1 Neil Frank, “The Great Galveston Hurricane,” in Hurricane: Coping with Disaster, ed. Robert Simpson (Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, 2003), 129–40.
2 Willie Drye, “Hurricane Ike’s 9-foot Floods to Bring ‘Certain Death,’” National Geographic News, September 12, 2008, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080912-hurricane-ike.html.
3 FEMA, “Hurricane Ike Impact Report,” December 2008, https://www.fema.gov/pdf/hazard/hurricane/2008/ike/impact_report.pdf.
4 Wikipedia, “List of Natural Disasters by Death Toll: 52 Deadliest Earthquakes,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#52_deadliest_earthquakes.
5 “Tragic Donegal Man’s Sons Are Washed from Mother’s Arms During Hurricane Sandy,” Donegal Daily, November 5, 2012, http://www.donegaldaily.com/2012/11/05/tragic-donegal-mans-sons-are-washed-from-mothers-arms-during-hurricane-sandy/.
6 Michael Sedon, “Staten Island Weeps at Discovery of 2 Little Bodies,” silive.com, November 2, 2012 http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/11/staten_island_weeps_at_discove.html.
7 National Hurricane Center advisory bulletin, “Hurricane Sandy,” http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al18/al182012.public.030.shtml.
8 James Barron, Joseph Goldstein, and Kirk Semple, “Staten Island Was Tragic Epicenter of Storm’s Casualties,” New York Times, November 1, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/staten-island-was-tragic-epicenter-of-new-york-citys-storm-casualties.html?_r=1&.
9 “Mapping Hurricane Sandy’s Deadly Toll,” New York Times, November 17, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/17/nyregion/hurricane-sandy-map.html?_r=0.
10 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011.
11 An annotated English-language translation of the transcript of the cockpit voice data recording is available at Cockpit Voice Recorder Database, “01 June 2009–Air France 447,” http://www.tailstrike.com/010609.html.
12 Ibid. This can be seen in the exchange between the pilot and copilot at the controls four seconds before the crash:
02:13:40 (Robert) Climb ... climb ... climb ... climb ...
02:13:40 (Bonin) But I’ve had the stick back the whole time!
02:13:42 (Captain) No, no, no… Don’t climb… no, no.
13 See, e.g., Flight Safety Foundation ALAR Tool Kit, “FSF ALAR Briefing Note 6.3: Terrain Avoidance (Pull-up) Maneuver,” Flight Safety Digest (August–November 2000), http://flightsafety.org/files/alar_bn6-3-pullup.pdf.
14 Top Koaysomboon, “Tsunami Warner Smith Dharmasaroja on a Scary Future,” BK: The Insider’s Guide to Bangkok, December 23, 2010, http://bk.asia-city.com/events/article/tsunami-warner-smith-dharmasaroja-scary-future; Patrick Barta, “His Warning Ignored, Thai Meteorologist Now Plays Key Role,” Wall Street Journal, January 10, 2005, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110530853574920997.
15 “Tsunami 2004 Facts and Figures,” May 21, 2013, http://www.tsunami2004.net/tsunami-2004-facts/.
16 Anu Mittal and US Army Corps of Engineers, “Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Washington, DC: US Government Accountability Office, September 28, 2005, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d051050t.pdf.
17 “Complaint and Summary Judgment: Deepwater Horizon—BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill,” https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/complaint-and-summary-judgment-deepwater-horizon-bp-gulf-mexico-oil-spill.
18 See, e.g., J. Peters and C. Büchel, “The Neural Mechanisms of Inter-temporal Decision-making: Understanding Variability,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15, no. 5 (2011): 227–35.
19 For a review of the historical treatment of time preferences in economics, see Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O’Donohue, “Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review,” Journal of Economic Literature 40 (June 2002): 351–401.
20 David Laibson, “Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (2015): 443–77.
21 Grace Jean, “Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System to Become Operational in 2006,” National Defense, November 2005, http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2005/November/Pages/Indian_Ocean5526.aspx.
22 See, e.g., C. Fischer, “Read This Paper Later: Procrastination with Time-Consistent Preferences,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 46, no. 3 (2001): 249–69.
23 To illustrate, if instead of buying the flood proofing she invests the $10,000 in a bank at a 5% annual interest rate, after 20 years this investment will be worth $26,532. But if she pays for the improvement and after four years begins investing the $2,500 annual premium savings at the same interest rate, after 20 years this investment will be worth $59,143.
24 Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman, “Temporal Construal,” Psychological Review 110, no. 3 (2003): 403–21.
25 Robert J. Meyer, Earl J. Baker, Kenneth Broad, Ben Orlove, and Jeff Czykowski, “The Dynamics of Hurricane Risk Perception: Real-Time Evidence from the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Association 95 (September 2014): 1389–1402.
26 Becky Oskin, “Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011: Facts and Information,” LiveScience, May 7, 2015, http://www.livescience.com/39110-japan-2011-earthquake-tsunami-facts.html.
27 Wikipedia, “Mikyako, Iwate,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyako,_Iwate.
28 Edan Corkill, “Heights of Survival,” Japan Times, June 12, 2011, 9–10.
29 Danny Lewis, “These Century-Old Stone ‘Tsunami Stones’ Dot Japan’s Coastline,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 31, 2015, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/century-old-warnings-against-tsunamis-dot-japans-coastline-180956448/?no-ist.
30 A. Austin, “Galveston, The City Reclaimed: Marvelous Recuperation of a Town Wiped out Four Years Ago,” Pearson’s Magazine 13, 3 (1905): 211–19.
31 Harvey Rice, “Ike Changed Bolivar Peninsula Forever,” Houston Chronicle, February 16, 2013.
32 E. Michel-Kerjan, S. Lemoyne de Forges, and H. Kunreuther, “Policy Tenure under the US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),” Risk Analysis 32, no. 4 (2012): 644–58.
33 Prior to 2010, the Outer Banks had encounters with storms in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008.
34 Ian MacKinnon, “Aceh Residents Disable Tsunami Warning System after False Alarm,” Guardian, June 7, 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/07/indonesia.ianmackinnon.
35 K. Dow and S. L. Cutter, “Crying Wolf: Repeat Responses to Hurricane Evacuation Orders,” Coastal Management 26 (1998): 237–52.
36 Daniel Yutzy, “ASOP 1964: Contingencies Affecting the Issuing of Public Disaster Warnings at Crescent City, California,” Research Note #4, Disaster Research Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, May 21, 1964.
37 Alison Frankel, “Double Indemnity: Was the WTC Disaster One Incident or Two?” The American Lawyer, September 3, 2002.
38 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “May 2003 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster,” NIST Special Publication 1000-3, 16, http://ws680.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=860495.
39 “History of the Twin Towers,” World Trade Center (website), http://www.panynj.gov/wtcprogress/history-twin-towers.html.
40 Dan Ackman, “Larry Silverstein’s $3.5B Definition,” Forbes, July 23, 2003, http://www.forbes.com/2003/07/23/cx_da_0723topnews.html.
41 Chris Francescani and Scott Michels, “Who Should Pay for 9/11?” ABC News, September 10, 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3579255&page=1.
42 Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller (Hoboken: John Wiley, 2010).
43 Jennifer Fermino, “List Shock for Madoff Investors,” New York Post, February 6, 2009, http://nypost.com/2009/02/06/list-shock-for-madoff-investors/.
44 US Securities and Exchange Commission Office of Investigations, “Investigation of the Failure of the SEC to Uncover the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme,” Report Number OIG-509, August 31, 2009, https://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2009/oig-509.pdf.
45 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9-11 Commission Report, 2004, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf.
46 A simple approximate solution is that the probability of at least one pair is 1 minus the probability of no pairs, or 1 - (364/365) (363/365) … (266/365) = .999.
47 The probability that we would find at least one person with our birth date from an audience of 70 is 1 minus the probability that we would find none, or 1- (364/365) ^ 70 or 17.5%.
48 An interesting footnote to the Johnny Carson story is that when he tried the problem on the audience, he misunderstood it and asked one audience member her birthday and then asked if anyone else had the same one. No one did, as this probability, of course, is small, as we’ve indicated.
49 See, e.g., Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology 5 (1973): 207–32.
50 James Ball, “How Safe Is Air Travel Really?” Guardian, July 24, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/24/avoid-air-travel-mh17-math-risk-guide.
51 Garrick Blalock, Vrinda Kadiyali, and Daniel Simon, “Driving Fatalities after 9/11: A Hidden Cost of Terrorism,” Applied Economics 41, no. 4 (2009): 1717–29.
52 Harold Maass, “The Odds Are 11 Million to 1 That You’ll Die in a Plane Crash,” The Week, July 8, 2013, http://theweek.com/articles/462449/odds-are-11-million-1-that-youll-die-plane-crash.
53 Risa Palm, Earthquake Insurance: A Longitudinal Study of California Homeowners, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990).
54 Risa Palm, R. and John Carroll, Illusions of Safety: Cultural and Earthquake Hazard Response in California and Japan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
55 Risk Management Solutions Inc., “When ‘the Big One’ Hits: 25 Years after Loma Prieta,” 2014, http://rms.com/images/loma-prieta/pdf/WhenTheBigOneHits.pdf.
56 Neil Weinstein, “Unrealistic Optimism about Future Life Events,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39, no. 5 (1980): 806–20.
57 Robert J. Meyer, et al., “The Dynamics of Hurricane Risk Perception: Real-Time Evidence from the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 95 (2014): 1389–404.
58 Ziva Kunda, “The Case for Motivated Reasoning,” Psychological Bulletin, 108 (1990): 480 –98.
59 The probability that at least one attack will occur is 1 minus the probability that no attacks will occur over the course of 99 years, or 1 - .99 ^ 99 = .63.
60 The probability of one or more floods in 25 years is 1 - .9925 = .22.
61 “Louisiana Superdome Turns Shelter,” Fox News, September 16, 2004, http://www.foxnews.com/story/2004/09/16/louisiana-superdome-turns-shelter/.
62 Chris Kromm, “2010 Census reveals lingering scars of Katrina,” Facing South, 2011, https://www.facingsouth.org/2011/02/2010-census-reveals-lingering-scars-of-katrina.html.
63 Eric J. Johnson, Jack C. Hershey, Jacqueline Meszaros, and Howard Kunreuther, “Framing, Probability Distortions, and Insurance Decisions,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 7 (1993): 35.
64 Eric J. Johnson and Daniel Goldstein, “Do Defaults Save Lives?” Science 302 (2003): 1338–39.
65 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979): 263–91.
66 Cass Sunstein, “Deciding by Default,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 162, no. 1 (2013).
67 William Samuelson and Richard J. Zeckhauser, “Status Quo Bias in Decision Making,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 1, no. 1 (1988): 7–59.
68 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Quick Facts 2014, 2016. This percentage is calculated by using the 1,669 motorcyclists saved that year by wearing a helmet divided by the total number of motorcyclists killed (4,586 + 1,669).
69 Martin A Croce, Ben L. Zarzaur, Louis J. Magnotti, and Timothy C. Fabian, “Impact of Motorcycle Helmets and State Laws on Society’s Burden: A National Study,” Annals of Surgery 250, no. 3 (2009): 390–94.
70 A. J. Chapman, R. Titus, H. Ferenchick, A. Davis, and C. Rodriguez, “Repeal of the Michigan Helmet Law: Early Clinical Impacts,” American Journal of Surgery 207, no. 3 (2014): 352–56.
71 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Highway Loss Data, “Motorcycle Helmet Use,” December 2016, http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/helmetuse/mapmotorcyclehelmets.
72 O. Huber, R. Wider, O. W. and Huber, “Active Information Search And Complete Information Presentation In Naturalistic Risky Decision Tasks,” Acta Psychologica 95 (1997): 15–29.
73 Robin Hogarth and Howard Kunreuther, “Decision Making Under Ignorance: Arguing with Yourself,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 10 (1995): 15–38.
74 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979): 263–91.
75 See, e.g., E. U. Weber, “Perception and Expectation Of Climate Change: Precondition For Economic And Technological Adaptation,” in Psychological Perspectives to Environmental and Ethical Issues in Management, eds. Max Bazerman, David Messick, Ann. Tenbrunsel, and Kimberley Wade-Benzoni (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 314–41.
76 For an example of what is required for windstorm mitigation, see “Hurricane Mitigation Retrofits for Existing Site-Built Single-Family Residential Structures,” http://consensus.fsu.edu/FBC/WMW/Reference_Document_v2rev0807.pdf.
77 See, e.g., National Hurricane Center, “Hurricane Preparedness—Be Ready,” http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php.
78 Robert J. Meyer, Earl J. Baker, Kenneth Broad, Ben Orlove, and Jeff Czykowski, “The Dynamics of Hurricane Risk Perception: Real-Time Evidence from the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Association 95 (September 2014): 1389–402.
79 See, e.g., Paul Fine, Ken Eames, and David L. Heymann, “Herd Immunity: A Rough Guide,” Clinical Infectious Diseases 52, no. 7 (2001): 911–16.
80 See, e.g., David M. Burns, Lora Lee, Larry Z. Shen, Elizabeth Gilpin, H. Dennis Tollery, Jerry Vaughn, and Thomas G. Shanks, “Cigarette Smoking Behavior in the United States,” in National Cancer Institute, Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 8 (1996), 13–42, https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/tcrb/monographs/8/index.html.
81 Alex Lo, “The Role of Social Norms in Climate Adaptation: Mediating Risk Perception and Flood Insurance Purchase,” Global Environmental Change 23, no. 5 (2013): 1249–57.
82 Karlijin Morsink and Peter Guertz, “The Trusted Neighbor Effect: Local Experience and Demand for Microinsurance,” (working paper, School of Economics, University of Oxford, 2012).
83 Howard Kunreuther et al., Disaster Insurance Protection: Public Policy Lessons (New York: Wiley InterScience, 1978).
84 De la Herrán-Arita, Alberto K., et al., “CD4+ T cell autoimmunity to hypocretin/orexin and cross-reactivity to a 2009 H1N1 influenza A epitope in narcolepsy,” Science Translational Medicine, 5 (2013): 216.
85 Heidi Ledford, “Journal retracts paper linking vaccine and narcolepsy,” newsblog, July 31, 2014, http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/07/journal-retracts-paper-linking-vaccine-and-narcolepsy.html.
86 Jeffrey Baker, “The Pertussis Vaccine Controversy in Great Britain, 1974–1986,” Vaccine 21 (2003): 4003–10.
87 E. J. Gangarosa, A. M. Galazka, C. R. Wolfe, L. M. Phillips, R. E. Gangarosa, E. Miller, et al. “Impact of Anti-vaccine Movements on Pertussis Control: The Untold Story,” Lancet 351 (1998): 356–61.
88 H. Coulter and B. L. Fisher, A Shot in the Dark (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985).
89 Jeffrey Baker, “The Pertussis Vaccine Controversy in Great Britain, 1974–1986,” Vaccine 21 (2003): 4003–10.
90 Matthieu Domenech de Cellès, Felicia M. G. Magpantay, Aaron A. King, Pejman Rohani, “The Pertussis Enigma: Reconciling Epidemiology, Immunology and Evolution,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences, January 13, 2016.
91 D. J. Isenberg, “Group Polarization: A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50, no. 6 (1986): 1141–51.
92 H. Kunreuther, R. J. Meyer, and Erwann Michel-Kejan, “Strategies for Better Protection Against Catastrophic Risks” in Behavioral Perspectives on Public Policy, ed. E. Shafir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 398–416.
93 R. Thaler and C. Sunstein, Nudge: The Gentle Power of Choice Architecture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
94 P. Slovic, B. Fischhoff, and S. Lichtenstein, “Accident Probabilities and Seat Belt Usage: A Psychological Perspective,” Accident Analysis and Prevention 10 (1978): 281–85.
95 N. D. Weinstein, K. Kolb, and B. D. Goldstein, “Using Time Intervals Between Expected Events to Communicate Risk Magnitudes,” Risk Analysis 16, no. 3 (1996): 305–8.
96 H. Kunreuther, N. Novemsky, and D. Kahneman, “Making Low Probabilities Useful,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 23 (2001): 103–20.
97 B. C. Madrian and D. F. Shea, “The Power of Suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) Participation and Savings Behavior,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 16 (2001): 1149–87; R. H. Thaler and S. Benartzi, “Save More Tomorrow™: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving,” Journal of Political Economy 112, no. S1 (2004): S164-87.
98 As an illustration in the case of Florida, see “Flood Resistant Construction and the 2010 Florida Building Code,” January 2012, https://www.charlottecountyfl.gov/services/buildingconstruction/Documents/BASF-FloodProvisions.pdf.
99 H. Kunreuther and E. Michel-Kerjan, “Demand for Fixed-Price Multi-Year Contracts: Experimental Evidence from Insurance Decisions,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 51 (2015): 171–94.
100 Insurance Institute for Property Loss Reduction (IIPLR), Homes and Hurricanes: Public Opinion Concerning Various Issues Relating to Home Builders, Building Codes and Damage Mitigation (Boston, MA: IIPLR, 1995).
101 Nathanial Gronewold, “Risk: Hurricane-Smashed Texas Barrier Island is a Magnet for New Development; Defenses Remain Pending,” ClimateWire, March 11, 2015, http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060014803.
102 Jonathan Gregory, “Projections of Sea Level Rise,” in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, chapter 13 of the 2013 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19/3_gregory13sbsta.pdf.
103 Joey Flechas and Jenny Staletovich, “Miami Beach’s Battle to Stem Rising Tides,” Miami Herald, October 23, 2015, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article41141856.html.
104 Andrew Rice, “When Will New York City Sink?” New York Magazine, September 5, 2016.
105 H. Kunreuther and E. Michel-Kerjan, At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
106 Jacob Vigdor, “The Economic Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 22, no. 4 (2008): 135–54.
107 H. Kunreuther, R. J. Meyer, and E. Michel-Kerjan, “Overcoming Decision Biases to Reduce Losses from Natural Catastrophes,” in Behavioral Foundations of Policy, ed. E. Shafir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
108 Harvey Rice, “Ike Changed Bolivar Peninsula Forever,” Houston Chronicle, February 16, 2013, http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Ike-changed-Bolivar-Peninsula-forever-4285143.php.
109 Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, “After a Disaster Strikes: Public Opinion on Rebuilding and Relocation Policies,” July 2013, http://www.apnorc.org/PDFs/Resilience%20in%20Superstorm%20Sandy/AP-NORC%20Sandy%20Issue%20Brief.pdf.
110 For more details on this managed retreat in Staten Island, see Elizabeth Rush, “As the Seas Rise” New Republic, October 25, 2015, http://newrepublic.com/article/123182/managing-retreat-along-new-york-citys-coasts.
111 New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection, “Frequently Asked Questions: Superstorm Sandy Blue Acres Buyout Program,” http://www.nj.gov/dep/greenacres/pdf/faqs-blueacres.pdf.
112 The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999).
113 PlaNYC, A Stronger, More Resilient New York (New York: City of New York, 2013).
114 Carolyn Kousky and H. Kunreuther, “Addressing Affordability in the National Flood Insurance Program,” Journal of Extreme Events 1, no. 1 (2014): 11–28.
115 National Research Council, Affordability of National Flood Insurance Program Premiums—Report 1, (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015).