5 ms·

Would not be complete without this fantastic article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/0

Would not be complete without this fantastic article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...

pmontra 5y ago
And Peter Watts' Starfish, from the web site of the author https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm That's the next earthquake.
- interestica 5y ago
  And Pacific Northwest Seismic Network blog https://pnsn.org/blog/2020/01/27/getting-ready-for-the-next-great-cascadia-subduction-zone-earthquake https://pnsn.org/blog/2020/01/27/getting-ready-for-the-next-...
gxqoz 5y ago
Fun song by Tacocat inspired by this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH1WKSugNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH1WKSugNo I saw them perform it at a concert in front of the Space Needle. Really felt I was tempting fate there.
- nowandlater 5y ago
  That Jazz Bass is so damn minty fresh; honestly, you're pretty lucky that alone didn't cause the big one!
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
From that article: > fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. From the rest of the article, it seems that this estimate of deaths is too low by an order of magnitude. More people died in the Fukushima earthquake, and that is in a country that is probably the most earthquake ready country in the world. If you only have 15 minutes from the start of the earthquake to when the tsunami rolls in, given the density and the lack of preparation, I could easily see several 100 thousand people perishing if not a million.
- divbzero 5y ago
  I don’t know about how this would impact the estimates, but the Pacific Northwest differs from Japan in that the largest population centers — Vancouver, Seattle, Portland — are not exposed to the open ocean.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ahelwer 5y ago
    Seattle also rises very quickly from the ocean. Take a look: https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/na3/Seattle/ https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/na3/Seattle/ With the exception of the international district, all the low-lying areas are industrial in nature.
    - jvolkman 5y ago
      "Drumlin" is the fun word for this geology, from what I understand. https://youtu.be/oSSxdogrv1s?t=189 https://youtu.be/oSSxdogrv1s?t=189
  - markkanof 5y ago
    Right, in Oregon the coastal areas mostly rise quite quickly from the beach and are relatively sparsely populated. The more populated areas of Portland, Salem, Eugene, etc are well away from the ocean, so a tsunami is unlikely to kill very many people here.
- tomtheelder 5y ago
  The population isn't really coastal. There will be a lot of casualties along the coast, but it is sparsely populated. The overall number should be much lower than the Tohoku quake. Some other estimates have the number considerably lower than FEMA's.
- akiselev 5y ago
  That figure comes with a caveat that's mentioned towards the end of the article: > As for casualties: the figures I cited earlier—twenty-seven thousand injured, almost thirteen thousand dead—are based on the agency’s official planning scenario, which has the earthquake striking at 9:41 A.M. on February 6th. If, instead, it strikes in the summer, when the beaches are full, those numbers could be off by a horrifying margin. Thirteen thousand sounds like a best case scenario. If it happens 4th of July weekend when a million people are on the beaches all up and down the west coast, that could cause orders of magnitude more fatalities.
gammarator 5y ago
I think that article is best paired with this followup: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-to-stay-safe-when-the-big-one-comes https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-to-s... in particular this hedge: > Perhaps no line in the entire six-thousand-word piece attracted as much attention as this declaration by Kenneth Murphy, head of the fema division responsible for Cascadia: “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” The first important thing to note about that remark is that, needless to say, Murphy really said it, and stood by it in the fact-checking process—so, clearly, fema is anticipating that the region will be in very grave shape. > That said, “toast” is not what you would call a precise description, so let me be more specific. What Murphy did not mean is that everyone west of I-5 will be injured or killed; fema’s casualty figures, while horrifying, amount to under one-half of one per cent of the population of the region. Nor did he mean that every structure west of the interstate will fail
- throwawaw 5y ago
  For God's sake, just quote the whole thing. You really broke it off mid-sentence? If including "a million buildings destroyed" (or whichever other part you felt you couldn't include) would make your comment seem less devastating, it just isn't that devastating. It's fine. Representing things accurately is more important than... whatever we were hoping to achieve there. Seeming cool for knowing the original article was BS, I guess? It's a good article! I don't think it's BS. I might think that if I read your partial excerpt, but that's a problem with the excerpt.
- irrational 5y ago
  I live in the Portland area, west of I-5. The reason for this became clear when I saw this article (which I learned about here on HN): https://www.usgs.gov/news/volcanoes-vineyards-new-geologic-map-reveals-portlands-deep-history https://www.usgs.gov/news/volcanoes-vineyards-new-geologic-m... For instance, look at page 3 of the pamphlet: https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3443/sim3443_pamphlet.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3443/sim3443_pamphlet.pdf To the west of Portland we see Dark Gray which is Basalt (if you've ever driven through the tunnel and up and over the west hills to the western suburbs of Portland, you have driven through the basalt region) and then there is a big light yellow oval that is labelled Tualatin Basin. What is the light yellow according to the legend? It is surface deposits. Long ago this was a basalt bowl. Then a giant flood came down the Columbia river gorge and dumped hundreds of feet of clay silt into the bowl. When you are standing in Beaverton, Hillsboro, Bethany, etc. you are standing hundreds of feet above the original valley floor. Now look at the map again. The basin is pretty much all to the west of I-5. If you live in the basin you are screwed when the big earthquake hits (the one exception is that hill of basalt rising like an island in the middle of the basin - that is Cooper Mountain, it's no coincidence that the houses on top of Cooper Mountain are where the rich people live). What is going to happen is the earthquake waves will come in and bounce off the basalt on one side of the bowl and reverberate back to the basalt on the other side. The waves will go back and forth in the bowl and liquefy all of that old clay silt. Just like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSXmTfASM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSXmTfASM0
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
philshem 5y ago
It's a fantastic article, which also won Kathryn Schulz and the New Yorker a Pulitzer! https://www.oregonlive.com/today/2016/04/really_big_one_pulitzer_new_yorker.html https://www.oregonlive.com/today/2016/04/really_big_one_puli... https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kathryn-schulz https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kathryn-schulz

Would not be complete without this fantastic article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...

pmontra 5y ago

And Peter Watts' Starfish, from the web site of the author https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm That's the next earthquake.

interestica 5y ago
And Pacific Northwest Seismic Network blog https://pnsn.org/blog/2020/01/27/getting-ready-for-the-next-great-cascadia-subduction-zone-earthquake https://pnsn.org/blog/2020/01/27/getting-ready-for-the-next-...

gxqoz 5y ago

Fun song by Tacocat inspired by this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH1WKSugNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH1WKSugNo I saw them perform it at a concert in front of the Space Needle. Really felt I was tempting fate there.

nowandlater 5y ago
That Jazz Bass is so damn minty fresh; honestly, you're pretty lucky that alone didn't cause the big one!

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

From that article: > fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. From the rest of the article, it seems that this estimate of deaths is too low by an order of magnitude. More people died in the Fukushima earthquake, and that is in a country that is probably the most earthquake ready country in the world. If you only have 15 minutes from the start of the earthquake to when the tsunami rolls in, given the density and the lack of preparation, I could easily see several 100 thousand people perishing if not a million.

divbzero 5y ago
I don’t know about how this would impact the estimates, but the Pacific Northwest differs from Japan in that the largest population centers — Vancouver, Seattle, Portland — are not exposed to the open ocean.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ahelwer 5y ago
  Seattle also rises very quickly from the ocean. Take a look: https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/na3/Seattle/ https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/na3/Seattle/ With the exception of the international district, all the low-lying areas are industrial in nature.
  - jvolkman 5y ago
    "Drumlin" is the fun word for this geology, from what I understand. https://youtu.be/oSSxdogrv1s?t=189 https://youtu.be/oSSxdogrv1s?t=189
- markkanof 5y ago
  Right, in Oregon the coastal areas mostly rise quite quickly from the beach and are relatively sparsely populated. The more populated areas of Portland, Salem, Eugene, etc are well away from the ocean, so a tsunami is unlikely to kill very many people here.
tomtheelder 5y ago
The population isn't really coastal. There will be a lot of casualties along the coast, but it is sparsely populated. The overall number should be much lower than the Tohoku quake. Some other estimates have the number considerably lower than FEMA's.
akiselev 5y ago
That figure comes with a caveat that's mentioned towards the end of the article: > As for casualties: the figures I cited earlier—twenty-seven thousand injured, almost thirteen thousand dead—are based on the agency’s official planning scenario, which has the earthquake striking at 9:41 A.M. on February 6th. If, instead, it strikes in the summer, when the beaches are full, those numbers could be off by a horrifying margin. Thirteen thousand sounds like a best case scenario. If it happens 4th of July weekend when a million people are on the beaches all up and down the west coast, that could cause orders of magnitude more fatalities.

gammarator 5y ago

I think that article is best paired with this followup: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-to-stay-safe-when-the-big-one-comes https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-to-s... in particular this hedge: > Perhaps no line in the entire six-thousand-word piece attracted as much attention as this declaration by Kenneth Murphy, head of the fema division responsible for Cascadia: “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” The first important thing to note about that remark is that, needless to say, Murphy really said it, and stood by it in the fact-checking process—so, clearly, fema is anticipating that the region will be in very grave shape. > That said, “toast” is not what you would call a precise description, so let me be more specific. What Murphy did not mean is that everyone west of I-5 will be injured or killed; fema’s casualty figures, while horrifying, amount to under one-half of one per cent of the population of the region. Nor did he mean that every structure west of the interstate will fail

throwawaw 5y ago
For God's sake, just quote the whole thing. You really broke it off mid-sentence? If including "a million buildings destroyed" (or whichever other part you felt you couldn't include) would make your comment seem less devastating, it just isn't that devastating. It's fine. Representing things accurately is more important than... whatever we were hoping to achieve there. Seeming cool for knowing the original article was BS, I guess? It's a good article! I don't think it's BS. I might think that if I read your partial excerpt, but that's a problem with the excerpt.
irrational 5y ago
I live in the Portland area, west of I-5. The reason for this became clear when I saw this article (which I learned about here on HN): https://www.usgs.gov/news/volcanoes-vineyards-new-geologic-map-reveals-portlands-deep-history https://www.usgs.gov/news/volcanoes-vineyards-new-geologic-m... For instance, look at page 3 of the pamphlet: https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3443/sim3443_pamphlet.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3443/sim3443_pamphlet.pdf To the west of Portland we see Dark Gray which is Basalt (if you've ever driven through the tunnel and up and over the west hills to the western suburbs of Portland, you have driven through the basalt region) and then there is a big light yellow oval that is labelled Tualatin Basin. What is the light yellow according to the legend? It is surface deposits. Long ago this was a basalt bowl. Then a giant flood came down the Columbia river gorge and dumped hundreds of feet of clay silt into the bowl. When you are standing in Beaverton, Hillsboro, Bethany, etc. you are standing hundreds of feet above the original valley floor. Now look at the map again. The basin is pretty much all to the west of I-5. If you live in the basin you are screwed when the big earthquake hits (the one exception is that hill of basalt rising like an island in the middle of the basin - that is Cooper Mountain, it's no coincidence that the houses on top of Cooper Mountain are where the rich people live). What is going to happen is the earthquake waves will come in and bounce off the basalt on one side of the bowl and reverberate back to the basalt on the other side. The waves will go back and forth in the bowl and liquefy all of that old clay silt. Just like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSXmTfASM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSXmTfASM0

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

philshem 5y ago

It's a fantastic article, which also won Kathryn Schulz and the New Yorker a Pulitzer! https://www.oregonlive.com/today/2016/04/really_big_one_pulitzer_new_yorker.html https://www.oregonlive.com/today/2016/04/really_big_one_puli... https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kathryn-schulz https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kathryn-schulz