Bad weather and bad judgement

[mdlbear]

When Tornadoes Attack: What a Tornado Taught Me About Our Stupid Obsession With Gadgets (And Why We Still Love Them)

Two weeks ago today, a tornado ripped through Illinois. At points it was up to a quarter mile wide, and it did enough damage, cracking giant powerlines like toothpicks and yanking old-growth trees right from the ground, that it completely closed the major highway I57 for a 35-mile expanse south of Chicago.

I was lucky enough to be traveling that day (on the way to the airport for WWDC) and pulled off the road just in time to intersect with the tornado at its worst. Inside a gas station with no basement and plenty of active fuel lines, it was the first time in a long time—maybe ever—that I genuinely feared for my life, that I thought things were over. Watch that video above. Then know that I was a lot closer.

But as I've played the scenes back in my head over the last several days, it's not the storm that’s proven to be the most haunting. It's the way the people reacted. Because in the gas station, I watched a group of 20 scared people not take shelter, but stand in front of a wall of glass to record the event—to make some YouTube clips.

Well worth a read, and rather touching in places.