The tour-group had gone to the plains of the region known as the United States and was at a museum that told of such things as the Great Depression, and how humans had caused such damage to their lands that this region even suffered a catastrophe known as the Dust Bowl, when a loud warning blared out. A particularly large tornado was on its way.
Fortunately, the place had shelters to survive even an F5 so no one was hurt, or killed, but physical damage isn't the only thing that can occur before, during, and especially after, a major storm like that has passed through. -- Anon Guest
Bad news: Deathworlds were host to extreme weather. Good news: The Deathworlders are already prepared for this. The sirens were creepy and deliberately designed to be alarming in more ways than one.The natives knew what they meant and many of them could be relied upon to help get any Havenworlders to safety.
There's always a few who are blasé to all but the most extreme of dangers, and even then they're never truly panicked. This has caused some upset and confusion amongst visitors. There's only so much that visitor's guides can prepare people for. Especially when most visitors only glance at the most important bits to them and leave the rest unviewed.
Public Service Announcements have helped the locals to help the visitors immensely. In this case, the Havenworlder tourists were ushered to a shelter and distracted from the noise of the storm. At which point, the people who were used to the tornadoes left to survey the damage. They assumed that the big danger was over and all would be well. Public Service Announcements can only do so much, after all.
In retrospect, the tourists were fortunate that they had their offensensitivity filters on. They were not prepared for the devastation a tornado could wreak. Havenworlders also knew that if Deathworlders felt safe, it didn't mean that everything was safe. Thus, they were cautious as they emerged from the underground shelter.
The museum they had been visiting at the time was intact. Public works buildings in such places were always built like vaults. Too heavy and too robust to have any part of them lifted up by the extreme winds. Outside was another matter.
It was far too expensive to build every building like a bunker. Better and cheaper, the Humans reasoned, to have buildings with bunkers that were easy to rebuild. Combined with objects within that were easy and cheap to replace.
Therefore, the exterior from the Museum doors was utter devastation. It wasn't just downed branches, which passed by the Havenworlders' filters. There were parts of buildings. Parts of vehicles as well as entire ones that had been thrown about like toys.
What they almost missed were the downed electrical wires. The filters registered them as hazards, but were not quick enough to parse what dangers they were.
Fortunately, good citizens are everywhere. "Stop! Stop moving!" The Human rushing towards them was also making shoo-ing motions to move them away from what, through their filters, only registered as thick cabling. "Danger! Back up!"
Since a Human was alarmed, so too were the Havenworlders. Then their programming kicked in and parsed the cabling as something they would fear, but not fear in a manner that would endanger their physiognomy.
They saw snakes, native to their worlds and painful to encounter, but not as deadly as the wires were.
"This place not being safe," said the Human samaritain, herding the tourists back towards the museum. "Many danger being. Where is guide?"
"Guide? Here is guide." One of them gestured to their datareader, which had the cover image of A Havenworlder's Guide to Visiting Earth on it. The version was out of date and therefore free on the infonets.
"Okay," sighed the Human. "You all need a solid lesson on why the cheapest solutions are not always the best..."
[AN: For those who are interested, I have two Feather and Fan patterns (Hi, Mum!) and no idea what TBI means]
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / photovs]
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