The study looks into whether technological development inadvertently constructed new vulnerabilities to nature's forces, thereby manufacturing a natural disaster. As this extreme weather may foreshadow what will occur with global warming, Murphy's interviews also explore the politics, economics, ethics, and cultural predispositions underlying climate change, investigating how modern societies create both risks they assume are acceptable and the burden of managing them. An innovative comparison with Amish communities, where the same extreme weather had trivial consequences, is instructive for avoiding future socio-environmental calamities.
