
The Really Big One (2015) - Tomte
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
======
johnohara
_A century and a half elapsed before anyone had any inkling that the Pacific
Northwest was not a quiet place but a place in a long period of quiet._

A fine wordsmith paints images of understanding.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, this is among the finest popular geology articles that I've ever read.
Also, the really cool thing is that it's part of Native American oral
histories. But that's only a few hundred years ago. There are also stories
about the eruption that created Crater Lake, ~7700 years ago. That is
impressive.

~~~
3x
It's a common complaint on HN that too many articles include irrelevant
details about the people and scenery of technical fields, but this article
really pulls it off perfectly. It is dense in technical information and the
personal stories complement this information and make it more memorable (e.g.
I didn't know that the duration of an earthquake is a rough proxy for its
magnitude, but I won't forget after reading the narration in the opening
paragraphs).

------
btmiller
Every time I'm reminded that Washington was only granted statehood after the
Civil War, I realize how young an area this is and how little we truly know
about it. We live in the wild out here and every day we seem to discover a new
way that it'll kill us all.

~~~
Avshalom
Young my ass.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Washington_(state...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Washington_\(state\))

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celilo_Falls](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celilo_Falls)

I don't say that with particular malice but the human history of north America
has been pretty intentionally lost, that's not the same as youth though.

~~~
mirimir
Yeah. The Americas have been populated for maybe 20-40 thousand years. And
heavily, according so some sources.

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jim-jim-jim
Earthquakes scare the shit out of me. I was unfortunate enough to experience
one in Japan, where dozens of people were killed and water was out for
weeks—despite probably being the most prepared society on earth. I can't
imagine what a proper one would look like in America.

Up until recently I've comforted myself with the thought that I'm safe here on
the east coast. That's until I read that the NYC area is overdue for one as
well: not nearly as big, but that doesn't matter to unreinforced masonry. And
the nuclear power plant sitting on the fault line.

~~~
essayist
Were you on the East Coast in August 2011?

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/earthquake-
dc-e...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/earthquake-dc-
explainer/)

~~~
jim-jim-jim
I was. I was far enough away from the epicenter that it felt like a pigeon
fart. I knew the magnitude was greater further south, but I didn't think it
warranted further consideration. It's only after feeling a 7.0+ one that I
developed this healthy(?) sense of preparedness.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878160)

~~~
dctoedt
A pointed comment in that discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9881946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9881946)

~~~
Stratoscope
Here's a mobile-readable copy of that comment...

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 market didn’t solve the problem of cities burning down,” Wysopal said,
> predicting that Internet security may require a historic disaster to force
> change. “It seems to me that the market isn’t really going to solve this one
> on its own.”_

> _But here’s a frightening fact: The push to create tough new fire-safety
> standards did not start after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, which killed
> hundreds of people and left 100,000 homeless. It took a second fire, nearly
> three years later in 1874, to get officials in Chicago to finally make real
> changes._

[via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760164)]

------
paulajohnson
Makes Kim Yong Un look like a minor nuisance.

