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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
478 points spking | 4 comments | 17 Jan 25 00:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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MagicMoonlight ◴[17 Jan 25 06:12 UTC] No.42734580[source]▶
What are we betting that the Americans rebuild in wood again? It seems like they never learn. We had a single city fire like this 500 years ago and since then we haven’t… because we built the city back in brick instead of wood.
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1. ohazi ◴[17 Jan 25 06:14 UTC] No.42734589[source]▶
Earthquakes.

Options are wood again, or steel and concrete.

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2. TheCapeGreek ◴[17 Jan 25 07:56 UTC] No.42735108[source]▶
Somehow, all these nations around the world with earthquakes still have their houses standing.

Why is it always whataboutism with earthquakes when presented with "don't build houses out of matchsticks"?

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3. jandrewrogers ◴[17 Jan 25 08:35 UTC] No.42735298[source]▶
Countries like Japan use the same construction techniques as the western US. Few countries have earthquakes as strong as the Pacific Rim, where M8-9+ are regular occurrences. Properly designed wood-framed houses will survive that.

I’ve never seen a house in Europe that was engineered to the M8.5 earthquake standard that is mandatory where I live in the US. They used to construct houses like in Europe but they kept getting destroyed in earthquakes and were made illegal for safety reasons.

4. locallost ◴[17 Jan 25 09:17 UTC] No.42735575[source]▶
They do not have their houses standing. Look at the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria. 60k dead and 150 billion in damage.