Most
places on earth have cities that are really, really old. Most places. The reason for this is generally along the lines of it’s a good
place to live, good resources, and there’s no horrible catastrophes looming
ominously over the horizon. In general
terms once some almighty act of nature destroys all you hold dear the
hollow-eyed survivors to want to rebuild elsewhere.
Not in
North America. Here we build wherever
the heck we want to and dang the consequences.
Here are a few inevitable disasters that are going to happen (and in
some cases already have happened). Not
probably happen, going to.
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#5 Anchorage, AK |
Anchorage,
AK is in the far north. I won’t explain
exactly where because most of you don’t care.
It’s up north where men are men and women are Sarah Palin.
No
matter what you think of her, your governor will never be this awesome.
Oh, and
it’s friggin cold.
So…what’s
the problem?
Earthquake…fire…tsunami…
Just like
San Francisco, Anchorage is built on and near a series of major fault
lines. But unlike San Francisco
Anchorage is built on glacial silt and is within sight of active
volcanoes. Just a few miles out in the
inlet you’ll find the fault line that creates the Aleutian Islands
(which is so long that if stretched out they would go from Canada clear into
southern Mexico). There are 57 volcanoes on
the island chain alone, not counting the ones on the mainland.
Here we’re
dealing with gold rush quality housing here.
Get it up and move on just like an elderly man at a whorehouse.
Too
soon?
Are you
sure?
Well, it
already happened. On Good Friday in
1964 people were sitting around doing whatever people do to celebrate Good
Friday. At 5:36 all hell broke
loose. The first earthquake over 9.0 on
the Richter scale ever recorded hit. As
anyone who’s ever sat through an earthquake knows, 10 seconds of earthquake
feels like 10 minutes.
This one
lasted five and half testicle-shriveling minutes. I’m guessing by the end there were few
atheists left in Anchorage, and God was already tired of the new recruits
whining. Due to the fact Anchorage is
basically built on glacial silt, it's especially prone to a nasty little
earth-secret called soil
liquefaction. This means that during an earthquake the soil begins
behaving as a liquid instead of a solid causing things to literally sink into
the ground. The Turnagain neighborhood of west Anchorage was
destroyed, with entire houses being eaten by the earth like a fat kid with
stick of butter.
Grandpa
Walton never had a chance
And just
because things are always bigger in Alaska, this also caused a huge
tsunami. The famous Indian Ocean
tsunami was 35 feet high. The Good
Friday tsunami was 150 feet high. It was so large it killed people in California, Oregon, Hawaii,
and it eventually hit Antarctica (take that south pole!). This tsunami wiped entire villages off the
map and killed at least 131 people. The
earthquake even sank boats in, I kid you not, Louisiana.
Oh, and speaking of Louisiana...
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#4 New Orleans, LA |
No sentence
containing the words “North America” and “disaster” can exist without the words
“New Orleans” in there somewhere. New
Orleans is a city of half a million people built on the delta of the
Mississippi river. Translation: it’s
built on mud.
So…what’s
the problem?
Flood…hurricane…sinking
Deltas tend
to rebuild themselves as the river dumps more crap when they enter the
ocean. However, since New Orleans is
built on the delta this can no longer happen.
Since water is being pumped out of the ground and the soil is naturally
settling, this means New Orleans is sinking,
and large portions of it that used to be above sea level are now below it. This requires levies to be built to protect
the city from both the ocean on one side and Lake Pontchartrain on the other.
Oh, and
it’s totally in hurricane alley.
Hurricanes turn in mid air when they
spot New Orleans.
The biggest destructive force of a hurricane is not the wind but rather the storm surge, which is a
huge bulge of water the storm pushes up.
This nasty thought combined with fact that 51% of New Orleans is below
sea level on a nice day, means we can all be glad those quality Federally built
levies never, ever under any circumstances fail.
Oh crap…
Are you
sure?
Well,
unless you haven’t watched the news since the 90’s you probably know that
Hurricane Katrina came stomping through New Orleans. The levies failed and 80% of the city flooded, killing over 1500
people.
But we
don’t to worry about that happening again because now we know that we
need to fix the problems so it won’t happen next time. In fact, the Army Corps of Engineers is
currently working on that right now.
Except that
the levee repairs are costing triple
what was budgeted and the repairs themselves aren’t fixing the
problem.
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#3 Los Angelese, CA |
Los Angeles
is the largest city on the west coast and the 2nd largest city in
the United States with a population of 3.8 million people.
Oh, and it’s totally a ticking time bomb.
So…what’s
the problem?
Earthquakes…tsunami…fire…mud
slides…(geez…what else is there?)
Los
Angeles, like most of our list, is on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Not being content with that it also
straddles the San
Andreas Fault. The San Andreas is
about 800 miles long and is the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the
North American Plate. This is the
location of over 10,000 earthquakes per year.
That’s a
clue, people.
In addition
the city is located in a basin that is protected from sliding down into the
middle by all the shrubbery. At least
it was until people started building there.
And the shrubbery that’s left started burning up. These fires have the
potential of destabilizing the bluffs and causing a massive threat of sending
them crashing down
into the Los Angeles basin.
Are you
sure?
Los Angeles
has already been the site of major earthquakes in 1933, 1987, 1994 and 2009,
and it’s been the site of literally thousands of small ones.
As if all
that crap wasn’t enough, Los Angeles is also prone to Blind Thrust
Earthquakes, which are massive earthquake that happen along a thrust fault
with no visible signs on the surface.
This means the next ‘big one’ might come from a fault we haven’t even
found yet. It’s the geological
equivalent of an ambush.
Geology
is the only deadly threat that's cute
Oh, and like everywhere else on the list it’s
prone to tsunamis crashing
in from the ocean. And given that the
same cataclysmic earthquake could trigger all of these at the same time,
Los Angeles is pretty much screwed in every conceivable way.
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#2 Tacoma, WA |
Tacoma, WA
is a neato little down situated south of Seattle and wrapped around Puget
Sound. It’s the third largest city in
Washington State.
And it
could be completely wiped out literally before you finish reading this
sentence.
So…what’s
the problem?
Earthquake…lahar
flows…tsunami…
Tacoma is
built within sight of several beautiful volcanoes, including Mt. Rainier. Mt Rainier,
if picked up and set next to K2 would be taller (K2 cheats by starting at a
higher elevation). It’s also the most
glaciated peak in the United States outside of Alaska. And to add to the coolness/horror meter it’s
also an active friggin’ volcano.
In
the dictionary under the word “looming”
When
volcanoes who have a lot of ice on them and start smoldering, they have a terrible
(or awesome, depending on how far away you are and how little you value human
life) phenomenon called Lahar flows. It’s a mud flow that can be many feet deep
and travel 30 mph. They can also be over
210* F. It’s like being run down by a
fiery freight train from hell.
Tacoma is built on a lahar flow.
Are you
sure?
Lahars usually accompany volcanic eruptions, but they can happen pretty much anytime they dang well feel like it. Mt. Rainier is especially prone to lahars due to its size, massive glaciers, and the fact that it’s way overdue for an eruption. There were 7 recorded eruptions of Rainier during the 1800’s. There hasn’t been one since. If you’re an optimist you would believe that means we’re safe forever. If you’re a pessimist (or a geologist) it means everyone in the city is soon going to die a horrible, burny, muddy death.
like Woodstock
only without the stoned hippies
Oh, and
don’t forget a nice tsunami coming in from the ocean as a final screw you from
nature.
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#1 San Francisco, CA |
Everyone
knows the line about leaving your heart in San Francisco, but few of us listen
to the next verse where it explains that your heart will be charred, buried and
drowned there too. San Francisco was
built where it was because at one time the Spanish thought it would be a swell
place to put large guns to shoot at their enemies so they could hold on to the
area. Well…that didn’t work out so well
(USA! USA!).
Then the
gold rush happened and people started moving there en masse. So quickly that they actually started
building houses in the desert and transporting them in to the city because they
couldn’t build them in town fast enough.
Back then ‘fire code’ consisted of a vague suggestion that you not building
your house directly on a working fire.
Other than that, dude…whatever.
Because of
this, the houses weren’t exactly built up to modern fire codes. This translates into they burn really,
really easily.
So…what’s
the threat?
Earthquake…fire…tsunami
San
Francisco is built on major fault lines.
Five of them to be exact, including the dreaded San Andreas. To help with this little problem it’s also
built on a series of very, very steep hills.
Those things coupled with the fact the houses are basically just wooden
frames containing highly flammable homosexuals, you couldn’t get a more looming
disaster.
How do
you know?
Again, it
already happened once. In 1906 there
was a massive earthquake (estimated at 7.8 on the Richter scale) right as
everyone was cooking dinner over fire in their nice flammable homes. This caused hundreds of small fires to erupt
all over the city, and because the water to fight the fires was in underground
pipes that broke in the earthquake, the firefighters could do little more than
watch the city be reduced to smoking rubble.
Rather than
deciding to build the city in a safer location, they decided to push the charred corpses aside and build right back on top
of the still smoldering wreckage. Seriously.
They
even passed an ordinance officially calling the catastrophe a ‘Fire’ and
prohibiting anyone from calling it an earthquake so as not to scare people away
from…well…the earthquakes.
A little paint and it'll be good as new
As if the
earthquakes and fires aren’t enough to scare people away, San Francisco is on
San Francisco Bay. Water + earthquakes
= tsunami. Yes, the area is prone to
tsunamis too to wash away what’s left of the charred ruins. This is just nature’s way of saying it dude.
don’t. build. here..
The only
horseman of the apocalypse not showing up to this orgy of carnage is war, and
that’s just because he hasn’t felt welcome there since the 60s.
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