> What the hell is America going to do if there is a cataclysmic event that takes out this region? The east coast isn't much better off either. If a tsunami hi

> What the hell is America going to do if there is a cataclysmic event that takes out this region? The east coast isn't much better off either. If a tsunami hits the Pacific, there are enough hills and mountains between the coast and say, Palo Alto or Mountain View, that not that much will happen. Half of SF is probably safe from tsunamis too just because of the high hills. Corporate offices are probably built earthquake-proof already. Houses, not so much, but hey, the corporations will be around. The east coast, not so much. Boston and NYC are flat, at sea level, and would be gone if an asteroid were to crash into the Atlantic. Nuclear power stations in Newark would become the next Fukushima disaster. Most ancient cities were not built on the coast, for good reasons. It seems to be a relatively recent fad around the world. Take China for example, because it's an ancient civilization. Shanghai and Shenzhen, are on the coast, but are cities built extremely recently. The historical population capitals of China (Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an, etc.) were never on the coast. Likewise, Rome, Madrid, Cairo, Paris, London, Kyoto -- none of these cities are on the coast. The USA, on the other hand, is a relatively new kid on the block in the grand scheme of civilization, has yet to learn, and put all of its eggs on the coast. :-/ That's the bigger problem IMO.