When I was little, I was terrified of natural disaters like hurricanes and volcanoes. I asked my parents when I was really young if there could ever be an earthquake where we lived. They said no and gave me some kind of reason that I never remembered, but since then I always imagined that the people in our state had long ago placed this huge metal plate deep underground to prevent earthquakes, and I would sometimes wonder why places like California and Japan didn't do the same. I occasionally still have to remind myself that it's because of fault lines and not whether or not there are underground metal plates.

Chelsea

I used to believe that during an earthquake, little lawn gnomes were on little ladders, shaking my house. Like literally surrounding my house and they would just hug the house and shake shake shake.

k

When I was about 6 or 7 I watched that movie Volcano. I was really scared that a volcano would pop up in the middle of town and we would all die that I would run and hide whenever I heard a loud noise

Lily Brennan

When I was young, I was really interested in dinosaurs. My dad told me that they all died when a huge meteor hit the Earth. I got so scared that one would come from space and we would all die, that I would hide in the closet for protection every day, thinking that would save me.

Addison

When I was young I came to a conclusion after watching my mice run around in their wheel that the reason the earth goes around is because we walk on it. In other words, we stay in one spot and the earth moves underneath us. This theory worked well when it came to explaining earthquakes: They are cause by too many people walking in different directions at the same time.

Saskia K

When I was little, I never would have thought--not in a million years--that I would live to be 30 without a) being stuck in quicksand, b) having an encounter with hot lava, and c) having to break out of prison. No, I've had a boring life.

Sol

There was a relatively short period of time in my childhood where I was very paranoid about quicksand. I would avoid light spots in black pavement (small rocks, presumably) in order to not be sucked into quicksand!

Jennifer

As a child I used to believe that people can swim into the lava while it comes out of the volcano. I also had the image of a man diving into the lava.

dim

I live in California where we have frequent earthquakes. When I was four, I experienced my first one (the big '89 earthquake) while I was singing in the shower. Later on that evening my dad explained to me that when god doesn't like what you're doing, he makes earthquakes. He did a little demonstration of shaking a lego piece on a magazine until the lego piece fell off. Then it was bedtime and I couldn't go to sleep so I asked my mom for a glass of water. When she came back with the water, we had an aftershock which felt like our apartment building was tipping over. She sat down just as it stopped and for the longest time I thought that she stopped the building from falling with her weight. I ALSO thought that I was the cause of that earthquake because god hated my song, so for years I tried to remember that song I sang in the shower.

Anon

When I was six or seven, I read the Pompeii issue of National Geographic and became convinced that volcanoes were going to get me when I slept, though we lived nowhere near any. In fact, they were waiting outside my window, though if I looked outside they'd duck around back so I couldn't see them. A bad dream about fire or lava traveling along our fence up to the house was the kicker, and I remember I took the magazine outside and left it there at some point so it got ruined by rain. I was so worried about a friend who was going on a vacation to Washington because of Mt. Saint Helens, too.

My defenses against the volcanoes were always sleeping with my comforter over me, even in summer, and sleeping with a huge stuffed dog that would shoot... something, I guess... out of its nose to keep the volcanoes away. The habit of sleeping with the comforter always on lasted until I was at least fifteen or so, though the belief had long since passed...

Amanda

When I was younger, I went through this faze of being tarafied of naturle disasters. I believed that any natrul disaster could happen anyware. Where I live, the worst thing that could happen is a Ice Storm. THATS NOTHING!

Crazy Believer

When I was in kindergarten, a boy in my class told me that the rubber button-looking thing on the wall in the bathroom was an earthquake button. He said that if there was an earthquake, you push it in and it would keep the walls from falling down. It never occurred to me to question that, until many years later (I'm embarrassed to admit how old I was) when someone said something to me about the rubber doorstop. Before I could stop the words from coming out, I said, "Oh, that's what that is? I thought it was an earthquake button." Needless to say, I earned myself quite a lot of teasing for that one!

Amy

When I was about 5 or 6 my friend told me that if the weatherman said that there was a tornado, you had to be extra quiet because if you talk too loudly, the tornado would hear you and come after you and suck you up into the clouds. The only way to protect yourself was to fight the tornado (yes, punching and kicking) off and hope you win and scare it away.

We were what you call "special."

Savannah Dearest

air would soon finish in the world then humanity would be in trouble but only I knew this and I didn't want to panic the entire planet so I secretly tried to think of ways to save air only I would use.

Abdul

In Russia we had a lot of training for 'incase a powerplant explodes and released toxic gases'. And I kept hearing these stories about it...

People were telling me things like "When the powerplant explodes we would all have to wear the gasmasks, even when we sleep, and even eat wearing them".

This eventually made me belive that there is only one powerplant on earth which one day WILL explode... like it is unavoidable and it will explode, people are just basically waiting for the unavoidable disaster to happen ( just like a meteor strike)

And I belived that when it explodes, the gases would ALMOST INSTANTLY fill the ENTIRE EARTH and we would have to live with gasmasks for the REST OF MANKND. xD

Yarik

Once in second grade, (I thought) a teacher told me "If you don't throw your trash away in the trash can, the world will stop spinning." I certainly didn't want that to happen! Her scare tactic worked good. At 24, I still make sure my trash gets thrown away properly.

Danna

My parents had a science background, and gave us lots of kiddie science books, so I knew pretty well how the world worked. However, I was scared of things that really COULD happen but didn't understand they were unlikely. For example, when mom would take us to see kid's plays at the local performing arts complex, I was convinced that the platform in the ceiling where the huge speakers and stage lights were was going to fall and flatten us. I was also convinced that when we drove through a canyon on the way to go camping that a huge rock would fall from above and crush our car (I was not scared of a flood or landslide, both of which happen in canyons, but just a huge random boulder).

Afraid of being flattened

Growing up in the Midwest - there were frequent tornado warnings.
For those of you who are not familiar with tornados, it is recommended that you open windows to help equalize the air pressure in your home to keep it from exploding.
I would go behind my father and close the windows because I thought the tornado would push thru the screens as little tornados then re-form into the large tornado in our house!

Linda M

When I was young, I thought every time there was a thunder storm, there was automatically a tornado. I used to grab all of my favorite stuffed animals and my pillow and go sleep in the basement every time it rained, and I would get upset with my parents for not letting me bring my dog in the basement. When I would wake up, I was astonished to see the roof still on the house. After this happened about 10 times, I finally realized there wasn't always going to be a tornado.

Anon

When I was little, I used to think that during an earthquake, the reason the bed would shake was because my sister was messing with me. I would yell to my parents to come and get my sister out from under my bed.

Garry