Entertaining and terrifying article. Now I get to loose a bit more sleep on this. (sighs) Going to pass that favor along by forwarding the link to other inhabitants of this power keg (read: death trap) that is the Mid-South.
More seriously, the situation isn't unknown over here. Many of us are told what happened as campfire stories and such. Running the "Mighty Mississippi" backwards plus creating Realfoot Lake [1] left us in shock and awe. Especially after fishing at Realfoot. Then we tried to calm down by asking when the next one is coming and what they did to prevent us from being buried in rubble. The answers... didn't calm us down one bit... The New Madrid fault's potential is so devastating that people either leave the area or just put it out of their mind until some asshole writes another article lol.
The worst thing is we have bad storms, tornados, and potential for a major earthquake. The protections against the first two tend to make the other one worse. And vice versa. Tapei 101 has an interesting solution but Mighty Madrid would probably throw that sucker right out of the ground (or sink it). Not being in the area is literally the only safe strategy. I just hope the Big One doesn't hit during one of the many tornado invasions...
In the mid-1980s, I was at Grinnell College in Iowa. One summer, there was a tornado warning - one on the ground, a couple miles away from campus. A bunch of students visiting from California for some academic thing ran out to the soccer field to watch. The native midwesterners like me told them to get inside NOW (we didn't mention that the part of campus they were on was completely destroyed by a tornado in the 1920s). One sneered, "Hah! You've never lived through an earthquake!" I told him that I won't go into the basement of a brick building during an earthquake if he won't stand in an open field during a tornado. Then I went to the basement, because I'm not stupid. Dunno if they did or not.
Lmao that's hilarious. "Hey, it's one of those things that put objects through brick walls and fling trailers through the air. Let's get close to it!" I nominate them for At-Risk Survivor status on Darwin Award page.
Yeah, seriously. Native midwesterners (I grew up in central Illinois, in a nasty tornado alley) take tornadoes seriously. They were new on campus, or they'd know that the dorms they walked out of to go see the tornado were built because the previous dorms had been destroyed by a tornado.
I have so many tornado stories from Tennessee and Mississippi it isn't funny. My mom says I was jerked off the ground (in her hand) by one when I was a kid but I must've blocked it out. One time we were in the trailer in the bathroom... wishful survival thinking I know... when she got sucked into the vent she was laying on due to air pressure, vacuum, or something. My dad had to pull her off it. Another time at school some people wanted to get to their family [against our recommendations] but two people couldn't pull the door open against the tornado's winds forcing it shut. Another time was a storm rather than tornado with 90mph windows that had me practically crawling to the house, garbage cans rolling down streets, and cars barely keeping on their path. Most recent was when we lost our shed to either a tornado or intense storm. I was temporarily living somewhere else & can't recall details except to say there's no trace of it in the backyard lol. House is fine, though, except for constant roof work.
So, I was thinking on these underground houses as a potential solution to that and then there's this article on New Madrid fault... (sighs)
More seriously, the situation isn't unknown over here. Many of us are told what happened as campfire stories and such. Running the "Mighty Mississippi" backwards plus creating Realfoot Lake [1] left us in shock and awe. Especially after fishing at Realfoot. Then we tried to calm down by asking when the next one is coming and what they did to prevent us from being buried in rubble. The answers... didn't calm us down one bit... The New Madrid fault's potential is so devastating that people either leave the area or just put it out of their mind until some asshole writes another article lol.
The worst thing is we have bad storms, tornados, and potential for a major earthquake. The protections against the first two tend to make the other one worse. And vice versa. Tapei 101 has an interesting solution but Mighty Madrid would probably throw that sucker right out of the ground (or sink it). Not being in the area is literally the only safe strategy. I just hope the Big One doesn't hit during one of the many tornado invasions...
[1] http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3713836