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Could a massive CA/WA earthquake severely damage the Internet?

2 points by InquilineKea ↗ HN
We know that both regions have survived earthquakes in the past. But both regions are quite vulnerable to earthquakes far more powerful than any seen in the last 100 years.<p>For the Los Angeles region, see this: http://news.discovery.com/earth/los-angeles-earthquake-overdue.html<p>For the Seattle area, see this: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/09/seattle-earthquake-fault.html

3 comments

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russell
There are only a few places on earth where you can get a 9 earthquake. Seattle is one, but CA is not., probably an 8ish is about the worst. The internet infrastructure is relatively immune to earthquakes, by weight mostly cables and UPS's and it's quite widely distributed. In spite of appearances earthquake damage can be quite localized. I lived about a dozen miles noth of Loma Prieta and suffered no damage. SF and Oakland were another 30 miles to the north.

The internet was designed to survive all kinds of damage. Larger companies usually have multiple data centers and colos so they can continue operations.

When the big one hits SF, I will probably have to walk a dozen miles to my car. Then I drive home 200 miles south, plug in to the Internet, and see what I just went through.

EDIT: I expect to survive because of tough CA building codes and decades of seismic retrofits. My homes survived two 6.5-7.0 earthquakes, because one of the first things I did after moving in was to make sure of the basics, like foundation ties and reinforced cripple walls.

InquilineKea
Oh, good reply. What about server racks though? An entire array of hard drives could fall down and get destroyed. And many laptops will also fall down from the quake
kovar
I spent quite a few years building out server rooms, large and small, in California. They were all braced against seismic activity, even when installed in closets. All the critical equipment was mounted on rails and bolted in. Yes, there were the occasional towers sitting on shelves and rack mount systems that were not secured against sliding out, but in general, the server rooms were the least likely places to get hit by falling equipment.