Booking Through Thursday (4) - Headlines

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme (mostly) about books and reading.

The BTT question of the week is:

The news has been horrifying and addictive this week, with catastrophe piled on catastrophe, to a degree that–if I had read this in a book or seen it in a movie–I’d be protesting that it was just too unlikely, too farfetched.

But, topics for novels get ripped from the headlines all the time. Or real-life events remind you of fiction (whether “believable” or not) that you’ve read but never expected to see. Or real life comes up with an event so unbelievable that it stretches you sense of reality.

Hmm … I can’t quite come up with an outright question to ask, but thinking about the theory of fiction and how it can affect and be affected by real world events can act as a buffer between the horrific events on the news and having to actually face that horror. So … what happens when the line between fiction and reality becomes all-too slim? Discuss!

I assume we are referring to the catastrophic event that happened in Japan last week.
I got a text message from my high-school classmate praying for the lives of the people of Japan that afternoon. I didn't what happened since I have no TV at the condo. It was about two hours later when my former college roommate texted me if my family back in the province were safely evacuated. I was puzzled about that message and I asked her why. She said because there was a tsunami warning for the whole eastern Philippines. That's when I panicked and I must've had shouted at some people at the sari-sari store (a small grocery store) because some girls were so slow and I wanted to load my cellphone to check up on my family. 
I was supposed to stay at the condo until Saturday but I was worried and I decided to go back to my cousin's place.

And I saw the news - those horrifying images were all too real. At that time I also recall the images of the 2004 earthquake and tsunami at the Indian Ocean.
Everything was shocking. Still is. All these events are stuff that we see only in disaster movies - movies that are products of "over-active" imaginations of people who have death wishes or fetishes, watcha call'm. But let's face it, we are masochists, the human race. We enjoy watching these kind movies or relish reading these kind of books. We love that pseudo-adrenaline; we like to put ourselves in situations like those, to imagine what it would feel like. After watching or reading we discuss it with our friends: "What would you do if this happens?" What are you going to bring with you if that happens?" I know I did ask questions. I think I asked my niece what she would do if there ever was a zombie apocalypse.
But we always exhale relieved breaths after we discuss these things, thanking a higher being that they will "not" happen.
Yet, things do happen. Those videos had me mesmerized and thinking: How could this happen? Is that really real?
The caliber of destruction and mayhem are all too real. And I am not only talking about the earthquakes and the tsunamis; I am also talking about revolutions, epidemics, storms, wars and Bigfoot. (sorry, couldn't resist)
This is not fiction that we can just stop watching or reading - this is reality and it's causing one hell of an adrenaline rush.