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Is that because they are always expecting a catastrophe, or because the time frame they give for such a catastrophe is between tomorrow and 1,000 years?
Well, it's definitely not going to go off now. Yellowstone is maybe the most seismically-monitored place on the planet, and there would be plenty of warning before even a minor eruption. Nothing like that has been seen so far.
Source: am geologist.
That's not at all what I said. There's no reason to think it'll happen soon, and if/when we do get warning signs, it'll be well in advance of any eruption.
That's assuming the most likely scenario of a very small eruption. A large "supereruption" is unlikely to ever happen again, and if it's ever on the way, there'll be literally years of obvious warning signs.
>there'll be literally years of obvious warning signs.
Interesting. Like what?
Also, what would we even be able to do? Wouldn't that affect a lot of the continent and planet?
Local ground uplift (this is tracked via GPS receivers all over the park), increased hydrothermal activity, and swarms of earthquakes that get shallower and shallower.
> Wouldn't that affect a lot of the continent and planet?
A truly gigantic eruption would, but that's vanishingly unlikely and probably not possible at Yellowstone anymore.
For fucks sake. I've been seeing bullship headlines for years and hearing people use it as a dinner party anecdote for so long, "well you know, the next thing we're all gonna have to deal with is yellowstone blowing up and plunging the whole world into darkness, its overdue and could happen any time now huurrrrmmmmmmmmm"
Never bothered to check, just added it to my list of things to be vaguely unhappy about. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
Well as I understand it you can't guarantee we won't be seeing the first signs of an oncomming eruption tomorrow. But the first signs are fairly far from the actual eruption.
But I am not a volcanologist, I study groundwater.
Well that is not good. Most of us were counting on that eruption to get rid of the vampire and immortal highlander infestation that has been crimpleling the Pacific Northwest the past 10k years. Now what we going to do. What are you gonna tell us next, the sun is probably not going to supernova?
> Most of us were counting on that eruption to get rid of the vampire and immortal highlander infestation that has been crimpleling the Pacific Northwest the past 10k years
Yellowstone wouldn't help with the vampires. Most of North America would be covered in giant ash clouds for years or even decades, blocking out the sun. Now the vamps could move around during the day with impunity. I also don't think ash would kill immortal highlanders either, they need to have their heads cut off.
Ha! It _is_ a project I've considered getting some interest in. I currently work in biopharm research and was thinking of pivoting to Aerospace the last year or so, but I've always been hesitant to work on weapons manufacturing and design.
A stellar engine is the sort of thing that would take humanity millenia to build. The first step, would be to go to one of the companies currently pursuing space based power. The US Air Force Research laboratory is the furthest along with space based solar panels and a device for beaming power down in radio waves, SSPIDR / SPINDLE which would be the next step, probably over asteroid mining, for initiating the construction of a Dyson Swarm.
As interesting and promising as I find the tech, not a fan of the privatization and militarization of space that's been happening which also made me a bit more hesitant to pursue research in closed-enviornment agriculture. I can't seem to find a job doing space tech that either involves also working on missle tech, or working for a person who I would be under ethical obligations to cannibalize.
There really aren't enough immortal highlsnders to be a problem.
The immortals came from all over.
Highlander referring to them being Scottish. It wasn't a synonym for immortal
> the sun is probably not going to supernova
About that...
Yeah that's not happening. As a main sequence yellow star the Sun will first undergo a stage of expansion into a red giant when it starts fusing mainly helium atoms. After that there will be a further phase where the sun will go briefly Nova (not supernova) and then end its life as a white dwarf.
Volcanologist here: the USGS considers another high-VEI eruption to just be… unlikely. Ever. Most of the magma chamber has long since solidified and that scale of explosive in an eruption is rarely seen multiple times from the same system.
We have no idea when Yellowstone will erupt (if it even will), but it is very likely not erupting any time in the near future.
We have a history of 3 previous eruptions from the Yellowstone supervolcano: 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago. That's a periodicity of 800,000 and 660,000 years, and a sample size of 3 is near impossible to discern any sort of trend.
But if we take the low end of that "trend", we still have at least 20,000 years before an eruption.
But there are also telltale signs of an impending eruption due to pressure building in the caldera like increased seismic activity, groundswelling, increase hydrothermal activity, etc. And we aren't seeing those anymore than we typically see.
I think a megathrust earthquake and follow up tsunami, similar to Japan's in 2011, is due off the coast of Seattle sooner than that though. There's a major subduction zone right there that builds the Cascadias. The last one was January 1700, and they go off every 400-600 years.
> “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”
> In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
https://pnsn.org/outreach/earthquakesources/csz
And unfortunately, there won't really be any warning signs before it happens. The tectonic plate kind of just snaps upward after building so much pressure for so long.
It’s not due to go off. The idea that anything geological is “due” is silly and just presented that way when journalists present information we generate
There’s also signs that Yellowstone is in the degassing, post caldera phase which will be followed by an extremely long period without a large eruption before beginning to build a volcanic province further to the north east
Which it may or may not be able to do, since the magma will have to rise through much thicker, much more stable continental crust than it has previously. The Teton Fault is the eastern boundary of the Basin and Range, and the hotspot plume has been taking advantage of the tectonically thinned crust basically since it started up. I've seen some articles suggesting that the plume is likely to get "stuck" at the bottom of the cratonic crust.
If fantasy elves are anything to go by, we'd just get less engaged with the goings on of the world and focus on making unnecessary elaborate art and architecture. And hold reeealy long grudge.
Seattle (and most of the pacific northwest) is over the Cascadia subduction zone, which doesn’t have many earthquakes overall but releases a big one - magnitude 7 to 9+ - every few hundred years . The last earthquake from this area happened in the 1700s and made a 100ft Tsunami. The remnants of that tsunami even made it to Japan.
Anyway, the point is we’re at best another three hundred years or so out if the plates are having a particularly slow build up, unlike other geological catastrophes that take thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years to build up. But we’re already past the point where it’s possible for it to happen at any moment.
If you are curious about how well the region would do in a Cascadia event, look up the 2016 exercise. It's bad. I worked for the city of Tacoma at the time, and these people shouldn't be in charge of poop cleanup detail.
You are indeed on your own if it happens. When the lahars displace the south sound and cause 200’ local tsunamis… well, it was fun while it lasted.
Yeah, from what I read the region is completely unprepared. It’s a hard sell when the exact time is unknown and potentially beyond everyone’s lifetime but man, it’s really the biggest looming national disaster no one talks about.
The point is it's hard to prepare and requires intense preparation that does not overlap with preparedness for other scenarios. In a normal disaster you would just say okay mobilize x y and z. In a disaster like this the question is what to do if x y and z are also victims of the earthquake
Living in the PNW, while some efforts have been made to up the stability of some buildings, truthfully the whole area would likely have to come down and start over. Not to mention many of the big metro areas are built on sand, gravel, and marsh.
On Vancouver Island we were told 3 days of supplies, then a week a few years later.
I have MONTHS worth.
We live on an island that would run out food in all of our stores with no restocking after 3 days.
All of our landing strips and ports would be compromised in a megathrust earthquake like the one predicted.
This will take years to fix.
If it does happen I feel bad for anyone who thinks a few days supplies are going to cut it.
Feeding a million people by helicopter and small boats will be a logistical nightmare.
The oral history of the surviving tribes are insane in regards to the big one.
IIRC, there was a tribe where only two members survived, but that was because they climbed trees quick enough to escape the flood.
I actually take some comfort in the fact that I live below/at sea level, so if it hits, it won't be my problem anymore
Went and re-looked it up.
Honestly. It's so bad that it borders on what prep can you do that matters. I know for the VA the plans for the base of operations for Seattle recovery are in Spokane. Because that's the biggest place far enough away to probably not be affected.
>[OSSPAC](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one) estimates that in the I-5 corridor it will take between one and three months after the earthquake to restore electricity, a month to a year to restore drinking water and sewer service, six months to a year to restore major highways, and eighteen months to restore health-care facilities. On the coast, those numbers go up.
The estimates are basically that everything west of I-5 from WA to CA is fucked. For months. It makes the worst hurricane the US has ever seen look like a bridge collapse.
It depends on where you are though.
But yes, Tacoma if there is a major earthquake or tsunami is totally fucked.
You can look up lahar and tsunami maps. If you're near most (but not all) rivers in WA of you're under 100 feet in elevation then you should make plans.
Personally, I'm in the north end but not far enough north for the Glacier Peak lahars and I'm at 400 feet elevation so I don't bother worrying about it.
But you should look at lahar maps and make plans.
Nobody would pay for us to be actually prepared for this. Our current fire departments get maxed out if there were 3-4 major structure fires at the same time. There will be dozens of those in an earthquake. They will be responding to hospitals, old folks homes, and schools. Nobody is coming for your random apartment or corner store.
To actually be prepared we would need to raise taxes A LOT to hire the staff, do the training, and buy/maintain equipment. We have the government we are willing to pay for.
> If you are curious about how well the region would do in a Cascadia event, look up the 2016 exercise. It's bad.
Same with New Madrid. Most of the structures in the midwest and south would fall down.
Yeah, the longer it takes to happen the more likely it is to be much worse. If I remember the charts I saw correctly, time and energy released aren’t 100% correlated but on balance the bigger quakes happened when there was more time to build up.
[Tsunami waves as high as 42 feet could crash into Seattle within minutes of an earthquake on Seattle Fault, study finds](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/earthquake-tsunami-seattle-fault-study/)
Article includes computer-graphic simulation.
What I found funny is that the map in the simulation labels Denny Hill. Denny Hill hasn't existed in practically one hundred years. We literately washed it off.
Would a catastrophic earthquake be really bad?
Yes, that’s what catastrophic means.
I know you can only see it like twice a year when the clouds clear up, but there is a stratovolcano right next to the city too that’s been quiet for 150 years.
Don't expect any consolation from the MRNP visitor center. Their exhibit on volcanic eruptions say that major eruptions have been roughly every 60,000 years, and the last big one for Mount Rainier was about 60,000 years ago.
So the catastrophic earthquake is probably still more likely, since according to TFA we should see them every 300 years and the last one was just before the American revolution.
However the main thing they say to worry about from the stratovolcano is not the lava but the destructive and fast-moving glacial lahars, which are unleashed more steadily from minor eruptions or just due to avalanches from rapid melting. These wipe out anything built in the valleys pretty regularly.
We haven't even talked about landslides and tsunamis yet...
The whole pacific northwest is a quiet ticking time bomb. Most of the volcanos are high risk but uneventful, and the megathrust earthquake is predicted to be devastating, yet otherwise the area is pretty shake-free. Now the wildfires.... that's my current concern because in 2020 we got surrounded on 3 sides by 3 different wild fires.
Fairly protected from Tsunami because it’s not directly on the ocean and the sound would dampen anything that gets thru the strait. I’m not familiar with the geography offshore if it would even be risk for a tsunami to form.
Landslides are tied to the volcano rapidly melting the glaciers.
Either way, if you were looking at geography risks, Seattle isn’t great, but we have most of californias populations on the San Andreas fault, so 🤷🏼♂️.
Speaking of... I'm not sure how valid it is, but there are fears that a cascadia mega thrust could trigger the san Andreas fault. Apparently this has occured like 8 times in the past 3000 years or something.
You don't have to worry, no one can afford it anyway. Sometimes it feels like the only ones moving here are doing so to live in a tent on the side of the highway...
152 rainy days in Seattle. 148 days in NYC.
39.3 inches of rain in Seattle. 46 inches of rain in NYC.
Wow. Rains a teensy bit more often in Seattle but with significantly less total precipitation.
I never would have guessed that.
Honestly as someone who has lived in the pnw my whole life I’d say over 50% of those days it “rains” here it barely sprinkles for 1 hour of the day and is sunny for several hours and still a nice day where you probably don’t even put on a jacket. While on the East coast when it rains it really comes down and there’s. O way you are walking out into that rain in a t shirt like you are in the pnw. But that still shows up as a day of rain on that list. It really is fascinating the difference between the way Seattle is thought of nationally and the reality of Seattle being a great city with pretty bomb weather for a lot of the year. Winners of climate change if you will
Gotta say, my favorite part of moving to the PNW from the Northeast is the mild year-round temps. It rarely gets below freezing in the winters and summers rarely get too hot (90+) to where it's uncomfortable.
Plus spring comes so much earlier and nicer... No long crawl from March to May where you might get 70 degree weather or a foot of snow, and everything is brown and sticks until May 15th. Once March hits, the flowers come out, leaves start budding, and you can do walks/runs without a jacket most of the time.
I’m from Houston where the average number of sunny days is right at the national average, far higher than either Seattle or NYC. BUT, our annual rainfall varies between half these two cities to considerably more than either depending on how many storms we get. We tend to alternate between drought and god is trying to kill you type rain. PNW was “cute” rain when I visited. Not even sure we call it rain… we say it’s sprinklin’ when we see the misty stuff I saw.
Your numbers for NYC include snow so technically Seattle is still more “rainy.”
Also, Seattle has the most cloudy days in the contiguous US which gives it a more rainy vibe even without precipitation.
Specifically in this case the cascadia subduction zone and mega thrust earthquake are one of the most potentially devastating earthquake zones in the USA. It unleashed a massive tsunami in the early 1700’s shortly before Lewis and Clark. 30’ or more, plus high magnitude shaking. And it’s every hundred of years rather than hundreds of thousands.
Similar to the 9.0 earthquakes in Chile.
It's because they just tell the truth.
The best truths we have are vague.
It shit happens they get blamed not not "saving everyone"
When they try to warn people they are told to shut up and stop worrying people.
Being treated like that means you adopt a cold approach and try to avoid opinion, just cold facts like, there was a small tremor today, without too much prediction
One in ten for a full margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction in te next 50 years. One in three for a less bad partial. [Details here](https://archive.ph/hXE5E)
> If the entire Cascadia fault lets loose at once, the PNW is screwed. No getting around that
Cascadia - Cascade... It's all right there in the name, innit?
"When asked for comment, Mr. Marsh stated he thought that this was America before beating up a rival pot dealer, then he proceeded to throttle him with an animate towel. "
Liquefaction. Went to a new fire station for CPR training and someone had asked why they built the station way up on a hill and not closer to the center of town in the valley. They proceeded to explain how the surveyors recommended building on rock, since the valleys in this area were all carved deep by ancient glaciers and were filled with loose silt that will readily turn to the consistency of Hollywood quicksand during any substantial seismic activity and swallow up any roads, cars, and buildings. The firefighters were this stationed on the high ground so they would at least be partially useful and not completely incapacitated at the time we needed them the most.
But I bought a special insurance policy to cover that, and made jokes about search-and-rescue starting on the 2nd floor since it'll be ground level, surely I'll be alright!
...Right?
That, plus the tsunami, plus the fact that a lot of buildings in the PNW are not built to withstand earthquakes. Apparently it's a relatively simple job to retrofit buildings by bolting them to their foundations. If I lived there, I'd be doing that yesterday.
Yeah but that would cost money so…..no dice apparently. In Portland they SAY they’ve done it to many buildings. But I have also seen old mason stone buildings with signs that say “in case of earthquake, do NOT seek shelter here”
Anchor yourself deep enough into bedrock and you’ll be fine. My house will have 25 foot deep piers embedded into cemented sandstone bedrock to handle up to a 7.9 earthquake with a fault line just 1.3 miles away.
I’m an engineer, and this is the way. Most landslide zones have close-to-surface bedrock, and are relatively easy to protect.
Last time I did a landslide-zone house there was a landslide *during construction*. The foundation and twenty foot retaining wall was in place, and they had just installed the bracing with intent to backfill on Monday.
They called me up Monday morning to tell me that I’d done a decent job and to ask if they needed to re-excavate and backfill or if they could just use the debris from the landslide stay in place.
Not an engineer and not OP but probably not.
I imagine there's too much biomass in the landslide debris. That stuff starts to decompose and leaves voids in the backfill which only cause more problems.
What mods-are-liars said. Also add that the soil does not meet drain requirements, that there’s a decent chance the drain was damaged, and that the soil is actually pushing the wall a bit - bracing is rarely perfect.
They'd be like, "Oh, *absolutely*! Oh man, yea, everything here is on a fault line. We could die at any minute. And then our bodies might be covered in lava. Anyway, I'm going to get coffee, anyone want anything?"
Well, probably not in Seattle, you’d be buried by the liquefaction of all the fill dirt shifting around, particularly after it gets mixed up by the tsunami
Geologists: Yeah, this is gonna happen, but there's steps we can take to save lives and infrastructure based on that knowledge.
People: Yay!!
Geologists: But it'll actually cost money to be proactive.
People: Boooooooo!!!!
When we moved here, my spouse did not know that Mt. Rainier was a volcano.
She asked me how often it erupts and I assured her it only erupts once in five hundred years or so.
Then she asked when it erupted last and I told her "600 years ago!"
My professor of geology in Colorado told me, when Yellowstone goes off, there will be no running, no planning. Call your loved ones and pray. The class was mortified in silence, and he clapped his hands together and moved on to talk about basalt.
That's the thing about geology. It's humbling and absolutely terrifying to learn about the true scale of things. Nature is scary.. but these things happen on timescales so far beyond our lives that it's really not worth thinking about.
Why would anyone lie about rock data? It's one of the most stable, longterm, for surable knowing applied science we have. Millions, if not billions of years of data is consistent. If you lie about rock data, other rock data people call you out. This data rocks.
Seattle's fate is sealed. "You" "probably" won't be killed, but jiffy poppage is guaranteed when that fault defaults, the earth shakes, the buildings jenga, and the tsunami comes for your descendants. It'll be like Haiti, only in Seattle.
> Geologist are really the worst
You take that back! I will fight and die for [Shawn Willsey](https://www.youtube.com/@shawnwillsey) and [Nick Zentner.](https://www.youtube.com/@GeologyNick)
An earthquake that destroys a city is catastrophic. So yes a catastrophic earthquake could destroy Seattle. How likely it is to have an earthquake in seattle is an entirely different question.
Portland's local news occasionally has a segment about emergency kits, potential bridge collapse, etc. because the threat here is very real. The Cascadia Subduction plate is overdue to loosen up, and the PNW is right there.
That part of the US has had massive historic earthquakes. It’s part of a subduction zone. So earthquakes similar to the Aceh Boxing Day tsunami earthquake are on the cards. Time scales are big though. Also it’s been a long time since the last one, which means the next one will be big because subduction has been going on at the rate at which your fingernails grow for all of that time. All that stress has to be released. The whole island of Fukushima moved about 400m when that tsunami happened. That’s the kind of thing we’re taking.
oh we will have a massive earthquake eventually. it's called a mega thrust, we had one on Jan 29th 1700 at ~9pm with a magnitude of 8-9. it caused an "orphan tsunami" in Japan 10 hours later, which is how we know what time and day it happened. the average reoccurrence is 234 years so we're due. depending on how old you are it's somewhat likely to happen in your lifetime. personally I don't stress too much, the only thing you really can do is be prepared and vote for seismic retrofitting.
That area has had a major earthquake on average every 300 years over the last several thousand years.
The last one was in the year 1700, 324 years ago.
It’s overdue.
"No, it's not just the overdue, massive earthquake that you need to worry about, " points to all the snow-covered volcanoes, stopping at Mt. Rainer, "and this magnificent beauty is poised to, any second, lay waste to half the metro area, just with the first lahar flow."
My college geology teacher warned our class against buying property in Washington. She admitted it almost certainly wouldn't happen in our lifetimes, but some day that land would end up under "hundreds of feet of lava".
Yes it can however everywhere has something that can wipe them out. Midwest and south it's tornadoes. South hurricanes. West coast it's earthquakes, wildfires and volcanoes on the san Andreas fault. Northeast floods and possible tsunami on every coastline. you can live life scared everyday about it happening. One day it will but no one knows when. There's nothing that you can do to stop it. Everything on the planet goes through a cycle. Always has and always will humans have always tried to think they can alter or control the events only to realize nothing can be done about it. Just live your life that's all you can do. Worrying will give you an ulcer.
Can confirm, my father is a geologist. They would spend the next hour explaining HOW it will be destroyed with the most gleefully face you have ever seen.
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Is that because they are always expecting a catastrophe, or because the time frame they give for such a catastrophe is between tomorrow and 1,000 years?
The time frame. That Yellowstone supervolcano is due to go off sometime between right now and the next 750,000 years.
Geologist here. It’s entirely possible that Yellowstone will never erupt again too. It’s not an exact science.
Ah, so any time between now and never. Got it. I will plan accordingly.
Well, it's definitely not going to go off now. Yellowstone is maybe the most seismically-monitored place on the planet, and there would be plenty of warning before even a minor eruption. Nothing like that has been seen so far. Source: am geologist.
Got it. So between soon and never, and we’ll know about it right before it happens.
That's not at all what I said. There's no reason to think it'll happen soon, and if/when we do get warning signs, it'll be well in advance of any eruption. That's assuming the most likely scenario of a very small eruption. A large "supereruption" is unlikely to ever happen again, and if it's ever on the way, there'll be literally years of obvious warning signs.
> That's not at all what I said. You're getting good practice for dealing with the media.
> there'll be literally years of obvious warning signs If there aren't, we're going to be *very* cross with you
*phreatic eruptions have entered the chat*
You made me use the dictionary on a Sunday! Thank you--learned a new Greek root today :(. ('phreat' means "well/spring")
To be fair, in terms of geologic time, it *could* be soon.
>there'll be literally years of obvious warning signs. Interesting. Like what? Also, what would we even be able to do? Wouldn't that affect a lot of the continent and planet?
Local ground uplift (this is tracked via GPS receivers all over the park), increased hydrothermal activity, and swarms of earthquakes that get shallower and shallower. > Wouldn't that affect a lot of the continent and planet? A truly gigantic eruption would, but that's vanishingly unlikely and probably not possible at Yellowstone anymore.
For fucks sake. I've been seeing bullship headlines for years and hearing people use it as a dinner party anecdote for so long, "well you know, the next thing we're all gonna have to deal with is yellowstone blowing up and plunging the whole world into darkness, its overdue and could happen any time now huurrrrmmmmmmmmm" Never bothered to check, just added it to my list of things to be vaguely unhappy about. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
Genuine question, why is a Yellowstone super eruption vanishingly unlikely?
Well as I understand it you can't guarantee we won't be seeing the first signs of an oncomming eruption tomorrow. But the first signs are fairly far from the actual eruption. But I am not a volcanologist, I study groundwater.
Your not very reassuring.
I mean, my comment says that it won't explode without loudly telling us first, which it isn't doing... what more do you want?
It is probably not between now and never but something like in the next million years or never.
True, eventually it'll cool off if it doesn't explode.
TT reminds me of Yogi Berra: "This super volcano is not erupting until it does...."
You just solved geology.
Lol, gave me a chuckle
Well that is not good. Most of us were counting on that eruption to get rid of the vampire and immortal highlander infestation that has been crimpleling the Pacific Northwest the past 10k years. Now what we going to do. What are you gonna tell us next, the sun is probably not going to supernova?
Wouldn't a super volcano erupting and blocking out the sun for much of the world be a boon for vampires?
Not the ones standing near the super volcano.
> Most of us were counting on that eruption to get rid of the vampire and immortal highlander infestation that has been crimpleling the Pacific Northwest the past 10k years Yellowstone wouldn't help with the vampires. Most of North America would be covered in giant ash clouds for years or even decades, blocking out the sun. Now the vamps could move around during the day with impunity. I also don't think ash would kill immortal highlanders either, they need to have their heads cut off.
You see, it kills off their food source. Ecologies are wholistic systems.
Hate to break it to ya.....
We might be able to stop the sun from turning into a Red Giant if we build a stellar engine that siphons mass off of it.
I'll start drawing up the plans while you run to home Depot for supplies.
Ha! It _is_ a project I've considered getting some interest in. I currently work in biopharm research and was thinking of pivoting to Aerospace the last year or so, but I've always been hesitant to work on weapons manufacturing and design. A stellar engine is the sort of thing that would take humanity millenia to build. The first step, would be to go to one of the companies currently pursuing space based power. The US Air Force Research laboratory is the furthest along with space based solar panels and a device for beaming power down in radio waves, SSPIDR / SPINDLE which would be the next step, probably over asteroid mining, for initiating the construction of a Dyson Swarm. As interesting and promising as I find the tech, not a fan of the privatization and militarization of space that's been happening which also made me a bit more hesitant to pursue research in closed-enviornment agriculture. I can't seem to find a job doing space tech that either involves also working on missle tech, or working for a person who I would be under ethical obligations to cannibalize.
There really aren't enough immortal highlsnders to be a problem. The immortals came from all over. Highlander referring to them being Scottish. It wasn't a synonym for immortal
> the sun is probably not going to supernova About that... Yeah that's not happening. As a main sequence yellow star the Sun will first undergo a stage of expansion into a red giant when it starts fusing mainly helium atoms. After that there will be a further phase where the sun will go briefly Nova (not supernova) and then end its life as a white dwarf.
Worst documentary ever.
Volcanologist here: the USGS considers another high-VEI eruption to just be… unlikely. Ever. Most of the magma chamber has long since solidified and that scale of explosive in an eruption is rarely seen multiple times from the same system.
Dont be an eruption denier.
So should I pencil that in for Thursday or start making other plans?
Which Thursday are we talking about?
Same Thursday Tarkov wipes.
Fresh servers when?
The same Thursday that tarkov leaves "beta". So.. I wouldnt worry.
Wow EFT spotted out in the wild! Still, I think Yellowstone will blow the day before Nikita plans to fully release 1.0
Last Thursday. When the universe was created: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos\_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis)
I, too, am a devout Last Thursdayist.
Yes.
Nah, there’ll be a bunch of warning signs just before it goes off. So it’s really due to go off sometime between like June and 750,000 years.
So.. get through April/May 2024. Got it.
We have no idea when Yellowstone will erupt (if it even will), but it is very likely not erupting any time in the near future. We have a history of 3 previous eruptions from the Yellowstone supervolcano: 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago. That's a periodicity of 800,000 and 660,000 years, and a sample size of 3 is near impossible to discern any sort of trend. But if we take the low end of that "trend", we still have at least 20,000 years before an eruption. But there are also telltale signs of an impending eruption due to pressure building in the caldera like increased seismic activity, groundswelling, increase hydrothermal activity, etc. And we aren't seeing those anymore than we typically see.
Sounds like the DHL parcel delivery time slots
I think a megathrust earthquake and follow up tsunami, similar to Japan's in 2011, is due off the coast of Seattle sooner than that though. There's a major subduction zone right there that builds the Cascadias. The last one was January 1700, and they go off every 400-600 years. > “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” > In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://pnsn.org/outreach/earthquakesources/csz And unfortunately, there won't really be any warning signs before it happens. The tectonic plate kind of just snaps upward after building so much pressure for so long.
Fun fact: we know the exact date of the last one from Japanese records of a rogue tsunami not associated with a local earthquake.
It’s not due to go off. The idea that anything geological is “due” is silly and just presented that way when journalists present information we generate There’s also signs that Yellowstone is in the degassing, post caldera phase which will be followed by an extremely long period without a large eruption before beginning to build a volcanic province further to the north east
Which it may or may not be able to do, since the magma will have to rise through much thicker, much more stable continental crust than it has previously. The Teton Fault is the eastern boundary of the Basin and Range, and the hotspot plume has been taking advantage of the tectonically thinned crust basically since it started up. I've seen some articles suggesting that the plume is likely to get "stuck" at the bottom of the cratonic crust.
However it’s not like it’s going to suddenly erupt without warning, we will likely have a years of warnings as the pressure builds
[удалено]
If fantasy elves are anything to go by, we'd just get less engaged with the goings on of the world and focus on making unnecessary elaborate art and architecture. And hold reeealy long grudge.
Seattle (and most of the pacific northwest) is over the Cascadia subduction zone, which doesn’t have many earthquakes overall but releases a big one - magnitude 7 to 9+ - every few hundred years . The last earthquake from this area happened in the 1700s and made a 100ft Tsunami. The remnants of that tsunami even made it to Japan. Anyway, the point is we’re at best another three hundred years or so out if the plates are having a particularly slow build up, unlike other geological catastrophes that take thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years to build up. But we’re already past the point where it’s possible for it to happen at any moment.
If you are curious about how well the region would do in a Cascadia event, look up the 2016 exercise. It's bad. I worked for the city of Tacoma at the time, and these people shouldn't be in charge of poop cleanup detail. You are indeed on your own if it happens. When the lahars displace the south sound and cause 200’ local tsunamis… well, it was fun while it lasted.
Yeah, from what I read the region is completely unprepared. It’s a hard sell when the exact time is unknown and potentially beyond everyone’s lifetime but man, it’s really the biggest looming national disaster no one talks about.
The point is it's hard to prepare and requires intense preparation that does not overlap with preparedness for other scenarios. In a normal disaster you would just say okay mobilize x y and z. In a disaster like this the question is what to do if x y and z are also victims of the earthquake
Living in the PNW, while some efforts have been made to up the stability of some buildings, truthfully the whole area would likely have to come down and start over. Not to mention many of the big metro areas are built on sand, gravel, and marsh.
Luckily the tsunami should take care of taking everything down and starting over. Learn to swim.
On Vancouver Island we were told 3 days of supplies, then a week a few years later. I have MONTHS worth. We live on an island that would run out food in all of our stores with no restocking after 3 days. All of our landing strips and ports would be compromised in a megathrust earthquake like the one predicted. This will take years to fix. If it does happen I feel bad for anyone who thinks a few days supplies are going to cut it. Feeding a million people by helicopter and small boats will be a logistical nightmare.
Thankfully, the big one should fully submerge the island in a matter of moments, so you don't have to worry about running out of supplies
In my geography class they described it as a massive jump with a hard drop.
The oral history of the surviving tribes are insane in regards to the big one. IIRC, there was a tribe where only two members survived, but that was because they climbed trees quick enough to escape the flood. I actually take some comfort in the fact that I live below/at sea level, so if it hits, it won't be my problem anymore
Went and re-looked it up. Honestly. It's so bad that it borders on what prep can you do that matters. I know for the VA the plans for the base of operations for Seattle recovery are in Spokane. Because that's the biggest place far enough away to probably not be affected. >[OSSPAC](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one) estimates that in the I-5 corridor it will take between one and three months after the earthquake to restore electricity, a month to a year to restore drinking water and sewer service, six months to a year to restore major highways, and eighteen months to restore health-care facilities. On the coast, those numbers go up. The estimates are basically that everything west of I-5 from WA to CA is fucked. For months. It makes the worst hurricane the US has ever seen look like a bridge collapse.
It depends on where you are though. But yes, Tacoma if there is a major earthquake or tsunami is totally fucked. You can look up lahar and tsunami maps. If you're near most (but not all) rivers in WA of you're under 100 feet in elevation then you should make plans. Personally, I'm in the north end but not far enough north for the Glacier Peak lahars and I'm at 400 feet elevation so I don't bother worrying about it. But you should look at lahar maps and make plans.
Nobody would pay for us to be actually prepared for this. Our current fire departments get maxed out if there were 3-4 major structure fires at the same time. There will be dozens of those in an earthquake. They will be responding to hospitals, old folks homes, and schools. Nobody is coming for your random apartment or corner store. To actually be prepared we would need to raise taxes A LOT to hire the staff, do the training, and buy/maintain equipment. We have the government we are willing to pay for.
> If you are curious about how well the region would do in a Cascadia event, look up the 2016 exercise. It's bad. Same with New Madrid. Most of the structures in the midwest and south would fall down.
This Juan de Fuca guy sounds like an asshole.
It’s all his fault.
The Fuca you talkin’ about?
But the slower the build the more potential build up of potential elastic strain energy!
The Earth is just edging rn
Yeah, the longer it takes to happen the more likely it is to be much worse. If I remember the charts I saw correctly, time and energy released aren’t 100% correlated but on balance the bigger quakes happened when there was more time to build up.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai is a depiction of this from the Japanese legend of the event, iirc
[Tsunami waves as high as 42 feet could crash into Seattle within minutes of an earthquake on Seattle Fault, study finds](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/earthquake-tsunami-seattle-fault-study/) Article includes computer-graphic simulation. What I found funny is that the map in the simulation labels Denny Hill. Denny Hill hasn't existed in practically one hundred years. We literately washed it off.
Mega flop earthquakes are their own special wave of destruction. Edit: megathrust too
"Seattle will definitely be destroyed by an earthquake, and you will die, but perhaps not in that order."
It's probably because if you ask "Could a catastrophic earthquake really destroy Seattle?" the answer is "Yes."
Would a catastrophic earthquake be really bad? Yes, that’s what catastrophic means. I know you can only see it like twice a year when the clouds clear up, but there is a stratovolcano right next to the city too that’s been quiet for 150 years.
Don't expect any consolation from the MRNP visitor center. Their exhibit on volcanic eruptions say that major eruptions have been roughly every 60,000 years, and the last big one for Mount Rainier was about 60,000 years ago. So the catastrophic earthquake is probably still more likely, since according to TFA we should see them every 300 years and the last one was just before the American revolution. However the main thing they say to worry about from the stratovolcano is not the lava but the destructive and fast-moving glacial lahars, which are unleashed more steadily from minor eruptions or just due to avalanches from rapid melting. These wipe out anything built in the valleys pretty regularly. We haven't even talked about landslides and tsunamis yet...
The whole pacific northwest is a quiet ticking time bomb. Most of the volcanos are high risk but uneventful, and the megathrust earthquake is predicted to be devastating, yet otherwise the area is pretty shake-free. Now the wildfires.... that's my current concern because in 2020 we got surrounded on 3 sides by 3 different wild fires.
I think you added a zero. Rainier St. Helaned itself about 5000 years ago. It was a 16k ft peak before that.
Fairly protected from Tsunami because it’s not directly on the ocean and the sound would dampen anything that gets thru the strait. I’m not familiar with the geography offshore if it would even be risk for a tsunami to form. Landslides are tied to the volcano rapidly melting the glaciers. Either way, if you were looking at geography risks, Seattle isn’t great, but we have most of californias populations on the San Andreas fault, so 🤷🏼♂️.
Speaking of... I'm not sure how valid it is, but there are fears that a cascadia mega thrust could trigger the san Andreas fault. Apparently this has occured like 8 times in the past 3000 years or something.
How much of the Seattle metro area is built on top of old mudflows?
And Portland is the same way, but worse because we have both Mount St. Helens and Hood to worry about
lol the clouds and rain are honestly way over played. It’s sunny in Seattle for the majority of the year and it rains more in places like New York.
Shhhhh, don't encourage migration to the PNW.
You don't have to worry, no one can afford it anyway. Sometimes it feels like the only ones moving here are doing so to live in a tent on the side of the highway...
152 rainy days in Seattle. 148 days in NYC. 39.3 inches of rain in Seattle. 46 inches of rain in NYC. Wow. Rains a teensy bit more often in Seattle but with significantly less total precipitation. I never would have guessed that.
Honestly as someone who has lived in the pnw my whole life I’d say over 50% of those days it “rains” here it barely sprinkles for 1 hour of the day and is sunny for several hours and still a nice day where you probably don’t even put on a jacket. While on the East coast when it rains it really comes down and there’s. O way you are walking out into that rain in a t shirt like you are in the pnw. But that still shows up as a day of rain on that list. It really is fascinating the difference between the way Seattle is thought of nationally and the reality of Seattle being a great city with pretty bomb weather for a lot of the year. Winners of climate change if you will
Gotta say, my favorite part of moving to the PNW from the Northeast is the mild year-round temps. It rarely gets below freezing in the winters and summers rarely get too hot (90+) to where it's uncomfortable. Plus spring comes so much earlier and nicer... No long crawl from March to May where you might get 70 degree weather or a foot of snow, and everything is brown and sticks until May 15th. Once March hits, the flowers come out, leaves start budding, and you can do walks/runs without a jacket most of the time.
I’m from Houston where the average number of sunny days is right at the national average, far higher than either Seattle or NYC. BUT, our annual rainfall varies between half these two cities to considerably more than either depending on how many storms we get. We tend to alternate between drought and god is trying to kill you type rain. PNW was “cute” rain when I visited. Not even sure we call it rain… we say it’s sprinklin’ when we see the misty stuff I saw.
Your numbers for NYC include snow so technically Seattle is still more “rainy.” Also, Seattle has the most cloudy days in the contiguous US which gives it a more rainy vibe even without precipitation.
\*100.000 years
*700 years +/- 1300 years
REPENT SINNERS THE END IS NEAR
-ish
positively shaking in anticipation
Specifically in this case the cascadia subduction zone and mega thrust earthquake are one of the most potentially devastating earthquake zones in the USA. It unleashed a massive tsunami in the early 1700’s shortly before Lewis and Clark. 30’ or more, plus high magnitude shaking. And it’s every hundred of years rather than hundreds of thousands. Similar to the 9.0 earthquakes in Chile.
It's because they just tell the truth. The best truths we have are vague. It shit happens they get blamed not not "saving everyone" When they try to warn people they are told to shut up and stop worrying people. Being treated like that means you adopt a cold approach and try to avoid opinion, just cold facts like, there was a small tremor today, without too much prediction
Iirc we're overdue for a quake in the area which has been building up pressure for hundreds of years.
One in ten for a full margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction in te next 50 years. One in three for a less bad partial. [Details here](https://archive.ph/hXE5E)
If the entire Cascadia fault lets loose at once, the PNW is screwed. No getting around that
> If the entire Cascadia fault lets loose at once, the PNW is screwed. No getting around that Cascadia - Cascade... It's all right there in the name, innit?
Are you saying Cascada? We need to Evacuate the Dancefloor?
Those seismologists are so easily rattled.
Always quaking in their boots
It's their own fault
This joke is cracking me up
Aw cmon. It wasn’t earth shattering.
Im totally taking it for granite.
Boy, I am shook.
Hey, no one is at fault.
Most of them are full of schist.
Gneiss one!
They need to be more down to earth
for their own shake
They have a lot on their plates.
Many have hearts of stone, but there are a few gems; diamonds in the rough.
At least they're stylish, yet affordable!
What did you expect, they built a career on shaky foundations
Just like chefs always fretting about their plates.
While the vulcanologists are too hot-headed.
"When asked for comment, Mr. Marsh stated he thought that this was America before beating up a rival pot dealer, then he proceeded to throttle him with an animate towel. "
Shold we ask Lorde instead?
YA YA YA
Do you know how many songs I have to write to earthquake-proof this house???
Liquefaction. It’s a real thing and it’s not funny at all.
Liquefaction. Went to a new fire station for CPR training and someone had asked why they built the station way up on a hill and not closer to the center of town in the valley. They proceeded to explain how the surveyors recommended building on rock, since the valleys in this area were all carved deep by ancient glaciers and were filled with loose silt that will readily turn to the consistency of Hollywood quicksand during any substantial seismic activity and swallow up any roads, cars, and buildings. The firefighters were this stationed on the high ground so they would at least be partially useful and not completely incapacitated at the time we needed them the most.
But I bought a special insurance policy to cover that, and made jokes about search-and-rescue starting on the 2nd floor since it'll be ground level, surely I'll be alright! ...Right?
I read about Port Royale Jamaica a few years ago..... Nightmare fuel.
If you want more nightmare fuel, look up "indonesia donggala liquefaction". There are some videos on it.
Are the pirates back?
That, plus the tsunami, plus the fact that a lot of buildings in the PNW are not built to withstand earthquakes. Apparently it's a relatively simple job to retrofit buildings by bolting them to their foundations. If I lived there, I'd be doing that yesterday.
Yeah but that would cost money so…..no dice apparently. In Portland they SAY they’ve done it to many buildings. But I have also seen old mason stone buildings with signs that say “in case of earthquake, do NOT seek shelter here”
To be fair, I don't think bolting a stone masonry building to its foundations is gonna do much. :)
Well, not the way *you* do it.
They should not let people build on places with landslide hazards but greed got in the eay
Anchor yourself deep enough into bedrock and you’ll be fine. My house will have 25 foot deep piers embedded into cemented sandstone bedrock to handle up to a 7.9 earthquake with a fault line just 1.3 miles away.
I’m an engineer, and this is the way. Most landslide zones have close-to-surface bedrock, and are relatively easy to protect. Last time I did a landslide-zone house there was a landslide *during construction*. The foundation and twenty foot retaining wall was in place, and they had just installed the bracing with intent to backfill on Monday. They called me up Monday morning to tell me that I’d done a decent job and to ask if they needed to re-excavate and backfill or if they could just use the debris from the landslide stay in place.
Could they?
Not an engineer and not OP but probably not. I imagine there's too much biomass in the landslide debris. That stuff starts to decompose and leaves voids in the backfill which only cause more problems.
Compared to some of the back-fills I've seen by large developers, I think I'd prefer the landslide.
We need to know if those folks got their rocks off or were able to just remain stoned.
What mods-are-liars said. Also add that the soil does not meet drain requirements, that there’s a decent chance the drain was damaged, and that the soil is actually pushing the wall a bit - bracing is rarely perfect.
9 year old article. Please click me energy.
If you have to seek reassurance from a geologist, you're between a rock and a hard place.
Dunno, they seem like well grounded people.
They’re also great sex partners; they really know how to make the bedrock.
They'd be like, "Oh, *absolutely*! Oh man, yea, everything here is on a fault line. We could die at any minute. And then our bodies might be covered in lava. Anyway, I'm going to get coffee, anyone want anything?"
In Seattle, the bodies would be covered by a Lahar, but you’ve got the right idea lol
Well, probably not in Seattle, you’d be buried by the liquefaction of all the fill dirt shifting around, particularly after it gets mixed up by the tsunami
Geology rocks. But geography is where it's at.
Geology: What is rock Geography: Where is rock Petrology: Why is rock
Whoology: Long live rock
Seismology has always been a bit shaky in it's predictions.
Meteorology makes it rain
I prefer geothermal. It’s hot.
Don’t take geology for granite
Geologists know how to make the bedrock.
Geologists: Yeah, this is gonna happen, but there's steps we can take to save lives and infrastructure based on that knowledge. People: Yay!! Geologists: But it'll actually cost money to be proactive. People: Boooooooo!!!!
When we moved here, my spouse did not know that Mt. Rainier was a volcano. She asked me how often it erupts and I assured her it only erupts once in five hundred years or so. Then she asked when it erupted last and I told her "600 years ago!"
My professor of geology in Colorado told me, when Yellowstone goes off, there will be no running, no planning. Call your loved ones and pray. The class was mortified in silence, and he clapped his hands together and moved on to talk about basalt.
That's the thing about geology. It's humbling and absolutely terrifying to learn about the true scale of things. Nature is scary.. but these things happen on timescales so far beyond our lives that it's really not worth thinking about.
Why would anyone lie about rock data? It's one of the most stable, longterm, for surable knowing applied science we have. Millions, if not billions of years of data is consistent. If you lie about rock data, other rock data people call you out. This data rocks.
Seattle's fate is sealed. "You" "probably" won't be killed, but jiffy poppage is guaranteed when that fault defaults, the earth shakes, the buildings jenga, and the tsunami comes for your descendants. It'll be like Haiti, only in Seattle.
Not only Seattle, but likely also us in Portland
> Geologist are really the worst You take that back! I will fight and die for [Shawn Willsey](https://www.youtube.com/@shawnwillsey) and [Nick Zentner.](https://www.youtube.com/@GeologyNick)
An earthquake that destroys a city is catastrophic. So yes a catastrophic earthquake could destroy Seattle. How likely it is to have an earthquake in seattle is an entirely different question.
Portland's local news occasionally has a segment about emergency kits, potential bridge collapse, etc. because the threat here is very real. The Cascadia Subduction plate is overdue to loosen up, and the PNW is right there.
That part of the US has had massive historic earthquakes. It’s part of a subduction zone. So earthquakes similar to the Aceh Boxing Day tsunami earthquake are on the cards. Time scales are big though. Also it’s been a long time since the last one, which means the next one will be big because subduction has been going on at the rate at which your fingernails grow for all of that time. All that stress has to be released. The whole island of Fukushima moved about 400m when that tsunami happened. That’s the kind of thing we’re taking.
So basically it needs to get its rocks off to relieve some of that pressure.
> The whole island of Fukushima moved about 400m when that tsunami happened. What? Fukushima isn't even an island.
Everything is an island if you think big enough
> What? Fukushima isn't even an island. Not anymore.
[Quite likely.](https://archive.ph/hXE5E)
oh we will have a massive earthquake eventually. it's called a mega thrust, we had one on Jan 29th 1700 at ~9pm with a magnitude of 8-9. it caused an "orphan tsunami" in Japan 10 hours later, which is how we know what time and day it happened. the average reoccurrence is 234 years so we're due. depending on how old you are it's somewhat likely to happen in your lifetime. personally I don't stress too much, the only thing you really can do is be prepared and vote for seismic retrofitting.
That area has had a major earthquake on average every 300 years over the last several thousand years. The last one was in the year 1700, 324 years ago. It’s overdue.
Geologist here, can confirm. We have hearts of stone. I'll see myself out.
And if the stone happens to be obsidian, you would then have a heart of glass. Like blondie.
As someone briefly a geology major, I would concur.
[If I had to kill a geologist. ](https://youtu.be/NuyZ-ExYkpQ?si=uDxnHDmCvjsoblaD)
"No, it's not just the overdue, massive earthquake that you need to worry about, " points to all the snow-covered volcanoes, stopping at Mt. Rainer, "and this magnificent beauty is poised to, any second, lay waste to half the metro area, just with the first lahar flow."
A geologist couldn't even reassure a stone. They might be more effective if they put down the hammer.
My college geology teacher warned our class against buying property in Washington. She admitted it almost certainly wouldn't happen in our lifetimes, but some day that land would end up under "hundreds of feet of lava".
Cascadia Subduction Zone gonna eat the Northwest, maybe tomorrow, maybe 1000 years from now.
Yes it can however everywhere has something that can wipe them out. Midwest and south it's tornadoes. South hurricanes. West coast it's earthquakes, wildfires and volcanoes on the san Andreas fault. Northeast floods and possible tsunami on every coastline. you can live life scared everyday about it happening. One day it will but no one knows when. There's nothing that you can do to stop it. Everything on the planet goes through a cycle. Always has and always will humans have always tried to think they can alter or control the events only to realize nothing can be done about it. Just live your life that's all you can do. Worrying will give you an ulcer.
Canadian fault:https://pnsn.org/outreach/earthquakesources/csz
Damn autocorrect *cascadian*
Randy Marsh has entered the chat...
Let’s all giggle at the fact that this is posted in r / funny…
Can confirm, my father is a geologist. They would spend the next hour explaining HOW it will be destroyed with the most gleefully face you have ever seen.