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There’s a killer on the loose, a killer responsible for some 20,000 deaths over thirty-five years, an uncontrollable, mindless, inhumane killer: Mother Nature.

Sure, there were worse killers during the period 1970-2004. According to a study on natural disasters, heart disease claimed 652,091 lives, cancer, 559,312, stroke (cerebrovascular diseases), 143,579, chronic lower respiratory diseases, 130,933, and accidents (unintentional injuries), 117,809.

That’s some toll and those are some pretty gory numbers but those merciless marauders are (somewhat) preventable and, when they strike, their victims are usually isolated and the damage they cause limited in scope. When Mom Nature really goes on a tear, the devastation is much more widespread and not confined to people.

We in the Northeast seem relatively safe, compared to those living in the South or on the Gulf Coast, except when the freak blizzard dumps a few feet of the white stuff on us or when an errant hurricane decides to roar up the coast. We more than paid our dues with the unnamed 1938 storm that ripped a hole in Long Island and people in the far reaches of Maine tasted Atlantic seawater.

That doozey, dubbed the Long Island Express by some, caused hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage. The casualty total was limited only by the sparse number of residents in the path of the Express.

You can run but you can’t hide when the forces of nature decide to remind us of who’s really in charge on our planet. With diseases, you can’t run far enough or fast enough to escape your genetic history but you can take precautions. With the threat of natural catastrophes, you can escape to “higher ground,” as the “death map” here shows.

Nowhere is 100% safe and re-location can only improve, not eliminate, risks and if your only aim in life is survival I’d personally steer clear of the murder capital of the United States.

Areas at great risk from Mother Nature are the Great Plains, (no hurricanes but lots of heat during the summer, extreme frigid temps in winter, and recurring droughts), the Rocky Mountain states, (cold and floods), and the south central region, (flooding and tornadoes).

As nasty and as ugly as those events are, they have been going on since time immemorial, and will continue to go on forever, “global warming” notwitstanding.

Again personally, I’ve lived elsewhere and I’ll still take New York.