141–150 of 286 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only would there be significant downtime of major internet services, but lots of people would die as well!
Well, I live here, so, yeah. I think the people who live here understand we're screwed, the point is what the larger effect will be.
Well this article at least justifies that perhaps we don't need to replace the viaduct after all if everything is going to get destroyed anyways! While my fear of "the big one" doesn't keep me up at night, Seattle is going to be a classic example of "we should have known this was going to happen!" after a sizable earthquake costs substantial life at some point in the future. But this article does seem to stretch itse…
The viaduct's collapse in the next big earthquake and the ~80 lives it'll take is the _reason_ we're building something as a replacement! Granted, Bertha is a huge fuckup. A MBA in my python night class said that one approach to the viaduct problem would be to: fund a "victims of the viaduct" fund, today, with a couple million. And then pass a law that the compensation for families of the victims is limited to what's…
Except that every time even one direction of the viaduct is closed during rush hour (due to an overturned semi or whatever) traffic grinds to a complete halt throughout the entire city.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that you can't really simulate the systemic effects of a really major quake (like a scenario where Mountain View is out of power for weeks).
Sure you can. Just look for the keys to the main breakers to those buildings. Of course, paying for that amount of vacation for 15 days is probably not entirely feasible for any company.
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.
"The Pacific Northwest sits squarely within the Ring of Fire. Off its coast, an oceanic plate is slipping beneath a continental one. Inland, the Cascade volcanoes mark the line where, far below, the Juan de Fuca plate is heating up and melting everything above it. In other words, the Cascadia subduction zone has, as Goldfinger put it, “all the right anatomical parts.” Yet not once in recorded history has it caused a…
I agree. There are regularly 4.0-5.5 earthquakes along the oregon coast, and the seismologists that report on these say that they are a result of the Cascadia Subduction... I was interested until I got to this point as the local reports on earthquakes are counter to what the article suggest. I mean there was even a 4.2 in Springfield, OR within a week. just check the US geological data. Claims seem dubious without ha…
I felt that one - I was over in Eugene for the weekend of the 4th, and was... uh... seated, when it felt like something slammed into the house. Not much shaking, just one short, sharp impact.
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…
Fortunately, the tallest tsunami was from a rockfall in a fjord[1], not from a subduction zone earthquake. They are typically ~10 m, and it's really the wavelength, not the amplitude, that is a problem because there is so much water that the inundation is more like a flash flood than a quick slap from a breaking wave. Second, I don't believe tsunamis from subduction zone earthquakes on the Cascadia trench will impact…
Is there any work on inducing earthquakes to relieve stress before it builds to catastrophe levels?
It's a matter of magnitude. A magnitude 2 earthquake releases ~30x the energy as a magnitude 1 earthquake. A magnitude 3 releases ~900x the energy of a magnitude 1. You can see where this is going. (Note, the "shaking intensity" of the earthquake doesn't increase as quite as rapidly as the amount of energy released, but the relationship depends on a lot more than the earthquake's size.) Let's say we were to trigger m…
the question I would be asking myself is Am I prepared for such a natural disaster ? Or What steps can I take on a personal level to be ready ? For eg: Always have an evac bag ready to take off Or live out of a suitcase so that I dont have to worry about stuff & data. Or distribute my personal resources (cards, cash) etc in PO boxes across the country. Ofcourse, in such a huge disaster these steps wont matter but in…
I would suggest against the suitcase in the trunk more for social reasons[1]. Hidden compartments are illegal in some states[2].
1) it is a sign of cheating
2) drug laws, go figure
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... this article seemed to be talking about a potential future earthquake. And it's a very long article.
It discusses why a big earthquake is likely to hit the PNW in the next 50 years with lots of flowery language and science. TL;DR: There's a big earthquake that is likely to hit the PNW in the next 50 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.