The danger isn't over when the storm dies down.

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0:00Monkey Island is, perhaps unsurprisingly, home to thousands of monkeys. And when a

0:04major hurricane blew directly across the island, the researchers who study those monkeys thought

0:08that they were going to return to a scene of mass tragedy. But only two monkeys died

0:12during the storm. It wasn’t until long after the skies cleared that the bodies started piling up.

0:18In the years following the hurricane, fifty more monkeys died than usual. Stressed-out

0:22monkeys with weakened immune systems succumbed to diseases. Traumatized females gave birth to

0:27babies who died soon after they were born. And with over half the trees on the island gone,

0:31monkeys were suddenly way more exposed, leading to more heat-related illnesses

0:34and deaths. All hurricanes have these kinds of lingering deaths – sometimes lots of them;

0:39for example, the average hurricane that makes landfall in the US has an aftermath

0:43number of more than 200. And other disasters have aftermath deaths too. Major floods lead

0:48to heart attacks in overworked farmers, who have to replant their soggy fields. Earthquakes often

0:52lead to disease outbreaks by breaking sewage pipes and creating unsanitary conditions.

0:57Scientists are still trying to figure out what it is about a particular disaster that determines

1:01its aftermath number. Disasters like earthquakes tend to have lower aftermath numbers for the same

1:05total of deaths because more of the deaths happen during the disaster. But the fact that aftermath

1:09deaths exist at all –and that some disasters have so many of them– means we probably need to

1:13pay just as much attention –or even more– to the lingering effects of a disaster as to the disaster

1:18itself. And when you hear that a hurricane in the US killed, say, 5 people, you should

1:23multiply that number in your head by around 200 to understand the true death count of the hurricane.