Why do disasters happen?

The ancient Greeks had an all-purpose explanation, as I’ve been learning from my Greek myth-mad 7-year-old son: the gods.

Bad harvest? The gods. Plague? The gods. Drought? The gods. Sea monster ravages your city? Definitely the gods — specifically that jerk Poseidon, who once sent a sea monster to raze Troy because its king Laomedon refused to pay him for building the city walls.

At a time when understanding of the mechanics of the natural world was as poor as its cosmology was rich, the idea that the catastrophes were the result of the actions of higher beings must have brought some sense to the senselessness of suffering. And that idea — that we should distinguish between events that had a clear human cause and those that did not — stuck around, even as paganism gave way to monotheistic religion, and humans developed legal systems and codes meant to judge liability and guilt.

By the 16th century, the term “act of God” had entered the English lexicon, meaning any natural event or disaster that was seen as both beyond human understanding (or prediction) and a direct manifestation of divine will. An “act of God” meant that no person or business could be held legally liable for any resulting damage from such an event — a distinction that became increasingly important as the modern insurance industry took root in late 17th-century England.

Originally, an “act of God” was largely a way for insurers to get out of paying claims. At a time when risk assessment and prevention was still primitive, natural disasters and other acts of God were generally not covered, because there was no way to insure against what was still unforeseeable.

But as both the insurance industry and risk prediction matured, that category began to shrink. Storms could be forecast; seismic zones could be identified; flood zones could be calculated. Insurers could price specific policies for specific risks with greater and greater confidence; if we couldn’t always prevent a disaster, increasingly we could at least see it coming and know why, and therefore prepare. It wasn’t the gods or God who made the earth move — it was the movement of tectonic plates.

Risk still existed, just as it did for the ancient Greeks. The difference is that it was comprehensible. God was mostly out of the picture. Right?

Not exactly.

Who’s at........

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