[Travis McGee]

My last novel takes place in the aftermath of a major New Madrid quake, so I did a lot of research on the area and the risk. The image above captures well the much wider area of destruction that would follow a NMF quake, compared to a quake in California or even Haiti.

In the case of a NMF quake, most of the bridges over the Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers in the affected zone could collapse, along with highway overpasses, railroad bridges and son on. The rivers would be impassible to cars, trucks, trains and tugs/barges. So it would be damned hard to get in relief supplies, other than by air, until the bridges could be rebuilt.

Western Tennessee, the area between the TN and MS rivers, would practically be cut off from any outside help. Memphis would be without power or water for weeks or longer, with no way to bring in massive relief supplies or reconstruction machinery. Certainly, the inhabitants of Memphis (already called "Mogadishu on the MIssissippi" would freak out completely before they could be rescued from outside. It would be incredibly ugly.

That's the background to my third novel. The President orders the mandatory evacuation of Western Tennessee, and most of the inhabitants refuse to go. The US National Guard is ineffective at forced evictions on a massive scale, and foreign "contract battalions" of "peacekeepers" are brought in to do the heavy lifting.

Be that as it may fictionally, a New Madrid quake would make Katrina seem like a Sunday school picnic.

[LucyJo]

How effective would be retrofitting on the bridges under those circumstances?

[vetvetdoug]

Mogudeshu on the Mississippi

LOL; living just 80 miles East of there we call it Memfrica. The area North of West Tennessee is bordered by the Ohio River, East by the Tennessee and Tennessee-Tombigbee. The entire area could be isolated easily by a quake and bridge failure. Living in this area we are aware of the limitations and possibilities...the South is the Gulf. Jackson, MS and TN would both become hell holes also.

[madamemayhem]

hey, hey, HEY! wait a minute... i live in that red zone part of Indiana. i have to worry about ice in the winter and tornados in the summer. now i have to worry about the EARTHQUAKE FROM HELL? not cool.

[Quix]

INDEED.

Travis,

what do you attribute the seeming willful . . . what . . .

sleepwalking, blindness . . .

something,

even on the part of so many conservative Christians who ought to know better???

[21twelve]

For a real scare - overlay it with the oil and gas pipeline systems that feed the populated east coast. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen in winter. (Oh - and it WILL happen).

[muawiyah]

Love that map.

Think of a gigantic ice sheet to the North. it's two miles high and weighs gigatons. Over a period of 2 million or so years it's come and gone at least 20 times (with a number of advances interspersed with brief interstadials).

It's like a gigantic hammer hitting the Earth's surface just North of that area.

Over and over and over and over and finally the area just above the mantle along that line through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio snaps ~ I believe they call it the Carmel Fault ~ at least through Indiana.

So, once it snaps, the mantle gets pressed downward by the weight of the ice-hammer and "flows" to the South where it begins raising the land under the Mississippi fault (already 17 miles deep and getting deeper by the millenium).

To the East the continent itself tilted. It dropped in the North and Florida rose in the South. The Appalachians mitigated the torque since they already have vast fault lines.

Thinking geologically in geological spans of time it's pretty clear the New Madrid quake occurred simply as a consequence of the Ice Sheets Not Returning On Time! The land to the North continued to rebound for an extra 5,000 years, and the land to the South (center of the red area of the map) settled back.