Q: Where's the safest place to live, in terms of avoiding natural disasters?

A: How long can you hold your breath? It seems to us you'd be best off suspended at some depth underwater, safely beneath hurricanes and tsunamis, insulated from earthquakes, immune to mudslides, and at reduced risk from forest fires.

Assuming, however, that you're talking about places that are composed of actual earth, experts have a few more realistic suggestions. Statistically, your biggest threat is storms, which accounted for 40 percent of natural-disaster deaths between 1995 and 2015 according to a report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

So where are there the fewest major storms? Those who thrive in chilly conditions should head to places like Finland, Estonia, or Iceland, which are all too far north and east to be at risk for Atlantic hurricanes and too butt-ass cold for tornadoes to form. Conversely, if hot, dry weather is your thing, grab your sunblock, learn how to say "I'm Canadian, eh" in Arabic, and settle in somewhere like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia. "They're deserts so they don't get much weather to begin with, except for occasional dust storms," says Greg Forbes, tornado and severe-weather expert for The Weather Channel.

If those two extremes are too extreme, Singapore is an interesting compromise. It has a tropical climate but, thanks to its position roughly astride the equator, is safe from harsh weather. Storms must be distinctly north or south of the equator in order to spin up to strength. "On the equator you're kind of in between, so [nascent storms] don't tend to spin at all, the air just tends to rise or sink," says Bob Henson, meteorologist and severe-weather expert for Weather Underground. Moreover, Singapore's a pretty intriguing little city-state. Sure, they'll cane you if you step out of line, but any place that has hug-operated Coke machines and fines folks for failing to flush a public toilet can't be all bad.

This story appears in the March 2017 Popular Mechanics.

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