One summer evening, after gathering at my apartment in Anacostia, DC, a group of my friends and I piled into someone’s car and headed off to see the group War perform at the DC Armory. Concerts at the Armory were sit-on-the-floor affairs – literally, there was no seating. The show had just begun when my friends and I, and those sitting near us, heard the low but growing rumble of what sounded like approaching thunder. We turned our gazes from the stage toward the sound, and saw what looked like a tsunami. A rising wave of panicked, stampeding human bodies was headed right for us, people who already had spied the wave approaching them and had instinctively leapt to their feet and turned to run away. If the question of “Why?” ever entered anyone’s mind, it was a fleeting thought. We knew only that we must move. We jumped up and turned to run just in time to be swept up and carried along like flotsam. I had taken pillows from my sofa, pillows I never saw again. A friend lost his glasses. Other concertgoers lost shoes and other items. We were the lucky ones. Some had been nearly trampled or crushed, and had to be carried out in ambulances which had been driven right onto the Armory floor.

Once the crowd began to pour through the doors in a rushing torrent, things slowly began to calm. We soon learned a fight had broken out in a far corner of the venue, and those nearby who tried to move out of the way apparently started a chain reaction of retreat. Once the ambulances left, the show resumed, and people settled down on the floor once again as if nothing unusual had occurred. The chances of the same thing happening again did not seem to enter people’s thoughts.

I remember that evening as having presented me with what I thought was a moment of clarity. I used to wonder how people who had experienced an earthquake could so casually resume their lives in the same location. It came to mind again as I sat back down to listen to the music. “Oh”, I thought, “people just take their chances, even in situations like this”.

The recent deadly flooding in Texas and Oklahoma brings to mind this very point. One elderly man being rescued commented to reporters that all of it was nothing more than a bad, hundred-year flood he had heard about all his life. “Well”, I thought, “if he knew all along that a bad one was due, I guess he just always has taken his chances.”

Life goes on, as it must, but sometimes it makes no sense to keep doing the same things in the same ways. The destruction from flooding in Houston, the nation’s fourth most-populous city, must be considered alongside this fact: there are real estate websites that tell people in Houston and its surrounding areas exactly how FEMA has assessed the flood risk there – assessments that cover centuries. Home buyers are informed that the 100-year flood plain carries a 1% chance of being flooded in any given year, and a 26% chance of flooding during a 30-year period. The 500-year flood plain has a 0.2% chance of being flooded in any given year, and a 6% chance of flooding during a 30-year period. Potential residents also are told that localized street flooding can happen anywhere in a heavy rain, not only in the 100 and 500-year flood plains.

Before the age of websites, of course, people have posted warnings for posterity’s sake, warnings that often are unknown or unheeded. Think Leviticus, for instance. Whatever your opinion of the dietary restrictions found in that book, looking at them through modern eyes may make you appreciate their efficacy. As pointed out by the Biblical Archaeology Society “Like other ancient peoples, the early Jews avoided certain foods and other practices through simple observation of the dangers. Many of their statutes form a basic health-and-hygiene guide for any people living in a warm, arid climate without the luxury of refrigeration and availability of advanced medical treatment. They observed that in a hot climate, mixing milk and meat can have a bad effect on health. The prohibition against eating shellfish makes sense if you consider they are potentially deadly for a consumer if water reaches a certain temperature. Spoiled finned fish is readily detectable by smell and taste, but not so with shellfish. Pork rots easily. Spoiled pork is more dangerous than other meats like goat and – because of a pig’s diet and lack of ability to sweat – can contain up to 30 times more toxins than beef or venison, thus a potential health hazard as well as a possibility of transferring parasites.”

What has been happening in Texas recently brings much more to mind about heedlessness and risk taking than memories of that War concert or thoughts about Leviticus. I am reminded of the tsunami that struck Japan following the 2011 earthquake. For me, the most stunning revelation to follow those events were the reports about ancient warnings. Unlike what we read about the Ten Commandments, the Biblical dietary restrictions were not written in stone. The Japanese warnings were. As Martin Fackler wrote in The New York Times in April of that year “Hundreds of so-called tsunami stones, some more than six centuries old, dot the coast of Japan, silent testimony to the past destruction that these lethal waves have frequented upon this earthquake-prone nation. But modern Japan, confident that advanced technology and higher seawalls would protect vulnerable areas, came to forget or ignore these ancient warnings, dooming it to repeat bitter experiences when the recent tsunami struck. The flat stones, some as tall as 10 feet, are a common sight along Japan’s northeastern shore, which bore the brunt of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left almost 29,000 people dead or missing.”

The forbears who erected the stone outside the small village of Aneyoshi were specific in their caution, writing “Do not build your homes below this point!” Paying attention paid off. Fackler writes “Residents say this injunction from their ancestors kept their tiny village of 11 households safely out of reach of the deadly tsunami…that wiped out hundreds of miles of Japanese coast and rose to record heights near here. The waves stopped just 300 feet below the stone.”

We may be risk-averse as a species, but not so much as individuals. So, as we will inevitably continue to take chances and place ourselves on shaky ground at times, perhaps its best to remember the words of Aneyoshi villager Isamu Aneishi who said “We are proud of following our ancestors, but our tsunami stone can’t save us from everything.”