Roger,

As I recommended, you shouldn’t ask to reincarnate as a disaster mitigation worker the next time around. I hear that starving to death is a horrible way to go.

The death toll from unpredicted earthquakes absolutely dwarfs into nothingness any problems created by or damage done by careless forecasters.

My first circulated earthquake warning was generated on December 30, 1994. It was sent to U.S. government officials and was an attempt to warn them about what it appears was the approaching catastrophic earthquake in Kobe, Japan that occurred a little over two weeks later.

If you look back in the EarthWaves board records you will find one of my earthquake warnings circulated on January 11, 2010, the day before that extremely deadly earthquake in Haiti.

In all of these year, as far as I can tell I have never had even one of my earthquake warnings cause anyone to panic and flee a city. And one of the reasons for that is that people working in my own area of science are constantly having to deal with disasters. So if they want to survive in that science they need to learn how to discuss information with the general public in such a manner that the information itself does not cause major problems.

Most forecasters don’t have that type of training. And with no guideline help from governments they are left to learn those lessons on their own. Frequently, the results are not what is desired.