“We never saw it coming!” “Who would have thought that would happen here?” “We wouldn’t have expected something like this in a million years!” Phrases like these are common after disasters occur. The implication is that the disasters were unforeseen and unpreventable. Is this true, though? Are disasters truly unpredictable? Is there no way we can prepare for an unexpected crisis?

One can argue that we have a wealth of historical and scientific data on disasters that should allow us to predict future events on the assumption that if it has happened before, it can happen again. From a certain ...