Posted on 03/13/2019 9:37:20 AM PDT by Sarcasm Factory
Americans have long dreaded the “Big One,” a magnitude 8.0 earthquake along California’s San Andreas Fault that could one day kill thousands of people and cause billions of dollars in damage. The Big One, though, is a mere mini-me compared with the cataclysm forming beneath the Pacific Northwest.
Roughly 100 miles off the West Coast, running from Mendocino, California, to Canada’s Vancouver Island, lurks the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca Plate is sliding beneath the North American Plate, creating the conditions for a megathrust quake 30 times stronger than the worst-case scenario along the notorious San Andreas, and 1,000 times stronger than the earthquake that killed 100,000 Haitians in 2010. Shockwaves will unleash more destructive force against the United States and Canada than anything short of nuclear war, a giant asteroid strike, or a civilization-threatening super-volcano.
We didn’t even know a megaquake was coming until recently. When I was a kid, growing up in the mid-Willamette Valley in Oregon, earthquakes were California’s problem. Everyone, including scientists, thought us immune. Seismic hazard maps shaded California red and Oregon green. Geologists knew about the Cascadia Subduction Zone, but they thought that the Pacific and Juan de Fuca Plates weren’t locked—that the subduction was smooth, as if the continent were greased with lubricant. University of Washington geologist Brian Atwater proved them wrong in the late 1980s. Oregon had recorded no earthquakes since American pioneers colonized the territory in the nineteenth century, and the native population had no written records, but the earth itself keeps copious records of geologic events, once one knows where to look. Atwater’s first clue was the “ghost forests” along the Oregon and Washington coasts, drowned by seawater, covered by sand and landslide debris, and then exposed by beach erosion. According to tree-ring dating, every one of those forests was buried in 1700. Something extraordinary happened that year. Sea levels can’t rise six or more feet in a year. The coastline itself must have plunged into the ocean. Later, beach erosion exposed yet another ghost forest, in the small town of Neskowin; this one was 2,000 years old.
Atwater then collaborated with Japanese seismologist Kenji Satake, who dug up long-forgotten reports in his own country of an “orphan tsunami”—a violent tidal inundation not preceded by a local earthquake—that also occurred in 1700. Scientists scrambled for core samples of the ocean floor just off the American coast and found turbidites—layers of tsunami debris—that date back millennia and, most recently, again, to 1700, revealing a cycle that repeats itself every 300 to 600 years. The Cascadia Subduction Zone is not quiet, after all: it triggers catastrophic megathrust quakes, on schedule. “A fault that ruptures with this big of an earthquake every few hundred years is ragingly active,” says Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI).
A 9.0 megathrust quake is too powerful even to be measured on the now-dated Richter scale. Megathrust quakes are measured instead on the Moment scale. Like its predecessor, the scale is logarithmic. Every whole-number increase represents an energy release 32 times greater than the whole number before it. An 8.0 earthquake is therefore 32 times more powerful than a 7.0, and a 9.0 roughly 1,000 times more powerful.
Of the three West Coast states, Oregon is the most vulnerable. “We’re less prepared here,” says geologic-hazard analyst John Bauer, also at DOGAMI. “Washington has had more earthquakes recently, so they’re better prepared, and California, too, of course. We didn’t adopt a culture of preparation until the mid-1990s.” Portland is also closer to the subduction zone than Seattle or Vancouver, so it will experience more violent ground shaking. And the Oregon coast is considerably more populated than anywhere else in the tsunami’s path. “We’re not overdue,” Bauer says. “But we’re due.”
Here’s the executive summary. On a date and time unknown, but at some point in the future, everything west of the I-5 corridor is going to be obliterated. At which point, California, Oregon and Washington will become Republican states.
Here’s the Addendum:
After the 9.0 mega-quake destabilizes the subduction zone, magma will rise under Mt. Rainier, placing the 14.400 ft structure under such enormous pressure that the only exit is up but the mountain is too high for the magma to push up that far - causing the structure to begin to destabilizing - instead of the standard volcanic eruption, the entire mountain will explode eliminating what remained of Republican WA and OR from Vancouver BC to Northern CA.
This release causes all the other volcanoes (Mt Baker, Mt Shasta et al) to erupt pushing the combined hundreds of cubic miles of material as gases into the stratosphere creating a planet-wide winter. This winter will be so sever that when combined with the new solar minimum, the Earth will enter into a new Ice Age replete with 2 KM high glaciers after the first 100 year period - this period will last until the next solar maximum roughly 500-1000 years later.
And people are worried about politics and stock piling ... Bwahhahahhahahahahaha
Best thing to happen to the rest of America if it happens.
Idaho is great for a close up of the Yellowstone eruption touched off by the events on the West Coast, meanwhile I believe I read somewhere that the only geologically stable part of the US is Wisconsin ...
All the coast along the the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound will be swept away from Vancouver BC to Tacoma WA.
The fault being offshore is irrelevant - a long lasting mega-quake will take out most of WA and OR as well as some of Northern CA.
Unless the Hayward takes out the Bay Area, and San Andreas Los Angeles, Democrats will still rule over California. Per the ‘Loaf “Two out of three ain’t bad?”
Check to see if you are living in a liquefaction zone. which is very likely - when it shakes big time you will be going down ... and down
Find escape routes.
why is this prediction so special?
Richter is logarithmic-one full number jump is ten times the energy.
How much of Seattle area buildings have any steel reinforced construction with earthquake in mind? Until thirty years ago, the area was perceived as lacking any major seismic threat.
That soil under Seattle is the run-out plain for a prior Lahar event spawned by Mt. Rainier, more than ten-thousand years past.
Well... aren’t you Mr. Sunshine.
Here's what the 1964 Alaskan quake left (M9.2) - pictured are variously Whittier, Cordova, and Anchorage
Calculated Travel Time Map for 1964
The M9.0 quake is just filled with sunshine so I thought I’d add a bit of realism.
The globe was angrily warming that day my friends...
IIRC, hasn’t the Richer Scale been replaced with the moment magnitude scale, especially for megaquakes? Or is Richter still used when talking about historical quakes...?
yes.
Fiscal compensation?
Does this mean that Walla Walla will once again be the capital of Washington State?
Duh ... Right you are. Must be I'm still time (not to mention calendar) challenged due to changing clocks with the advent of DST! :>))
Thanks Sarcasm Factory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
