Favorite Passages: "How do they endure all those terrible things?"

I came across this passage as I was reading The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories (New York: Scribner, 2011). The story is called "Human Moments in World War III," and it was originally published in 1983 (Esquire, July). The story is about two men in orbit around the earth, the narrator and a younger man named Vollmer. The passage consists of the latter's sublime musings from their bird's-eye perspective. The emphasis on the names of the things themselves -- the deserts, the oceans, the volcanoes, the hurricanes -- and the theme of catastrophe strikes me as classic DeLillo. For, as he writes in White Noise, "Only a catastrophe gets our attention."

Anyway, it is, I feel, a piece of writing to be admired.

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It's almost unbelievable when you think of it, how they live there in all that ice and sand and mountainous wilderness. Look at it," he says. "Huge barren deserts, huge oceans. How do they endure all those terrible things? The floods alone. The earthquakes alone make it crazy to live there. Look at those fault systems. They're so big, there's so many of them. The volcanic eruptions alone. What could be more frightening than a volcanic eruption? How do they endure avalanches, year after year, with numbing regularity? It's hard to believe people live there. The floods alone. You can see whole huge discolored areas, all flooded out, washed out. How do they survive, where do they go? Look at the cloud buildups. Look at that swirling storm center. What about the people who live in the path of a storm like that? It must be packing incredible winds. The lightning alone. People exposed on beaches, near trees and telephone poles. Look at the cities with their spangled lights spread in all directions. Try to imagine the crime and violence. Look at the smoke pall hanging low. What does that mean in terms of respiratory disorders? It's crazy. Who would live there? The deserts, how they encroach. Every year they claim more and more arable land. How enormous those snowfields are. Look at the massive storm fronts over the ocean. There are ships down there, small craft, some of them. Try to imagine the waves, the rocking. The hurricanes alone. The tidal waves. Look at those coastal communities exposed to tidal waves. What could be more frightening than a tidal wave? But they live there, they stay there. Where could they go?