Residential

Exposure at home: houses, flats, detached and shared housing.

Infrastructure Risk | Telecom and Internet

Ninety Per Cent of Emergency Calls From One Indoor Spot Missed the Dispatcher. Ordinary Calls From the Same Spot Connected in Six Seconds.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 14, 2026October 2, 2026

File photo: a dispatch room at the Redding Interagency Command Center, California. Photo: Region 5 Photography, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. In the news · July 2026 The FCC published a Next Generation 911 reliability and interoperability rule in the Federal Register, effective 10 August 2026. It requires covered providers to make location facilities reliable,…

Read More Ninety Per Cent of Emergency Calls From One Indoor Spot Missed the Dispatcher. Ordinary Calls From the Same Spot Connected in Six Seconds.
Family and Care | Social Risk

Family Carers Are Widely Said to Face a 63 Per Cent Higher Risk of Death. In 1.1 Million Linked Records, They Died Less Often Than Everybody Else.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 13, 2026October 2, 2026

The famous figure came from 392 people, applied only to strained spouses, with a confidence interval starting at 1.00. Larger studies found the reverse — and inside them, strain still predicts death.

Read More Family Carers Are Widely Said to Face a 63 Per Cent Higher Risk of Death. In 1.1 Million Linked Records, They Died Less Often Than Everybody Else.
Infrastructure Risk | Water and Sanitation

Eighty-Seven Per Cent of Boil-Water Advisories in One State Followed a Broken Pipe, Not a Positive Test. Nobody Has Shown the Advisories Themselves Reduce Illness.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 10, 2026October 2, 2026

Key takeaways · 11 min read In Kentucky over seventeen years, 87% of 36,673 boil-water advisories were issued because of a line break or leak, not because of a positive test. Average duration was five days. A pressure loss stops the pipe being a sealed system. That is the mechanism, and it has the best…

Read More Eighty-Seven Per Cent of Boil-Water Advisories in One State Followed a Broken Pipe, Not a Positive Test. Nobody Has Shown the Advisories Themselves Reduce Illness.
Isolation and Belonging | Social Risk

Loneliness Raises the Risk of Dying by Fourteen Per Cent. The Fifteen-Cigarettes Line Came From Somewhere Else.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 7, 2026October 2, 2026

The 50 per cent figure everyone quotes is an average across measures that disagree. Across 90 cohorts and 2.2 million adults, social isolation raised mortality risk 32 per cent and loneliness 14 — and every improvement in method makes the number smaller.

Read More Loneliness Raises the Risk of Dying by Fourteen Per Cent. The Fifteen-Cigarettes Line Came From Somewhere Else.
Burglary and Personal Crime | Crime and Security Risk

They Asked 422 Burglars What Made Them Walk Away. The Locks Did Not Come First.
BySeung Hyoun Kim August 29, 2026October 4, 2026

A survey of 422 incarcerated burglars found occupancy, police proximity and a dog outranked alarms and cameras, that only about 12% picked a lock, and that fewer than a third cared about lighting or neighbourhood watch signs. What that means for where the money is worth spending.

Read More They Asked 422 Burglars What Made Them Walk Away. The Locks Did Not Come First.
Earthquake and Wildfire | Environmental and Climate Risk

Houses Do Not Usually Burn From the Flames. They Burn From What Lands in the Gutter.
BySeung Hyoun Kim August 29, 2026October 4, 2026

Embers are the leading cause of home ignition in wildfire, and they arrive miles ahead of the fire. An ember-resistant buffer halves a home ignition risk, and clearing perimeter vegetation nearly doubles survival odds. Why the first five feet matter more than the next ninety-five, and which measures have evidence behind them.

Read More Houses Do Not Usually Burn From the Flames. They Burn From What Lands in the Gutter.
Accounts and Devices | Crime and Security Risk

Nobody Updates the Router. The FBI Says Criminals Are Living in the Old Ones.
BySeung Hyoun Kim August 29, 2026October 4, 2026

The FBI warned in May 2025 that end-of-life home routers are being taken over for criminal proxy networks, using malware that needs no password. What attackers actually want is your residential IP address. The eight settings that matter, why the guest network is the highest-value free change, and the backup rule that is the only answer to ransomware.

Read More Nobody Updates the Router. The FBI Says Criminals Are Living in the Old Ones.
Earthquake and Wildfire | Environmental and Climate Risk

In a Modern Building, the Earthquake Is Not What Hurts You. The Room Is.
BySeung Hyoun Kim August 29, 2026October 4, 2026

A magnitude 5.9 near Tokyo in August 2026 injured 37 people and knocked down no buildings — almost all of them hurt by furniture, doors and falls. In Northridge, deaths came from collapse but hospitalisations came from falling objects. Here is what the injury data says about securing a room, why the “Triangle of Life” is wrong, and the eight fixes that matter — four of which are free.

Read More In a Modern Building, the Earthquake Is Not What Hurts You. The Room Is.
Financial Risk | Insurance

Your Home Insurance Almost Certainly Does Not Cover Flooding
BySeung Hyoun Kim August 29, 2026October 4, 2026

Most homeowners policies exclude flood entirely — and 29% of US flood claims came from outside the designated high-risk zones, where nobody is told they need it. The gaps that show up at claim time, and the two-hour job that fixes most of them.

Read More Your Home Insurance Almost Certainly Does Not Cover Flooding
Health Risk | Infectious Disease

The Six-Foot Rule Was Wrong, and Handwashing Was Never the Main Defence
BySeung Hyoun Kim August 29, 2026October 4, 2026

In 2024 the WHO dropped the droplet-versus-airborne distinction that underpinned decades of advice. Exhaled particles behave like smoke, not falling cannonballs — which moves ventilation to the top of the list and surface cleaning near the bottom.

Read More The Six-Foot Rule Was Wrong, and Handwashing Was Never the Main Defence