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When reading the article by Jonathan Bergman, he tries to describe how the word disaster has changed over the course of history. What I found interesting was how Bergman talks about modern day definitions of the word “disaster” referring to lives lost and and destroyed buildings as “A common measuring stick…stubbornly persists due to hideous curiosity” (Bergman pg. 3). I find that phrase to be damning as a sort of mini social commentary on how we people come to learn about disasters by utilizing social media and knowing about something like the recent floodings in Louisiana or the earthquake in Italy despite being hundreds or thousands of miles away where they occur. This tendency to be utterly fascinated by these disasters is also highlighted in the prologue of Steven Biel’s American Disasters, where Biel comments on how a program showcasing what happened to the Titanic from the inside had many superlatives that Biel “…quickly lost count of how often [the correspondents] tell us these images are “incredible”, “remarkable”…”extraordinary” (Biel 2) and so on. What I believe the reasoning for why most people’s fascination with disasters borders on macabre is because they were not personally affected by the disasters they learn about. If I asked someone who lost a family member in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake if they would describe that event as “extraordinary”, I would probably be given a look of disgust, at best. How we understand and learn about disasters really depends on whether or not we’ve been personally affected by such a disaster and if we have been impacted, how does that impact shape our understanding towards other natural disasters?