I've always wondered if it would be possible for a warning system to provide 5-10 seconds of warning for an earthquake. For a large earthquake and p-wave speeds of 10 km/s, if acted upon immediately couldn't you push out an alert with a lead time of a couple dozen seconds?
I believe this is how bullet trains avoid catastrophe in Japan. They have an early warning system and the trains stop before the actual ground starts trembling.
The most surprising part for me is although most of the network was closed due to infrastructure being damaged on the day of the earthquake, everything was repaired and fully operational the next day.
It's definitely possible. Japan, which is situated in another earthquake-prone region, has built an Earthquake Early Warning system.[0] It saves lives.
I'm so disappointed that California doesn't have something like Mexico's Seismic Alert System, which has historically given 60 seconds of warning before an earthquake.[1] Something like that could save so many lives.
"CIRES transmits earthquake early warning alerts through a network of VHF stations similar to the NOAA Weather Radio service in the United States, including use of Specific Area Message Encoding, but with faster lead times in order to issue more timely warnings within two seconds or less. CIRES offers alert systems for buildings and personal use, which also come pre-installed with the official warning sound used for earthquake alerts in Mexico. On its network of transmitters, CIRES issues required weekly tests every three hours to ensure receivers are connected to its network, as well as earthquake warnings when necessary. More than 90,000 users in Mexico City, including almost all public schools, have receivers. The Mexico City Metro additionally receives SASMEX alerts, although not for public dissemination but instead to stop trains or delay departures as necessary."
If they can text everyone about an Amber Alert dozens of miles away, they can text everyone about an incoming earthquake. No sense how this doesn't exist yet.
Latency. With Amber alerts, a latency of tens of seconds (not unusual for mass text message) is irrelevant; with earthquake, the seismic waves can overtake the messaging queue. (Computation itself might be happening near speed of light, high-level communication protocols in general pas through thousands of buffers)
Any alert is better than no alert, but if you're sitting right on top of a fault it won't give you much time to act. I'd be surprised if it's even enough time to get under a desk.
In countries with decent engineering standards, broken glass and items falling from above such as light fittings and ceiling panels cause the worst injuries. Giving people a minute or so warning could be very helpful to prevent these sorts of injuries.
For large earthquakes, absolutely. But if you get a situation like the Canterbury earthquakes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake - 17,000+ over the span of several years) the warning system becomes useless unless it can rapidly detect magnitude and mercalli intensity.
My family lived through the Canterbury earthquakes. If you live somewhere with this hazard PLEASE prepare accordingly.
Depending on your proximity to the epicenter, sometimes you can hear a big earthquake before it hits. It won't help much if it hits in the middle of the night when you're asleep, but a second or two is enough to drop under your desk and avoid the most frequent danger, falling objects.
I imagine that most of the losses in an earthquake are property losses. These don't seem like they'll be significantly mitigated by a one minute warning.
I guess the average person doesn't have very much life insurance (<$100k on average per person). Looks like about 100 people have died from earthquakes in the last 30 years in CA, so maybe that gives you $10M in life insurance expenditures.
Health-wise, let's say every injury has cost $30k on average (IMO a very generous estimate). Looks like there have been about ten thousand injuries or so over the last thirty years. So that's $300M.
Let's say for the sake of argument that an early warning system reduces losses by 50%. So that gives us $150M in value over thirty years. Or about $7.5M per year in value. (Less, really, because value saved in the future has to be discounted.)
That doesn't really go very far even toward maintaining an existing system, to say nothing of developing a new one. (Assuming the last thirty years is representative, that my napkin math is good, etc.)
Probably a better way to guesstimate the "value" of a life is to look at the wages that would have been earned if alive. The median income of a worker in the US earns $44k/year, and can probably expect to work another 30 years for retirement (median US age is 37). Multiply those numbers together, and the median death would have earned $1.2M. If you do more rigorous probability distributions, you could probably build a better estimation of what this number would be. Of course, you could also argue for more precise estimates of someone's value than their wages. But the magnitude of the number does appear to gel with regulatory thought: most regulatory agencies seem to do cost-benefit analysis of regulations assuming that saving a life is worth costing at most a few million. $100K per life does seem quite low.
A hedge fund might have motivation do it, but I don't know how one would reconcile the cross purposes of knowing the info ahead of time for stock trades vs warning the public asap.
If you're worried about getting claim-jumped by an HFT firm subscribed to the public-warning system, a few millisecond delay might allow for trade execution?
Once you plan for any delay then the ethical/financial discussion then goes to why not 0.1s or 1 second or two? It might be more ethically balanced, and less of a PR nightmare if a hedge fund were satisfied with maybe matched parallel feed and the advantage they get for just having the infrastructure to respond to a richer signal sent at the same time as the public warning. The public warning is a yes or no to send, but the feed might have added data such as uncertainty, or initial locations.. etc.
I think sixty seconds would be more than ample to evacuate most of the buildings I find myself in. In fact, the only building I don't think I could get out of within sixty seconds would be a Walmart or a big box home improvement store.
If you can't escape the building, the usual advice is to find a doorway.
Are you assuming nobody else is trying to exit at the same time? I can get out of my sixth floor apartment in 60 seconds but not if everyone in the building is trying the same thing.
The tricks discussed in CERT classes (which are well worth taking - very interesting material) is to go to back of store because few people think to. Same with concerts and other events - people instinctively run to the entrance in which they entered, rather than the nearest.
Secondly, if you're in the midst of huge shelves with no escape (like a home depot) get under the first shelf. the shelving won't collapse downwards, but if a neighboring shelf falls sideways you'll be protected.
Harder to do in a real emergency, but good ideas, and thinking them through can be enough to execute them when needed.
Anyway - I highly encourage taking a local CERT class if you're in the US, or finding the equivalent wherever you live.
You won’t know exactly how much time you have once you hear the warning. You might be better off finding shelter in the immediate vicinity rather than being caught in a potentially dangerous area 15sec into your 60sec evacuation route.
Oh geez, the aisles with shelves of heavy objects stacked 20 feet high at home improvement stores would be terrifying during a big earthquake. Had never considered that.
Would you rather be in an open field of a place with things above you?
The reason to stay indoors is if you're in a city or next to buildings where glass and shrapnel could fall on you. If you have open space outside, then that is a much better place to be.
You generally don't have enough time to get into an open field, even if you aren't in a city. If you happen to be right next to one, odds are you're in a single-story building with few weights in the attic. When these buildings fall down the doorframes are often left standing. Plus if you're running out while the ground is shaking there's a significant chance that the unsupported ceiling will fall on you, the building wall will fall on you, the windows will be flexing and shattering, cutting you...
Generally, standing in an interior doorway is a far safer move.
I feel like you are disagreeing with me but also reiterating my point.
You don't need to be in field in Kansas to be safe outside. If you're in the suburbs you have lawns, parking lots, or streets and there aren't windows above you. Obviously if you're in downtown LA or SF don't go outside. But there's a lot of people that don't live in, or aren't going to be in, an area with multi-story buildings completely surrounding them. You can easily get far enough away from a couple story building (parking lot) and be safe. That is much safer than inside said building.
Here's the rule of thumb "If something can fall on you outside, go to a door frame or braced structure." But I'll reiterate, it depends on your initial location.
In the suburbs, I have a lawn, but there's some big trees. Out on the street, there's power lines. If it's big enough that I should be worried about my house falling down around me, I'm also worried about trees and downed power lines.
It does depend on your initial location. But if your initial location is inside, then when going outside you are necessarily passing through dangerous territory. Because for as long as your exiting your building, you're right next to a building, which is a more dangerous place to be than inside a building under a desk.
It depends on the construction material. If the building is unreinforced masonry, the doorframe is the strongest part of the wall (with respect to earthquakes). If it is not, it is no stronger or weaker than the rest of the wall. (See https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/megaqk_facts_fantas...).
The most useful place to be in a major earthquake is anywhere where things are not going to swing into or fall onto you. Such as underneath a desk (assuming it's not a cheap construction that will buckle under any significant weight).
But would you not agree that if available, the most safe space is an open field? That's all I'm saying here. People seem to be missing that I'm not suggesting going outside if things can fall on you outside.
Wood-framed single story homes are some of the most seismically safe (by virtue of flexibility) structures.
Unreinforced masonry structures, tilt-up concrete buildings, and the like are far more dangerous. California has a lot of legacy tilt-up concrete structures in industrial and commercial zones.
Residences are probably more vulnerable to the resultant gas leak fires than the quake itself.
In the Loma Prieta earthquake some of my co-workers exited building while dodging ceramic tiles coming falling off the roof. Then gathered under the power lines on the far side of the parking lot. Being a modern wood and steel framed building it was better to stay inside.
Also heard stories in the SF financial district of large glass windows popping out and falling into the street below.
Best time to sort out what to do is before the earthquake.
A framed house is about the safest building you can be in in an earthquake. They are small enough that they just flex with the earthquake.
It's masonry buildings that are the most dangerous.
Either way, you should not be trying to exit a building during an earthquake because the greatest risk is debris falling on you, not the building collapsing on you.
In fact, framed houses are so safe that the current advice is that if you are in bed when an earthquake occurs, you should stay in bed. You are more likely to get hurt trying to get out of bed and find cover.
Depends on construction and earthquake size. Many frame houses have collapsed in an earthquake and the risks increase dramatically with building height.
60 seconds is better than nothing. Similar to japan, that 60 seconds could mean stopping trains and anything else sensitive to the ground moving. Elevators could be stopped and people directed out. Gas and water shut off. Quite a bit more too, really.
Partial list of things that can happen with even 10 seconds of warning:
* Elevators stop at closest floor and doors open, preventing people from being stuck between floors.
* Critical garage doors & gates at fire stations / hospitals will open, allowing emergency vehicles to quickly exit.
* Other critical doors & gates will close to prevent people from entering tunnels or other areas that could be blocked off.
* Trains will slow or stop to prevent derailments.
* Oil/Gas pipeline pressures will be reduced and valves will close to lessen impact if line is compromised.
* Hospitals alert to prevent mishaps in surgery or other dangerous areas (like MRIs).
* Airports alert to stop takeoffs/landings in case there are buckles in the runway.
In short, there are a ton of things that you can do to prevent really bad outcomes (many of which are prefaced on doing something before the power cuts out) that are much more difficult and expensive after the shaking has started.
Could also post electronic signs on freeways that warn motorists to stop and pull over immediately, particularly before hazardous areas like bridges, tunnels, viaducts, and onramps. IIRC most of the civilian casualties of the 1989 Loma Prieta & 1994 Northridge earthquakes were from viaduct or bridge collapses that pinned cars underneath. With a minute's warning, you can prevent any more cars from entering the bridge and get most of the existing traffic out.
I can almost guarantee you that a warning like that, broadcast at certain times of the day on all major freeways in LA or the bay area, would kill more people than the events that you mentioned.
Yes actually (or go into a doorway or similar). I don't understand the derision extremely simple and basic response strategies (like the well designed and effective "duck and cover" for nuclear strikes) get when they can be absolutely enormous lifesavers. A huge amount of the human injury potential from a lot of major classes of disaster is from simple stuff like flying/falling glass and falling dense materials, all of which can do terrible things to an unprotected human body but are also absolutely trivial to deflect with another inert object. Shattered non-safety glass will cause tremendous damage to soft tissues, and someone can certainly be badly injured or killed by even a small weight like a brick or other dense objects that fall from just ceiling or high shelf height.
But none of those is going to go through heavy steel or wood. Typical work desks and tables (and of course institutional use furniture in general) are quite sturdy. Door frames tend to exhibit significant structural reinforcement as well and be away from many short range dangers. Putting an inch or two (4-6 cm) equivalent of hardwood, dense composite wood, or metal between a person and debris can be the work of seconds, and the difference between a brick landing on the table vs on someone's skull is not nothing, as is getting into a position protecting the face and vulnerable extremities and organs as much as feasible and being braced.
It's true that better architectural and infrastructure design matters tremendously and is worth continuing to work on, that if a heavy building pancakes then anyone inside is in trouble/toast, etc. But on a population survival/mass casualty reduction basis a little executed well can make a bigger difference then a lot of people give credit. The difference between death/grievous injury in many mass disasters can come down to relatively small differences in where someone is and what actions they take right before, and how practiced they are in taking the best actions promptly. Don't underestimate it.
Based on the location of the epicentre, there was no way of getting a 60 sec (or any) warning if you were in Christchurch that day.
It would've been useful in the 2016 Kaikoura quake though - watching the models* of how that fault unzipped up the east coast of the South Island should've given Marlborough and Wellington some warning.
60s seems unreasonable. Earthquakes move at around 5km/s. 60s warning would be for someone 300km away, who is probably not at risk. You could get 2-10s warning to those nearer the epicenter, which is still enough warning to be valuable. Especially if machinery and self driving cars and such could be auto-safetied.
You're assuming that an impending major earthquake can be detected before it happens. I don't think that is possible.
All 'early warning' systems rely on having sensors close to the epicenter that detect the waves before they propagate out to populations further away, but by that time the earthquake is already happening.
Parent seems to be assuming, rather, that earthquakes take time to reach "full force". I weakly suspect that's not the case, but it's a different question than "before it happens".
From the videos I've seen of the 2011 Japan earthquake, the general reaction generally follows a pattern of "meh, just an earthquake... okay, this is a strong earthquake... HOLY SHIT THIS IS A STRONG EARTHQUAKE." I don't know how much of that is particular to the earthquake, though, and it's hard to tell why that kind of reaction seems to occur.
Small earthquakes are common enough in Japan that many people will just brush them off. My personal reaction to anything 4 or less on the intensity scale is just to stand/sit still. Basically, if it’s not strong enough to trigger the early warning system, I don’t really worry.
Even with the early warning, sometimes the earthquake will still be on the weaker end of the spectrum, so you brace yourself but not necessarily panic.
The 2011 earthquake started off moderately, so no one in my office ducked for cover until it really started to shake, which was already about half a minute in.
I think it should be possible in principle... but I had a professor whose casual academic output basically consisted of publishing rebuttals to other academics who thought they had found an early warning sign (lightning phenomena is a common approach). A particularly amusing one he shared with us was just a case of bad data analysis in Matlab, the author had used 'filter' instead of 'filtfilt' to get their graph and so were trying to derive their results from the distorted phase...
It is my understanding that at the epicenter the time between "start of earthquake" and "full force" is negligible. When the earth slips, it slips. The reason why there feels like there is a ramp-up and delay to full intensity is that some waves travel faster than others, and therefore at moderate distance from the epicenter you start getting one type of wave before the other.
I didn't know we had the tech to detect earthquakes with high prob (say >99%) something like 60 seconds in advance. Can someone comment? If we can detect, you are right that it is shocking we don't do population wide drills with messaging infrastructure.
The tech here is P-wave detection. P-waves are somewhere around twice as fast as S-waves, so if you're 100-200km away from the hypocenter, it gives you that much advanced warning. Powerful earthquakes are still destructive at that range.
The other advantage is that once the seismic wave is detected, you can transmit that info at lightspeed vs the 10s of km/h that seismic waves propagate.
It works well for Mexico, but would not be as useful in California.
Earthquake P-waves travel at 5km/s. To get 60 seconds of warning, you must be 300km (186 miles) downstream of the detector.
Mexico has a very unique situation [1]: the filled lake basins that Mexico City sits on have the same resonance frequency as buildings of a certain height. Earthquakes generate that frequency. So a serious earthquake 300km away can get the lake basin rocking, and that will knock down buildings of a certain height.
A detector is nowhere near as useful in California. Consider the Loma Prieta Earthquake. It occurred 90km from the damaged sections of San Francisco. Assuming there is a detector within 10km of Loma Prieta, that is only 16 seconds of warning. Give a few seconds for the alert to get out, and it's barely 10 seconds. That's not enough time to do anything other than hide under a desk -- which you can already do after the earthquake starts. Such a system would be excellent for bringing trains to a halt, but that's pretty much it.
Given the opportunity, I know I'd rather be ten seconds further from a nearby stack of bricks or possibly-unsecured bookcase when an earthquake hits...
This is enough time for automated systems to have an orderly shutdown. Trains come to a stop so they don't derail. Toll both gates on bridges go down. Fire station doors open up. Elavators stop on the nearest floor and open their doors.
Thanks for the explanation. However, it may be nowhere as useful, but still plenty useful. On the top of my head, 10s could be enough so:
* Trains may stop, preventing a literal train wreck.
* People doing delicate tasks (e.g., a surgeon, someone operating heavy machinery, even someone cooking) may lock to a safer position.
* Elevators may stop and open the doors safely, so no one will be stuck inside them.
* Air traffic control may hold take offs and maybe landings.
* All traffic lights going red may slightly reduce car incidents. Seems minor, I admit.
Also, people with little experience (me!) do NOT understand that an earthquake is happening until after the fact. Some blast alert even during the earthquake is very helpful for tourists and even immigrants.
Here's a video of Japan's warning system giving someone 30+ seconds of notice before the 2011 earthquake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-FMpNBfna8 (and notice how significant the shaking was, even at that distance)
Yes, there have been cases of people getting trapped in rooms/buildings due to doors getting bent or warped, so it’s common advice in Japan to prop open a door to secure yourself an exit.
Those 10 seconds were staged. She knew that they were coming, she was in a small "room", and she probably took a look at her surrounding before those 10 seconds kicked and planned what to do and in which order in her head.
In real life, the warning such as this would catch people by surprise. That's not to say they wouldn't be useful, but I highly doubt they would be that useful as they were on that video.
Even if I'm in my own home, I imagine it would take me at least a fifth of that time to look around and come up with a plan of what is achievable in such a short time span.
30 seconds? you must be joking. I live in Japan and get such alerts on a regular basis. usually you get the alert about 3 to 5 seconds before the shake hits you depending on how far you are from the epicenter. If you get something 10 seconds before it hits then you dont even have to worry because it means you are very far.
Taking exceptional anecdotes under consideration is hardly useful to save lives. In reality such people should always assume that an earthquake can hit if they are in such areas at risk and use appropriate equipment.
I hate these "it wouldn't help" arguments regarding most things in this world, including this one. Case in point here, even a siren blasting 0 seconds beforehand would be useful to reduce the inevitable delay between when you feel something shaking and when you realize it's really an earthquake. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it wouldn't be useful, because as far as I know, the reason we don't have it is lack of funding, not lack of usefulness.
I said that it super-helps Mexico, but that because of the specific situations in both regions, we should not anticipate getting anything like their results.
Automatic shutoff valves at major lines? There would still be smaller leaks where the minor lines would rupture, but the ruptures would not be continuously fed from the upstream pipes.
During Loma Prieta I got maybe 15 secs of warning ... driving in Berkeley I heard the announcer on KQED (NPR affiliate in SF) say something like "shit earthquake" followed by dead air ... time to stop the car and see it ripple up the street
(normally on that day of the week I would have been on the lower part of the freeway that collapsed, went into work a day early that week because of the possible World Series traffic)
I hope everyone in California who reads HN is prepared with emergency supplies. At the very least stock up on emergency drinking water so that you won't have to go out of your way to get it if things get particularly bad. You'll have plenty of other things to worry about, so you may as well mitigate what's arguably one of the easiest and cheapest issues to prepare for now.
I live in San Jose and have 10-20 gallons of fresh water stored in large bottles for precisely this purpose. I'm amazed at how many people give me flak about that single preparation -- too few people in this area have lived through a proper natural disaster and are woefully ill prepared.
No need, a plastic jug of water is good for decades. Yeah, it’ll have carcinogenic nasties in it after sufficient time, but not a huge problem for a temporary emergency situation.
But make sure you engage the quarter-turn valves on the input and output. If the main water source gets polluted you don't want it to contaminate your drinking water.
I live in Maryland, and can't imagine getting flak for storing water. I wouldn't call them disasters, but every few years or so we get a major snow-storm that basically traps us in for a few days. I can't imagine the idea of not having supplies to last out such a semi-routine event.
That's the recommended interval if you're just storing the cheap water that comes in thin bottles from the grocery store. Use a thicker food-grade plastic, glass, or stainless steel container, and the water will stay drinkable indefinitely.
Yeah, I'm not going to worry too much about how long water will stay "good" for an emergency situation. And, if you're worried about bacteria, keep a filter/UV sterilizer/iodine/etc. with the water.
Too few? Too few in tech maybe, because more than 2/3 of tech workers moved here. Most of the natives above a certain age have a decent grasp of the dangers, but also know how remote they are.
With the exception of '93-'98, I've experienced every event in the Bay Area since 1971.
Many local water systems are reinforced against earthquake damage. It's really the loss of electricity and gas leaks that are the problem.
That said, you should always have drinking and non-drinking water on hand that will last a few days. If you're smart, own some coolers and keep ice packs on hand to preserve your food. There are more cases than just natural disasters, when that could come in handy.
Even Loma Prieta only caused loss of power and/or gas in a few select areas, mostly the areas that got wrecked, where there were bigger problems to worry about. The epicenter was West of Gilroy, but there was no significant damage South of Oakland and SF. That's 90 miles away from the epicenter.
There are only a few really dangerous faults running through the area. If you're near one, you should seriously prepare and have safety plans. The East Bay from Hayward to El Cerrito or so, for instance, is really dangerous. The Greater San Jose is pretty tame.
This sounds like the second most important worry a prepper would have: "I'm now prepped for a disaster; therefore, expect looters to come say hello." You better be bulletproof for your plan to work ;o)
Is due. Just because something hasn't happened for some time doesn't by itself mean it's immminent. How are the distributions of earthquake events and magnitudes typically modeled?
I was talking to someone the other day who is working on predicting earthquakes by combining massive data sets with deep learning. They have a promising technique that looks like it can predict 24-72 hours in advance.
Having lived through Northridge in '94, I really hope he succeeds before it happens.
This sounds like the sort of existential tool that Silicon Valley ought to be pouring as much funding into as possible. Or fueling the creation of alternate tech hubs.
Martian colonies and mind uploading are unlikely to be ready by the time the Big One comes.
Google runs earthquake drills every year in which they assume that the Mountain View & other Bay Area offices have been completely destroyed, all employees within them (including top executives) have been killed, and all West Coast datacenters have been knocked out. Their aim is to ensure continuity of operations. Although each drill usually identifies some deficiencies and potential failure points, in the 5 years I was there the simulation never actually resulted in Google going offline.
The big Silicon Valley companies are all huge multinationals at this point, more powerful (and safer) than many nation-states. I'm not even sure a worldwide nuclear war would take Google offline, although it would likely kill 90%+ of its customer base.
> I'm not even sure a worldwide nuclear war would take Google offline
All the major power generation systems in the US and Europe that Google needs to operate, would likely be taken down. They're well known and those would all be intentionally targeted. Google as a shell of its former self might stay up briefly, that wouldn't last long outside of some stray regions. Further, they'd have those stray regions severed by local authorities who would divert the critical power to more important uses (literally keeping people alive). Any resistance by Google at that redirect of their power use would be met by military equivalent force.
If you wish to hide, you could always go for abandoned mining works etc. - most satellites won't see that. (Of course, you need to get energy in, so a massive new power line that disappears down a shaft would betray you again ;))
Google usually has its own private power generation for major DCs, not connected to the public grid. They're very big on renewables - they've built their own hydro power stations on the Columbia River for their west coast DCs, and they typically use geothermal or tidal power in Europe. Being close to potential renewable energy sources is actually a major consideration for where they put new DCs.
A new e-mail appears in my inbox explaining that zombies have invaded Georgia and are
trying to eat the brains of the data-center technicians there.
The zombies have severed the
network connections to the data center. No network traffic is going in or out.
Lastly, the e-mail
points out that this is part of a DiRT exercise and no actual technicians have had their brains
eaten, but the network connections really have been disabled.
I was thinking of Uruguay etc. rather than the U.S. when I made the statement, but given the political climate in the U.S. over the last couple years, I'm not so sure anymore. At this point I think I'd give better odds to Google breaking up the U.S. than the U.S. breaking up Google.
Really. I'd like to see Google take on a war against the entire world. This is something the US is prepared to do constantly. And even win such war (not that there would be much left afterward).
As mentioned in a sibling comment, there are a number of scenarios where the people are fine but all lines of communications are down, which is functionally equivalent to everyone being killed:
(The actual wording on the e-mail is usually far more colorful, and usually involves a zombie apocalypse. Mountain View employees aren't just dead, they're undead.)
I think the assumption is that if the event actually did involve a danger to life & limb, response would be in the hands of Google Physical Security, local first responders, CalFire, FEMA, etc. Those organizations all do drill for rescuing people and treating injured, and will be in a much better position to coordinate responses than Google ops people.
They're probably not, but the point is to defend against a loss of headquarters and all the resources surrounding it, regardless of the cause. Note that a network partition (where the Bay Area is fine but cut off from communications with the outside world) is functionally equivalent.
There are a number of other scenarios that could conceivably take out all Bay Area offices: nuclear strikes on SF + Moffett Field, wildfires in the Diablo Range that sever all communications, secession of California and following military blockade, large scale protests or civil unrest that do the same, etc. Might as well protect against all of them rather than special-casing earthquakes.
You're talking about the tech industry like they're the government. It's the government's job to focus on the public good, not profit driven corporations.
It's good business to have a contingency plan in case your main headquarters falls into the earth, though. Surely a technological focused area like Silicon Valley would consider these potential existential threats to the bottom line. At least the larger orgs.
I'm skeptical this will ever become a reality. There's been a lot of talk over here in Japan about trying the same thing, but the scientists researching it seem to be in agreement that predicting a specific earthquake is pretty much impossible.
Rooting for anyone who actually does manage to do it though.
For homeowners and building operators, there is a safety valve you can install that will shut off the gas line when it detects earthquake-like shaking. This reduces the risk of a fire or explosion in the aftermath of an earthquake.
Also, remember that emergency kits include perishable items. Keep an eye on those, and remember to rotate your supplies.
Stockpile foods you like to eat anyway, and rotate as you resupply.
You like Campbell's soup? Keep 10 cans in stock, not 2.
Same for any simple food with a long shelf life.
That way you don't end up with 100 pounds of 10-year-old beans, rice, and MREs.
YMMV if you're planning for SHTF/TEOTWAKI rather than a big earthquake.
Roughly, I'd say your biggest danger is falling objects, like books, and fire.
Building codes for new construction do most of the obvious now, the walls are tied to the foundation, there are shear panels.
5 to 15 stories is the worst height range, but shorter buildings can be bad if they're very asymmetric, like one with a parking under a two story appt, with one shear wall and poles for gravity support.
otoh, in a big enough earthquake, anything will be damaged.
What year did the "walls are tied to the foundation" bit become code? If I'm in a 50+ year old house, what are the main things to check for?
I've heard that there is shockingly little consistency with retrofit companies and the work they do, and that the inspections aren't really great for those things, but I know next to nothing about making sure one's home is properly fitted.
It was well known when I did civil engineering in the mid 90s, I want to say that it was post Northridge that it started to bubble through the code. 50 years is probably pre-foundation tiedown. Current construction is going to have long sheet metal straps or j bolts into the foundation, I'm not sure what a retrofit will have.
An easy thing to check is the hot water tank. If it's not well strapped to studs, then I can't imagine anything else has been done. If it has, then at least you know that has been done, it it doesn't really tell you anything else.
I know when I was selling my house in Wa, that was one of the things the inspector looked for, so it's highly probable that it's been done, as its quick and easy.
Inspections are the only way to know for sure, but it can be invasive to get into the walls enough to see.
Thanks for the info. Water heater has two metal straps to the studs and is on a raised platform, so that's taken care of.
The foundation is slightly raised on post and pier with no sheering panels or bolts in the posts that I can see, but the exterior walls look like they may be bolted to concrete the foundation perimeter.
Any tips on making sure a retrofit company is legit? My biggest concern is I'd heard that the inspections for getting a retrofit aren't super consistent or thorough, which is a huge concern.
The article asserts there is a "drought" because Earthquakes on certain faults haven't occurred in the last N years. But the article fails to even suggest a frequency of expected occurrence which would lead to such a conclusion. This is just clickbait exploiting fear for money.
For facts, the USGS posts the best scientific evaluation of fault frequency. Here's the one for the Bay Area [1]. Summary is that in the next 30 years, there is a 98% chance of >= 6.0 (meh), 72% chance of >= 6.7 (ouch), 51% chance of >= 7.1 (Loma Prieta class), and 20% chance of >= 7.5 (Great SF Earthquake class). The fact sheet goes into detail on the likelihood of earthquakes on each fault.
As disasters go earthquakes are intermittent enough that it is easy to forget about them. I carry an earthquake kit in my car with enough to get out of my car and hike (and possibly camp a bit) back to my house from most anywhere I might be in the 99th percentile.
I did have the unpleasant experience of replacing my water cache and finding that one of the barrels had been leaking into one of the dry goods boxes. That was a gooey icky mess. And it reminded me to be more vigilant about rotating supplies.
Very ignorant question, but could it be possible to artificially start an earthquake in order to prevent "power build-up" ? Like many small man-made earthquakes spread over a decade instead of a big natural one.
It's how it's done with avalanches: you start them before they get too big and dangerous.
It obvious that it is beneficial (at least for areas that have large earthquakes), but because it has to do with oil and GW many researches don't want to admit there are side-benefits.
In general the answer is no. The gist seems to be that because the richter scale for magnitude is logarithmic is would take thousands of 3.0 quakes to equal a 6.0. More info here in "Common Myths and Misconceptions" http://seismo.berkeley.edu/outreach/faq.html
From my understanding the energies involved are so large that once you have that technology you‘d be more likely to extinguish all life than do any good. Significant earthquakes move landmasses by half a meter or so, and they influence earth rotation and inclination measurably. If that kinda energy was coupled to our atmosphere thermally you‘d have a global killer very quickly. A 9.0 quake is 476M tons of TNT and a 9.5 one would be 2682M tons - I wouldn‘t mess with that ;).
I've lived in the Bay Area all my life, was a baby when Loma Prieta hit. I had scarcely felt an earthquake in my life except for a few occasions where I had to ask people nearby 'was that just an earthquake?'.
A month or two ago there was an earthquake epicentered a 5 minute walk from my house. It shook my house and wobbled my walls and I thought for sure it was finally the big one. I find out the next day that it was only around a 4.0. It's hard to imagine what the epicenter of a 7.0 (>30k times as powerful) would feel like.
I was a tween when LP hit. I remember my TV shooting out of of an 8 foot tall entertainment cabinet and taking the whole thing down with it inside. Outside, I watched our 3 acres of squared off of ranch fencing visibly ripple and distort as the waves passed through.
More than one window shattered, and our well (I lived in a remote area) actually was stressed so that it collapsed. We were lucky we only lost power for a week. People further up in the mountains didn't have it for over a month.
Aside from the lessened intensity of the main shock, distance saves you from even feeling many of the aftershocks.
During LP, my then-pregnant sister lived in Aptos less than one mile from the epicenter. They were getting meaningful aftershocks by the dozens through the evening.
The surface waves were amazing directional. I was at work when it hit, and we had those suspended, noise-absorbing foam panels in the ceiling... and you could see the rippling of the surface wave propagate along the ceiling.
Those bookshelves/cabinets, dressers and other tallish rectangular objects that were perpendicular to the wave fell over; those parallel to it tended to be fine.
Almost everywhere along El Camino from Menlo to the Sunnyvale border had power outages, with one exception: a half-block of El Camino just "north" of Grant. Yet that half-block just happened to have a gas station and a 24-hour restaurant (where Los Charros is now) that remained up and running throughout.
Maybe it's from living in CA all my life, but having ridden many out many quakes, my concern for 'The Big One' is a little less than my concern is for an astroid hit... which isn't much.
Seems odd. We have a non-zero (hopefully pretty good) chance of spotting an incoming asteroid, at which point we would calculate everything about the time, place, and severity of the strike with extremely high precision. We have none of that for earthquakes.
I don't think they have their datacenters in the same place. These kind of events are anticipated and large companies like those will have detailed disaster recovery plans with multiple redundancies.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Bsq5IcrFA
https://www.railway-technology.com/features/feature122751/
The most surprising part for me is although most of the network was closed due to infrastructure being damaged on the day of the earthquake, everything was repaired and fully operational the next day.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...
"CIRES transmits earthquake early warning alerts through a network of VHF stations similar to the NOAA Weather Radio service in the United States, including use of Specific Area Message Encoding, but with faster lead times in order to issue more timely warnings within two seconds or less. CIRES offers alert systems for buildings and personal use, which also come pre-installed with the official warning sound used for earthquake alerts in Mexico. On its network of transmitters, CIRES issues required weekly tests every three hours to ensure receivers are connected to its network, as well as earthquake warnings when necessary. More than 90,000 users in Mexico City, including almost all public schools, have receivers. The Mexico City Metro additionally receives SASMEX alerts, although not for public dissemination but instead to stop trains or delay departures as necessary."
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SASMEX
Would any expert reading this like to comment?
For large earthquakes, absolutely. But if you get a situation like the Canterbury earthquakes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake - 17,000+ over the span of several years) the warning system becomes useless unless it can rapidly detect magnitude and mercalli intensity.
My family lived through the Canterbury earthquakes. If you live somewhere with this hazard PLEASE prepare accordingly.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-early...
Health-wise, let's say every injury has cost $30k on average (IMO a very generous estimate). Looks like there have been about ten thousand injuries or so over the last thirty years. So that's $300M.
Let's say for the sake of argument that an early warning system reduces losses by 50%. So that gives us $150M in value over thirty years. Or about $7.5M per year in value. (Less, really, because value saved in the future has to be discounted.)
That doesn't really go very far even toward maintaining an existing system, to say nothing of developing a new one. (Assuming the last thirty years is representative, that my napkin math is good, etc.)
Spoiler: it varies wildly.
Writeup: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/blog/id/93/how-much-are-we...
Citing: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=424523
Here are some illustrative examples:
* Consumer Product Safety Commission's (CPSC's) regulation on childproof lighters = $100k
* Federal Aviation Administration rules on airplane cabin fire protection = $300K
* National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration rules on passive restraints and seat belts = $500K
* CPSC's rules on children's sleepwear flammability = $2.2MM
* EPA's rules on fugitive benzene emissions = $3.7MM
If you're worried about getting claim-jumped by an HFT firm subscribed to the public-warning system, a few millisecond delay might allow for trade execution?
That's better than nothing.
> It's probably not enough time to run out of a building.
It could be, if the building is less than 3-4 stories tall.
If you can't escape the building, the usual advice is to find a doorway.
Secondly, if you're in the midst of huge shelves with no escape (like a home depot) get under the first shelf. the shelving won't collapse downwards, but if a neighboring shelf falls sideways you'll be protected.
Harder to do in a real emergency, but good ideas, and thinking them through can be enough to execute them when needed.
Anyway - I highly encourage taking a local CERT class if you're in the US, or finding the equivalent wherever you live.
The reason to stay indoors is if you're in a city or next to buildings where glass and shrapnel could fall on you. If you have open space outside, then that is a much better place to be.
Generally, standing in an interior doorway is a far safer move.
You don't need to be in field in Kansas to be safe outside. If you're in the suburbs you have lawns, parking lots, or streets and there aren't windows above you. Obviously if you're in downtown LA or SF don't go outside. But there's a lot of people that don't live in, or aren't going to be in, an area with multi-story buildings completely surrounding them. You can easily get far enough away from a couple story building (parking lot) and be safe. That is much safer than inside said building.
Here's the rule of thumb "If something can fall on you outside, go to a door frame or braced structure." But I'll reiterate, it depends on your initial location.
The most useful place to be in a major earthquake is anywhere where things are not going to swing into or fall onto you. Such as underneath a desk (assuming it's not a cheap construction that will buckle under any significant weight).
Unreinforced masonry structures, tilt-up concrete buildings, and the like are far more dangerous. California has a lot of legacy tilt-up concrete structures in industrial and commercial zones.
Residences are probably more vulnerable to the resultant gas leak fires than the quake itself.
Also heard stories in the SF financial district of large glass windows popping out and falling into the street below.
Best time to sort out what to do is before the earthquake.
It's masonry buildings that are the most dangerous.
Either way, you should not be trying to exit a building during an earthquake because the greatest risk is debris falling on you, not the building collapsing on you.
In fact, framed houses are so safe that the current advice is that if you are in bed when an earthquake occurs, you should stay in bed. You are more likely to get hurt trying to get out of bed and find cover.
I hope it won't rain during an earthquake or landslides may happen.
* Elevators stop at closest floor and doors open, preventing people from being stuck between floors.
* Critical garage doors & gates at fire stations / hospitals will open, allowing emergency vehicles to quickly exit.
* Other critical doors & gates will close to prevent people from entering tunnels or other areas that could be blocked off.
* Trains will slow or stop to prevent derailments.
* Oil/Gas pipeline pressures will be reduced and valves will close to lessen impact if line is compromised.
* Hospitals alert to prevent mishaps in surgery or other dangerous areas (like MRIs).
* Airports alert to stop takeoffs/landings in case there are buckles in the runway.
In short, there are a ton of things that you can do to prevent really bad outcomes (many of which are prefaced on doing something before the power cuts out) that are much more difficult and expensive after the shaking has started.
Yes actually (or go into a doorway or similar). I don't understand the derision extremely simple and basic response strategies (like the well designed and effective "duck and cover" for nuclear strikes) get when they can be absolutely enormous lifesavers. A huge amount of the human injury potential from a lot of major classes of disaster is from simple stuff like flying/falling glass and falling dense materials, all of which can do terrible things to an unprotected human body but are also absolutely trivial to deflect with another inert object. Shattered non-safety glass will cause tremendous damage to soft tissues, and someone can certainly be badly injured or killed by even a small weight like a brick or other dense objects that fall from just ceiling or high shelf height.
But none of those is going to go through heavy steel or wood. Typical work desks and tables (and of course institutional use furniture in general) are quite sturdy. Door frames tend to exhibit significant structural reinforcement as well and be away from many short range dangers. Putting an inch or two (4-6 cm) equivalent of hardwood, dense composite wood, or metal between a person and debris can be the work of seconds, and the difference between a brick landing on the table vs on someone's skull is not nothing, as is getting into a position protecting the face and vulnerable extremities and organs as much as feasible and being braced.
It's true that better architectural and infrastructure design matters tremendously and is worth continuing to work on, that if a heavy building pancakes then anyone inside is in trouble/toast, etc. But on a population survival/mass casualty reduction basis a little executed well can make a bigger difference then a lot of people give credit. The difference between death/grievous injury in many mass disasters can come down to relatively small differences in where someone is and what actions they take right before, and how practiced they are in taking the best actions promptly. Don't underestimate it.
I can go all day....
It would've been useful in the 2016 Kaikoura quake though - watching the models* of how that fault unzipped up the east coast of the South Island should've given Marlborough and Wellington some warning.
* Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1HWet9j070
All 'early warning' systems rely on having sensors close to the epicenter that detect the waves before they propagate out to populations further away, but by that time the earthquake is already happening.
Even with the early warning, sometimes the earthquake will still be on the weaker end of the spectrum, so you brace yourself but not necessarily panic.
The 2011 earthquake started off moderately, so no one in my office ducked for cover until it really started to shake, which was already about half a minute in.
Earthquake P-waves travel at 5km/s. To get 60 seconds of warning, you must be 300km (186 miles) downstream of the detector.
Mexico has a very unique situation [1]: the filled lake basins that Mexico City sits on have the same resonance frequency as buildings of a certain height. Earthquakes generate that frequency. So a serious earthquake 300km away can get the lake basin rocking, and that will knock down buildings of a certain height.
A detector is nowhere near as useful in California. Consider the Loma Prieta Earthquake. It occurred 90km from the damaged sections of San Francisco. Assuming there is a detector within 10km of Loma Prieta, that is only 16 seconds of warning. Give a few seconds for the alert to get out, and it's barely 10 seconds. That's not enough time to do anything other than hide under a desk -- which you can already do after the earthquake starts. Such a system would be excellent for bringing trains to a halt, but that's pretty much it.
[1] See preface of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Mexico_City_earthquake
* Trains may stop, preventing a literal train wreck.
* People doing delicate tasks (e.g., a surgeon, someone operating heavy machinery, even someone cooking) may lock to a safer position.
* Elevators may stop and open the doors safely, so no one will be stuck inside them.
* Air traffic control may hold take offs and maybe landings.
* All traffic lights going red may slightly reduce car incidents. Seems minor, I admit.
Also, people with little experience (me!) do NOT understand that an earthquake is happening until after the fact. Some blast alert even during the earthquake is very helpful for tourists and even immigrants.
Here's another example of what you can do with ten seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB6-nU2nJqM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_Life
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/triangle-of-life/
In real life, the warning such as this would catch people by surprise. That's not to say they wouldn't be useful, but I highly doubt they would be that useful as they were on that video.
Even if I'm in my own home, I imagine it would take me at least a fifth of that time to look around and come up with a plan of what is achievable in such a short time span.
10 seconds would make a huge difference to some people.
I said that it super-helps Mexico, but that because of the specific situations in both regions, we should not anticipate getting anything like their results.
You could also cut off gas and water lines, so it would probably prevent a lot of damage due fire or flooding.
(normally on that day of the week I would have been on the lower part of the freeway that collapsed, went into work a day early that week because of the possible World Series traffic)
In general, some big water jugs that you periodically empty and refill are probably the better bet.
But don't you have to replace the water every 6 months? That's gonna be a huge chore, to do for the next 50 years. Is there an easier way?
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/15/world/science-h...
With the exception of '93-'98, I've experienced every event in the Bay Area since 1971.
Many local water systems are reinforced against earthquake damage. It's really the loss of electricity and gas leaks that are the problem.
That said, you should always have drinking and non-drinking water on hand that will last a few days. If you're smart, own some coolers and keep ice packs on hand to preserve your food. There are more cases than just natural disasters, when that could come in handy.
Even Loma Prieta only caused loss of power and/or gas in a few select areas, mostly the areas that got wrecked, where there were bigger problems to worry about. The epicenter was West of Gilroy, but there was no significant damage South of Oakland and SF. That's 90 miles away from the epicenter.
There are only a few really dangerous faults running through the area. If you're near one, you should seriously prepare and have safety plans. The East Bay from Hayward to El Cerrito or so, for instance, is really dangerous. The Greater San Jose is pretty tame.
That's my take, at least.
googling gives some results of scientific papers that would say this is the way its done.
Having lived through Northridge in '94, I really hope he succeeds before it happens.
Martian colonies and mind uploading are unlikely to be ready by the time the Big One comes.
The big Silicon Valley companies are all huge multinationals at this point, more powerful (and safer) than many nation-states. I'm not even sure a worldwide nuclear war would take Google offline, although it would likely kill 90%+ of its customer base.
All the major power generation systems in the US and Europe that Google needs to operate, would likely be taken down. They're well known and those would all be intentionally targeted. Google as a shell of its former self might stay up briefly, that wouldn't last long outside of some stray regions. Further, they'd have those stray regions severed by local authorities who would divert the critical power to more important uses (literally keeping people alive). Any resistance by Google at that redirect of their power use would be met by military equivalent force.
A new e-mail appears in my inbox explaining that zombies have invaded Georgia and are trying to eat the brains of the data-center technicians there. The zombies have severed the network connections to the data center. No network traffic is going in or out. Lastly, the e-mail points out that this is part of a DiRT exercise and no actual technicians have had their brains eaten, but the network connections really have been disabled.
Like maybe safer than Uruguay? Not the US.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16590441
(The actual wording on the e-mail is usually far more colorful, and usually involves a zombie apocalypse. Mountain View employees aren't just dead, they're undead.)
I think the assumption is that if the event actually did involve a danger to life & limb, response would be in the hands of Google Physical Security, local first responders, CalFire, FEMA, etc. Those organizations all do drill for rescuing people and treating injured, and will be in a much better position to coordinate responses than Google ops people.
pretty sure both the hayward and the san andreas faults are not capable of this sort of destruction.
sounds more like a dark nihilistic adolescent fantasy.
There are a number of other scenarios that could conceivably take out all Bay Area offices: nuclear strikes on SF + Moffett Field, wildfires in the Diablo Range that sever all communications, secession of California and following military blockade, large scale protests or civil unrest that do the same, etc. Might as well protect against all of them rather than special-casing earthquakes.
It's basically the unspoken reason for Amazon HQ2, isn't it?
What precision is their output?
72h before big quake they start buying put options for insurance companies and firms most affected.
Rooting for anyone who actually does manage to do it though.
Long story short: a data center might be a good place to be in a disaster.
Also, remember that emergency kits include perishable items. Keep an eye on those, and remember to rotate your supplies.
That way you don't end up with 100 pounds of 10-year-old beans, rice, and MREs. YMMV if you're planning for SHTF/TEOTWAKI rather than a big earthquake.
I live in a new construction home with a post-tensioned slab foundation about 4 miles from the Hayward fault -- in a vertical line straight down.
How worried should I be?
Building codes for new construction do most of the obvious now, the walls are tied to the foundation, there are shear panels.
5 to 15 stories is the worst height range, but shorter buildings can be bad if they're very asymmetric, like one with a parking under a two story appt, with one shear wall and poles for gravity support.
otoh, in a big enough earthquake, anything will be damaged.
I've heard that there is shockingly little consistency with retrofit companies and the work they do, and that the inspections aren't really great for those things, but I know next to nothing about making sure one's home is properly fitted.
An easy thing to check is the hot water tank. If it's not well strapped to studs, then I can't imagine anything else has been done. If it has, then at least you know that has been done, it it doesn't really tell you anything else.
I know when I was selling my house in Wa, that was one of the things the inspector looked for, so it's highly probable that it's been done, as its quick and easy.
Inspections are the only way to know for sure, but it can be invasive to get into the walls enough to see.
The foundation is slightly raised on post and pier with no sheering panels or bolts in the posts that I can see, but the exterior walls look like they may be bolted to concrete the foundation perimeter.
Any tips on making sure a retrofit company is legit? My biggest concern is I'd heard that the inspections for getting a retrofit aren't super consistent or thorough, which is a huge concern.
For facts, the USGS posts the best scientific evaluation of fault frequency. Here's the one for the Bay Area [1]. Summary is that in the next 30 years, there is a 98% chance of >= 6.0 (meh), 72% chance of >= 6.7 (ouch), 51% chance of >= 7.1 (Loma Prieta class), and 20% chance of >= 7.5 (Great SF Earthquake class). The fact sheet goes into detail on the likelihood of earthquakes on each fault.
[1] PDF https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2016/3020/fs20163020.pdf
I did have the unpleasant experience of replacing my water cache and finding that one of the barrels had been leaking into one of the dry goods boxes. That was a gooey icky mess. And it reminded me to be more vigilant about rotating supplies.
Still, when it hits, I expect a lot of chaos.
It's how it's done with avalanches: you start them before they get too big and dangerous.
Look up the research around hydraulic fracturing (specifically, waste water injection).
It appears that there isn't much consensus around whether or not this is beneficial.
A month or two ago there was an earthquake epicentered a 5 minute walk from my house. It shook my house and wobbled my walls and I thought for sure it was finally the big one. I find out the next day that it was only around a 4.0. It's hard to imagine what the epicenter of a 7.0 (>30k times as powerful) would feel like.
More than one window shattered, and our well (I lived in a remote area) actually was stressed so that it collapsed. We were lucky we only lost power for a week. People further up in the mountains didn't have it for over a month.
During LP, my then-pregnant sister lived in Aptos less than one mile from the epicenter. They were getting meaningful aftershocks by the dozens through the evening.
The surface waves were amazing directional. I was at work when it hit, and we had those suspended, noise-absorbing foam panels in the ceiling... and you could see the rippling of the surface wave propagate along the ceiling.
Those bookshelves/cabinets, dressers and other tallish rectangular objects that were perpendicular to the wave fell over; those parallel to it tended to be fine.
Almost everywhere along El Camino from Menlo to the Sunnyvale border had power outages, with one exception: a half-block of El Camino just "north" of Grant. Yet that half-block just happened to have a gas station and a 24-hour restaurant (where Los Charros is now) that remained up and running throughout.