The normalcy bias refers to a mental state (head in the sand) people enter when facing a potential disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.

This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. America will always be America – yeah right.

It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Possible causes

The normalcy bias may be caused in part by the way the brain processes new data. Research suggests that even when the brain is calm, it takes 8–10 seconds to process new information. Stress slows the process, and when the brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a single solution that may or may not be correct. An evolutionary reason for this response could be that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of surviving an attack; predators are less likely to eat prey that isn’t struggling.

Effects
The normalcy bias causes people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster.
Therefore, they think that everything will be all right, while information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reason to believe there is a risk.
This creates a cognitive dissonance that they then must work to eliminate.
Some manage to eliminate it by refusing to believe new warnings coming in and refusing to evaluate (maintaining the normalcy bias), while others eliminate the dissonance by escaping the danger.

The possibility that some may refuse to evaluate causes significant problems in planning for the future.

Our present disaster is the Obama – Soros (Fabian Socialists) dumbing down of America, Making America a third world country. They are presently behind all the uprising in the middle East. The Fabian Socialists believe the smashing apart the World and rebuilding it in their elite One World Order image. It is easy to pick up their agenda. We write about it every day at our website – www.itmakessenseblog.com It is time to wake up your neighbors and your children.

Sad to say my grown children get their news from the comedy channel, the food channel, the travel channel and believe that somehow the world will stay the same.
Let’s try to get their heads out of Normalcy bias. – The Meister