Hillbilly MAGA country for shurr.

Nice people generally and quite a different tempo and attitude F2F from up north here in Ohio where THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS etc... I'm pretty intellectual and I disdain stupid shit but that area is special and I love it when we visit. Historian PDQ lives in the general region there and wrote here on the forum about seeing moonshiners handing out samples in public in the middle of the day in tourist areas we are familiar with, and the one moonshiner guy has been featured a lot on "Moonshiners". I fact checked it by digging up some videos... he was handing moonshine out in a tourist trap called "The Old Mill".

I wish H-PDQ were here now to give eyewitness accounts. He would know a lot.

Anyway about your points:

The Smokey Mountains millions of years ago were rugged and as high as the Himalayas, but have eroded over millennia down to no more than about 7000 foot elevation. It's still mountainous as shit there.

As far as "vulnerable" regions - when I've been there I have felt completely utterly safe from natural disasters. The mountains make the region feel cloistered and protected.

Basically I fault ABSOLUTELY no one for living and building there. This storm's effects were the literal definition of "Act of God" - completely random and unprecedented.

My opinion is that if the Smokey Mountains are not completely safe, then where on earth is? It's just this simple: the scenic and rugged mountains caused the flooding by concentrating the flow of water. Like huge funnels. And the videos indicate that the flood waters crashed down some places at over 100 MPH.

Here's a different disaster possibility: the New Madrid fault, close to Paducah, KY. Supposedly it would level masonry buildings far north as... my masonry house here. A major New Madrid earthquake would take down many dwellings and buildings across the mid-south.

As the Bible says, or rather, if I wrote it, it would say - shit falls on the righteous and the unrighteous.

It doesn't matter where you build, you can get fucked. All your stacked silver that guaranteed your retirement - washed down the hill.