Can you imagine how unprepared Britain would be for an actual natural disaster?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Prompted by the fuss about Scotland maybe missing out on a sporting contest in Japan because, you know, the stadium roof might get ripped off by 150mph winds.

In the UK (well, okay, England, no wonder Scotland are saying bring it), our road and rail networks shut down completely after an inch of snow, and the latter are shitting themselves now we're into leaves on the line season. What the fuck would we do with typhoons, earthquakes, or volcanoes spewing lava over Telford?

[San Bernardhinault]

It's fascinating what a comically safe place England is. Growing up somewhere that doesn't have earthquakes or volcanoes, rarely gets winds over 50mph, where it's considered bitterly cold at 5 degrees below freezing and insanely hot at 30C, where the most poisonous animal is a bee and the most dangerous one is probably an angry sheep, you don't realise that almost nobody else on the planet is so securely insulated from nature. Even, for all the talk about how rainy England is, it rarely gets really serious, inches in an hour, kinds of rain. It's just multiple days of drizzle.

Of course, this all means Britain's terrible engineered for a natural disaster. For example, all our nice brick buildings would collapse crushing everyone in a pretty small earthquake. You never see tsunami evacuation routes pointed out in Britain, and I'm pretty sure nobody has planned hurricane evacuation routes where all the traffic lanes are in just one direction.

[Balderdasha]

I once spent a long evening in a bar in Chongqing trying to explain to an Australian friend why English tourists in Australia were so bloody stupid, camping next to crocodile-infested rivers, not checking their shoes for poisonous spiders, etc. The most dangerous thing in England is another human in a car, and yet pedestrians still saunter across the road expecting drivers to stop for them.

[Moonlight Shadow]

It's fun comparing the list of things a wildcamper can deal with in the USA and in the UK. Top of the list of dangers for us are...ticks (that said, be careful with those fuckers, Lyme disease is no joke)

[San Bernardhinault]

I once had a friend end up with a scratched car at a campsite in the Peak District because peacocks attacked their reflections in it. That's almost the same as elephants walking through camp, or rattlesnakes, or crocodiles, right?

[Hot Pepsi]

It's fun comparing the list of things a wildcamper can deal with in the USA and in the UK. Top of the list of dangers for us are...ticks (that said, be careful with those fuckers, Lyme disease is no joke)

The top of the list in the northeastern US is also ticks. It’s an increasingly major problem.

And IIRC, if you count road accidents, deer kill a lot more people than bears, mountain lions, sharks or alligators. So slow down and be careful.

Insects and arachnids are probably the most likely threat almost everywhere, really. Even in the places that have lions, crocodiles, grizzly bears, etc, some kind of tiny parasite is more likely.

[Greenlander]

Someone told me just last night that daddy longlegs are dead venomous but haven't got the power in their jaws to bite humans. That's not true surely.

[Lang Spoon]

It's not.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Growing up somewhere that doesn't have earthquakes or volcanoes, rarely gets winds over 50mph, where it's considered bitterly cold at 5 degrees below freezing and insanely hot at 30C, where the most poisonous animal is a bee and the most dangerous one is probably an angry sheep,

There are still a few adders about aren't there? Though, I'd agree a bee sting is probably more dangerous.

There have been serious floods in the past, especially on the East coast, I don't if they're still on the cards or not.

[Lang Spoon]

Tsunami hit Bristol as well.

[Sam]

A tsunami hit Bristol and North Somerset in 1607. The village I grew up in is on relatively high land above the moor outside Clevedon, but in one of the nearby villages, the church has a chiselled mark on the wall from where the water reached its highest point: 25'5" off the ground.

[Uncle Ethan]

There are still a few adders about aren't there? Though, I'd agree a bee sting is probably more dangerous.

There have been serious floods in the past, especially on the East coast, I don't if they're still on the cards or not.

East Anglia is sinking and sea levels are rising, so very much still on the cards.

[Moonlight Shadow]

The top of the list in the northeastern US is also ticks. It’s an increasingly major problem.

And IIRC, if you count road accidents, deer kill a lot more people than bears, mountain lions, sharks or alligators. So slow down and be careful.

Insects and arachnids are probably the most likely threat almost everywhere, really. Even in the places that have lions, crocodiles, grizzly bears, etc, some kind of tiny parasite is more likely.

Ticks are spreading everywhere and are found higher up due to climate change. The Jura mountains in France/Switzerland were safe above 1000m asl 10 years ago, now it's 1500m asl...Deers are a major cause of the spread too hence why Scotland has a big ticks problem.