I actually thought about this when the Tsunami in Japan happened. I was on youtube and watched a couple of videos that were absolutely mind blowing. As in, I have never even seen a movie that had created something so destructive looking. It actually turned my stomach, and made me want to cry watching it. I couldnt watch any more videos it affected me so bad. I was watching some videos of the tornado in Tuscaloosa and the same thing happened to me when I watched a tornado actually cross through a parking lot. It was filmed by a dude on his cell phone from the other side of the parking lot. You could see cars driving there before and then the tornado came and they were gone. My stomach turned again and I wanted to cry...
I guess what I'm getting at is I think these events are not too much more severe than they ever have been (but thats a different argument), its just that, unless you have ever been involved in a disaster of that magnitude, you can't even imagine (as in dream up the visuals) what it would be like. Now with cell phones that take HD videos etc, there is so much more coverage of these events than before. The reason I wanted to cry when I saw that tsunami wipe out/kill everything in the video in HD is because I have NEVER seen a tsunami video before ever, really. Even the Indian Ocean tsunami videos don't compare. Im rambling, but I imagine you can see my point. I don't think that there has ever been coverage of natural disasters like there has been worldwide in say, the last year or two.
