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I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

The main arguement of this article is that a large number of factors, such as demographic changes, economic development, gobal travel and commerce and conflict have heightened the risk of international disease outbreaks and international organizations like the WHO and national public health organizations are struggling to develop and adopt new and innovative protocols to cope with new threats.

This article is entirely about the shortcomings of emergency response, and how the history and traditions of the FDNY and NYPD got in the way of an effective response, resulting in communication barriers, an uncoordinated response, unknown and unaccounted responders, and even possibly avoidable deaths. Public health was not explicitly mentioned, as this article focused more on the efficacy of the multi-agency response itself.

The distribution of scarce resources, specifically with healthcare, is a struggle faced by all institutions and how it is acted upon is heavily dependent on the culture and values of the people making the allocations. In France, a relatively wealthy country with a high standard of medical care available, the government has elected to make advanced medical care available to people who would not be able to obtain it in their respective countries of origin by granting them residence rights on a health basis. The article discusses the social factors behind this, the adaptation of the policy over time to meet new demands, and how a balance between ethical and moral obligations, overall public health interests, and equal opportunity of immigrants applying was developed.

The data for this study were collected as part of a larger, population-based, representative study of persons living in the 23 southernmost counties of Mississippi prior to Hurricane Katrina. This is not a new or inventive way of studying this issue, as a representitive study of a population is one of the classic ways social research is conducted.

"Within the last 12 months, there have been multiple "crisis" states declared in Indigenous communities across the country, including even the entire territory of Nunavut—where 84 percent of the population are Inuit. Canadians have begun to ask what exactly is happening, but we should already know."

"What do you find 20 years ago? The same conversations we are having now about suicide. The same
conversations we are having now about the lack of mental health. The same conversations that we are
having around socio economic development,"

I followed up on other environmental concerns relating to US military operations, other water contamination crises (both military and civilian), and i looked more into the history of Camp Lejeune.

Historical research and analysis of primary resourses and international policy was used to produce claims and arguments in this article.