As a society we always try to be progressive and not offend anybody. But in doing so, lives have been lost.

In a study done by the PNAS, they determined that more lives are lost to female hurricanes rather than male ones, because people are more likely to prepare and evacuate when a storm has a male name. That is insane to me, because living in California the natural disaster I have to worry about is fires. Every fire is given it’s own name, usually based on geography so some have female and male names. But I feel like the only important word is Fire, regardless of whether it’s the Steven or Stephanie Fire. It’s not a perfect comparison because fires approach so quickly and with hurricanes there’s usually roughly a week’s worth of warning and plenty of time to prepare. And if the word hurricane isn’t scary enough, I don’t know what to tell those people.

I also don’t know what the solution to something like this would be. Originally, all hurricanes were given female names. That was deemed sexist so we now alternate between male and female names. I guess you could give them all male names, since were only afraid male hurricanes can break our glass ceilings. That’d be sexist as well, but apparently it would keep people safer. In the end, the system’s probably going to stay the same and I’m glad it is. Because if someone’s too stupid to take Hurricane Kelly seriously, I don’t want them breeding.

Or we could just name our hurricanes after NFL lawbreakers? Hurricane Ray Rice? Pretty scary, right?