Weekend Recs: Natural Disasters
Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week.
Photo by Marcus Kauffman on Unsplash
September, among other things, is the month of Disaster Preparedness Month. There are countless disasters that one can prepare for–we experienced one in 2020–but natural disasters seem to hold a morbid place in our imaginations. Movies are made about these horrific events, some more ridiculous than others (Sharknado, we’re looking at you). Some people even spend a good amount of their time and resources dedicated to preparing for these catastrophic events. This weekend’s recs will help you get a little more prepared.
If you have 18 seconds…and need something more up-beat to watch, check out this old news video of a person surfing during a hurricane.
If you have 7 minutes…and want some official disaster survival tips, read the National Institute of Health’s preparedness guide.
If you have 10 minutes…and want to learn about how indigenous people are at the forefront of mitigating the effects of climate change, read the New York Times article about how indigenous techniques helped stop a wildfire spread in Canada.
If you have 12 minutes and 48 seconds…and want to check out some more dire survival tips, watch this video. I wouldn’t recommend testing out most of these tips unless you truly need to.
If you have 45 minutes…and enjoy watching somewhat morbid reality shows, watch an episode of Doomsday Preppers from National Geographic. The episodes feature people prepping for a range of disasters, including tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, pandemics, and economic collapse.
If you have 1 hour and 54 minutes…and enjoy based-on-a-true story films, watch The Impossible. Starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, and Tom Holland, this movie focuses on a family who was in Thailand during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
Bonus: if you’re looking for a based-on-a-true story show about surviving disasters, watch I Shouldn’t Be Alive.
If you have 8 hours…and are a history buff, read David McCullough’s The Johnstown Flood. This might be a somewhat “unnatural” disaster, as it was caused by a dam, but it’s still a great book for any history lovers.
Bonus: for more on natural disasters, check out this reference handbook.
If you’re interested in natural disasters and disaster preparedness, check out some more of Falvey’s Geography and Environment resources, including:
Annie Stockmal is a second-year graduate student in the Communication Department and Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.