
Hurricane Maria Killed as Many American Citizens as 9/11 Did - vinnyglennon
https://warisboring.com/hurricane-maria-killed-as-many-american-citizens-as-911/
======
roenxi
9/11 was tragic, but consider the damage caused by the response in the last 15
years [1]. The number of Afghani civilian deaths alone is an order of
magnitude more destruction than 9/11 and it seems unlikely that even a
plurality of them cared about America or really understood why they were
dying.

Assuming that nobody thought to mention this or take a deep breath and think
while mobilising the army is only barely plausible to me. It seems much more
likely that the absolute damage done was never an issue, and hence it isn't a
powerful comparison. There are so many things worse than 9/11, including even
_the immediate response to_ 9/11, that the raw damage just isn't important.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_\(2001%E2%80%93present\)#Civilian_casualties)

~~~
throwaway8879
There are always side effects to geopolitical powerplay. The lives of the
"them" are never as valuable in an "Us vs Them" scenario especially when the
players and their motives are complex. The modern hegemony is the same as
those of the ancient world. We just have better projectile weapons.

------
umanwizard
Smoking kills 50-100 times more Americans every year than 9/11 did.

There are a few obvious reasons why the response was much less: (1) Natural
disasters are more common, more expected, and less psychologically dramatic
than terrorist attacks. (2) Americans intuitively view Puerto Ricans as
foreigners regardless of whether they legally have US citizenship. (Due to
different culture, language and religion)

~~~
sanbor
Mass shootings are also psychologically dramatic but policies are still not
changed in USA.

~~~
rayiner
Yes they are. Maryland for example has gone through several rounds of taking
away peoples’ gun rights in the last decade.

~~~
cuboidGoat
In Maryland, did they actually take away any guns particularly?

~~~
craftyguy
No, GP is just echoing rhetoric they heard.

~~~
harryh
On April 4, 2013, the Maryland General Assembly approved legislation imposing
significant new restrictions on gun ownership. The bills ban the sale of
certain semi-automatic firearms that they define as assault weapons, limit
magazine capacity to ten rounds, require that handgun purchasers be
fingerprinted and pass a training class in order to obtain a handgun license,
and bar persons who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health
institution from possessing firearms. Martin O'Malley Governor at the time,
signed the legislation into law on May 16, 2013.[14] Regarding ten round
magazine limits for rifles purchased in Maryland, 'standard' 30 round
magazines may be purchased outside Maryland and brought into the state for
personal use. Those standard magazines may not be transferred, given, sold or
manufactured inside Maryland.[15]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Maryland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Maryland)

~~~
craftyguy
The GP comment is still wrong. They didn't take away firearms from anyone.
Limiting _sale_ != taking away what is already owned.

~~~
rayiner
I didn’t say they took away guns, I said they took away gun _rights_.
Restricting the kinds of guns you can buy, or ability to sell ir transfer
existing proprty, is taking away part of your rights.

~~~
craftyguy
Meh. It's more of a clarification of rights. When the second amendment was
written, firearms were quite rudimentary by today's standards. I'm curious how
the conversation will turn when we have 'laser guns', hand-held railguns and
other weapons in the future that we cannot even comprehend today. Will folks
complain about the government taking away their rights to owning an automatic
railgun? Probably. Did the writers of the second amendment mean for it to
apply to massively overpowered weapons? Probably not. If you believe it did,
then why aren't you complaining about the government not letting you own
ICBMs?

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>When the second amendment was written, firearms were quite rudimentary by
today's standards.

When the first amendment was written, the press was quite rudimentary by
today’s standards. TV, radio, and internet were not envisioned. Maybe the
government is allowed to regulate all news that isn’t physical printed. Also,
it should be able to ban automatic printing presses. The printing presses of
the timer were manual, one press one page. Nowadays the printing presses can
spew thousands of pages with a single press of a button.

~~~
krapp
Thomas Jefferson wanted a revolution every 20 years, but we don't string up,
draw and quarter our entire government every other decade.

It isn't ridiculous to question whether eighteenth century political and
cultural standards should always apply to a 21st century state. The
Constitution isn't holy writ. Somehow much of the rest of the world manages to
have free, democratic states without a 2nd Amendment or its thesis that a free
state requires an armed and violent populace and a lack of any regulation on
firearms.

~~~
rayiner
> It isn't ridiculous to question whether eighteenth century political and
> cultural standards should always apply to a 21st century state. The
> Constitution isn't holy writ.

The appeal to the text and original meaning of the Constitution is not about
giving deference to 18th century attitudes over 21st century ones, it’s about
resolving a dispute amongst two contemporary views. If _everyone_ agreed that
the framers were out to lunch on the 2A, it would be trivial to change it. But
people don’t agree that the 2A is obsolete.

If you saw the word “arms” in a contract, would you think it was limited to a
particular type of gun. If someone sells just automatic weapons, are they not
an “arms dealer?” Like in a contract, if both sides agreed to change the word
“arms” to something narrower, they could do it. But just like a contract,
where the sides don’t agree, one is entitled to have the contract enforced as
written.

~~~
cuboidGoat
'Arms', in the general sense, is up to and including nukes though.

~~~
rayiner
Maybe. The Constitution protects the right of "people" to "keep and bear" (
_i.e._ keep and carry) "arms." There is at least a textual basis for
interpreting "arms" to exclude weapons (like nukes and attack aircraft) that
are not ordinarily carried by individuals.

But note, at the time of the founding, it was perfectly legal for private
citizens to own armed warships. These ships had dozens of cannons that could
fire over a mile (thus sieging a city). Canons moreover could fire grapeshot,
causing massive casualties to groups of people. These weapons were far more
destructive than an AR-15.

~~~
cuboidGoat
There are backpack nukes specifically designed for individuals to carry, like
the B-54. If your legal cutoff was 'designed for a single person to carry',
they would be included as legal.

~~~
rayiner
Then maybe backpack nukes are protected by the Second Amendment? The
Constitution says what it says--"we don't like the result" is a reason to
amend it, not ignore it. In any event, whether or not backpack nukes are
"arms," AR-15's clearly are within the category denoted by the word "arms."

~~~
cuboidGoat
Can't really fault you on any of that. Also, I do appreciate that I am carping
from the sidelines here as I am not living in the US, so whatever works for
you. My intent is only in passing commentary, not in trying to tell people
what to do. It just looks a bit risky from the outside, is all.

------
UncleEntity
> Certainly, there were major logistical challenges to moving materials on an
> island a thousand miles away from the U.S. mainland. Yet such obstacles did
> not prevent the deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division across the 7,000
> miles from Fort Bragg, South Carolina to Saudi Arabia in August 1990...

Ok, first off, Fort Bragg is in _North_ Carolina.

Secondly, the 82nd Airborne Division's job was/is to be ready to deploy
halfway around the world on a moments (OK, two hours) notice and I can say
that we weren't ready to do much of anything once we landed in Saudi Arabia
other than be "speed bumps in the sand". Also, as was seen in Haiti (I
believe), it isn't such a good idea to send combat troops off on missions like
this since they are war makers and not peace keepers -- bad things happen
because up to that point you are trained to fight the enemy and not much else.

So, yeah, they could've had the 82nd on the ground pretty quickly but doing so
wouldn't have been a very good idea unless the Cubans were invading or
something.

------
ulldma
I don't like this comparison of death toll numbers.

At the same time I think the death toll of 9/11 is unfortunately much higher
as an alarmingly big number of first responders were diagnosed with cancer and
many of them died already.

------
sneakware
That's weird, they do not mention the water and food left to rot on
governmental parking lots and airport runways. I guess they just completely
forgot about it..

~~~
vuln
That doesn't help push the narrative that it's all Trump's fault. Do you
expect them to blame the victim?

------
wruza
While I'm sure that in reality terrorism is rather a great political leverage
than a biggest threat, it also has one specific property that HN should be
familiar with: scalability. Hurricane, shooters and road/cancer deaths are not
scalable, i.e. they cannot be over-produced because it's just weather,
psychopathy* and other statistical accidents. Terrorism though can be scaled
by orders of magnitude by pretty simple means.

* terrorists can be viewed psychopats, but let's leave that question open, since it is more military than civil.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree about hurricanes, but about the rest - how so? Does history record any
case of terrorism scaling up? Meanwhile, both road and cancer deaths scale up
directly with the growth of modern civilization - more people = more cancer
deaths; more roads & cars = more car deaths.

~~~
wruza
But, same people = same cancer deaths; same roads & cars = same car deaths.
You cannot increase it from outside and claim that it was your revenge.

>Does history record any case of terrorism scaling up?

Do you mean that if after first acts of terror no one would bring up a defense
against it, then there would be no more acts than it is? By "first" I mean the
time since our world got good enough life to see it as outstanding event --
burning village was obviously a regular thing at earlier periods.

------
stevew20
War on Weather!

------
maxxxxx
I sometimes wonder how much of an impact 9-11 would have made if the planes
had killed 3000 people in poor neighborhoods in Louisiana or Alabama. Same for
Maria. If it had devastated Manhattan I think there would have been much more
of an effort to help.

~~~
craftyguy
Or if it had hit mar-a-lago

------
HillaryBriss
I don't disagree with the author's basic idea, but there's this other analysis
of death from all causes in the case of 9/11 which puts the death toll higher.

One analyst ascribed an additional 1595 deaths to 9/11 because of increased
car traffic in the year after 9/11\. So, the numerical comparison does not
result in such a close match.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/05/september-11-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/05/september-11-road-
deaths)

~~~
Retric
Those deaths where not caused by 9/11, they where caused by people’s responces
to 9/11\. By that token the moon landing or any major event caused deaths by
changing people’s behaviors, but saying the moon landing killed people seems
more obviously wrong.

By comparison some people had heath issues directly caused by 9/11 and you
could reasonably add those deaths to the 9/11 death toll.

~~~
nyolfen
the 3000 number for maria comes from taking the total death rate in puerto
rico in the 6(?) months following the hurricane and subtracting the average
death rate for that period in previous years. it's an nonstandard way of
calculating disaster fatalities, chosen specifically because it gives a big
number that is useful for relief lobbying purposes (it's like 9/11!), and if
you calculated 9/11 casualties the same way you would surely come up with a
significantly higher number. the number of people killed directly by the
hurricane, during the course of the hurricane, was under 100.

~~~
cuboidGoat
I thought they ended up doing that because the bodies were piling up uncounted
and the governor admitted that that the civilian infrastructure required to
keep track of the dead had itself failed and so asked for outside help from
academics on the mainland. They didn't go with the highest academic figure
either.

If they were actually trying for high figures, as you suggest, why not go with
the Harvard study placing it at around 4600 dead?

