The impression is one of figures hurled back by some cataclysmic disaster.
"This is a city that's made do every time there's some kind of cataclysmic disaster," Ms. Ascher said.
The flames that engulfed the factory, on the top three floors of a building at Washington Place and Greene Street, was the most cataclysmic disaster to befall a New York workplace until Islamist fanatics turned airplanes into missiles in 2001.
On the subject of which, the cataclysmic disaster romp 2012 20099, Sony, 12) is one of those bloody awful movies that makes you wish the End of Days would come sooner – to Hollywood at least.
"Expectation levels became so depressed that any news short of a cataclysmic disaster was going to create a rally," said Steve Massocca, president and head of trading at Pacific Growth Equities.
Mr. Bush was right to put a high priority on terrorism insurance, which is needed because some real estate development projects around the country are in danger of being stalled by the difficulty in getting coverage for a cataclysmic disaster like the one that struck the World Trade Center.
But completely losing 952 million monthly users by 2017 would require cataclysmic disaster.
And then this year, hot on the heels of a cataclysmic disaster, an entirely different approach had been born.
But, as the two World Wars so forcefully reminded us, the chances of a cataclysmic disaster have greatly increased, so we have merely traded in one type of insecurity for another.
