An earthquake could destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest (2015)

&gt; Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”<p>I remember when this article came out, my mom called me and said &quot;you&#x27;ll be okay, you&#x27;re east of I-5, right?&quot;<p>&quot;Yeah mom.&quot;<p>About 6 blocks east. Plenty of cushion.

Nick Zentner of Central Washington University did a really good talk about this article and some of it seems overblown, specifically the &quot;west of I5 will be toast.&quot;<p>They&#x27;ve placed GPS sensors throuout the PNW and one of the more interesting things is that Oregon and Washingtons land is working in a spiral, and the land is moving in a circular pattern. Also that the hot spot that creates Yellowstone used to be off the Oregon coast and traveled through Oregon, and Idaho before it reached where it currently is. It&#x27;s left a trail of calderas that they&#x27;re only now discovering. The hotspot stays in the same spot, but the earths crust moves over it changing it&#x27;s position over time.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tW4D6OE7Qkc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tW4D6OE7Qkc</a>

It’s actually closer to every 500 years at the latitude Seattle and Portland are at.<p>The 300 year figure only applies to the southern Oregon and Northern California portion of the fault, and is based on turbidities and controversial.<p>Still, this is an under-appreciated risk of living in the northwest. There’s plenty of societies living in subduction zones across the planet. But few with as little awareness of their fault.<p>I remember talking to transplants to Seattle, I’d say there’s a 50&#x2F;50 percent chance they were aware the region could produce earthquakes.<p>On the bright side: while we can never predict this for certain, it doesn’t appear there’s enough energy stored in the northern portion of the fault to produce a mega-thrust earthquake right now.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Megathrust_earthquake" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Megathrust_earthquake</a><p>An absolutely nuts quote from the article -- &quot;the northwest edge of the continent [...] will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west&quot;

The last several years, every time I consider the idea of someday moving back to Portland, I always think of this &quot;The Big One&quot; article.<p>(With my mixed luck, the PNW mega-shark-quake-nami is just waiting for me to move back, so that&#x27;d really be irresponsible of me.)

It’s worth reading Ms Schultz’s other articles; if you do, you may come to the conclusion I did, which is that she is a very skilled provocateur, and always finds just that angle in whatever topic she is investigating.<p>Her hack job on Thoreau demonstrates this [0], in the selections of his writing that she reproduces and her at best inability to read his words (at worst willful misrepresentation them). It is easy to say that the “[Vision of Thoreau as a national conscience] cannot survive any serious reading of “Walden.”” It is much harder to know how to read Walden seriously.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;19&#x2F;pond-scum" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;19&#x2F;pond-scum</a>

What is Microsoft&#x27;s contingency plan for this? Or, in fact, the FAANG&#x27;s and other west-coast tech companies? The effects of a Cascadia earthquake on the US and world economy would be &quot;interesting&quot;.

“The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism—an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own.”<p>… great point.

Are there studies that analyse the effects of such an earthquake on the world&#x27;s software infrastructure and thus on global economy?

I don&#x27;t know how scientifically reliable this article is, but it gives me an idea. Could tsunami avoidance be an ideal use case for a jet pack? It doesn&#x27;t need a lot of altitude or more than a few minutes of flight time, just easy rapid deployment without an airstrip. Some startup should be all over this. A combined package with an alarm triggered by an ultrasonic sensor would make a great sales pitch to well heeled customers living in that region. It might even lead to beneficial government policy changes by raising awareness of the danger when everybody who&#x27;s not rich enough to afford one whinges about it on facebook.

When that article was written, it was 29.6 percent past the average cycle time. Now it is more than 32 percent past. Time just keeps on marching forward. I didn&#x27;t see any mention of what the distribution of intervals is, but 32 percent past average seems a lot even for a long-tailed distribution.

Don&#x27;t get too comfortable if you&#x27;re on the East Coast. Whatever survives sea level rise due to global heating, will be wiped out by the megatsunami caused by the ensuing landslide when La Palma erupts.

In other news: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32443017" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32443017</a>

I remember reading this article when it came out. It&#x27;s pretty terrifying.

I think the year of publication of this article — 2015 — should be in the title, no?

The article is from 2015