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The Social Stage Model of Disasters is examined as a parallel to natural responses to terrorism. After a shared upheaval, people tend to go through an emergency phase when they talk about the event, followed by a drop in talking during a longer inhibition phase. Thoughts of the event still weigh heavily on people's minds until the adaptation phase when social and physiological patterns stabilize. New methodological and analytical tools have enabled the study of immediate reactions to natural disasters, collective trauma, and terrorist attacks. These include the Electronically-Activated Recorder (EAR), which captures how people congregate and talk to or avoid others. Also, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a software program that analyzes psychological states through linguistic markers, has been applied to language samples from various internet forums for communication before, during, and after shared upheavals. A review of the research using these recent technological developments suggests that terrorism can have the unintended effects of encouraging affiliation, strengthening values, and reaffirming identities. The findings further suggest that distancing, a natural phase in the course of crises and challenges, may be helpful when faced with terrorism. The Internet will continue to be a valuable venue for both victims and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the image of the house as a space of safety, a protection from external dangers, from storms on winter nights. However frail and vulnerable the individual might be, bricks and mortar provide them with a nest, a sanctuary, a place to retire to. The House of Doom is viewed by nighttime. It has flapping casements, impossibly pitched roofs and gables, and deep shadows behind dense shrubberies. Its floors creak and its draperies are rotten. The debris of interrupted meals litters tabletops and vermin scuttle behind the wainscoting. People visit it in fairgrounds and in horror movies. People relish its capacity to thrill. In its own way the House of Doom is an ideal home. While the show house reminds us how family life should be lived, displaying the spatiality of the required activities and social divisions in dining rooms, lounges and bathrooms, in parents' spaces and children's spaces, public rooms and private rooms the House of Doom allows us to safely rehearse our terror of demons which, like God, are all-seeing and inescapable--the ghosts of unknown previous occupants.

Chapter three of the book "Listening for a Change: Oral Testimony & Development" is presented. It discusses the efforts from those involved in the developmental projects to ensure that undertakings are people-centered. It describes the role-reversal concept where the subject is the expert and the researcher is the learner. Details on the role of oral testimonies in recording technical knowledge of locals, their coping strategies during natural calamities and the tracing of their family history are desribed.

The article offers information on the empirical findings on the issue of nonpurposeful evil. It mentions that there were unanticipated good results from something that appears as a source of suffering or pain which may bring something good and beneficial. It says that the willful ignorance, greed, and irresponsibility of human were cited as the source of suffering linked to birth defects and natural disasters.

The article focuses on the destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998. The hurricane caused around 9,550 deaths and destroyed or affected around 137,851 homes. The secondary effects of the hurricane include increases in communicable diseases and set-backs in progress in public health. It cites the factors that increased the vulnerability of the Central American population to the effects of the natural disaster.