Comment by FooHentai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FooHentai | Hacker News Reader

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It's not possible to please people with these kinds of notifications. On a long time scale, that fault IS gonna rip and if civilization exists around it at the point it goes, a LOT of people are going to die.

But, our ability to predict quakes on a short time span (read: human lifetime) is abysmal. The best we can say is eh, maybe. There are no consistent, confirmed precursors.

So, what can you do? Every warning will be accused of being alarmist if it doesn't eventuate, and every failed prediction (note that you don't see these from reputable professionals working in the field) mocked. If a warning is ever actually borne out by a significant seismic event, expect a TON of criticism that someone knew but didn't provide sufficient urgency in their warning.

Putting all the stuff about warnings aside for a moment, let's examine at individual's justification for and capacity to make preparations for such an event. At one extreme you have preppers, and at the other end there's folk that do nothing. Both approaches seem predominantly to hinge on pure opinion on the immediacy of the threat. If you immerse yourself in various materials on the topic to be found online, you'll probably adopt a prepper mindset. If you simply never bother to do that and continue about your day, you'll likely sit on the 'do nothing' extreme. There really isn't a 'right' here without a crystal ball, which everyone seeks from seismologists and get frustrated when they can't provide any tangible insights.

In summary: Mankind's ability to risk assess and rationally respond to long-interval threats of high severity is very, very poor.

I'd distinguish between prepping and doomsday types. Prepping can be as simple as having some basic supplies and nonperishable goods such that you're not going to die if, for any reason, you need to survive independently for some period of time. It's not like some lifestyle or even dependent upon an assumption that you'll even ever need these things. So it's a relatively low cost decision to be able to be at least somewhat prepared for an eventuality that, though extremely improbable, would have disproportionately negative consequences if you were of the 'do nothing' extreme on the other end.

To put it mathematically, if I said there was a 1 in a million chance of you losing a billion dollars sometime in your life, and you agreed with me, it'd certainly be logical, if you could, to provide insurance against that eventuality for $1. In fact it'd still be mathematically sound to spend $1000. But this is for an event that you are literally 99.9999% sure will not happen. I think the big difference is in seeing reality as a neverending stream of probabilities as opposed to seeing reality as a neverending stream of certainties. The probabilistic mindset can lead you to conclusions and decisions that look peculiar to a deterministic mindset. By contrast doomsday types are those who have a deterministic mindset and have decided that the world (as we know it) is going to end and thus make that a part of their persona and worldview. Granted, they could also be of a probabilistic mindset with a different weighting but, at least in my experience, that's not usually the case.

I distinguish between prepping vs doomsday as;

1) Acknowledging there is a chance of a significant event vs. I know what is coming.

2) It takes a minor part of your life vs. significant proportion/resource.

Personally I keep a couple months food stored. I dont keep freeze dried barrels of meals etc, just buy bulk on stuff we use that's 1) on special and 2) stores; like jars of pasta sauce, peanut butter, toothpaste etc so really it also saves money as a portion of my grocery is always half price rather than that weeks on special usage.

The way I look at it is pretty much every 2nd generation experiences a significant catastrophic at some time. If I can keep things covered for a couple months it covers most non-extreme scenarios, where as if the end of civilisation did come I figure there would be so many variables there not much you can really do unless you devote you life to this and sacrifice you lifestyle for a likely non-existent outcome.

Keeping some extra food/supplies is insurance of a kind. And surprised more people dont while so many have things like house content insurance.

For me I dont have content insurance on my house while most people do. Many people would think I'm strange for having a couple months food, but the way I look at it is, if all my house goods disappeared it would suck but I can sort it out fairly easily over 3-12 months. If something happened that broke supply lines, while significantly less likely than the house being being burgled/fire etc, the consequences are so much greater. I prefer to be covered for a much less likely event that would have significant impact on me, than a more likely (though still low) event that will have little impact on me in the over arching story of my life. PLus there something nice about the planning organising mental exercise of it

Precisely! While the risk of most disasters is rather low for most people, there is a considerably larger risk that _something_ will happen at some point. It's only reasonable to be able to survive on one's own if society is disrupted for a few weeks or so.

There's a long way to go from that to bunkering down in the wilderness and withdrawing from society.

One thing I wonder about here is: How do people with chronic health conditions prep for this?

- Is there a form of insulin which can be shelf-stable for a year and isn't so expensive that throwing it out yearly is a hardship?

- Suppose someone has a chronic pain condition and after a year of debilitating pain, found a specific treatment regimen that works for them. Is it possible for them to stockpile drugs without being accused of drug-seeking-behaviour?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...

I broadly agree with you, although I don't see a distinguishing line between preppers and doomsday-ers, to me it looks like more of a gradient.

Also, I think most people have that deterministic mindset, not just the doomsday folks. It's just they've come down on the other side of the fence. It's why you see so many folks making no preparations, even though they have received warnings from reputable sources.

> I'd distinguish between prepping and doomsday types

The New Zealand government sure does! https://getthru.govt.nz/ / https://getprepared.nz/

There are also sometimes ads on TV reminding people to keep an emergency kit.

And yesterday the annual ShakeOut event happened where everyone does the drop'n'cover exercise at a particular time of day.

Some councils supply discounted emergency water tanks for home install, too. Got one hooked up last Autumn, and a second in the garage waiting for better weather.

I do some work with MCDEM, the operator of getthru (and getready, and civil defence). Fascinating area - They cover the governance/policy aspects of emergency management but also some of the operational/practical execution of it (that which isn't devolved to regional civil defence or emergency sector e.g. FENZ).

Most people preparing an earthquake kit don't consider themselves "preppers". You might want to take that social issue into account before you pick a label.

I get what you're saying but this post isn't about a fault experiencing a catastrophic event, but cascading events. If this fault rips it could trigger an event on another fault.

Now I'm no geologist, but I question why the order the authors listed possible sites as this:

>A large quake on the Garlock fault has the potential to send strong shaking to the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, Lancaster, Palmdale, Ventura, Oxnard, Bakersfield and Kern Count

Which seems to be influenced by the population of those areas and not the geographic distance from the Garlock fault itself. All the propabalistic models I've seen for "the Big One" have the waves that reach the SF Valley (which has iirc 2 million people) originating from the southwest from a major quake on the San Andreas fault, not a ripple effect from the northeast.

That paragraph is literally about the impact on society that it would cause. Yes, they are listing metropolitan areas.

And yes, all the models you've seen before moooooost likely did not take into account activity from Garlock that had literally never been seen. That should not be a surprise.

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