The Darwin effect

For years the annual Darwin Award has been circulated on the internet - the award for the annual really stupid action most likely to remove one or more people from the gene pool. (See http://www.darwinawards.com/ for some recent awards). The Darwin effect is the natural pruning from the gene pool of those less fit to survive.

Hurricane Ike roared ashore in Galveston, Texas yesterday. Galveston had been devastated by the storm surge in the 1900 hurricane, killing between 6000 and 12,000 people, This fact was widely advertised and discussed on the TV. The National Hurricane Center made the strongest possible statement about the danger of not evacuating - "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one- or two-story homes will face certain death." It couldn’t have been clearer.

Yet, despite all this, and the drumbeat of new reports about the approaching storm, and the police passing through neighborhoods with loudspeakers ordering the evacuation, a vast number of people (estimates run as high as 140,000) simply ignored all that and stayed in place. Some were even shown on TV partying at a bar on the beachfront.

Now rescue crews are risking their lives and spending millions of dollars to find and rescue all those people who ignored all the warnings. And no doubt some will go on TV eventually, as they did in New Orleans, to bitch about why the rescuers were late and why the shelter food wasn’t better and why the government didn’t do more and why their insurance companies are reticent to pay them to rebuild in the exact same spot, etc, etc, etc.

I have a lot of sympathy for people devastated by an unexpected and unpredictable natural disaster like a tornado, an earthquake. a forest fire or a famine, but it’s much harder to feel as much sympathy for people who, from their own arrogance, stubbornness or stupidity, deliberately leave themselves in harms way despite extensive warnings and then expect other people to risk their lives to save them.

Or perhaps they have a death wish. And perhaps the Darwin effect should simply have been allowed to operate.