A raw total rewards scale — a huge county racks up a bigger number partly because there's simply more there to lose, not because any one resident faces more danger. Dividing by population fixes that. But the dollar figure alone still isn't the whole story: Social Vulnerability and Community Resilience are what actually separate a bad storm from a catastrophe — Hurricane Katrina made landfall as "only" a strong Category 3, and it became the deadliest disaster in this dataset's memory because of who could evacuate and whether the levees held, not because the wind was unsurvivable. Money buys mobility — a car, a place to go, the ability to miss work — so Lack of Reliable Transportation (the share of adults without it) is shown alongside as the closest available read on who actually can't leave. A high resilience score today can reflect real rebuilding since a past disaster, not a claim that the disaster didn't happen.

A small county landing near the top of this list isn't a math artifact to wave away — it's a different kind of signal than a big county in the same spot. The same dollar total that would barely register against Los Angeles's economy can be a meaningful share of a small county's whole tax base, workforce, or population. A high per-resident number in a small place isn't necessarily "this individual is in more danger" — it's closer to "one bad year could reshape this place's economy or its culture," which a huge, diverse county can absorb in a way a small one can't. Population is shown for every row so you can read the number in that context, not to discount it.