Is the world becoming uninsurable?

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?"

The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

I'm always baffled at the fact that Americans don't build houses out of bricks.

I read those arguments of the advantages this method has, especially financial ones, but to me it's nonsense considering that it would prevent an endless number of problems that cause the total loss.

I still remember when New Orleans was hit with by Katrina, large parts of the suburbs where houses where made by wood and plastic where destroyed, yet downtown where buildings where made of bricks required maintenance, sometimes little of it, but none faced a total loss.

Unreinforced masonry is illegal in most of California and extremely dangerous- every brick becomes a projectile in an earthquake.

Despite the news coverage, fires are extremely rare but nearly every home in these areas is guaranteed to face multiple massive earthquakes that would bring down a brick building.

In cusco basin in Peru spanish colons realized their brick made building were falling down at every earthquake. They also realized incas building made of thin walls built on top of large stones that can move relative to each others during an earthquake were resisting much better. They then decided to reuse the foundations of incas buildings and put their brick build constructions on top of it to have earthquake resistant building.

Earthquake resistant constructions made of stones have been known for centuries by the incas and probably other civilizations without having building entirely made of wood, why can't californians?

I don’t know but do they have ~7.9 earthquakes like California? I’ll bet they were not multi story homes with vaulted ceilings, giant glass windows with tons of natural light, and efficient insulation?

Wood is extremely cheap, and extremely earthquake resistant… it is an appropriate material for the area despite a slightly higher fire risk.

They have had up to ~9.0Mw earthquakes in their history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Peru

You can also look at some states like Chiapas in Mexico. There are daily earthquakes in Tuxla. Last 8.2 was in 2017 in Tapachula. They typically live in small building made of mud bricks and stones. https://earthquakelist.org/mexico/chiapas/#all-latest-earthq...