The California Correction (Listen to what Lucy doesn’t say)
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception”
- Carl Sagan
Dr. Lucy Jones, the noted Caltech, USGS seismologist and famed consultant to the media on our earthquake issues here in Southern California, has made consistent efforts in warning the public about the coming megaquake that will happen, whether we like it or not, here in Southern California. But what she does not talk about other than the immediate 2,000 deaths and 8,000 structures lost, is the aftermath. My best guess is the psychology of talking about the societal chaos that follows a mega quake in Southern California goes beyond what is possible to describe, at least verbally, from one’s imagination. That, and it is beyond any apocalyptic vision screenwriters can conjure, and Covid is already here.
However, she does mention the reality of no water in Southern California for a year or more, let alone no electricity or internet for three months in most areas. I suspect in saying that — it was her way of declaring: prepare yourself people. She does mention the best advice, which is have enough food and water wherever you reside for at least two weeks. The reason why she says two weeks is because that’s how long it will take, at the very least, for the federal and state authorities to organize some sort of food and water distribution for the general public, and just as importantly, organize the National Guard to hopefully maintain some sort of order.
Yet if very few were listening before to Lucy before, no one the last nine months with COVID-19, the protests/riots, and the political chaos that has overrun our country, has even whispered the word earthquake. Everyone seems to have forgot who’s really in control. There are interesting discussions on the Earth’s weariness of humans, that human-induced climate change and a sudden highly contagious virus is her way of thinning the pesky herd of humans.
Anyone familiar with the Gaia Theory https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf and Dr. Lovelock’s once thought “far flung” theories in the Earth’s ability to defend itself, may be thinking — here we go. Lest you doubt the Earth’s self-defense abilities, research the natural disasters of history. Save the planet??? No, save ourselves is far more appropriate. As George Carlin famously said: “The planet is fine, the people are fucked. She’s been through a lot worse than us, and long after we’re gone…we were just another evolutionary cul de sac, just another failed mutation. The Earth has been here 4.5 billion years, she is not going anywhere. We are.” But I digress.
A large hurricane is devastating, however, it is something that people can recover from relatively quickly, as with a tornado. Yet outside of Alaska, as a country we have not experienced a megaquake in modern times, particularly in a major city. The southern San Andreas is more than 360 years overdue for a quake of at least a 7.8 magnitude, which would be the greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States. They say as California goes, so goes the country, and a disaster like that would financially bring down the entire country within 60 days. Just the real estate mortgages alone on homes from San Diego to Malibu — those would go to a value of zero. Trillions in debt, evaporated in 3.5 minutes. Think not?
While it is fairly impossible to imagine a seismic rolling carpet with waves 15 feet tall undulating up the 10 Freeway from Indio and upwards through the LA basin, like a giant King Kong whip-shaking one end of a 90-mile wide x 300-mile long carpet — try to, for 3.5 minutes. Watch the 3D models on the USGS site: https://escweb.wr.usgs.gov/content/learn/topics/shakingsimulations/shakeout/ShakeOut_mapview.mp4 Even those can’t really show the catastrophic structural effect. But it is the post-quake environment that will take the biggest human toll.
No police, fire or EMT services will be able to respond because they will have to take care of their own families. Remember, there will be no water for anyone, especially after all reserves are used to put out the ensuing firestorms from broken gas lines. When people ultimately learn to listen to AM radio, they will learn that all the major transportation corridors including the Cajon and Tejon passes, have failed in the quake. Food transportation will come to a grinding halt. The National Guard will come in, but they will be overwhelmed by a population that has grown to 30 million in the last 20 years. Keeping calm and peace among a starving population that size with no water will be an impossible task.
The Exodus and Correction
There is already an exodus of people leaving the state that either cannot afford the cost of living here and/or are tired of the taxes, homelessness, violence, and overcrowding. But after the quake, the exodus will turn into more of a mass migration once the roadways are fixed. And while that may sound disastrous to people who subsist on tourism, over the long-haul people will come back and property values will return because — let’s face it — people love the weather. But there will be a few years of aftershocks, both physically and literally. I guess the deeper psychological question becomes: is this the only salvation option for California? Is it really purification through fire? It does appear that California is on a downward spiral path that leads indeed to a very dark place. When you see Governor Newsome lecture about how California is still the tech giant of the world, the number one agricultural producer in the country, he says those things because he must. What cannot be ignored is that the state seems to have lost control of its destiny, and the politicians don’t mind as long as their pockets are filled.
So on this California Shakeout Day, remember that you live on the Pacific Plate, which moves north past the North American plate at about 3 inches a year, yet it’s supposed to move at about three times that rate. https://www.livescience.com/45294-san-andreas-fault.html For so literally for hundreds of years the massive springs have been building on these locked sections of the two plates, without any relief. No one but Mr. Gates and virologists knew Covid-19 was coming, yet we all know this is coming.
My family has been in SoCal since just after the Civil War, and coincidentally, just after the Tejon Megaquake of 1857 on the Grapevine. No one has experienced one since, and we tend to not believe science until it happens to us directly. Do yourself a solid and get two weeks’ worth of water and food and a way to cook it. Give those who we honor as first responders a chance to help us. To learn more about the Southern San Andreas and the forces that form it, please read Juilan Lozo’s excellent paper on the case for a joint rupture of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/3/e1500621
And understand what the Durmid Ladder is — if it sounds like a Sci-Fi nightmare waiting to happen — it is indeed that:
Spend a day at Costco and Home Depot and load up, its worth it.
