Archive Gallery: PopSci Fights Natural Disasters
May 1933 The hurricane house, the seismograph camera, the forest-fire-fighting dirigible, and more technologies developed for reducing the consequences of natural disasters In the wake of Japan's horrific earthquake and tsunami, we can at least acknowledge that if it weren't for the country's superior technology, the rising death toll would be a lot higher than it is now. Sturdy skyscrapers, a capable warning system and disaster training didn't come from nowhere, though. As sad as it is to admit, most disaster-prone countries had to learn from destruction in order to improve their technology. We've collected several examples of early disaster-fighting tech from the Popular Science archives. Click to launch the photo gallery. We begin in the fall of 1919, just after World War I, when dirigibles glided across national forests in search of fires. After the war, scores of airplanes and zeppelins were commissioned to join horseback-riding firefighters to extinguish the...