History tends to be full of random chimp events running along the usual schedule.

I think it's a fundamental difference between an unknown disaster and a known one. Obviously we should have extremely competent leaders in charge, and proper precautions can prevent our society from falling apart due to an earthquake.

The black plague is fundamentally different, at least to me, since nothing like it had ever hit human society up to that point. It'd be like a hurricane hitting a civilization that had never seen one before; You can't really fault them for not handling it super well.

Of course, this makes it all the more embarrassing when we mishandle events that we could have curbed, when a disaster could have been eliminated in a month but dragged on for a year due to poor leadership. To that end I believe we are in agreement, we should make sure that our leaders are competent. All the more reason I'm concerned about the future of the United States, since anything significant within the next few years could be really, really bad.