How to read the death map

Hi there Florida map fans!
Some people are calling it the death map, but the new maps created by two academics may help emergency management policy makers and local emergency responders reduce fatalities from natural disasters or at least plan accordingly.
The New Scientist has posted the maps, which chart the areas of the United States where nature piled up the highest body counts by county between 1970 and 2004. The maps come from a study in the International Journal of Health Geographics written by Kevin Borden, a geography professor at the University of South Carolina, and Susan L. Cutter, director of the Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute, also at the University of South Carolina.
The New Scientist reports: Southerners are more like to die from the effects of the weather than people living in any other region of the US.
But for all the attention garnered by catastrophic hurricanes such as Katrina and Andrew, simple heatwaves kill far more people than all natural disasters combined, according to a newly published county-by-county map of natural hazard deaths (see the maps here).
Other extreme summer hazards, such as floods, and cold winter weather also outranked hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires, according to geographers Kevin Borden and Susan Cutter, of the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Overall, natural disasters account for less than 5% of natural hazard deaths across the US.
Large cities like San Francisco and New York are among the safest places to live, but if city living isn't for you, the odds of dying from the weather are lowest in the Midwest.
So there you have it, choose your preferred mode of death, find where it's most likely to happen and go live there! Alternatively, just come to Florida and enjoy yourself - you never how long you might be around!
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