.

This isn't rocket science. No one who lives in Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas can claim to have been "caught by surprise" when these repeating natural disasters strike. To live in these areas is to live with the ever-present knowledge that such risks will never go away. My hope is that more and more of these people will take seriously the importance of personal preparedness so that more lives can be saved as these repeating disasters continue to unfold.

Americans rarely seek shelter from storms, but they gladly "shelter in place" when government warns them about terrorists

If you really want to get Americans to take cover and seek shelter, tell them there's an armed teenager running loose in their city, tossing pressure cookers everywhere. The people will immediately and obediently follow orders and seek cover in their homes.

But tell them there's a category 5 hurricane about to strike their city, and they'll ignore the warnings while calling a bunch of friends over for a "hurricane party."

Making matters worse, local governments rarely invest in the construction of buildings that can serve as effective shelters against oncoming storms. Many of the children killed in Oklahoma yesterday, for example, were killed by collapsing roofs of schools.

Read this description from Fox News:

Television footage on Monday afternoon showed homes and buildings that had been reduced to rubble in Moore, which is south of Oklahoma City. Footage also showed vehicles littering roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City. At the Plaza Towers Elementary School, students were hugging and clinging to the walls of the school as the tornado passed over, KFOR reports. An Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled out of what was left of the school. The school's roof appeared mangled and the walls had fallen in or had collapsed.

Dare I ask the question: Why didn't that school have a basement for sheltering the children?

The answer is devastatingly simple: Because even local governments in Oklahoma -- where tornados are a predictable repeating threat -- often don't think long-term enough to invest in basement shelters for their own children. If they had, those children could have simply been led into the basement and they would all still be alive today. (Tornados don't rip apart properly-constructed basement shelters.)

Sometimes more people die than should have

My message in all this? In every natural disaster, more people die than should have died. I'm not blaming everyone who died for their own death, because there's always that 20% "luck" factor when it comes to storm and disasters. Sometimes people are literally killed due to no fault of their own. Sometimes people who prepare still get caught by unexpected random events. But across the board, at least 80% of your "risk" in a natural disaster is under your own control.

Is the TV news warning about an approaching tornado? Seek out an underground shelter and stay there until the storm passes.

Is the National Weather Service warning about an approaching hurricane? Evacuate early and get out of the way of the storm.

Worried about earthquakes? Carry emergency supplies in your car, in your basement and even simple items on your person (like a flashlight and seatbelt cutter).

No matter what risks you face in your particular geographic area, there are smart, effective ways to drastically reduce your risk of being victimized by disasters.

Nearly all "natural" disasters are repeating, predictable events that occur over and over again in the same geographic areas. People who build homes in flood plains should never be surprised when their homes flood. People who build homes in forests should never be surprised when those forests burn. People who live in Oklahoma should always be prepared for tornados.

Did you know that the simple act of crawling into a roadway culvert can save your life from a tornado? Even lying in a ditch is often a far better strategy than hiding inside a building that can't handle the wind loads. There are many, many ways to protect yourself and your family members from tornados, hurricanes and other natural disasters. But you've got to take the idea of preparedness seriously...

... and most people simply won't do that. It takes too much effort to plan ahead.

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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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