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For your apocalyptic pleasure, the New Yorker runs as story on "the next big one" Earthquake - the one which will happen in the 700 miles long Cascadia subduction zone:
Every fault line has an upper limit to its potency, determined by its length and width, and by how far it can slip. For the San Andreas, one of the most extensively studied and best understood fault lines in the world, that upper limit is roughly an 8.2—a powerful earthquake, but, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, only six per cent as strong as the 2011 event in Japan.
In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.
...Thanks to that work, we now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle.
In regards with preparedness: the TL/DR version is "pants down and properly bent"
...estimates that seventy-five per cent of all structures in the state are not designed to withstand a major Cascadia quake. FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings—more than three thousand of them schools—will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake. So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers, and two-thirds of railways and airports; also, one-third of all fire stations, half of all police stations, and two-thirds of all hospitals.
...Fifteen per cent of Seattle is built on liquefiable land, including seventeen day-care centers and the homes of some thirty-four thousand five hundred people. So is Oregon’s critical energy-infrastructure hub, a six-mile stretch of Portland through which flows ninety per cent of the state’s liquid fuel and which houses everything from electrical substations to natural-gas terminals.
...For the seventy-one thousand people who live in Cascadia’s inundation zone, that will mean evacuating in the narrow window after one disaster ends and before another begins. ... Depending on location, they will have between ten and thirty minutes to get out. That time line does not allow for finding a flashlight, tending to an earthquake injury, hesitating amid the ruins of a home, searching for loved ones, or being a Good Samaritan. “When that tsunami is coming, you run,” Jay Wilson, the chair of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC), says. “You protect yourself, you don’t turn around, you don’t go back to save anybody. You run for your life.”
So... if you live in Seattle, better move to Chicago?
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by danaris on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:37PM
Seems to me (as someone having only a passing familiarity with the science involved) another question is whether such a quake could destabilize the Yellowstone supervolcano. If I understand correctly, a significant seismic event in its vicinity could have at least some effect on it, but I don't have a clue how close "its vicinity" is, or what kinds of (un)certainty we have about that kind of chain reaction.
Any Soylentils have any greater knowledge on this?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:44PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by danaris on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:50PM
Well, that's at least moderately reassuring.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:27PM
Seems to me (as someone having only a passing familiarity with the science involved) another question is whether such a quake could destabilize the Yellowstone supervolcano. If I understand correctly, a significant seismic event in its vicinity could have at least some effect on it, but I don't have a clue how close "its vicinity" is, or what kinds of (un)certainty we have about that kind of chain reaction.
The Yellowstone area experiences frequent fairly large earthquakes. For example, the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake [wikipedia.org] was Richter magnitude 7.3-7.5. That happened about 30 miles away from the western edge of the last caldera eruption and perhaps 50-70 miles away from the two primary areas of current magma activity. Even more powerful earthquakes are thought to be possible on the fault at the base of the Grand Tetons to the south of the Yellowstone hotspot which would be a bit further away. Meanwhile a western coast earthquake would probably be 700 miles away at the closest with the intervening land greatly fractured by faulting. IMHO that would absorb most of the shaking energy and deformation from the earthquake (despite it being up to two orders of magnitude greater than a nearby earthquake) and it would be substantially weaker than a nearby earthquake. In any case, the caldera area has probably experienced thousands to tens of thousands of major earthquakes since the last caldera eruption 640k years ago.
(Score: 1) by danaris on Wednesday July 22 2015, @12:01PM
Thanks, that's quite informative. (And sorry for taking a week to respond; I don't yet have a regular schedule set up for SoylentNews the way I did for Slashdot...)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 23 2015, @01:16AM
(Score: 1) by Bromine001 on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:04PM
Remember when it was the San Andreas fault that was going to cause California to fall into the ocean?
or when the New Madrid Fault was going to cause Missouri and Illinois to collapse?
Or when the Yellowstone supervolcano was going to cover the entirety of North America in hot lava?
I feel like Geologists have cried wolf once too often for me to pay much attention to hyperbole.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:48PM
Yes, well, how else are you going to sell geology and get your funding?
There's either, well, humm… probably, at some point in the next 100 years, likely not in your lifetime, no I can't tell you when (or for Yellowstone: humm… probably, at some point in the next 100,000 years, overwhelming odds not in your lifetime [or your grandchildrens' lifetimes, or theirs, or theirs, etc], probably at a point when geology has advanced and we'll have the modeling to see it coming 100 years off.)
Or there's OMG END OF THE WORLD! Plus, disaster movies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:30PM
Well, San Andreas thought about making an earthquake. But his insurance told him that earthquakes are not covered in his third-party liability, so he decided to postpone it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gravis on Tuesday July 14 2015, @04:14PM
Remember when it was the San Andreas fault that was going to cause California to fall into the ocean?
or when the New Madrid Fault was going to cause Missouri and Illinois to collapse?
Or when the Yellowstone supervolcano was going to cover the entirety of North America in hot lava?
⸮tell me about it! these "scientists" keep telling me the Earth is going to be engulfed by the Sun but it hasn't happened! how can people be so wrong about things!⸮
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 14 2015, @04:56PM
California won't fall into the ocean, but a large chunk of it will likely be up against Alaska sometime in the distant future. The Wrangellia block caused Denali to form when it hit Alaska, and it is thought (by some) to have once been about where California and a large chunk of other territory is now. It may have been responsible for some of the structure of the Rockies that currently mystifies geologists.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday July 14 2015, @05:14PM
They can tell there's a build-up of energy, but there's no way to know when it will be released.
Calling it crying wolf is ignorant. An earthquake is coming and it's going to be massive. I don't think trying to wait until the eve of destruction to warn is a viable strategy. Humans do a poor job with risks of catastrophe in the future. At least this way the building codes have been updated to try and mitigate it. But a 9.0 would leave even recent buildings toppled.
(Score: 1) by Type44Q on Tuesday July 14 2015, @07:31PM
I'd be curious to know what the results would be if you took an IQ test. No,really.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday July 14 2015, @09:19PM
I remember when geologists said the San Andreas would eventually cause a big earthquake, and that the New Madrid fault would eventually cause a quake in Missouri and Illinois, and that sometyime in the next 100,000 years the Yel;lowstone supervolcano would erupt.
I also remember the media deciding that wasn't dramatic enough so they played with words to make it sound like it was going to be 10 times as bad and probably next week or so.
My advice: when the media says stuff like that, look up the actual scientists to find out what they actually said. Read carefully.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fadrian on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:15PM
It is a problem. When it hits, it might well be pretty bad. On the other hand, earthquakes are non-linear and chaotic in timing so, just because it's 80 years past it's average date, doesn't mean the quake will happen tomorrow. in addition, there's not a lot of science to say that the subduction zone will SPROING (actual scientific word... OK, not really, but you get the idea) along the whole zone. The energy could be released as minor quakes, relieving enough pressure to avoid a major one. Or you could have a major quake in one area that causes nothing but minor damage as you get further from the epicenter. That's the problem with "planning" for quakes - you don't know when the "big one" in your area will hit. We know the subduction zone SPROINGs about every 250 years. You just can't say where or when.
So yeah, I got my insurance and emergency supplies and plan. Besides that, there's FEMA. I'm not going to ruin my life worrying about natural disasters - we have enough man-made ones to worry about already.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:27PM
Looks like we need to do some neutrino tomography :-)
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~mcdonoug/KITP%20Website%20for%20Bill/slides/Neutrino%20Oscillation%20Tomography%20-%20Enomoto.pdf [umd.edu]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:10PM
earthquakes are non-linear ... 80 years past it's average date
Is there enough data to show the distribution of events? If its increasing or decreasing over time, etc? Not sure the average means too much if its not linear or constant.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:41PM
The series quoted didn't have enough data points to figure a decent standard deviation. And the further in the past you get, they less accurate the dating. So I'd guess that we don't have enough evidence to say any particular "when" with any certainty. Enough to worry about, however.
OTOH, I'm busy worrying about the Hayward fault, which is connected to the San Andreas fault and has some tall buildings and at least one reservoir built on top of it. But since my brother-in-law lives outside Seattle (well, actually many miles East (and South?) of Seattle, I really should spend a bit of time worrying about that one, too.
The problem is, you can't just stock up on supplies, you need to replace them regularly. We stocked up after the Loma Prieta quake, but things have gotten stale, and we've gotten older and less capable of energetic action. And the "Emergency Earthquake Supply Stores" that popped up right after then have largely gone out of business, so replacing the supplies now means quite a long trip.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 15 2015, @11:32AM
but things have gotten stale
Like what? In blizzard-land its all about camping supplies.
I keep a stockpile of batteries in this FIFO organization holder mostly because I don't like running out of batteries, but also its handy during power outages.
As a mostly car camper I like canned food so I keep a supply of that too. I like deep woods hiking but I don't think carrying all that junk on my back would be good for my knees.
One advantage of always being prepared to go camping, in case of sudden vacation, cancellation of other activities, or great weather, it also means I'm always prepared for natural disaster (tornado winds mean trees down in all the streets, 2 foot snow blizzard, both of which have happened in the last decade...).
People trash talk water bottles but, oh well, I rotate thru a crate of them per year. I don't live in the west, there's no shortage of (probably contaminated) water. Of course I have a water filter for camping...
The camping thing is a workable strategy. Unless there's something special about earthquake supplies...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday July 15 2015, @09:02PM
Well, we don't go camping anymore. Sleeping anywhere besides has gotten too painful on arising. Also we both have medical equipment that needs to be plugged in. (Just a monitor for her, but CPAP for me.)
We stored a bunch of canned goods, but they were "iron rations", i.e., not things we normally eat, but rather things like canned beans. Over the years the cans leaked and became swollen. Ended up not trusting even the ones that looked good. We never drink bottled water. We do store drums of water, but we don't change it often enough. Etc.
There isn't much special about earthquake supplies that doesn't apply to any other disaster supplies...but where do you store them? If the house is unsafe, you can't get at them in the basement. Etc. We live on a rather rocky hillside (not really steep, but not something you can put a lawn on, either. ... so you can't set up a storage shed there (and the terrain is such that if the house were unsafe, the back yard would probably be inaccessible. Etc.
If it works out better for you, great. But it may work out a lot less well as the decades pass.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday July 15 2015, @09:21PM
Ah OK then
One interesting stored food idea, might help, store junk food not healthy stuff. Its not healthy but it keeps you alive better than nothing, and being junk food that can of peaches or apple pie filling is going to get eaten (rotated) a lot faster than a can of beans. Only the tastiest soups for my storage, etc.
I have a good spot for emergency bag (I have one of those too, not just camp gear) and thats the trunk of the car. If something bad happens I might not be home but my car trunk is never more far from me, so I have stuff like a really good first aid kit in there and some food and water and some other things (tools, gloves, warm hats, blankets, things like that). Finding drinks that are freeze proof is non-trivial and pitiful as this probably sounds the only option I've found in freezing areas is capri-sun mylar juice bag things in a ziplock bag and even those leak after a bunch of freeze thaw cycles. Maybe if you put crowbar and gloves in the car trunk, if the worst happened it might help get into the basement where the real stuff is stored. Just an idea that worked for me, might help.
I got pretty sick of MREs when I was in the military, but they're not THAT awful, I keep a "supply" of them around too. When you have a bunch of hungry kids a case of them doesn't last long anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:23PM
Does anyone know what the min/max on that range is, not just the average?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:37PM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:29PM
Luckily for you they have camps and trains [nstarzone.com] all lined up.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @04:00PM
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 14 2015, @10:11PM
I am often at the Peet's at Broadway and Washington in the morning, and the Starbucks at Couch and 11th across from Powells in the evening.
mdcrawford@gmail.com
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday July 14 2015, @11:12PM
This makes me wonder if it'd be possible to use some bombs, buried deep underground in key locations along the fault line, to set off some smaller earthquakes in order to relieve the energy and avoid a much larger quake. Obviously, this is one of those cases of "what could possibly go wrong?", but I do think it's an interesting idea to speculate about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2015, @03:58AM
Not a good idea. [usgs.gov]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:32PM
If Seattle, Portland, and the Cascades collapse into the Pacific, all that moisture-laden cloud goodness can travel East unimpeded and render the eastern portions of those states habitable.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 14 2015, @04:11PM
Also, Microsoft will be no more, or at least severely disrupted for a long time.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday July 14 2015, @06:17PM
Forget San Andreas, Evacuate Seattle
Nothing to do with earthquakes, just general life advice.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 14 2015, @10:16PM
My sister was in Spokane in the diagonally opposite corner of the state when Mt St Helens erupted. When she came home she brought me a bag of ash. I sold little baggies of it to my schoolmates for two bucks apiece. I still have some.
I visited Johnson Observatory recently. St Helens looked like a mountain on the moon.
Anywhere there are volcanoes there will be earthquakes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]