Impending Disaster

With New Orleans partially submerged by just the edge of Katrina, word comes that five years ago city officials had been discussing building a wall around the city 25 feet high. But, alas, it was never done. The result of the decision to do nothing is the devastation we are seeing on the news.

So often, it seems, we human beings face impending disaster with a shrug, or with a wishful thought that the bad thing will not happen, or that we will somehow be spared in the midst of it. With trouble clearly ahead, we dither instead of decide, we choose inaction over action, we punt instead of plan.

Which brings to mind the all-important question: What other clearly foreseen dangers are we choosing to ignore? While this list is by no means exhaustive, here are a few:

- terrorists coming over our borders with compact weapons of mass destruction;

- hijackings or other attacks on our aviation industry by members of ethnic or religious groups that we politely refuse to "profile";

- attacks on our lightly defended nuclear and chemical plants.

Of course, dangers from the weather or our fellow man are not the only things we choose to ignore. These events are more or less statistically probable. There is one fate that we all face with 100 percent certainty: death. What are we doing to prepare for that?