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While discussing the varying criteria with which historians have understood ‘disaster’ Bergman points out that historians “have not advocated a common creed” but rather share a “familiar lexicon” (935). In my opinion this comment, which serves as a keystone to his article, highlights the large role that the scope of a disasters appraisal can play in creating varying historical understandings of the term while still maintaining a “familiar lexicon.” Throughout our class discussion we referenced different ways with which to evaluate disasters. Be it the “common measuring stick” that Bergman labels a calculus of property and lives, or a more nuanced method that evaluates a disaster’s psychological toll, these understandings are dependent on the group that is analyzed. An example of this can be seen in whether or not one considers the displacement and subsequent harm to Native Americans a disaster; it is dependent on whether analysis is limited to the American economy and subsequently American citizens or includes all parties involved. This is also present in both Bergman and Hewitt’s articles. Bergman references many scholars who contend that disasters are, by nature, social. This analysis is dependent on limiting a disasters evaluation to its toll on humans rather and discounting the ways in which they affect other species, so long as that doesn’t have a toll on humans (were there no disasters prior to humankind?). Hewitt draws attention to this issue of appraisal in by discussing the ways in which countries might export a dangerous technology, product or waste product despite it being illegal in their own country. This exportation of products that are outlawed so as to prevent disaster, demonstrates a disaster appraisal that, by being limited to a certain group of people, is counterproductive on a larger scale. It additionally highlights the ways in which disaster appraisal and response can create collective action problems and the dangers of inward and narrowly focused evaluations and prescriptions for disasters that Hewitt goes on to discuss in his conclusion.