Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Really Big One

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 286 posts

Re: The Really Big One

#211

Post by sneak »

pc86 wrote: post #92
Sven7 wrote: post #86

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.

As with most people who reason about Google, you are off by at least two orders of magnitude in your estimate.

Re: The Really Big One

#212

Post by chillacy »

shas3 wrote: post #188
davesque wrote: post #98

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.

I am really interested to learn how they calculate the probability of 1/3. I think there is a legitimate question here about the methods used. In technical terms: what is the sample space and what set are you looking for within that sample space? How strong is the justification to treat the sequence of earthquakes as a sequence of independent identically distributed random numbers? Leaves me scratching my head. I loo…

From what I've heard, earthquakes are frequently modeled as following a poisson process

Re: The Really Big One

#213

Post by sneak »

stephengillie wrote: post #31
serve_yay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does seem likely, though as far as I know, AWS's biggest zone is located in Northern Virginia. And, I'm sure the AWS people have planned as much as they can for this eventuality. (Um, I hope.)

AWS West in Oregon are somewhat further inland from I-5. It would probably be impacted, but not to the same degree as the datacenters in other cities like Tukwila.

The loss of datacenters is irrelevant; the loss of people to keep the services running is the issue.

Re: The Really Big One

#214

Post by sneak »

idlewords wrote: post #62
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…

It's pretty baffling. Japan is the model for earthquake warning systems. Even a few seconds' warning could be invaluable if you are running a major datacenter. But apart from a tiny pilot program in Berkeley I'm not aware of any serious efforts in that direction.

For extra credit, figure out how to trigger the compression wave near the sensors the datacenter depends on to automatically fail masters over to another state.

Re: The Really Big One

#215

Post by Mtinie »

dnautics wrote: post #166
callmeed wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, please don't move to San Luis Obispo / Avila Beach. We have a nuclear power plant on a bluff near a fault line. Come visit though. We have great tri-tip and outdoor activities.

not only that, it's called "diabolo canyon". I mean talk about tempting fate.

At the end of the road through Montaña de Oro State Park there's a warning siren[1] that will go off if there's a problem at the Diablo Canyon facility. Every time I get out there and see it there's a part of me that expects it to start to blare... and I'm totally glad when I'm "disappointed" and it doesn't.

[1] http://www.andremount.net/vanstravaganza_iii_2010/images/ful...

Re: The Really Big One

#216

Post by ryanmarsh »

nosuchthing wrote: post #190
rfugger wrote: post #167

I was in New Orleans in October 2002, and this guy was on the front page of the main newspaper predicting that within 20 years a category 5 hurricane was likely to whip around Florida and strike the city head on. He said the levies weren't high or strong enough, and that downtown New Orleans would be under 20 feet of water: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/predicting-katrina.html I remember reading it with interest…

An omnious quote from an article on l0phet: Wysopal offered this grim precedent: Cities were once vulnerable to disastrous fires, which raged through dense clusters of mostly wooden buildings. It took a giant fire in Chicago to spur government officials into serious reforms, including limits on new wooden structures, a more robust water supply for suppressing blazes and an overhaul to the city’s fire department. “The…

Ironically enough, the architecture of the French Quarter in New Orleans is exactly an example of this. The way it was explained to me the French used wood until a mayor or some such proclaimed that all new buildings would use stone because the Spanish inspired buildings were the only ones left standing each time the city burned down.

Re: The Really Big One

#217

Post by kragen »

obstinate wrote: post #207
kragen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how far away the high ground is. There are islands where it’s hundreds of miles away (and putting out to sea is by far the better idea) but even miles away would be too far to run for me.

We're talking about Seattle. I don't know if you've been there, but most of it is pretty hilly.

I used to live in Seattle — I used to bike up Yesler to go home from work — but I was talking about tsunami zones in general, especially the Pacific Northwest mentioned in the New Yorker article, not just Seattle. Maybe you replied to the wrong thread by mistake.

Re: The Really Big One

#218

Post by lsllc »

chiph wrote: post #68
cdsingh1001 wrote: post #52

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…

ready.gov has some basic steps. But, they don't have enough emphasis on having clean water, IMO. Having a storage sharing agreement with friends within a day or two's walk could be useful, so if your home is destroyed (along with your emergency supplies) your friend's might still be in good shape. And vice-versa.

Sadly, being well prepared with clean water, food, medicine and shelter does you no good if someone else takes it from you. The very first item on your list should be a powerful firearm & sufficient ammo.

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle has a pretty good take on the post-apocalyptic chaos & breakdown in society that will likely ensue.

Re: The Really Big One

#219

Post by anigbrowl »

Meanwhile the barrier to a proper early warning system for the west coast is a whopping $15.6 million a year, of which California has managed to get a whole $5 million from Congress so far - http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-quake-early-wa...

Honestly, I'm a little unclear as to why we are even going to Congress for this, instead of the governments of CA, WA and OR agreeing to divide up the sum based on population or state GDP or some other obvious metric. The sums involved are so small in budgetary terms as to seem less than the cost of conducting studies and federal lobbying activities.

Re: The Really Big One

#220

Post by mindcrime »

mikeash wrote: post #34
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…

I think the other problem with your idea is that people won't behave as if it's inevitable, because they'll know that there's at least the possibility of having the event postponed or canceled. Worse, the more people who refrain from preparing, the better the odds are of getting a postponement or cancellation. I like the idea, though. I proposed something similar in another earthquake-related HN thread a while back.…

I like the idea, though. I proposed something similar in another earthquake-related HN thread a while back. If you can't stop or predict natural disasters, make them predictable by causing them yourself!

We already do a certain measure of that in terms of wildfires. Regular "controlled burns" to reduce fuel load (among other reasons) are a routine part of forest management practices. See, for example: http://ncprescribedfirecouncil.org/newsletter_stories/Spring...

Post reply on HN