Disaster, By Gerald Diamond

Avoiding Disaster by Disaster
Have you ever made disastrous decisions? You might think the reason why you made a disastrous decision without any thought about the consequences is because you lacked prior experiences of making such disastrous decisions. When I was a child, I usually played with a coin to amuse myself. One day, I envisioned the coin was a shining, delicious cookie, and then I swallowed it like a cookie, resulting in the coin getting stuck in my throat. Fortunately, my mom noticed in time and patted my back heavily until the coin came out. Although I was saved, my throat was injured because the coin scratched my throat. As a result, I could not eat any hard food for a month, such as my favorite fries and sausage. Gerald Diamond,
However, by examining a disaster through Diamond`s perspectives of how people make disastrous decisions, I can probably learn from the disaster and avoid it happening in the future. The first reason for making a disastrous decision is failing to anticipate the problem. Diamond provides an example of Easter Island, where the islanders logged the forest for their own benefit. In the long run, the forest was destroyed by the islanders logging. However, no longer having those supplies for them to live threatened their lives. They were on the knife`s edge. Living becomes a primary problem for them. In the end, most of the islanders died because they didn’t have any resources for them to. The reason for having such tragic end is they didn’t anticipate it. They didn’t have a clue of the consequences if they deforest the island, because they did not know that if they logged too much would become a disaster. For example, the Donner party consisted of 86 emigrants, who attempted to travel to California. However, they didn’t follow the regular trail road and decided to take a new, supposedly short route named Lansford Hastings. Afterwards, they knew that this route was worse