JERRY STOOD BEFORE the firelight, his head bare, his hands behind his back. "Tomorrow we are going to track the most violent storm in recorded history," he said. "It will break tomorrow, probably by noon, and it will kill thousands, probably tens of thousands of people. If it’s stable and it persists beyond a few hours, it may kill millions. If we had time, and energy, and opportunity, I would try to save lives. But we don’t, and we can’t. We don’t have time, and we don’t have authority, so we can’t save anyone. We can’t even save ourselves. Our own lives are not our top priority tomorrow."