Warm liquid from Oregon seafloor comes from Cascadia fault

You must really work out.

Those warn of an actively occurring earthquake. They don't predict an upcoming one.

Yeah it is a cool system, but it only works well depending on your location in regards to the sensors that detect the earthquake. That determines whether you will have seconds or up to a minute of time to react. If you are closer to the epicenter than the sensors, then you will probably feel the tremors before the warning gets to you.

"Economic upsides" are directly related to the values assigned. If no value is assigned to death and trauma, it's quite possible that a net positive is recorded by knocking down a bunch of old building and highways and rebuilding them.

However, if we decide to jump-start economic development by knocking down infrastructure and rebuilding it, I'd suggest we make sure buildings and freeways are empty of human beings first.

Segment Anything, Sam!

There is a "Meet the Parents" joke in there somewhere.

Correct, if we [ blockchain ] then we will be able to solve [ thing ]

Full text from Watts’ site:

https://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm

I... would not describe that trilogy as a fun read, though I think you were being sardonic in as much as the premises throughout are apocalyptic and nihilistic.

Whenever the CSD and the JdF fault are mentioned, I scan to see if this trilogy is mentioned, and if so, if a content warning is attached.

I have many ties thought, I would like to recommend this to people as disaster-porn,

but (not unlike Accelerando), I can't, generally,

because it is also unremittingly disturbing BDSM torture-porn.

I have wondered recently whether with the help of AI tools like Hyperwrite, one could excise that content and leave the other aspects coherent.

TLDLR if Watts isn't a hardcore devotee of BDSM, crossing over into fetishization of torture especially of women, you wouldn't know it from these novels.

A shame as the stuff about the rift itself is quite good.

There’s an entire petrified forest that apparently became marsh overnight.

I really enjoyed his lectures during Covid lockdown.

Are the claims made by the professor still accurate given that the video is seven years old and we have been hearing for years that our infrastructure hasn’t been doing so well? I guess it might not be “toast”, but I can’t imagine having to wait weeks to get emergency aid and resources.

What kills me is the often repeated claim that some massive tsunami is going to wipe out everything up to I-5 (about 60-80 miles inland in Oregon).

Most of the analysis I've seen seems to completely ignore the existence of the Oregon coastal mountain range, a 4000 ft high mountain range a few miles inland along the entire Oregon coast (basically Astoria to Florence).

Even in the worst case scenario, maybe some coastal towns are going to have a bad day, though they are all very well outfitted with tsunami alarms and maps that basically say to go a mile or so inland, so I doubt there would even be any significant loss of life.

> Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year. It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it cannot do so indefinitely. There is a backstop—the craton, that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent—and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one.

> Flick your right fingers outward, forcefully, so that your hand flattens back down again. When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries. Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. (Watch what your fingertips do when you flatten your hand.) The water will surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the earthquake begins. By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs fema’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”

The edge of B is basically a crumple zone.

I find they often are bad. I don't know if this was written for radio but why not include a simple diagram since we're on the internet? Or is The New Yorker too cultured for that so they can only include snide comics?

In any case I didn't think this one was the worst I have come across. Can you really put your hands side by side with palms facing downward and middle finger tips touching? And if yes, may I see it?

Nothing is bending. Imagine your right hand as South America continent, and left as North America. The middle fingers' tips are touching where both of these two continents are joined by a narrow mass of land.

I'm talking about architecture, building practices and city planning, not your choice of hobbies.

As long as it's not in my back yard.

What about doing the opposite of this? Like, if you can tell pressure is building up in a volcano just blow a few holes in it or around it. Preferably with nukes because I don't believe in half-assing this sort of thing.

> Volcanoes like Mount St Helens explode with huge amounts of pressure, making the added concrete a danger to health as it is easily scattered around. "The dust from concrete," YouTube channel What If notes, "would lead to fatal lung diseases and cancer."

Whereas volcanic ash and gas (released in large amounts) is safe to breathe? \s

That's about 6.3 olympic swimming pools a year. Olympic swimming pools are the only true way to measure volume.

>I'm curious what makes you uncomfortable about it?

The same thing that makes them uncomfortable looking under the bed at night.

The whole premise of the article and paper is that the water its self is from the plate boundary. "The seep fluid chemistry is unique for Cascadia and includes extreme enrichment of boron and lithium and depletion of chloride, potassium, and magnesium. We conclude that the fluids are sourced from pore water compaction and mineral dehydration reactions with minimum source temperatures of 150° to 250°C, placing the source at or near the plate boundary offshore Central Oregon."

The article says that (as far as they can tell) the liquid pressure helps reduce the plate friction, so leaking actually contributes to stress build up:

> Fluid released from the fault zone is like leaking lubricant, Solomon said. That’s bad news for earthquake hazards: Less lubricant means stress can build to create a damaging quake.

The fault lies where the two plates collide. This can't be redirected. At absolute best, over the course of millions of years, you could break larger plates up into smaller plates and make a bunch of smaller faults. I don't know that this would ultimately be beneficial, and I have no clue how humans could do it.

> It seems like, ideally, we'd be able to redirect the cascadia fault line elsewhere.

To Canada!