The Really Big One • Hacker News Board

Re: The Really Big One

#91

Post by sterl » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #27

I used to live in Portland, and thought about this impending catastrophe a lot. Once -- under the influence of intoxicants, most likely -- I came up with a way of dramatically reducing its impact. It's a batshit crazy solution which will never actually happen -- but even when I'm sober, I still think it would work. Here's what I'm thinking: the major problem with a disaster like this is the uncertainty surrounding it…

This idea is fantastic. However, we can do one better. We can control the quake such that we use a sequence of low energy quakes distributed across many years to eliminate the need for the large quick entirely.

Re: The Really Big One

#92

Post by pc86 » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

Sven7 wrote: post #86

nostrademons wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DiRT drills include the simultaneous loss of whole offices, including the complete obliteration of the Bay Area. Participants are instructed to pretend that they've been eaten by zombies and not communicate with anyone in a remote office, and that's backed up (as described in the article) by cutting the network links to & from the Mountain View corporate office. Now, there may certainly be larger systemic effects…

What happens if Google goes down for a while? Is it really that bad? Yes, Gmail and Drive may cause all kinds of chaos but I think I can survive quite a while without the search engine and YouTube.

In the grand scheme of things, not a lot of businesses use Apps for their email, but I'd hazard a guess that you're still looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in losses if that were to suddenly disappear.

Re: The Really Big One

#93

Post by ecdavis » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:07 PM UTC

someear wrote: post #56

I like to think about how I'd react in the 15 minutes I have between the earthquake and tsunami. How tall would this tsunami be? Quick googling shows the tallest one ever is 524 meters. Assuming the tsunami is that tall, going into tall buildings might not work - tallest building in Seattle, Columbia Tower, is 287 meters (+50m in elevation increase), and is a few blocks from the waterfront . Best bet is to run/bike u…

From the article:

> A grown man is knocked over by ankle-deep water moving at 6.7 miles an hour. The tsunami will be moving more than twice that fast when it arrives. Its height will vary with the contours of the coast, from twenty feet to more than a hundred feet.

That's on the coast, not in the sound, of course.

Re: The Really Big One

#94

Post by nkrumm » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:07 PM UTC

olefoo wrote: post #73

[deleted] wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Large parts of downtown and the area between Queen Anne and Capitol Hill ( where the Amazon campus is ) are built on fill, and are likely to be subjected to liquefaction in a major seismic event. It's entirely possible that whole sections of Capitol Hill could slide into downtown too. The hills shake and the mountains dance, and then comes the tsunami; this sounds much more exciting to read about than live through.

Here's a map of liquefaction risk in King county: http://your.kingcounty.gov/dnrp/library/water-and-land/flood...

Re: The Really Big One

#95

Post by itistoday2 » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

sswaner wrote: post #76

itistoday2 wrote: post #58

TLDR someone?

The Really Big One: earthquake wipes out the Pacific Northwest. Really needed that?

... this article seemed to be talking about a potential future earthquake. And it's a very long article.

Re: The Really Big One

#96

Post by cossatot » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #26

Worth noting that the state of warning systems there is somewhere between dismal and non-existent and the disaster preparedness of most cities seems to vary between unprepared and comically inept. Is there anything anyone can do to set up an alert for these sorts of things? If these predictions are true, there's a good chance that the entirety of Silicon Valley could be utterly destroyed. You'd think people would tak…

Earthquakes are, for now, impossible to predict so there is little forewarning (and not for the lack of people trying). However, there is a huge interest in the geological/hazards community in earthquake early warning systems in the US, especially focused on California[1][2]. The Napa earthquake last summer was the first real test of the more modern components and was successful. But again, you're dependent on warning the populace after the earthquake has begun, which isn't useful for people near the epicenter.

Tsunami warning systems have been in place for many places for decades; whether people respond is a different story.

In terms of people preparedness, again, California is the leader in the US but there are drills in many places[3], though they're generally voluntary and totally ignored by most.

[1]: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/earlywarning/ [2]: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lanow-ln-earthquake... [3]

Re: The Really Big One

#97

Post by cm2012 » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:25 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #59

nkoren wrote: post #27

I used to live in Portland, and thought about this impending catastrophe a lot. Once -- under the influence of intoxicants, most likely -- I came up with a way of dramatically reducing its impact. It's a batshit crazy solution which will never actually happen -- but even when I'm sober, I still think it would work. Here's what I'm thinking: the major problem with a disaster like this is the uncertainty surrounding it…

If you are now fully retrofitted to survive a 9.0, why do we absolutely have to set off this earthquake now using hundreds of nuclear bombs?

Moral hazard. If you don't cause the quake that was promised, no one will ever believe you again.

Re: The Really Big One

#98

Post by davesque » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:25 PM UTC

FYI, the two-hundred year figure that this article mentions appears to be in dispute. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone#Earth...) includes much more specific, cited information which puts the frequency at 300-600 years between significant quakes with the earthquake of 1700 having occurred after a 780 year lull.

Re: The Really Big One

#99

Post by waynecochran » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:25 PM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #20

Hmm, in the spirit of thinking of worst-case scenarios, most of the engineering talent for Amazon and Microsoft is in Seattle and Redmond, respectively. There's even a sizable percentage of Google cloud platform in Fremont and Kirkland. Even if most of the employees live, it's likely basic infrastructure will be a disaster for quite a while. Maybe Google would be able to offload ops work to Mountain View, but it seem…

Not only would there be significant downtime of major internet services, but lots of people would die as well!

Re: The Really Big One

#100

Post by nappy-doo » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 8:25 PM UTC

iamcurious wrote: post #48

kenferry wrote: post #35

Is there any work on inducing earthquakes to relieve stress before it builds to catastrophe levels?

I like how you think. If we are going to have an earthquake, at the very least we should have an scheduled organized mild one.

On the Richter scale, the difference a full step (7.0 to 8.0) is about a factor of 32. So if we're trying to mitigate an 8.0 earthquake every 100 years, you're talking about a magnitude 7.0 every 3 years to release the same amount of energy.

Most engineering structures on the west coastare built to withstand a 6-7. When a magnitude 8 comes (and it will come, and in some sense we're coming out of the stress shadow from the 1906 quake just now) the devastation will be horrendous.

*Editting to add: The structures on the west coast are engineered to withstand a SINGLE 6-7 magnitude event. Not one every 3 years.