4 ms·

Priorities are balanced by two factors; probability and time. And time always (?) matters more. In other words we worry more about things that may happen today

Priorities are balanced by two factors; probability and time. And time always (?) matters more. In other words we worry more about things that may happen today, and tomorrow than what will happen in the next 100 years. For example the Cascadia fault _will_ slip in the next 100 years (probably) and cause (probably) millions of deaths, and likely make living on the west coast untenable for some generations. But its (almost certainly) not gonna happen today or tomorrow. By contrast much smaller events affecting "almost no-one", like say missing stop signs leading to traffic fatilities, will use up significant human hours this week. Which is to say, we prioritise our lives at "human scale" not geologic scale. Small things, small timeliness, not big things on big time lines. There's also not a lot of point worrying about things we can't really do anything about. When the next asteroid arrives, or when Cascadia slips, there's not a whole lot you can have done to make a difference. (mostly it boils down to "don't be there".)

chx 5y ago
As someone who lives on the Cascadia fault (hi from beautiful British Columbia) we do care and we do prepare as much as we can. We build our infrastructure to better withstand earthquakes and replace or remove those that can't. As a community, we are aware, we prepare, the city itself has workshops teaching you to prepare, to show the neighbourhood where you live from this angle and so on. > and likely make living on the west coast untenable for some generations [citation needed]
- bruce511 5y ago
  hi to beautiful BC - long may it last :) My point was that when people wake up in the morning they care more about breakfast than checking the news to see if there was an earthquake. I'm not saying you don't care (at all) but ultimately that the level of caring is crowded out by, well, life. Alas preparation (as much as you can) is a good thing, but the forces involved, and the sheer scale of the event (assuming a big one of course) will make preparations useful on a personal scale (my house didn't fall on my head, yay) but largely immaterial in the grander scheme of things. Preparation will save lives. But the impact of the event will change everyone, prepared or not. Infrastructure will vanish, no roads, bridges, harbors, airports, rail. Food distribution, power, water, sanitation will all be off for extended periods of time. In the long term one can expect large areas of unstable debris, oil and chemical pollution and so on. Between the earthquake (perhaps a 9) and the tsunami, there's going to be a big mess, over a very large territory. Regarding the west coast being untenable - mostly that revolves around infrastructure, and the ability to recreate it. Given the impact the event will have on the rest of the country (countries) the ability, or finances, to recreate it will be impaired. Imagine you wake up tomorrow and Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook are just "gone". What would the ripple effect on other business be? Would that spark a recession? With respect to New Orleans, Katrina displaced 800 000 people, cost $125 billion, and roughly 10 years to reconstruct. And again, with respect, the cause of the disaster is trivial, and the result small, compared to a factor 9 quake, and 100 ft wave. Imagine that playing out over the whole west coast, from Vancouver to San-Diego. The impact will be national, not local and it will be a long time before life on the west coast resumes in anything like the scale it is now.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> the Cascadia fault _will_ slip in the next 100 years (probably) and cause (probably) millions of deaths, and likely make living on the west coast untenable for some generations. That seems hyperbolic to me. The average interval for Cascade quakes has been 570-590 years. It has been 321 since the last. It could happen in the next 100, but it's a stretch to say that it probably will. I also think the 'millions of deaths' prediction is overstated by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. And while a 9.x earthquake would be big, making it untenable to live on the west coast for generations is a pretty wild prediction.
- XorNot 5y ago
  A disease with an 0.001% base fatality rate has killed 500,000 people in the United States. It is optimistic to think a massive logistics disruption and severe infrastructure damage won't, without serious mitigation efforts.
  - froh 5y ago
    someone with severe covid-19 will asphyxate no matter how much food and drinking water you have, and how many toilets you provide. apples to oranges.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    The predictions I've seen by folks much more capable than me suggest a death toll in the 5-10K range for a magnitude 9 Cascadia quake. They also say we could lose 10-20% of all the structures. No doubt about it, this would be devastating. It would probably be decades before we fully rebuilt everything. But it certainly wouldn't make the west coast uninhabitable, thought it would likely make it very inconvenient for a few months at least.
- bruce511 5y ago
  Apologies, in the 100 year time scale I was referring to this [1] - but that is for a "big one (8.0-8.6)" not a "really big one (8.7-9.2)". The risk of a big one is 1 in 3 in the next 50 years, 1 in 10 for the really big one. So _likely_ 250 till the next big, big one. So who cares right? The very definition of "not my problem". On the up side (referring back to the top of this thread) ELE Asteroids are millions of years apart :) [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...)
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>Priorities are balanced by two factors; probability and time. And time always (?) matters more. I remember reading a critique of conventional risk analysis about a decade ago that said some things were too big to allow to happen even if the risk of them happening by conventional analysis was too small to make the investment worthwhile.
- dwohnitmok 5y ago
  You have to be careful. Otherwise you run into a version of Pascal's Mugging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Then again, investment to mitigate these kinds of risk could lead to profitable advancements even if the original cause does not happen. It's a matter of priorities. After all, there were many important and also generally useful advancement due to space program. In my educated opinion, we should focus on climate change first, especially securing cheap food, water and electricity for everyone. Additionally, prepare for the catastrophe that would be 5 C warming since it is likely in our lifetime. The same approaches to survive this lesser ecological problem may prove useful for space travel or terraforming. I don't particularly care under which budget this research is done as long as it commences.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"When the next asteroid arrives, or when Cascadia slips, there's not a whole lot you can have done to make a difference." Asteroids can be diverted, given enough warning.[1] There are theoretical proposals for doing so, but its never been tried. Massive funding of testing, standby spacecraft with asteroid diversion capability, and increasing Earth's early warning system are all realistic things that could be done, were there a political will to do it. Unfortunately, like COVID, I expect it'll take a devastating asteroid impact that costs millions of lives and trillions of dollars before the Earth wakes up to this threat. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance

chx 5y ago

As someone who lives on the Cascadia fault (hi from beautiful British Columbia) we do care and we do prepare as much as we can. We build our infrastructure to better withstand earthquakes and replace or remove those that can't. As a community, we are aware, we prepare, the city itself has workshops teaching you to prepare, to show the neighbourhood where you live from this angle and so on. > and likely make living on the west coast untenable for some generations [citation needed]

bruce511 5y ago
hi to beautiful BC - long may it last :) My point was that when people wake up in the morning they care more about breakfast than checking the news to see if there was an earthquake. I'm not saying you don't care (at all) but ultimately that the level of caring is crowded out by, well, life. Alas preparation (as much as you can) is a good thing, but the forces involved, and the sheer scale of the event (assuming a big one of course) will make preparations useful on a personal scale (my house didn't fall on my head, yay) but largely immaterial in the grander scheme of things. Preparation will save lives. But the impact of the event will change everyone, prepared or not. Infrastructure will vanish, no roads, bridges, harbors, airports, rail. Food distribution, power, water, sanitation will all be off for extended periods of time. In the long term one can expect large areas of unstable debris, oil and chemical pollution and so on. Between the earthquake (perhaps a 9) and the tsunami, there's going to be a big mess, over a very large territory. Regarding the west coast being untenable - mostly that revolves around infrastructure, and the ability to recreate it. Given the impact the event will have on the rest of the country (countries) the ability, or finances, to recreate it will be impaired. Imagine you wake up tomorrow and Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook are just "gone". What would the ripple effect on other business be? Would that spark a recession? With respect to New Orleans, Katrina displaced 800 000 people, cost $125 billion, and roughly 10 years to reconstruct. And again, with respect, the cause of the disaster is trivial, and the result small, compared to a factor 9 quake, and 100 ft wave. Imagine that playing out over the whole west coast, from Vancouver to San-Diego. The impact will be national, not local and it will be a long time before life on the west coast resumes in anything like the scale it is now.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> the Cascadia fault _will_ slip in the next 100 years (probably) and cause (probably) millions of deaths, and likely make living on the west coast untenable for some generations. That seems hyperbolic to me. The average interval for Cascade quakes has been 570-590 years. It has been 321 since the last. It could happen in the next 100, but it's a stretch to say that it probably will. I also think the 'millions of deaths' prediction is overstated by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. And while a 9.x earthquake would be big, making it untenable to live on the west coast for generations is a pretty wild prediction.

XorNot 5y ago
A disease with an 0.001% base fatality rate has killed 500,000 people in the United States. It is optimistic to think a massive logistics disruption and severe infrastructure damage won't, without serious mitigation efforts.
- froh 5y ago
  someone with severe covid-19 will asphyxate no matter how much food and drinking water you have, and how many toilets you provide. apples to oranges.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  The predictions I've seen by folks much more capable than me suggest a death toll in the 5-10K range for a magnitude 9 Cascadia quake. They also say we could lose 10-20% of all the structures. No doubt about it, this would be devastating. It would probably be decades before we fully rebuilt everything. But it certainly wouldn't make the west coast uninhabitable, thought it would likely make it very inconvenient for a few months at least.
bruce511 5y ago
Apologies, in the 100 year time scale I was referring to this [1] - but that is for a "big one (8.0-8.6)" not a "really big one (8.7-9.2)". The risk of a big one is 1 in 3 in the next 50 years, 1 in 10 for the really big one. So _likely_ 250 till the next big, big one. So who cares right? The very definition of "not my problem". On the up side (referring back to the top of this thread) ELE Asteroids are millions of years apart :) [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...)

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>Priorities are balanced by two factors; probability and time. And time always (?) matters more. I remember reading a critique of conventional risk analysis about a decade ago that said some things were too big to allow to happen even if the risk of them happening by conventional analysis was too small to make the investment worthwhile.

dwohnitmok 5y ago
You have to be careful. Otherwise you run into a version of Pascal's Mugging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
AstralStorm 5y ago
Then again, investment to mitigate these kinds of risk could lead to profitable advancements even if the original cause does not happen. It's a matter of priorities. After all, there were many important and also generally useful advancement due to space program. In my educated opinion, we should focus on climate change first, especially securing cheap food, water and electricity for everyone. Additionally, prepare for the catastrophe that would be 5 C warming since it is likely in our lifetime. The same approaches to survive this lesser ecological problem may prove useful for space travel or terraforming. I don't particularly care under which budget this research is done as long as it commences.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"When the next asteroid arrives, or when Cascadia slips, there's not a whole lot you can have done to make a difference." Asteroids can be diverted, given enough warning.[1] There are theoretical proposals for doing so, but its never been tried. Massive funding of testing, standby spacecraft with asteroid diversion capability, and increasing Earth's early warning system are all realistic things that could be done, were there a political will to do it. Unfortunately, like COVID, I expect it'll take a devastating asteroid impact that costs millions of lives and trillions of dollars before the Earth wakes up to this threat. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance