Hacker News Reader

Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

> There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate.

As a person who lives in a geologically stable region I have to chuckle because it is entirely possible that this comment will age as terribly as that 'which country is best equipped to deal with a pandemic (2019) post that we saw recently.

I don't deny the part of your comment about in person interactions being the foundation of creative output but all that is overridden by the notion that this must take place in Silicon Valley.

With rising sea levels and the fault lines in the region I'm aghast that so many of America's eggs are in one precarious basket. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all based in this region, it just seems so utterly short-sighted.

What the hell is America going to do if there is a cataclysmic event that takes out this region?

View on HN

The thing about natural cataclysms is that the most deadly ones are the ones you don't expect, because you can prepare for the ones you do expect.

CA has been preparing for a large earthquake since the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge quakes. Building codes here are pretty strict; anything built or retrofitted since about 1980 should do fine. Lots of money has been spent retrofitting older soft-story apartments, and infrastructure has been shored up since Loma Prieta. Cities are starting to discourage and then ban natural gas in new construction to reduce the risk of fire; when they can't, gas lines are being upgraded to make them more robust. Most families keep an earthquake kit of canned food, campstoves, and potable water. Google at least runs annual drills that simulate all of their Bay Area offices being taken offline (and their employees presumed dead) to ensure business continuity; it'd surprise me if other Silicon Valley companies don't.

This is when the two recent M6.8 earthquakes [1][2] killed about 60 people each, and a worst-case scenario [3] predicts about 800 dead. Significantly more people have died from COVID.

The natural disasters you really have to worry about are black swans that you'd never expect, like frost in Houston or heat waves in Seattle. If the Bay Area got a blizzard it'd be a disaster, but we've basically got earthquakes covered.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake

[3] https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/haywired-scenario-movie

> What the hell is America going to do if there is a cataclysmic event that takes out this region?

The east coast isn't much better off either. If a tsunami hits the Pacific, there are enough hills and mountains between the coast and say, Palo Alto or Mountain View, that not that much will happen. Half of SF is probably safe from tsunamis too just because of the high hills. Corporate offices are probably built earthquake-proof already. Houses, not so much, but hey, the corporations will be around.

The east coast, not so much. Boston and NYC are flat, at sea level, and would be gone if an asteroid were to crash into the Atlantic. Nuclear power stations in Newark would become the next Fukushima disaster.

Most ancient cities were not built on the coast, for good reasons. It seems to be a relatively recent fad around the world. Take China for example, because it's an ancient civilization. Shanghai and Shenzhen, are on the coast, but are cities built extremely recently. The historical population capitals of China (Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an, etc.) were never on the coast.

Likewise, Rome, Madrid, Cairo, Paris, London, Kyoto -- none of these cities are on the coast.

The USA, on the other hand, is a relatively new kid on the block in the grand scheme of civilization, has yet to learn, and put all of its eggs on the coast. :-/ That's the bigger problem IMO.

> Nuclear power stations in Newark would become the next Fukushima disaster.

Note, we’re not sure anyone died from radiation from Fukushima. We can be certain more people died from the evacuation though.

Oh yes, and a tsunami of that magnitude would just plow right through the streets of NYC or Boston.

> With rising sea levels and the fault lines in the region I'm aghast that so many of America's eggs are in one precarious basket

Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people... Building codes in California are strict for just this reason. Most people will get through with minor injuries, and some inconveniences from utility and transit outages. The Bay Area will likely fare better than Los Angeles, which is likely to lose access to its water supplies..

As for flooding, check the history of Sacramento. Over a few years they systematically raised the street level and most of the buildings in the city. Now it's one of the highest areas and least affected by floods in the region. Why this tact wasn't taken in New Orleans after Katrina is beyond me.

>all that is overridden by the notion that this must take place in Silicon Valley.

No you are missing the point. I never said it has to be in Silicon Valley. It's already happening in many places in the world. Google has offices in Silicon Valley and many other parts of the world, and the value the bring is the same: bring people who work together physically together.

I never said that it has to be in Silicon Valley either. I'm pointing out that it is in Silicon Valley and that this is a particular fault with these big companies that seem to be resisting a distributed work force.

Why are these large companies choosing to concentrate their work force in a geologically precarious location when their employees are telling them that they would rather work in a distributed fashion?

It all just seem so short-sighted to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com