To this and other disasters, Romanians reacted (and still react) with glum jokes: Bucharest became Ceaushwitz, Ceaushima, Paranopolis; the dynasty that ruled them represented socialism in one family. But gallows themselves were less evident than gallows humor.

People respond to these disasters in terms of their own experience. Unless the disaster has struck them personally, their circumstances, their environment, it is dismissed as a superficial thing.