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California's other drought: a major earthquake is overdue
- saagarjha 9y agoI've always wondered if it would be possible for a warning system to provide 5-10 seconds of warning for an earthquake. For a large earthquake and p-wave speeds of 10 km/s, if acted upon immediately couldn't you push out an alert with a lead time of a couple dozen seconds?
- masterleep 9y agoSure, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Bsq5IcrFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Bsq5IcrFA
- saagarjha 9y agoYes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It gives people enough warning to get to a safe place, in this case the plaza.
- bamboozled 9y agoI believe this is how bullet trains avoid catastrophe in Japan. They have an early warning system and the trains stop before the actual ground starts trembling.
- saagarjha 9y agoInteresting! That's not something I would have thought of. How long does it take a bullet train to stop?
- fyfy18 9y agoFurther reading on this: https://www.railway-technology.com/features/feature122751/ https://www.railway-technology.com/features/feature122751/ The most surprising part for me is although most of the network was closed due to infrastructure being damaged on the day of the earthquake, everything was repaired and fully operational the next day.
- asclepi 9y agoIt's definitely possible. Japan, which is situated in another earthquake-prone region, has built an Earthquake Early Warning system.[0] It saves lives. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pmoriarty 9y agoI'm so disappointed that California doesn't have something like Mexico's Seismic Alert System, which has historically given 60 seconds of warning before an earthquake.[1] Something like that could save so many lives. "CIRES transmits earthquake early warning alerts through a network of VHF stations similar to the NOAA Weather Radio service in the United States, including use of Specific Area Message Encoding, but with faster lead times in order to issue more timely warnings within two seconds or less. CIRES offers alert systems for buildings and personal use, which also come pre-installed with the official warning sound used for earthquake alerts in Mexico. On its network of transmitters, CIRES issues required weekly tests every three hours to ensure receivers are connected to its network, as well as earthquake warnings when necessary. More than 90,000 users in Mexico City, including almost all public schools, have receivers. The Mexico City Metro additionally receives SASMEX alerts, although not for public dissemination but instead to stop trains or delay departures as necessary." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SASMEX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SASMEX
- thatswrong0 9y agoIf they can text everyone about an Amber Alert dozens of miles away, they can text everyone about an incoming earthquake. No sense how this doesn't exist yet.
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- Piskvorrr 9y agoLatency. With Amber alerts, a latency of tens of seconds (not unusual for mass text message) is irrelevant; with earthquake, the seismic waves can overtake the messaging queue. (Computation itself might be happening near speed of light, high-level communication protocols in general pas through thousands of buffers)
- Osmium 9y agoAny alert is better than no alert, but if you're sitting right on top of a fault it won't give you much time to act. I'd be surprised if it's even enough time to get under a desk. Would any expert reading this like to comment?
- xenihn 9y agoI hope everyone in California who reads HN is prepared with emergency supplies. At the very least stock up on emergency drinking water so that you won't have to go out of your way to get it if things get particularly bad. You'll have plenty of other things to worry about, so you may as well mitigate what's arguably one of the easiest and cheapest issues to prepare for now.
- beambot 9y agoI live in San Jose and have 10-20 gallons of fresh water stored in large bottles for precisely this purpose. I'm amazed at how many people give me flak about that single preparation -- too few people in this area have lived through a proper natural disaster and are woefully ill prepared.
- encoderer 9y agoHow often do you rotate the supply? I do the same.
- beambot 9y agoEvery couple of months.
- gizmodo59 9y agoThis might be of help to those who are thinking of a cost effective way to quickly store water for immediate emergencies: https://www.amazon.com/WaterBOB-Emergency-Drinking-Storage-Gallons/dp/B001AXLUX2 https://www.amazon.com/WaterBOB-Emergency-Drinking-Storage-G...
- your-nanny 9y agoIs due. Just because something hasn't happened for some time doesn't by itself mean it's immminent. How are the distributions of earthquake events and magnitudes typically modeled?
- mikeash 9y agoEarthquakes tend to come from relieving built up stresses, so the “due” term is appropriate. They’re not purely random.
- Waterluvian 9y agoIt's one of those times gamblers fallacy isn't accurate. The longer since an earthquake, the more likely it becomes. Pretty fascinating.
- beberlei 9y agomaybe with survival distributions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_function googling gives some results of scientific papers that would say this is the way its done.
- jedberg 9y agoI was talking to someone the other day who is working on predicting earthquakes by combining massive data sets with deep learning. They have a promising technique that looks like it can predict 24-72 hours in advance. Having lived through Northridge in '94, I really hope he succeeds before it happens.
- nikkwong 9y agoLink? Would love to keep up to date with a project like this as a means to protect myself
- Apocryphon 9y agoThis sounds like the sort of existential tool that Silicon Valley ought to be pouring as much funding into as possible. Or fueling the creation of alternate tech hubs. Martian colonies and mind uploading are unlikely to be ready by the time the Big One comes.
- Kalium 9y agoIt's shockingly difficult to get paid to develop this kind of critical tools.
- xbryanx 9y agoNo it’s easy to get paid, just at a deeply discounted rate.
- nostrademons 9y agoGoogle runs earthquake drills every year in which they assume that the Mountain View & other Bay Area offices have been completely destroyed, all employees within them (including top executives) have been killed, and all West Coast datacenters have been knocked out. Their aim is to ensure continuity of operations. Although each drill usually identifies some deficiencies and potential failure points, in the 5 years I was there the simulation never actually resulted in Google going offline. The big Silicon Valley companies are all huge multinationals at this point, more powerful (and safer) than many nation-states. I'm not even sure a worldwide nuclear war would take Google offline, although it would likely kill 90%+ of its customer base.
- zapita 9y agoFor homeowners and building operators, there is a safety valve you can install that will shut off the gas line when it detects earthquake-like shaking. This reduces the risk of a fire or explosion in the aftermath of an earthquake. Also, remember that emergency kits include perishable items. Keep an eye on those, and remember to rotate your supplies.
- dmckeon 9y agoStockpile foods you like to eat anyway, and rotate as you resupply. You like Campbell's soup? Keep 10 cans in stock, not 2. Same for any simple food with a long shelf life. That way you don't end up with 100 pounds of 10-year-old beans, rice, and MREs. YMMV if you're planning for SHTF/TEOTWAKI rather than a big earthquake.
- shostack 9y agoIs there by any chance a subscription service that takes your expired items and delivers new ones on a recommended schedule?
- jraines 9y agoFor the geologists in the house: I live in a new construction home with a post-tensioned slab foundation about 4 miles from the Hayward fault -- in a vertical line straight down. How worried should I be?
- Waterluvian 9y agoProbably a better question for the builders and civil engineers.
- jraines 9y agoGood point. The builders gave all assurances, but they're also the seller, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- wiredfool 9y agoRoughly, I'd say your biggest danger is falling objects, like books, and fire. Building codes for new construction do most of the obvious now, the walls are tied to the foundation, there are shear panels. 5 to 15 stories is the worst height range, but shorter buildings can be bad if they're very asymmetric, like one with a parking under a two story appt, with one shear wall and poles for gravity support. otoh, in a big enough earthquake, anything will be damaged.
- shostack 9y agoWhat year did the "walls are tied to the foundation" bit become code? If I'm in a 50+ year old house, what are the main things to check for? I've heard that there is shockingly little consistency with retrofit companies and the work they do, and that the inspections aren't really great for those things, but I know next to nothing about making sure one's home is properly fitted.
- wiredfool 9y agoIt was well known when I did civil engineering in the mid 90s, I want to say that it was post Northridge that it started to bubble through the code. 50 years is probably pre-foundation tiedown. Current construction is going to have long sheet metal straps or j bolts into the foundation, I'm not sure what a retrofit will have. An easy thing to check is the hot water tank. If it's not well strapped to studs, then I can't imagine anything else has been done. If it has, then at least you know that has been done, it it doesn't really tell you anything else. I know when I was selling my house in Wa, that was one of the things the inspector looked for, so it's highly probable that it's been done, as its quick and easy. Inspections are the only way to know for sure, but it can be invasive to get into the walls enough to see.
- cjensen 9y agoThe article asserts there is a "drought" because Earthquakes on certain faults haven't occurred in the last N years. But the article fails to even suggest a frequency of expected occurrence which would lead to such a conclusion. This is just clickbait exploiting fear for money. For facts, the USGS posts the best scientific evaluation of fault frequency. Here's the one for the Bay Area [1]. Summary is that in the next 30 years, there is a 98% chance of >= 6.0 (meh), 72% chance of >= 6.7 (ouch), 51% chance of >= 7.1 (Loma Prieta class), and 20% chance of >= 7.5 (Great SF Earthquake class). The fact sheet goes into detail on the likelihood of earthquakes on each fault. [1] PDF https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2016/3020/fs20163020.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2016/3020/fs20163020.pdf
- ChuckMcM 9y agoAs disasters go earthquakes are intermittent enough that it is easy to forget about them. I carry an earthquake kit in my car with enough to get out of my car and hike (and possibly camp a bit) back to my house from most anywhere I might be in the 99th percentile. I did have the unpleasant experience of replacing my water cache and finding that one of the barrels had been leaking into one of the dry goods boxes. That was a gooey icky mess. And it reminded me to be more vigilant about rotating supplies. Still, when it hits, I expect a lot of chaos.
- yumraj 9y agoDo you mind sharing the contents of your car earthquake kit?
- casefields 9y agohttp://www.latimes.com/la-me-disaster17sep17-side-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/la-me-disaster17sep17-side-htmlstory....
- Faaak 9y agoVery ignorant question, but could it be possible to artificially start an earthquake in order to prevent "power build-up" ? Like many small man-made earthquakes spread over a decade instead of a big natural one. It's how it's done with avalanches: you start them before they get too big and dangerous.
- nordsieck 9y ago> could it be possible to artificially start an earthquake in order to prevent "power build-up" Look up the research around hydraulic fracturing (specifically, waste water injection). It appears that there isn't much consensus around whether or not this is beneficial.
- randyrand 9y agoIt obvious that it is beneficial (at least for areas that have large earthquakes), but because it has to do with oil and GW many researches don't want to admit there are side-benefits.
- Keyframe 9y agoThink of the scale you would need to operate in (and safely so).
- dkasper 9y agoIn general the answer is no. The gist seems to be that because the richter scale for magnitude is logarithmic is would take thousands of 3.0 quakes to equal a 6.0. More info here in "Common Myths and Misconceptions" http://seismo.berkeley.edu/outreach/faq.html http://seismo.berkeley.edu/outreach/faq.html
- m_mueller 9y agoFrom my understanding the energies involved are so large that once you have that technology you‘d be more likely to extinguish all life than do any good. Significant earthquakes move landmasses by half a meter or so, and they influence earth rotation and inclination measurably. If that kinda energy was coupled to our atmosphere thermally you‘d have a global killer very quickly. A 9.0 quake is 476M tons of TNT and a 9.5 one would be 2682M tons - I wouldn‘t mess with that ;).
- mmanfrin 9y agoI've lived in the Bay Area all my life, was a baby when Loma Prieta hit. I had scarcely felt an earthquake in my life except for a few occasions where I had to ask people nearby 'was that just an earthquake?'. A month or two ago there was an earthquake epicentered a 5 minute walk from my house. It shook my house and wobbled my walls and I thought for sure it was finally the big one. I find out the next day that it was only around a 4.0. It's hard to imagine what the epicenter of a 7.0 (>30k times as powerful) would feel like.
- KirinDave 9y agoI was a tween when LP hit. I remember my TV shooting out of of an 8 foot tall entertainment cabinet and taking the whole thing down with it inside. Outside, I watched our 3 acres of squared off of ranch fencing visibly ripple and distort as the waves passed through. More than one window shattered, and our well (I lived in a remote area) actually was stressed so that it collapsed. We were lucky we only lost power for a week. People further up in the mountains didn't have it for over a month.
- DrScump 9y agoAside from the lessened intensity of the main shock, distance saves you from even feeling many of the aftershocks. During LP, my then-pregnant sister lived in Aptos less than one mile from the epicenter. They were getting meaningful aftershocks by the dozens through the evening. The surface waves were amazing directional. I was at work when it hit, and we had those suspended, noise-absorbing foam panels in the ceiling... and you could see the rippling of the surface wave propagate along the ceiling. Those bookshelves/cabinets, dressers and other tallish rectangular objects that were perpendicular to the wave fell over; those parallel to it tended to be fine. Almost everywhere along El Camino from Menlo to the Sunnyvale border had power outages, with one exception: a half-block of El Camino just "north" of Grant. Yet that half-block just happened to have a gas station and a 24-hour restaurant (where Los Charros is now) that remained up and running throughout.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vondur 9y agoThis is one drought I'm ok with. I was here for the Northridge quake and awake at the time. Not that fun.
- masonicb00m 9y agoReminds me of "WHAT IS THE CHANCE OF AN EARTHQUAKE?" by David Freedman. https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/611.pdf https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/611.pdf. A fun read if you're into stats.
- yuhong 9y agoI have been paying attention to lunar tides as a factor for earthquakes myself.
- mmilano 9y agoMaybe it's from living in CA all my life, but having ridden many out many quakes, my concern for 'The Big One' is a little less than my concern is for an astroid hit... which isn't much.
- solipsism 9y agoSeems odd. We have a non-zero (hopefully pretty good) chance of spotting an incoming asteroid, at which point we would calculate everything about the time, place, and severity of the strike with extremely high precision. We have none of that for earthquakes.
- mmilano 9y agoI really meant a 'cataclysmic astroid hit', one we could do nothing about... but fascinating point none the less.
- jbverschoor 9y agoBetter move your s3 data ;)
- artur_makly 9y agohow could a +7.0 affect AWS and Coinbase? should people consider redundancy and moving to a different wallet?
- rnet85 9y agoI don't think they have their datacenters in the same place. These kind of events are anticipated and large companies like those will have detailed disaster recovery plans with multiple redundancies.