The struggle to understand why earthquakes happen in America's heartland

For it to be a bigger risk than other risks actively being worked on.

Even a group of millions can only work on so many things at once. The Lower Midwest and the Dixie region of this country have: Gun violence, Racist violence, Tornadoes, some have hurricanes, military service as a key means of social uplift, systemic poverty, low health care rates, lower life expectancy, dubious educational outcomes.

All of those kill people every year. When was the last earthquake fatality in the Nidwest? Killer bees kill something like a person per decade, far more than earthquakes (in the discussed regions), and no one thinks those are serious problem.

> The economy isn't a zero sum game and WELL THOUGHT OUT infrastructure projects generally pay for themselves in the long run many times over. I think we are too interested in today's budget to pay attention to historically valuable things.

Consider the megaports in China's Belt and Road Initiative that will never turn a profit. Consider Neom Line, which is unlikely to ever be worth the cost. Consider. Consider the Tacoma Narrows bridge, which needed to be rebuilt because it collapsed months after construction.

Infrastructure that many people need and demand in situ often produce far more wealth than free market alternatives when executed with a base level of competence.

Chinese Megaports served no economic demand and are functionally modern day land grabs. Neom is zany and funded by literal royalty with no real plan. The Tecoma Narrows did insufficient testing and learned a base engineering principle.

Two these failures were people on the outside pushing an idea the inside didn't want and the third failed because people doing the work didn't know something critical.

Earthquake proofing the midwest is likely to be both of these failures. The people here don't want it. We wouldn't know how to do it even if we did because why the earthquakes happen in the Midwest is an open scientific question. Knowing why could well change the remediation that plate tectonic induced earthquakes and presuming it doesn't we without testing and certification we don't even know how to reliably hire earthquake proofing engineers.

None of that is to say that it is impossible to do something like earthquake proof Omaha, but being possible doesn't make it a good idea. Omaha doesn't seem to want it. If it is forced on Omaha will they hire good engineers or will they hire the lowest bidder that just pencil whips everything? If they do hire good engineers will that matter if these midwest earthquakes are fundamentally different in some unknown way from CA quakes? If the remediation the good engineers implement do work then do they actually save lives and money? If there are no earthquakes, which is possible, then of course they won't. What if a 5.0 quake hits Omaha with and with and without the remediation what really is the impact?

If I could spend money on laws and engineers that might have a hypothetical payoff sometime in the next 50 years and it might save tens of lives I would be a fool if I didn't do something about education, tornadoes, train derailments, or flooding with that same money that would almost certainly save lives next year.

"Communism" and "Socialism" are invoked like magical bogeyman that will destroy everything. To have any discussion on social welfare this needs to be somehow bypassed in discussions.

Texas and California have the highest "percentage of public school students who were English learners (ELs)" of any state or jurisdiction [1].

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgf/english-learn...

This is, of course, correct.

> In the long run requiring stronger buildings probably won't hurt the economy and likely will actually help it.

This is likely wrong, largely depending on details. But first, building don't have hit points, they have structure. Earthquake dampers don't help with anything else these buildings experience, and a lot of other earthproofing doesn't help most situations. Raising the cost of something when not needed is literally wasting money. If it has no impact then how will it help the economy? Most buildings don't last the requisite 500 years to see a single earthquake.

It isn't like the New Madrid region of MO has skyscrapers. Look at the picture on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid,_Missouri

That is 3,000 people on a busy day! Telling them to earthquake proof means potholes don't get filled. What does buildings that cost 50% more get them? It won't help with floods, fires, or tornadoes, things they likely actually see every year.

Even in a larger place, like an actual city like Omaha or St Louis the amount of tall buildings is limited and those falling would risk thousands of lives. A targeted piece of legislation mandating some kind of check/restriction/requirement on buildings over 5 stories would cover a hypothetical risk for nearly all risk cases.

> Stronger infrastructure lasts longer and encourages

Does it? I live in Omaha. There is no man-made structure that can withstand a big enough tornado.

The First National tower, the 47 story skyscraper we have, could collapse any day if tornado decides it happens. It resides at roughly 20th and Dodge street (every 12 streets is a mile) and we had real tornado destroy a neighborhood at roughly 180th and dodge. That was 3 months and a day ago. That same storm put a tornado down on the Eppley Airfield's flight line (Omaha's tiny airport north of 10th and dodge). That one storm put tornadoes on either side of the First National Tower. If the F3 that hit that neighborhood hit downtown the FNB Tower would have gone down no matter how many elastic earthquake dampers were installed because a building doesn't have more or less HP like a video game, it has structural integrity to resist shearing, tensile, compressive, and elastic loads. There is no building above the ground that survives 200+ mph wind smashing the remnants of nearby houses into it.

Source for tornado: https://www.wowt.com/2024/04/27/live-updates-tornado-survivo...

That building could have collapsed and engineering something that tall to withstand tornadoes is simply something humanity hasn't figured out yet. Why bother with stronger against shakes that never happen when everything gets rebuilt for tornadoes on a long enough time frame? Just leaving that earthquake damping money in an interest bearing tornado recovery fund would save more lives and do more good.

> My point about the economy not being zero sum is that we can prepare and prosper, they aren't mutually exclusive.

The economy isn't a zero sum game, but that doesn't mean it is a good idea to simply destroy resources. And money we have on hand now is literally a zero game.

New Madrid could spend money on hiring a few teachers or "New Infrastructure" and see much larger gains for their economy because in 18 years their workforce would be better educated and likely save a few lives. In that same time earthquake-proof construction would do nothing. Even if they did have the money, no one has infinite money so wasting it is bad. Consider Omaha, earthquake proofing costs something like double or triple the construction cost for many kinds of structures and for most people will and fundamentally can never provide them a benefit.

Let's flip this around. How much money does your town spend on preparation for giant asteroid collisions? Probably none. Because it doesn't happen there and if it did you wouldn't be ready no matter how much you spent. Phoenix doesn't waste money on snow plows, and if it did snow the city needs to shut down anyway. Salt Lake City doesn't prepare for hurricanes, and if it had one the city would need to shut down anyway. Why prepare for things that are so unlikely you don't even know how to prepare for them? If these were city ending events that literally erased all life, then maybe, but think about how much else needs to change for any of these scenarios. These would all be either nothing-burgers or national disasters one city couldn't hope to prepare for.

Money spent on any of those is completely wasted and could have gone to filling potholes that all of have because I have seen them all first hand. Phoenix has the fewest but the scariest, those heat induced fumaroles are gnarly. Filling potholes immediately returns on investments because roads are infrastructure that actually gets used.