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Not Quite SMOD, But…?
In a comment on a post addressing the priorities of the moron-Mayor of Portland, Oregon, I brought up the Big One. Or the Really Big One.
Back in 2015, a fascinating, if alarming, essay was published in the New Yorker. Its author described a terrifying and inevitable cataclysm centered on the Cascadian Subduction Zone off the west coast and affecting a huge area stretching from northern California to British Columbia. A BBC documentary on the same subject summarized the topic thus: “One day, the people of the Pacific Northwest will face a megathrust earthquake of a magnitude up to 9.2 on the Richter Scale.” Following which, there will be a gigantic tsunami.
Prompted by the New Yorker article, some of us had a long conversation here about the science, history, and destructive potential of the Big One. Here’s a brief recap: About 100 miles offshore, two of the earth’s huge plates are wedged together. For reasons best known to itself, one of these — the Juan de Fuca plate — has been attempting to push under the North American plate. The North American plate resists, because that’s apparently what plates do.
The plates have been at this for a bazillion years, and for a bazillion years, the result has been periodic earthquakes followed by tsunamis. A build-up of energy that results when irresistible force meets immovable object is intervals discharged, and the resulting destruction — lather, rinse, repeat — is discernible in the geologic and human record. After some belated but darned spiffy scientific detective work, geologists have determined that we are due — even overdue — for what is likely to be the largest natural disaster in US history.
The best-case scenario — the (merely) Big One — is that the fault partially ruptures, leading to a merely catastrophic earthquake along the lines of the one that devastated Japan in 2011. There’s about a 1-in-3 chance of that happening before 2050. The Really Big One would follow the apocalyptic rupture of the entire fault — odds of that are about 1-in-10.
It bears repeating: this is inevitable and though the fault could hold its fire for a hundred years, it could just as easily go kablooey (or KABLOOEY) this afternoon.
Because Europeans did not arrive in the Pacific Northwest until 100 years after the last Big One, because the Indians didn’t record these events in writing and because — Big Ones aside — it’s an otherwise geologically quiet region, European settlement has proceeded for the past two centuries without realizing or responding to the risk. All those buildings, skyscrapers, the Space Needle? Many, if not most, were not built to withstand even less powerful earthquakes, let alone the one that’s coming. Neither were the fuel storage facilities, the highways and bridges, the hospitals, schools, nursing homes, euthanasia/abortion centers, fire stations, police stations, social workers’ offices, airports…
You know those old buildings we see on the videos (when they aren’t yanked quickly off the air) that are now covered in graffiti? You know the overpasses from which the peaceful protesters hurl insults and bricks and under which the homeless have been encouraged to set up encampments?
Great news about the single-use plastics, the advances in trans rights, the strong, powerful womxn promoted to high office, the encouragement of all those activists hurling insults, bricks, and fireworks against police officers; good job defying and maligning the efforts of the government in DC.
But what’s the plan for dealing with this?
On the Beach.
The geologic record shows that these large earthquakes have occurred every 250 years or so in the Southern Oregon region but less often, perhaps every 500 years, as you go up the coast to the North. There is a lot of variation in the intervals. Also, the further East one is from the coast the less severe the earthquake will be. Portland and Seattle will not feel the full force of the 9.0 earthquake and they are too far from the coast to be affected by the tsunami much.
The chance of it happening in any given year is about 0.2%.
A lecture on these earthquakes by a Washington State geologist is here.
I should think it depends on the geography, right?
This Indonesian town was destroyed and it looks like the damage extended fairly far into the country.
But if there’s a lot of stuff in the way—islands and whatnot?—or if the Tsunami gets more or less channelled up a river? Maybe less so. Though apparently it can go really, really far up a river. (I recommend watching the videos—the geology is pretty fascinating/scary…) And landslides can happen hundreds of miles away…
Here’s the thing: Let’s say that Oregon gets hit with a 9.0 earthquake. Bad things happen. Buildings fall down. Cell towers are knocked out. Fires start. Gas lines blow up. There are 2,000 casualties, and the hospitals are damaged as are the emergency service buildings, equipment and personnel (those that haven’t been Defunded in the name of Social Justice, that is).
But still, Portland is in relatively good shape.
Portland is, nonetheless, damaged. Enough so that, if Portland was the only place affected, we would consider it a disaster. But Portland won’t be the only place affected. Millions of people will be in urgent need of resources (clean water, food, shelter) and services.
What would’ve happened on 9/11 if, in addition to the damage in NYC, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island had experienced even more devastation?
I liked the lecture! Though, if anything, it sounded like there were more grim possibilities rather than fewer.
Try to look on the upside. All the homeless people will die or will die shortly thereafter so we won’t have that problem anymore.
I’m a bit more worried about the sun making an EMP wave that will destroy all our technology and man reverting to cannibalism and savage tribes. After generations of cruelty, democracy and civilization will rise again in a more libertarian and tribal form. At this point, man will be so aware of his innate cruelty that genetic engineering will be popular. So you know, there is always an upside.
Cold, but mostly true. A few homeless might survive.
But the survivors will probably be homeless so back to square one or would it be square -2.
How is it, though, that progressives in Portland who are so very willing to predict climate catastrophe and say they want to impose all kinds of onerous rules on the populace so as to forestall what “Science” assures us shall be apocalyptic…
…don’t seem to be nearly as concerned about the threat of a 9.2 earthquake?
For instance, the city council recently repealed a policy that required unreinforced masonry buildings to post notices alerting occupants that the buildings will almost certainly collapse during a major earthquake, and obliged landlords to inform potential tenants if their building is made of unreinforced masonry. “Seismic experts say the greater Portland area has about a one in four chance of suffering a major 8.0-or-greater earthquake in the next 50 years. People inside or near brittle brick buildings without extensive reinforcements and bracing are likely to suffer injuries in a quake of that magnitude.”
Whatever one thinks of this or similar regulation, how do we explain their newfound sensitivity to the financial well-being of property owners?
Could it be that there is no way to blame an earthquake/tsunami on white people, capitalism, Western cultural hegemony, oil companies, Republicans, deplorables or DJT?
Yep. Leftism needs something to hate. They need a Satan/Jew/White male capitalist to project their hatred onto. I don’t think that Satan even exists and if he does, he doesn’t do all that much. We humans were born to hate. We need to hate.
Eezy peezy, in the event it will have been those slipshod deplorable Republican capitalists who produced the shoddy buildings that collapsed killing the heroic disadvantage owing to white hate.
Yes, but not so easy in advance of the event, eh? Whereas, with climate change, there will be no event for which X can be blamed, so the blaming is part-and-parcel of the “prevention.”
Maybe they think we will all die of global warming, so what’s the point?
This is exactly what makes this such an interesting psychological study! Why climate change…and not the CSZ M-9 “Big One?” The worst case scenario (according to “science”) is that things are going to get pretty rough due to climate change in about 100 years. (Forget the “we have 10/12 years” thing; 100 years is the time frame, and the change happens incrementally, at least when compared to the changes wrought by an M-9 earthquake!)
“Magnitude-9 quakes differ from smaller ones in two distinct ways: they last longer and they have more low-frequency energy. They don’t shake any harder, but the greater length of shaking causes more destruction. And the low frequencies are more effective at causing landslides, damaging large structures and exciting water bodies. Their power to move water accounts for the fearsome threat of tsunamis, both in the shaken region and on coastlines near and far (see more on tsunamis).
After the strain energy is released in great earthquakes, whole coastlines may subside as the crust relaxes. Offshore, the ocean floor may rise. Volcanoes may respond with their own activity. Low-lying lands may turn to mush from seismic liquefaction and widespread landslides may be triggered, sometimes creeping along for years afterward. ”
Doesn’t that sound like something worth getting at least a little exercised about? Wouldn’t you assume that progressives would leap into action, and regulate the Bajeesus out of everything they could think of, “for the children?”
Why are they, instead, so sympathetic to homeowners and landlords?
You can’t “do something” about an earthquake – It’s going to happen. You *can* “do something” about Global Warming. (Okay, you can’t, not really, but you can think that you can.)
They vote. They donate.
But that’s exactly what confuses me: You could do something about the earthquake. You could insist—regulate—legalize/illegalize—-mitigation and safety efforts. You could forbid new building along the coast. You could demand seismic-sensitive retrofitting of buildings. You could move schools, hospitals, police and fire stations out of the innundation zone. You could do all this stuff, and enjoy yourself tremendously, pushing people around (“Safety!” and “For the Children!”) insisting on green as well as earthquake-proof technology, push for solar panels on the new roofs because even after the earthquake, the sun will still shine….
But…nope. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
The owners of Portland and Seattle buildings, the landlords, the established companies…all probably vote Democrat. Why piss off your voters and donors when, for all you know, the Big One won’t come until your great grandchildren are in their thirties? Especially when you can’t make it into a racial thing—the drowned people are probably going to be white and relatively well-off (who else can afford beachfront property?) so …y’know…you can’t really fit it into any of the existing narratives.
Meanwhile if you’re a Republican, presumably you’ve got a sort of libertarian excuse; let people do what they want. Okay, sure, the kids in the public elementary school don’t have much choice about whether to go to school in an inundation zone…but their parents do! If their parents are worried, they can move to someplace that is..well, higher. And farther inland.
Fascinating.
All that doesn’t “prevent” the earthquake from happening though. It just mitigates the effects. And as we’ve seen from the green types on Climate Change, they’re not about mitigation, they’re about prevention.
Do you think that’s the difference? Maybe Climate Change seems more like a good/evil, all-or-nothing cause…well, it’s the cause of ending capitalism, right? When it comes right down to it? whereas mitigating the damage of an uncontrollable future natural disaster is sort of boring. Requires actual and generally unheroic work.
I read this, about a brand new building being planned for Portland: https://www.enr.com/articles/49574-portlands-pae-living-office-building-designed-for-hospital-level-quake-performance
The building is supposed to be engineered to be both earthquake-proof (that is, it can get through a 7.2…?) and “green.” For instance, the building harvests nutrient-rich urine.
That’s the sort of thing that gets people excited: solar panels on the roof, and recycling pee.
In a sense, the weather system just recycles pee.
Yes it does. And the planet is quite good at converting sunlight into energy. That’s what coal and oil are, right? Concentrated sunshine!
Yes, it is all solar power.
Or trapped, degraded, evil sunshine, depending on your environmental view.