* * * * *
                                        
                    You feel the earth move under your feet
                                        
> In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it
> is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now
> know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake [approximately 8.3 —
> Editor] happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The
> odds of the very big one [approximately 9.0 —Editor] are roughly one in
> ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the
> point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly
> worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew
> that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake.
> Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.
> 

Via Jason Kottke [1], “The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle - The New
Yorker [2]”

I knew about the San Adreas fault [3], and even the the New Madrid fault [4],
but I did not know about the Cascadia subduction zone [5] and as the article
above points out, it has a history of “blowing” every 250–300 years, with the
previous one being in 1700. And from reading, it doesn't sound good when the
earth finally does move in the Pacific Northwest.

[1] http://www.kottke.org/
[2] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andreas_Fault
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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