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The Really Big One

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Re: The Really Big One

#231

Post by [deleted] »

tempestn wrote: post #147
jofer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, my understanding from what you wrote is that it may indeed be possible to slowly release the accumulated pressure, but we don't really understand how that occurs naturally yet, let alone how to trigger it artificially.

[deleted]

Re: The Really Big One

#232

Post by Gustomaximus »

tempestn wrote: post #147
jofer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, my understanding from what you wrote is that it may indeed be possible to slowly release the accumulated pressure, but we don't really understand how that occurs naturally yet, let alone how to trigger it artificially.

Fracking seems to trigger/create quakes.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/earthquakes-fra...

Re: The Really Big One

#233

Post by TrevorJ »

pixl97 wrote: post #106
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.

>I think I can survive quite a while without the search engine The search engine that holds the vast majority of the worlds traffic? The search engine that everyone is going to call on minutes after the earthquake to get news, but isn't going to be there so all the other search engines slow to a crawl. If Google search just disappeared for a week there would be a considerable number of businesses go out of business.…

I wonder how it would play out if all the major search engines went down. I think people would start communicating on whatever sites they knew the URL for that were still up. Probably some ad-hoc manually curated indexes would pop up in comment threads on various sites and then a few people would probably aggregate these and host them on their local boxes.

Re: The Really Big One

#234

Post by TrevorJ »

platz wrote: post #224
prawn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the human toll goes without saying (well, until you said it). The technical impact is naturally of interest specifically to HN readers.

Especially since we know HN readers are sociopaths

Shh, nobody is supposed to know that.

Re: The Really Big One

#235

Post by eru »

lexcorvus wrote: post #199
hrktb wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't a lower interest rate cause us to value the future more? (Or you mean, the natural interest rate should be higher?)

Re: The Really Big One

#236

Post by baddox »

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

The problem is made worse by the fact that your confidence in predictions also generally diminishes quickly as you go forward in time.

Re: The Really Big One

#237

Post by InclinedPlane »

sharkweek wrote: post #10

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 will collapse even in a fairly moderate earthquake. A magnitude 7 quake that was closer to seattle might easily bring it down, for example.

Re: The Really Big One

#238

Post by thedufer »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #176
lifeformed wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that many optimizations can be made if you make the quake happen at a specific time of day.

My point is that you can perform all of those optimizations and still not make the quake happen (since all of the optimizations seem to be occurring before the quake).

A good chunk of the optimizations are timing related, though. Low tide, summer, mid-day, etc. Not inducing the quake gives all of those up (not to mention the moral hazard of lying about it mentioned by others).

Re: The Really Big One

#239

Post by chrismcb »

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…

There is an entire mountain range between Seattle and the ocean. I am curious how the Sound would affect the tsunami.

Re: The Really Big One

#240

Post by lexcorvus »

eru wrote: post #235
lexcorvus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't a lower interest rate cause us to value the future more? (Or you mean, the natural interest rate should be higher?)

Lower interest rates increase your relative propensity to spend by lowering the opportunity cost of consumption. For example, if you have $10K and can get only a 1% annual return, you might as well take that trip to Vegas. If you could get a 15% return, though, you might rather stay home and rake in the interest.
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