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The Really Big One

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Re: The Really Big One

#191

Post by mirimir »

freehunter wrote: post #123
VikingCoder wrote: post #88

After watching the Japanese Tsunami, it got me wondering about a weather-balloon-like device. You strap it on like a life jacket, and you wait for the wave to come your way. As it approaches, you pull the cord. Something that looks like a weather balloon inflates, extends the length of a tether, and then you float a few hundred feet in the air, and then float back down a while later. Why is this a dumb idea?

Where do you get the helium needed to make it fly through the air? If you're just pumping air, at best you would float on water, which still leaves you vulnerable to being killed by something else that is floating (possibly a pickup truck, a growler of Rogue Dead Guy Ale or maybe the Space Needle).

You'd get helium from a tank. But you'd need a regulator with a huge heat exchanger to get fast inflation. Maybe use a high-volume whitewater kayak as the "basket".

Re: The Really Big One

#192

Post by hinkley »

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…

People talk and talk about how The Cloud is about decentralizing things but really at the end of the day it's about centralizing everything with about a dozen vendors. And of course when price sensitivity causes attrition that will turn into 4 or 5 vendors.

I'm not sure I see how that really counts as 'more robust'.

Re: The Really Big One

#193

Post by Locke1689 »

miles932 wrote: post #170
Locke1689 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Google is distributed enough to stay up, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft and Amazon are not, and I doubt Google has the spare capacity to handle Azure load, much less Amazon load.

Try us :)

If Google utilization is really only 10% of capacity, that's pretty surprising and worrying for a host of other reasons.

Re: The Really Big One

#194

Post by WildUtah »

deegles wrote: post #30
civilian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could a tunnel even survive an earthquake above 8.5?

Yes. Japan engineers tunnels -- one longer than the Chunnel -- to survive 9+ earthquakes and they do. BART was undamaged by the Loma Prieta quake that brought down the Bay Bridge and the Oakland freeway.

Re: The Really Big One

#195

Post by [deleted] »

kragen wrote: post #183

So how can you escape from a 10-meter tsunami, like the 11-meter Tohoku tsunami that wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi, assuming you have years to prepare? You could build buildings that could withstand the water flowing around them, as the nuclear reactor center itself did; but windows that can survive not just ten meters of water pressure but also cars and trees being dashed against them by the tsunami are going to be les…

[deleted]

Re: The Really Big One

#196

Post by jebblue »

I can't read the article, says I've read my last complimentary issue. That's in Chrome, I added them to my allowed cookie list. It still doesn't work. I tried Firefox with cookies enabled and it works so guessing something to do with the ad cookies from their site I have blocked.

If I open an Incognito window in Chrome it works.

Re: The Really Big One

#197

Post by PotatoEngineer »

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…

The Microsoft campus in Redmond would most likely not be knocked over by the tsunami: a rather hilly Seattle is in the way, then there's the large Lake Washington, and then Redmond is another ~40 feet above the lake on the far side, plus another ~2 miles inland. A fair amount of the energy of the tsunami is going to be expended by the time the Microsoft campus gets salted. (Kirkland is west of Redmond, adjacent to Lake Washington, so it's a similar-but-somewhat-less-optimistic story there. Fremont is adjacent to Seattle and slightly inland, so it will be worse there.)

Of course, the infrastructure of the greater Seattle area is going to be trashed, but chances are good that the Redmond and Kirkland campuses of Microsoft and Google respectively would be intact.

Link to the inundation zone predicted for a magnitude 7.3 earthquake on Seattle: http://wa-dnr.s3.amazonaws.com/Publications/ger_ofr2003-14_t... This isn't even "the big one" as the OP describes, much less "the really big one", but it's a rough description of where the flooding will happen. Downtown Seattle (up and left of the word SEATTLE on the map, with streets in a dense diagonal grid) won't be strongly affected, because downtown Seattle is a hill. With an 8.5 or 9.0 earthquake, of course, Seattle will be much worse off, but there's still some hope that Redmond and Kirkland won't get too damaged.

Re: The Really Big One

#198

Post by nickthemagicman »

VikingCoder wrote: post #88

After watching the Japanese Tsunami, it got me wondering about a weather-balloon-like device. You strap it on like a life jacket, and you wait for the wave to come your way. As it approaches, you pull the cord. Something that looks like a weather balloon inflates, extends the length of a tether, and then you float a few hundred feet in the air, and then float back down a while later. Why is this a dumb idea?

I love this idea. Like a reverse parachute. It would be great for both the earth quake AND the tsunami assuming you could get high enough fast enough and stay up long enough. If I was rich I would just buy a cheap helicopter but your idea is more affordable and would be accessible to more people.

Re: The Really Big One

#199

Post by lexcorvus »

hrktb wrote: post #189
nordsieck wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people predict lots of catastrophes. The trick is identifying the correct ones ahead of time. This is much more difficult than you are implying.

I think it's still very simple. We can view it through the concept of discount rate [0], basically people don't value a future event as much as a present one. The world ending in 50 years is not worth making drastic efforts now, at least for most people. If your prediction is too costly on the short term, as accurate as it can be most people won't act on it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertemporal_choice

I suspect this is in part a side-effect of the Anglo-American (maturity-mismatched) banking system, which keeps long-term interest rates artificially low, leading to higher time preference.

Re: The Really Big One

#200

Post by CamperBob2 »

WildUtah wrote: post #194
deegles wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could a tunnel even survive an earthquake above 8.5?

Yes. Japan engineers tunnels -- one longer than the Chunnel -- to survive 9+ earthquakes and they do. BART was undamaged by the Loma Prieta quake that brought down the Bay Bridge and the Oakland freeway.

The length of the tunnel doesn't have much to do with earthquake survivability, beyond the obvious linear scale factor. What the tunnel is tunneling through has a lot to do with it.

Seattle's geology is somewhat different from any of the usual cited examples, as we've learned by watching everyone from journalists to politicians to engineers stand around with dumbfounded looks while the Bertha saga unfolds.

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