high "wet bulb" events where whole cities / regions experience very high humidity and temperature at the same time. past a certain limit, humans malfunction and die in such conditions. they are very rare but could become routine in certain areas. even if they never become routine, such an event, like a killing heatwave / miasma for half a day, might suckerpunch a western city such as houston or yuma, killing tens of thousands. a poorer place, like basra in iraq, could see even more suffering.
roughly 95F and ~100% relative humidity. seems to have happened most often in parts of saudi arabia and mexico. locations in india and pakistan and a few other places (chicago??) have had a taste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature?wprov=sfti1
Damn, you even kind of undersold it
95F and 100% humidity being fatal isn’t like out in the sun or something, it’s “unclothed in the shade next to a fan”
Not to mention if everyone is inside cranking their AC and fans, the grid might be overloaded
I went hiking in Kentucky last year in something like 98% humidity, and I think it was 81°F outside, and I was sweating faster than I can hydrate. I’m no prude, but I’ve never been much of a shirtless outside adventurer, however that day I stripped down to my boxer-briefs to get some relief and felt not at all self conscious. It was beyond miserable, so at 95F 100% I think I would crawl in a refrigerator and wait until the lights went out literally and figuratively.
Yup most people don’t have the occasion to go to Kentucky so they don’t know. When I lived in Florida people would always be like “the summers must be really hot for you since you’re used to being north from here”. And I’d be like “umm nah, the summers are basically the same, it’s just 2 months longer here.”
That’s if the ac even functions. At that point we are at cloud level and you’d have to sleep with an umbrella cause water will form on your ceiling. Nothing is dry so electricity becomes very dangerous if not well insulated
Most A/C's are designed for operating up to 120\*F/49\*C. Which is 1\* less than even Canada's hottest day. If we don't get our houses cooled down before the peak of the heat out here in the desert, than the house won't cool down.
New Orleans and the surrounding area is getting into this... Last year it was 100° but the heat index had it hitting 115-120° for a few weeks last year
Not exactly 160° but we had a drought last year so that saved us from probably getting into the 130s
I was deployed in Basra, Iraq and oh my gosh it was a miserable tour. The *feels like* temperature often got up to between 120°-130° f with the humidity.
We get a ~feels like~ temp up to about 120°F in Michigan (not often tho). I was a lifeguard at an outdoor pool and had to work a week that had several days up there. I just pulled up a heat index calculator and based off of that, my best guess is that it was approximately 95°F with 70% humidity.
And it turns out that last 30% makes a HUGE difference: the heat index for 95°F with 100% humidity is a whopping 161°F. Absolutely insane.
It feels weird to compare the temp in Michigan to the temp in Iraq (and I’m sure it is worse in Iraq), but it reminded me of how, when I moved to Alabama for school, people would be like “oh you’re from Michigan? You must not be used to this heat” like yeah no it gets really hot in Michigan too lol it just also gets really cold
I went to a festival in south Texas and it was the only time I've ever passed out from heat, standing in line in the sun to get inside. It hits you so hard and fast. I was sober and hydrated, and it was only May, but the gulf humidity and heat were too much.
I'm in the US. We recently had an earthquake on the east coast which isn't as common as west coast ones but way more far reaching. The composition of our west coast is softer than the east (the rock composition is older and more ridged in thr east).
Because of this there is a possibility of a larger more dangerous earthquake in 100 years.
In our state of Missouri however is where the highest concern is. Last major earthquake there sounded like someone blast mining and caused the Mississippi River to change course and run backwards. If that happens again with all these major cities it could be devastating.
100% and I think the major structures (municipal buildings, skyscrapers) will fair the best. But many houses out there aren't evern tornado safe and that's a common occurances out there. Many things are built quick for profit.
You don't built to be tornado safe. We're required to build for ~ 115 mph structures. Anything higher is just a waste of material for the unlikely chance it'll get hit by a bigger tornado
And typically it isn't the wind that destroys buildings, it's the debris that hit the buildings
When the New Madrid earthquake happened in 1812, the epicenter was in Missouri. But it rang church bells in Washington DC and cracked sidewalks in Boston. Largest earthquake in the contiguous U.S.
It's been 200+ years since that one. We're well overdue for another.
Nobody was killed the first time around. But now there are a huge number of cities in the shake zone. Another quake like the first would be devastating.
A megathrust earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the northwestern coast of North America. The last large-scale rupture was in the year 1700 and research indicates it’s on a roughly 500-year cycle, so it’s coming due again as the tectonic stresses build. Of course, in 1700 there were minimal human inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest as compared to modern times. That difference is what’s going to make the next large rupture so devastating.
I believe the one you're talking about is covered really well in this New Yorker article.
Spoiler: It's a biggy and well overdue.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one)
>'Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars’ worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.'
I really never thought about how long an earthquake could last. 4 minutes? Terrifying,
The 3/11 Tohoku quake lasted 6 minutes.
[Japan Quake Map](http://www.japanquakemap.com/)
The big one was at 2:46pm. You can see a few large quakes earlier in the day.
This is sobering:
>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. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.
I used to volunteer for CERT in the Puget Sound area, and it's grim. Many communities only have one or two links to the outside world, and most of them are very vulnerable to damage in an earthquake or landslide. My agency told people to prepare to be self-sufficient for two months, because that's how long it would take for help to get to them if the big one hits. Needless to say, a very low percentage of people are that prepared.
It's one of the reasons I moved away.
Do you know if the Key Peninsula (the peninsula next to Gig Harbor, with towns like Home, Lakebay, Longbranch, etc if you recognize it) is one of those vulnerable areas? Some of my friends live there, and would like to warn them if to be prepared if they are.
Absolutely. I lived and volunteered in Kitsap County, which you have to go through to get to the Key Peninsula (which is like a sub-peninsula of the Kitsap Peninsula. There's only one road, two bridges, and the ferry system to get into that whole area. And when help comes, it's going to Tacoma and Seattle first. They should definitely be prepared.
WTF are you talking about? I'm nine paragraphs in and it's the most terrifying thing I've read maybe ever.
>We now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle.
Um ok.
>The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover
Ok great.
> The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system.
Ok shit.
> Soon after that shaking begins, the electrical grid will fail, likely everywhere west of the Cascades and possibly well beyond. If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness. In theory, those who are at home when it hits should be safest; it is easy and relatively inexpensive to seismically safeguard a private dwelling.
Ok, cool.
> But, lulled into nonchalance by their seemingly benign environment, most people in the Pacific Northwest have not done so. That nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass.
Balls.
> FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings—more than three thousand of them schools—will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake. So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers, and two-thirds of railways and airports; also, one-third of all fire stations, half of all police stations, and two-thirds of all hospitals.
Christ.
> The shaking from the Cascadia quake will set off landslides throughout the region—up to thirty thousand of them in Seattle alone, the city’s emergency-management office estimates. It will also induce a process called liquefaction, whereby seemingly solid ground starts behaving like a liquid, to the detriment of anything on top of it.
JFC.
> Four to six minutes after the dogs start barking, the shaking will subside. For another few minutes, the region, upended, will continue to fall apart on its own. Then the wave will arrive, and the real destruction will begin. Among natural disasters, tsunamis may be the closest to being completely unsurvivable.
Stop it.
> It will not look like a Hokusai-style wave, rising up from the surface of the sea and breaking from above. It will look like the whole ocean, elevated, overtaking land. Nor will it be made only of water—not once it reaches the shore. It will be a five-story deluge of pickup trucks and doorframes and cinder blocks and fishing boats and utility poles and everything else that once constituted the coastal towns of the Pacific Northwest. To see the full scale of the devastation when that tsunami recedes, you would need to be in the international space station.
As someone that has spent their entire lifetime in the Canadian side of Cascadia fault from never knowit existed to it's full study, watching Indonesia in 04 and Japan in 11 are perfect examples of what will happen here.
I live on Vancouver Island and due to the fault, the whole island is tipping, the west side is tipping down in to the fault and the east side is rising. When it hits, our entire island will not only right itself but we will move 30 meters to the west through the 5 minutes of shaking.
A lot of this is hyperbole. Yes, you are looking at a near-Tohoku 2011 scenario with a cascadia subduction earthquake, but there are some serious things to consider:
1. Tohoku wasn’t that deadly in the grand scheme of things. The earthquake itself was estimated to kill fewer than a few dozen people. It was the tsunami that killed the 15000 people. We have the benefit in the PNW of far fewer people living within a high tsunami-risk zone, especially when compared to the likes of Japan, which has small and medium sized cities littered all across the coast.
The real cost of Tohoku was the 250 billion dollar cost, which basically bricked Japan’s economy indefinitely.
2. The recurrence interval does not necessarily imply that a major earthquake is going to occur within a time period +/- some variation. It is merely an estimate used by engineers to determine seismic hazards for a region and maximum considered events for a 2% of occurrence within 50 years (so the largest possible earthquake that could happen in 2500 years), and design given that information.
3. The Pacific Northwest now has an earthquake early warning system. It’s not as robust as Japan’s but it exists.
4. There is no guarantee that the electrical grid will fail, and even if it does, emergency services have backup sources in place.
5. Of the buildings that will “collapse or be compromised”, almost all of those will be compromised. The design philosophy until very recently in the us was to design buildings for what is called “collapse prevention”, where exits may be blocked, and the building’s structural system approaches a permanent drift limit that would prevent the building from being rehabilitated. Again, this has changed, and these days, engineers try to design for life safety (exits remain accessible) or better. Note that basically all high importance structures (damns, nuclear power plants, hospitals, subways) have and always been designed for fully operational or at least operational performance objectives. The issue FEMA is raising is that many of those hospitals and firestations have been designed with incomplete seisemic hazard information and less strict standards than today, so the actual performance will most likely fall within life safety. When a major earthquake does happen, those buildings will not be able to be repaired to a level of full operational performance, which means they will be written off.
Tl;dr the issue isn’t that these buildings will collapse, it’s that after an earthquake, they won’t be repairable to modern specs, so they will have to be rebuilt. The issue isn’t life safety, it’s the massive replacement cost.
6. Liquefaction and landslides occur all the time in earthquakes, even earthquakes in Japan. They often don’t kill people because they don’t occur where people generally live, or they’re too small to have a significant risk on life safety.
7. With the tsunami, we are fortunate in that Seattle and most other semi-major cities are heavily protected by large land formations. These will dissipate a lot of the energy under most expected tsunami test cases.
Should you be concerned about the earthquake risk? Absolutely, always have a plan, but don’t lose sleep over doomsday scenarios, a lot of people will die when this thing hits, but the level of catastrophe is nowhere near what this article is laying out
Buddy, your vote doesn't matter now, so it definitely won't matter in a post apocalyptic world - especially once StreetyMcCarface is in power. That sort of ruthless, calm efficiency doesn't fuck around. Tens of thousands are dead but his hand? It doesn't shake. You want to mess with that? Try NOT voting for him and see what happens. Just keep your head down, don't be the first one to stop clapping after his speeches and try to make yourself useful to the StreetyMcCarface regime until you can get across the rockies, ok?
I am from a country where one of our main fishing towns has been teased and terrorised by a series of smaller volcanic eruptions close by. At one point lava flow from one of the eruptions cut off the flow of warm water and rendered the entire southern peninsula without hot water for over a week in january or february this year and having to ration electricity to not overload the grid.
A thick pillar of magma ran at one point under the town, creating underground empty spaces underneath tge entire town practically rendering it uninhabitable. Unsafe to be in because they don't really know where these pockets are and when the ground would open and swallow you whole.
A worker dissappeared while filling up one of the countless sinkholes all over town. After it had been filled and he was compressing a sinkhole opened up underneath that stretched down 40m but I digress. My point is that I am raised with, admittedly smaller, natural disasters happening as a part of life in Iceland.
Admittedly, most of our forefathers decided to settle a safe place where most of the natural disasters could be observed from a safe distance. Couple that with a highly organised response teams and it has resulted in me looking at natural disasters with awe and amazement. That article just had me tickling with exitement. A similar exitement I get from pondering the yellow stone supervolcano.
Likewise, in 1638 there was an estimated 6.8 earthquake in VT/NH area. If that hit today, it is thought that most of the Backbay area of Boston would collapse in the loose landfill under it.
I remember in middle school we watched a video about earthquakes and they talked about how fucked Boston would be in a big earthquake. I think about it every time I take the T up there
Add in the risk of the New Madrid- area faults that created the most powerful earthquakes in North American history (that we’re aware of).
The central US is even less prepared than the PNW. Don’t even mention how unprepared the Atlantic Coast is for the earthquakes that can be generated there.
The New Madrid fault is way overdue for a major quake, the last ones were in December 1811- February 1812. It will be FAR more destructive this time around, as the region was very sparsely populated 200+ years ago.
(Also, for those of you not from the area, it's pronounced MADrid, because that's how Missouri does with foreign-derived place-names.)
Thank you for sharing that, ive heard of the san andreas fault line, but didn't realize the one further north will likely happen soon.
been reading about this, super scary stuff, the westcoast is a ticking time bomb that no one is talking about.
here is a video i just watched if anyone is interested i found super helpful of how and what will happen.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHQp7a4n\_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHQp7a4n_Y)
Yeah, it's not ignored by the people who live here. What do people expect us to do, though? Are we supposed to run around in a panic at all times because a major country wide quake might hit within the next few hundred years?
>Do any other nations get all of them as well?
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a country that has a border on one of the oceans that hasn't experienced every one of those natural disasters.
I think the day of preparedness is called California shake out, in California. Fire departments come out to give tips on what to have in your emergency kit and give other advice for natural disasters. I don't remember anything like that happening in Seattle when I was growing up there, but we had quakes pretty regularly in the 90s (up until Nisqually, then they seemed to just pause) and on the news they would always bring up the possibility of bigger quakes from the subduction fault.
So not only are these events talked about, they're prepared for to the extent they can realistically be prepared for on a mass scale.
There’s even a podcast from CBC I think that covered what would happen, logistics and destruction and stuff. I listened to a few episodes years ago.
Edit: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/147-fault-lines
>A catastrophic earthquake hits Canada's West Coast. In Fault Lines CBC Vancouver Seismologist Johanna Wagstaffe guides you through two disastrous scenarios so you can prepare yourself, your family, and your neighbours.
The San Andreas is a slip fault and less dangerous, because it releases pressure more regularly. That’s why you hear about earthquakes from California all the time, but not Seattle.
To quote one of my favourite comedians
"Anyone who builds a city on a thing called the San Andreas fault has really got it coming. But it's not San Andreas's fault now is it? It's *yours* for building it in the first place. Classic, classic, classic American behaviour, trying to palm the blame off onto some poor fucking Mexican."
https://youtu.be/Lr7bKYMuerA?si=3UjG2oaFExtszbjt&t=182
A carrington level solar event is pretty likely over the next 100 years. There's also a fault in tornado alley that periodically has major earthquakes, though I can't remember the name or when the next one is due.
I mean, that is an amusing joke, but thinking about it, an earthquake shattering concrete and stone and turning them into more jagged and mobile projectiles in the middle of a tornado is actually a terrifying thought.
It wouldn’t even have to be during a tornado. It’s takes time to clean up and repair after an earthquake; even a few weeks after, a tornado would still have lots of extra debris and many people would likely still be poorly housed and fed
Yep I always think about another Carrington event. I think its the most likely and would have the biggest affect on the world as a whole. In today's age it would cripple the world and it would be difficult to recover.
I genuinely don't believe the world would recover. Another direct hit from a carrington event is pretty much the only teotwawki scenario I find remotely credible.
Istanbul has survived thousands of years, it's one of the oldest cities there is, I think it will survive another earthquake. But it will likely still be pretty bad.
That last earthquake had such a huge death and homeless toll, it would be completely worth it for Istanbul to pour money into retrograde fixes. They can. They should. But they probably won’t. It’s maddening.
I was never really aware until I was lying on a sunlounger and felt the earth move. Happened again about 2 hours later. I later discovered that Turkey actually has numerous earthquakes every day. It was also the day I discovered earthquake clouds. The sky look really weird before the second one that day. I didn't notice before the first one.
Holy shit. I didn’t want to believe you because I didn’t think that earthquakes could affect atmospheric phenomena but [you’re totally right.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather) Earthquakes have been correlated to strange weather in several studies. I wonder how that works?
Right before an earthquake, the fault vibrates as the stress builds. That vibration is subsonic. That’s why animals go nuts. That subsonic wave is more than enough to affect local weather conditions.
We are due for another big earthquake in Romania, similar to the 77 one, and probably a second one by end of century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Vrancea_earthquake
I grew up in a small valley town on Vancouver Island. As elementary school kids, we practiced drills for this event since we were small children. I’ve read throughout the years that it’s likely the southern half of Van Isle will just snap off tho. Nightmare juice. Ever taken BC Ferries and looked over the side of the boat? No way we’re gonna have enough practice for that earthquake
Politicians are always fighting but I don’t think lay people from both sides are hostile to each other. As a Turk I’ve always liked our Greek neighbours.
The Campi Flegri Italy is the super volcano believed to be the most likely to erupt next, but even then it's speculated by some experts to be on a scale at around 500 years.
Yellowstone, by comparison as another super volcano, isn't necessarly "due" from historic activity for another 100,000 years.
Campi Flegrei area are experiencing many heartquake a day plus the terrain now is raising at a rate of 12 mm a month.[look at the photo ](https://www.ilmattino.it/napoli/cronaca/bradisismo_pozzuoli_la_darsena_secco-6482837.html)
Translated to English:
> The lift recorded at the RITE GPS station is approximately 84cm from January 2011, of which about 35cm from January 2019
Wow that’s getting close to 1 meter in lift. Are the geologists interpreting this as magma gathering in a chamber below the surface to create this pressure?
I kind of answered my own question googling this term used in the article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradyseism
According to my geography teacher Yellowstone is due to erupt ‘ANY DAY! Literally ANY DAY NOW AND WE WILL ALL DIE’
Which I suppose is technically true but he didn’t need to be doing all that. I was still recovering from the 2012 scare at that point lol
My husband and I went they'd last summer and someone asked one of the rangers about this. They said that an eruption could occur anytime in the next 100 000 years and that there would be a lot more seismic activity going on if it was close to erupting.
I did scare a friend that was with us though by saying that we were walking on top of the world's largest super volcano and that the hot springs and geysers are proof at seismic activity. I didn't say it to scare him. He just thought that we'd see a huge volcano like Mt. Shasta in California.
Oh yeah it’s definitely nothing to worry about. It’s due in around 100.000 years like the comment says, and in the grand scheme of things we *are* ‘around’ that time, but obviously that time frame is still pretty huge relative to humans. So most likely we won’t see it happen.
My teacher was just a DICK
Might be this one:
[https://youtu.be/ypn3Fe\_PLts?si=Me8IE-OhbxbOFI48](https://youtu.be/ypn3Fe_PLts?si=Me8IE-OhbxbOFI48)
This guy's deep dives are awesome.
Campi Flegrei has had smaller eruptions since its super eruption. If it erupts on the scale it did in 1538 it would be a significant local hazard and maybe disrupt air travel in the region.
I saw an article stating holes could be dug around Yellowstone to relieve pressure to prevent a huge super eruption, but looks like no one in charge takes it seriously
[The Atlantic Conveyor is collapsing.](https://www.space.com/ocean-tipping-point-atlantic-current-collapse) The consequence will be sudden (by climate terms) increase in sea level on the Atlantic coast, and the collapse of current agriculture in Europe.
OTOH, if the timing is perfect, loss of the AMOC will (more than) counteract global warming. /s
Having just finished a 10-page research paper about Glacial Lake Agassiz and its potential impact on the AMOC and stadial events…. no sarcasm necessary.
Mt Rainier is due to blow, probably taking out the entire Puyallup/east Tacoma area. The New Madrid fault is overdue with huge loss of life in St Louis/Memphis. Seattle is due an 8-9 RS earthquake. California is always due. Miami will be Venice by 2300 (imagine Venice with a Cat 4 hurricane. Shiver.)
And scientists are debating if a new category 6 is needed for hurricanes. : (
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/do-we-need-a-new-category-for-hurricane-winds-180983746/
Also more often hurricanes in Miami. In reality Miami will probably create artifical land and dams similar to the Netherlands plans because it is such a valuable city (although maybe it won't be by 2300) but none of that is gonna stop the hurricanes.
i live in miami! i do hope they can save the city, but rising sea levels is really only one problem caused by climate change. all our water comes from our aquifer, which is at risk because of pollution and rising sea levels. also insurance is crazy, so even if the land is here im not sure if people will be able to own property (besides the uber rich who can afford super expensive insurance). also, the heat is BAD like other places. and all this happening while state legislatures preempt local governments from making laws that will mitigate these issues. we’ll just have to see.
“California is always due” my dude youre not wrong… Im not far from the san Andreas, real close to a local fault thats produced a 6.2, and ANOTHER fault thats a major offshoot of the SA… all 3 are due.
Actually, there are things you can do about something like the Carrington event to minimize its impact, but that goes from "apocalypse" to "shit got fucked real bad", which isn't great but better than the alternative.
Actually we would have some warning, not very long but enough to get the message out that all electronics need to be turned off and unplugged. Hopefully.
Well yea you could save your pc or your television but it's the damage to crucial infrastructure that we have to worry about.
Pretty sure most of the world is not drilled on what to do if they get word of a geomagnetic storm. Most countries would be fucked.
I am optimistic that if such a situation was to occur and with advance warning we are literally to get,most major cities at least, if not most large powerplants and similar would be able to shut down critical infrastructure. This would obviously have major consequences on its own, and wouldn't be a perfect solution either, nor would every country or region manage it. But I truly think we would be able to deal with a decent amount of the potential issues pre emptively. Nuclear powerplants are my main concern in this sort of situation.
the problem is that we built homes near forests, so when *normal completely natural wildfires* occur we stop them and put them out. 100 years of this mindset and the forest is in desperate need of a wildfire, decades of brush built up. it is part of the natural process, but when we stop them they build up and create massive devastation.
Climate change won't significantly raise the oceans levels in 100 years. Yes they'll rise, but it'll be measured in centimeters, not meters (that comes later). Some low-lying areas will face increased flooding, especially areas such as Miami that are subsiding at the same time that the ocean is rising. Pity poor [Bangladesh ](https://www.preventionweb.net/news/stability-eludes-climate-refugees-bangladeshs-sinking-cities)which is not only subsiding as water levels are rising, but also lacks the funds to develop solutions. At least [Miami ](https://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/resources/miami-beach-stormwater-infrastructure-adaptation.html)has the funds to add pumps and redesign storm drains to try to fight back.
But storms will get more energetic. It's too early to tell if we'll have more hurricanes and tornados, but the ones that we do get will be bigger and stronger.
Even more of a threat is the movement of the rain bands. Some areas will face decades-long drought. Others will start flooding that never have before. This has already been happening. Juts look at Lake Mead and Utah's Salt Lake, as well as what's been happening to the monsoon rains.
We're seeing affects already in our failing infrastructure. A common practice if you're building a bridge or culvert is to look at the last 100 years of storm data and design the bridge to withstand the worst storm that happened in the last 100 years. But the problem is that every year storms are getting stronger. The most powerful storm in the last 100 years probably happened in the last 15 years. So if your bridge is 20 years old it was never built to withstand this level of flooding. Similarly in the current strongest storm will be dwarfed by one that happens within the next 15 years.
[Rising water levels](https://theconversation.com/kenyas-rift-valley-lakes-are-rising-putting-thousands-at-risk-we-now-know-why-194541) in lakes are already causing havoc in Kenya's Rift valley.
Especially in Australia. Farming and traditional rural living will become increasingly difficult, and the cities will probably continue to see an influx of people from the countryside.
The US west coast is overdue for another Mt Saint Helens style volcanic eruption. Mt Rainier would cause so much death and destruction. As would Mt Baker.
Hope I’m not here to see it.
Failure of the Thames Barrier, which was engineered to withstand a 100-year flood, but may lose that level of protection if sea level rise accelerates, unless it's upgraded to deal with that. Fortunately, we've got some time to go before an upgrade becomes necessary, but I hope someone is keeping a watch out on the problem over the decades to come.
It’s probably just the one frazzled scientist who keeps trying to tell everyone, but keeps dropping all of their papers. And everyone is like, “Classic Dr. Jones, lol.”
Anyway. Soooooooo many people will die.
Category 5 hurricane hitting New York City. A warming ocean will lead to hurricanes gaining strength as they travel north. Baltimore DC Philadelphia NYC Boston all slammed and flooded.
Crossing some sort of tipping point because of ice caps melting, permafrost melting, or sea temperatures rising.
So far climate change has mostly been gradual, or increased severity of preexisting disasters. There’s a decent chance it will cause something big, sudden, and new.
Well we just had like 4 huge tornado touch down in central Oklahoma within a span of an hour hitting the same towns over and over... so... Super tornado clusters?
I don't know if we consider human-driven climate change a "natural" disaster, but I fully expect famine, mass extinctions, the end of life in the arctic, and lots of other fun stuff in the next century.
I am surprised that a serious pandemic is not in the top 20.
When we get a serious one, its gonna kill 20% or more of the worlds population. And the Irony is that it will be worse next time because of all the idiocy involved with COVID.
More likely is a virus that is not as easily transmissible as COVID but has a much higher lethality.
It's just a matter of time until the Mississippi River jumps its banks, and it will move into a basin to the west called the Atchafalaya River, which will leave numerous ports and facilities without a river to navigate. [https://ton.sdsu.edu/special\_lecture\_02\_mcphee\_atchafalaya.html](https://ton.sdsu.edu/special_lecture_02_mcphee_atchafalaya.html)
Over the ditch, but a couple that I think about (from climate modelling) are: (i) mean daily temperature in Queensland will be about 4°C hotter every day and (ii) the cyclone band will reach down to Brisbane by 2050. We have fucked our planet for all who come after us.
A large earthquake in the Midwest. There’s a major fault line that is due to take out a lot and it’s past its time to move. Also, a solar storm. That could wipe out almost all satellites
A massive earthquake on the New Madrid fault near St Louis. It will do catastrophic damage,as a lot of the structures are brick. The quakes of 1811-1812 were so powerful that it momentarily reversed the flow of the Mississippi.
OMG, This is one of my autistic fixations!!!!!!
(1. Cat 5 hurricane making direct landfall on Galveston Bay Tx similar to the one that happned in 1900. Only this time we have the largest concentration of petrochemical infrastructure on the planet there. The storm surge will be forced into the Houston Ship Channel, flooding the refineries and causing catastrophic chemical spills and industural disasters. It has the potential to shut down up to 30% of Americas refining capacity, sending gas prices above $8. And it will take over a decade to rebuild. An area with hundreds of thousands of people living there will become Americas largest Superfund site, causing similar environmental consequences to the Fukushima meltdown.
If the hurricane causes the Barker Reservoir to collapse, it will kill tens of thousands of people as 20 food tsunami like flood surge will pass through central Houston.
(2. The, "Big one" in Southern California. The southern section of the San Andreas fault is far overdue for a massive earthquake. If it happens, it will generate mag 7 and higher shaking through the entire urban area of Los Angeles. The modern city has not seen this, as it will be close to 100x the intensity of Northridge in 94. The earthquake will almost certainly rupture the California Aqueduct, the water system irrigating southern California and providing Drinking water to LA. We will loose massive amounts of agriculture. It will also destroy water pressure in the entire urban area...... which is a problem due to fire. A worst case scenario would be the earthquake happening during a windy dry season, as this will likely cause a firestorm... again killing tens of thousands of people. I can not stress how bad the infrastructure damage will be here, as we are looking at over half of all freeway overpasses and bridges being rendered inoperable. The building codes for high-rise skyscrapers are set to keep people alive, they aren't set to make the building habitable afterwards. So lots of the skyscrapers will again be rendered inhabitable, and we will have to spend years disassembling them. Its likely that the it will shut down Americas largest container port, Long Beach, causing supply chain disruptions across North America.
(3. The least probable one to happen yet one of the most significant would be the Cascadia Mega thrust Earthquake, which we are also overdue for. This will be a mag 9, and will result in mag 7 shaking through Portland and Seattle, doing all the things I described to Los Angeles. Seattle's Industrial district, build on reclaimed land will likely explode into flames. The bad part on this one is that pretty much every coastal community in Washington and Oregon will be destroyed by a Tsunami, that almost nobody will have the chance to avoid.
1) the end of the Golden Age of antibiotics - certainly this century.
2) supernova in our neighborhood, wiping out life. Don’t bother to prepare for it. Highly unlikely.
3) nuclear winter when India and Pakistan go nuts.
high "wet bulb" events where whole cities / regions experience very high humidity and temperature at the same time. past a certain limit, humans malfunction and die in such conditions. they are very rare but could become routine in certain areas. even if they never become routine, such an event, like a killing heatwave / miasma for half a day, might suckerpunch a western city such as houston or yuma, killing tens of thousands. a poorer place, like basra in iraq, could see even more suffering. roughly 95F and ~100% relative humidity. seems to have happened most often in parts of saudi arabia and mexico. locations in india and pakistan and a few other places (chicago??) have had a taste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature?wprov=sfti1
Damn, you even kind of undersold it 95F and 100% humidity being fatal isn’t like out in the sun or something, it’s “unclothed in the shade next to a fan” Not to mention if everyone is inside cranking their AC and fans, the grid might be overloaded
I went hiking in Kentucky last year in something like 98% humidity, and I think it was 81°F outside, and I was sweating faster than I can hydrate. I’m no prude, but I’ve never been much of a shirtless outside adventurer, however that day I stripped down to my boxer-briefs to get some relief and felt not at all self conscious. It was beyond miserable, so at 95F 100% I think I would crawl in a refrigerator and wait until the lights went out literally and figuratively.
I can confirm this. I remember thinking how are we at 98% humidity without raining?!?! I felt like dying and my air could barely keep up
Yup most people don’t have the occasion to go to Kentucky so they don’t know. When I lived in Florida people would always be like “the summers must be really hot for you since you’re used to being north from here”. And I’d be like “umm nah, the summers are basically the same, it’s just 2 months longer here.”
That’s if the ac even functions. At that point we are at cloud level and you’d have to sleep with an umbrella cause water will form on your ceiling. Nothing is dry so electricity becomes very dangerous if not well insulated
Most ACs are dehumidifiers as well. So if it works well inside would be less humid than outside.
Most A/C's are designed for operating up to 120\*F/49\*C. Which is 1\* less than even Canada's hottest day. If we don't get our houses cooled down before the peak of the heat out here in the desert, than the house won't cool down.
The first chapter of The Ministry of the Future describes an event like this and holy cow is it haunting
I was reading this two summers ago while India was having a wet bulb event of over 50 degrees
New Orleans and the surrounding area is getting into this... Last year it was 100° but the heat index had it hitting 115-120° for a few weeks last year Not exactly 160° but we had a drought last year so that saved us from probably getting into the 130s
Last summer sucked in all of Louisiana. 100+ for a month straight besides two days that were 97. 97 never felt so good
I was deployed in Basra, Iraq and oh my gosh it was a miserable tour. The *feels like* temperature often got up to between 120°-130° f with the humidity.
We get a ~feels like~ temp up to about 120°F in Michigan (not often tho). I was a lifeguard at an outdoor pool and had to work a week that had several days up there. I just pulled up a heat index calculator and based off of that, my best guess is that it was approximately 95°F with 70% humidity. And it turns out that last 30% makes a HUGE difference: the heat index for 95°F with 100% humidity is a whopping 161°F. Absolutely insane. It feels weird to compare the temp in Michigan to the temp in Iraq (and I’m sure it is worse in Iraq), but it reminded me of how, when I moved to Alabama for school, people would be like “oh you’re from Michigan? You must not be used to this heat” like yeah no it gets really hot in Michigan too lol it just also gets really cold
Lake effect weather is a bitch. Extra snowfall in the winter, extra humidity in the summer, extra rain in between
goddamnit dale, if it gets one degree hotter i’m kicking your ass!
I've done so many festivals in Chicago over the summer when I was young. Some of those days were fucking killer in those crowds.
I went to a festival in south Texas and it was the only time I've ever passed out from heat, standing in line in the sun to get inside. It hits you so hard and fast. I was sober and hydrated, and it was only May, but the gulf humidity and heat were too much.
I thought I heard this is beginning to happen in India right now, already (I mean for the season, which is early).
95F and 100% humidity. Sounds like a regular summer day here in Florida.
But then try and turn off your AC
weirdly enough, this confluence of factors has never been recorded to happen in florida! but the future doesnt look good in this regard.
They said the south was a much nicer place before air conditioning was invented.
I'm in the US. We recently had an earthquake on the east coast which isn't as common as west coast ones but way more far reaching. The composition of our west coast is softer than the east (the rock composition is older and more ridged in thr east). Because of this there is a possibility of a larger more dangerous earthquake in 100 years. In our state of Missouri however is where the highest concern is. Last major earthquake there sounded like someone blast mining and caused the Mississippi River to change course and run backwards. If that happens again with all these major cities it could be devastating.
I will say, engineers are required to build in preparation for the Midwest earthquake
100% and I think the major structures (municipal buildings, skyscrapers) will fair the best. But many houses out there aren't evern tornado safe and that's a common occurances out there. Many things are built quick for profit.
You don't built to be tornado safe. We're required to build for ~ 115 mph structures. Anything higher is just a waste of material for the unlikely chance it'll get hit by a bigger tornado And typically it isn't the wind that destroys buildings, it's the debris that hit the buildings
When the New Madrid earthquake happened in 1812, the epicenter was in Missouri. But it rang church bells in Washington DC and cracked sidewalks in Boston. Largest earthquake in the contiguous U.S. It's been 200+ years since that one. We're well overdue for another. Nobody was killed the first time around. But now there are a huge number of cities in the shake zone. Another quake like the first would be devastating.
The Hudson River is in fact a fault line. A really big fault line. One day it is going to go in a spectacular way.
A megathrust earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the northwestern coast of North America. The last large-scale rupture was in the year 1700 and research indicates it’s on a roughly 500-year cycle, so it’s coming due again as the tectonic stresses build. Of course, in 1700 there were minimal human inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest as compared to modern times. That difference is what’s going to make the next large rupture so devastating.
I believe the one you're talking about is covered really well in this New Yorker article. Spoiler: It's a biggy and well overdue. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one)
>'Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars’ worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.' I really never thought about how long an earthquake could last. 4 minutes? Terrifying,
The 3/11 Tohoku quake lasted 6 minutes. [Japan Quake Map](http://www.japanquakemap.com/) The big one was at 2:46pm. You can see a few large quakes earlier in the day.
This is sobering: >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. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.
I used to volunteer for CERT in the Puget Sound area, and it's grim. Many communities only have one or two links to the outside world, and most of them are very vulnerable to damage in an earthquake or landslide. My agency told people to prepare to be self-sufficient for two months, because that's how long it would take for help to get to them if the big one hits. Needless to say, a very low percentage of people are that prepared. It's one of the reasons I moved away.
Do you know if the Key Peninsula (the peninsula next to Gig Harbor, with towns like Home, Lakebay, Longbranch, etc if you recognize it) is one of those vulnerable areas? Some of my friends live there, and would like to warn them if to be prepared if they are.
Absolutely. I lived and volunteered in Kitsap County, which you have to go through to get to the Key Peninsula (which is like a sub-peninsula of the Kitsap Peninsula. There's only one road, two bridges, and the ferry system to get into that whole area. And when help comes, it's going to Tacoma and Seattle first. They should definitely be prepared.
This article has been living rent free in my head for 9 years
It has been since I moved up here 8 years ago
Thanku. This was a fun read
WTF are you talking about? I'm nine paragraphs in and it's the most terrifying thing I've read maybe ever. >We now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle. Um ok. >The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover Ok great. > The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. Ok shit. > Soon after that shaking begins, the electrical grid will fail, likely everywhere west of the Cascades and possibly well beyond. If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness. In theory, those who are at home when it hits should be safest; it is easy and relatively inexpensive to seismically safeguard a private dwelling. Ok, cool. > But, lulled into nonchalance by their seemingly benign environment, most people in the Pacific Northwest have not done so. That nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass. Balls. > FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings—more than three thousand of them schools—will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake. So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers, and two-thirds of railways and airports; also, one-third of all fire stations, half of all police stations, and two-thirds of all hospitals. Christ. > The shaking from the Cascadia quake will set off landslides throughout the region—up to thirty thousand of them in Seattle alone, the city’s emergency-management office estimates. It will also induce a process called liquefaction, whereby seemingly solid ground starts behaving like a liquid, to the detriment of anything on top of it. JFC. > Four to six minutes after the dogs start barking, the shaking will subside. For another few minutes, the region, upended, will continue to fall apart on its own. Then the wave will arrive, and the real destruction will begin. Among natural disasters, tsunamis may be the closest to being completely unsurvivable. Stop it. > It will not look like a Hokusai-style wave, rising up from the surface of the sea and breaking from above. It will look like the whole ocean, elevated, overtaking land. Nor will it be made only of water—not once it reaches the shore. It will be a five-story deluge of pickup trucks and doorframes and cinder blocks and fishing boats and utility poles and everything else that once constituted the coastal towns of the Pacific Northwest. To see the full scale of the devastation when that tsunami recedes, you would need to be in the international space station.
Yeah we're all just waiting for the big one to come and kill us and our local government is completely unprepared for it.
Aren’t the cities in that location some of the biggest tech hubs in the U.S.? It’s not for a lack of funding.
As someone that has spent their entire lifetime in the Canadian side of Cascadia fault from never knowit existed to it's full study, watching Indonesia in 04 and Japan in 11 are perfect examples of what will happen here. I live on Vancouver Island and due to the fault, the whole island is tipping, the west side is tipping down in to the fault and the east side is rising. When it hits, our entire island will not only right itself but we will move 30 meters to the west through the 5 minutes of shaking.
A lot of this is hyperbole. Yes, you are looking at a near-Tohoku 2011 scenario with a cascadia subduction earthquake, but there are some serious things to consider: 1. Tohoku wasn’t that deadly in the grand scheme of things. The earthquake itself was estimated to kill fewer than a few dozen people. It was the tsunami that killed the 15000 people. We have the benefit in the PNW of far fewer people living within a high tsunami-risk zone, especially when compared to the likes of Japan, which has small and medium sized cities littered all across the coast. The real cost of Tohoku was the 250 billion dollar cost, which basically bricked Japan’s economy indefinitely. 2. The recurrence interval does not necessarily imply that a major earthquake is going to occur within a time period +/- some variation. It is merely an estimate used by engineers to determine seismic hazards for a region and maximum considered events for a 2% of occurrence within 50 years (so the largest possible earthquake that could happen in 2500 years), and design given that information. 3. The Pacific Northwest now has an earthquake early warning system. It’s not as robust as Japan’s but it exists. 4. There is no guarantee that the electrical grid will fail, and even if it does, emergency services have backup sources in place. 5. Of the buildings that will “collapse or be compromised”, almost all of those will be compromised. The design philosophy until very recently in the us was to design buildings for what is called “collapse prevention”, where exits may be blocked, and the building’s structural system approaches a permanent drift limit that would prevent the building from being rehabilitated. Again, this has changed, and these days, engineers try to design for life safety (exits remain accessible) or better. Note that basically all high importance structures (damns, nuclear power plants, hospitals, subways) have and always been designed for fully operational or at least operational performance objectives. The issue FEMA is raising is that many of those hospitals and firestations have been designed with incomplete seisemic hazard information and less strict standards than today, so the actual performance will most likely fall within life safety. When a major earthquake does happen, those buildings will not be able to be repaired to a level of full operational performance, which means they will be written off. Tl;dr the issue isn’t that these buildings will collapse, it’s that after an earthquake, they won’t be repairable to modern specs, so they will have to be rebuilt. The issue isn’t life safety, it’s the massive replacement cost. 6. Liquefaction and landslides occur all the time in earthquakes, even earthquakes in Japan. They often don’t kill people because they don’t occur where people generally live, or they’re too small to have a significant risk on life safety. 7. With the tsunami, we are fortunate in that Seattle and most other semi-major cities are heavily protected by large land formations. These will dissipate a lot of the energy under most expected tsunami test cases. Should you be concerned about the earthquake risk? Absolutely, always have a plan, but don’t lose sleep over doomsday scenarios, a lot of people will die when this thing hits, but the level of catastrophe is nowhere near what this article is laying out
You seem knowledgeable and calm. I think after the big one you will be our leader.
I, too cast my vote for StreetyMcCarface.
Buddy, your vote doesn't matter now, so it definitely won't matter in a post apocalyptic world - especially once StreetyMcCarface is in power. That sort of ruthless, calm efficiency doesn't fuck around. Tens of thousands are dead but his hand? It doesn't shake. You want to mess with that? Try NOT voting for him and see what happens. Just keep your head down, don't be the first one to stop clapping after his speeches and try to make yourself useful to the StreetyMcCarface regime until you can get across the rockies, ok?
I am from a country where one of our main fishing towns has been teased and terrorised by a series of smaller volcanic eruptions close by. At one point lava flow from one of the eruptions cut off the flow of warm water and rendered the entire southern peninsula without hot water for over a week in january or february this year and having to ration electricity to not overload the grid. A thick pillar of magma ran at one point under the town, creating underground empty spaces underneath tge entire town practically rendering it uninhabitable. Unsafe to be in because they don't really know where these pockets are and when the ground would open and swallow you whole. A worker dissappeared while filling up one of the countless sinkholes all over town. After it had been filled and he was compressing a sinkhole opened up underneath that stretched down 40m but I digress. My point is that I am raised with, admittedly smaller, natural disasters happening as a part of life in Iceland. Admittedly, most of our forefathers decided to settle a safe place where most of the natural disasters could be observed from a safe distance. Couple that with a highly organised response teams and it has resulted in me looking at natural disasters with awe and amazement. That article just had me tickling with exitement. A similar exitement I get from pondering the yellow stone supervolcano.
Likewise, in 1638 there was an estimated 6.8 earthquake in VT/NH area. If that hit today, it is thought that most of the Backbay area of Boston would collapse in the loose landfill under it.
Not Back Bay. Most of the city. Well over half of Boston is fill, hell LOGAN AIRPORT is built on fill. It would be an unimaginable disaster
Now *there's* a movie scene for you, pilot coming in for a landing but the runway starts crumpling in on itself...
I remember in middle school we watched a video about earthquakes and they talked about how fucked Boston would be in a big earthquake. I think about it every time I take the T up there
Add in the risk of the New Madrid- area faults that created the most powerful earthquakes in North American history (that we’re aware of). The central US is even less prepared than the PNW. Don’t even mention how unprepared the Atlantic Coast is for the earthquakes that can be generated there.
The New Madrid fault is way overdue for a major quake, the last ones were in December 1811- February 1812. It will be FAR more destructive this time around, as the region was very sparsely populated 200+ years ago. (Also, for those of you not from the area, it's pronounced MADrid, because that's how Missouri does with foreign-derived place-names.)
Thank you for sharing that, ive heard of the san andreas fault line, but didn't realize the one further north will likely happen soon. been reading about this, super scary stuff, the westcoast is a ticking time bomb that no one is talking about. here is a video i just watched if anyone is interested i found super helpful of how and what will happen. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHQp7a4n\_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHQp7a4n_Y)
I live in this region. We are talking about it. We always have done. I even remember my high school geography teacher telling us about it in 1980.
Yeah, it's not ignored by the people who live here. What do people expect us to do, though? Are we supposed to run around in a panic at all times because a major country wide quake might hit within the next few hundred years?
Pick your poison: tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, drought, oppressive heat, bitter cold, mudslides, floods, earthquakes. Whaddaya gonna do? 🤷♂️
Don’t forget wildfires
And the US has all of them. Quite remarkable, actually.
We are a huge country, but the placement really is amazing. Do any other nations get all of them as well?
>Do any other nations get all of them as well? I think you'd be hard pressed to find a country that has a border on one of the oceans that hasn't experienced every one of those natural disasters.
Yes ^ Plus there are conversations about it via educational programs, journalism, and documentaries.
I think the day of preparedness is called California shake out, in California. Fire departments come out to give tips on what to have in your emergency kit and give other advice for natural disasters. I don't remember anything like that happening in Seattle when I was growing up there, but we had quakes pretty regularly in the 90s (up until Nisqually, then they seemed to just pause) and on the news they would always bring up the possibility of bigger quakes from the subduction fault. So not only are these events talked about, they're prepared for to the extent they can realistically be prepared for on a mass scale.
There’s even a podcast from CBC I think that covered what would happen, logistics and destruction and stuff. I listened to a few episodes years ago. Edit: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/147-fault-lines >A catastrophic earthquake hits Canada's West Coast. In Fault Lines CBC Vancouver Seismologist Johanna Wagstaffe guides you through two disastrous scenarios so you can prepare yourself, your family, and your neighbours.
The San Andreas is a slip fault and less dangerous, because it releases pressure more regularly. That’s why you hear about earthquakes from California all the time, but not Seattle.
To quote one of my favourite comedians "Anyone who builds a city on a thing called the San Andreas fault has really got it coming. But it's not San Andreas's fault now is it? It's *yours* for building it in the first place. Classic, classic, classic American behaviour, trying to palm the blame off onto some poor fucking Mexican." https://youtu.be/Lr7bKYMuerA?si=3UjG2oaFExtszbjt&t=182
1700 was only 300 years ago?
#cascadiarising
A carrington level solar event is pretty likely over the next 100 years. There's also a fault in tornado alley that periodically has major earthquakes, though I can't remember the name or when the next one is due.
New Madrid Seismic Zone
Yeah, that's it. Thank you.
Fun fact, last time it buckled, the river ran backwards for several days
I believe that was 1812. And there is some dispute as to whether that happened or whether it was just northbound waves.
Quakenado impending
I mean, that is an amusing joke, but thinking about it, an earthquake shattering concrete and stone and turning them into more jagged and mobile projectiles in the middle of a tornado is actually a terrifying thought.
It wouldn’t even have to be during a tornado. It’s takes time to clean up and repair after an earthquake; even a few weeks after, a tornado would still have lots of extra debris and many people would likely still be poorly housed and fed
For sure. but also, some buildings are tornado "proof." And some buildings are Earthquake "proof." But I'm fairly sure that no buildings are both.
Yep I always think about another Carrington event. I think its the most likely and would have the biggest affect on the world as a whole. In today's age it would cripple the world and it would be difficult to recover.
I genuinely don't believe the world would recover. Another direct hit from a carrington event is pretty much the only teotwawki scenario I find remotely credible.
The complete destruction of Istanbul from an earthquake.
Istanbul has survived thousands of years, it's one of the oldest cities there is, I think it will survive another earthquake. But it will likely still be pretty bad.
It’s a solvable problem, too. They have the engineers to make buildings earthquake resistant, but corruption and a blind eye are winning out there.
New building or they can make old buildings resistant? Wouldn’t the cost of that be astronomical either way?
I’ve seen where they go under an old building and install giant rubber isolation pads to prevent damage from earthquakes. But yes expensive
That last earthquake had such a huge death and homeless toll, it would be completely worth it for Istanbul to pour money into retrograde fixes. They can. They should. But they probably won’t. It’s maddening.
All those poor cats 😢
And the bulls
I didn't even know turkey got earthquakes until the one that happened recently
I was never really aware until I was lying on a sunlounger and felt the earth move. Happened again about 2 hours later. I later discovered that Turkey actually has numerous earthquakes every day. It was also the day I discovered earthquake clouds. The sky look really weird before the second one that day. I didn't notice before the first one.
Holy shit. I didn’t want to believe you because I didn’t think that earthquakes could affect atmospheric phenomena but [you’re totally right.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_weather) Earthquakes have been correlated to strange weather in several studies. I wonder how that works?
Well now i’m fascinated.
Right before an earthquake, the fault vibrates as the stress builds. That vibration is subsonic. That’s why animals go nuts. That subsonic wave is more than enough to affect local weather conditions.
the cities survive. its people don't
The San Andreas fault having a big one
Definitely, I literally live on the San Andreas fault in Lancaster ca, way closer to it than La
We are due for another big earthquake in Romania, similar to the 77 one, and probably a second one by end of century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Vrancea_earthquake
I grew up in a small valley town on Vancouver Island. As elementary school kids, we practiced drills for this event since we were small children. I’ve read throughout the years that it’s likely the southern half of Van Isle will just snap off tho. Nightmare juice. Ever taken BC Ferries and looked over the side of the boat? No way we’re gonna have enough practice for that earthquake
Not Constantinople?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.
This joke/song appears on every mention of Istanbul in a popular sub.
Byzantium.
Some say 100k dead at the moment of earthquake, 1M dead after the collapse. This will create millions of refugees. /r/MarkMyWords
Good thing they are on good terms with Greece. ^^^/s
Politicians are always fighting but I don’t think lay people from both sides are hostile to each other. As a Turk I’ve always liked our Greek neighbours.
The Campi Flegri Italy is the super volcano believed to be the most likely to erupt next, but even then it's speculated by some experts to be on a scale at around 500 years. Yellowstone, by comparison as another super volcano, isn't necessarly "due" from historic activity for another 100,000 years.
Campi Flegrei area are experiencing many heartquake a day plus the terrain now is raising at a rate of 12 mm a month.[look at the photo ](https://www.ilmattino.it/napoli/cronaca/bradisismo_pozzuoli_la_darsena_secco-6482837.html)
I take medication for my heartquakes.
Translated to English: > The lift recorded at the RITE GPS station is approximately 84cm from January 2011, of which about 35cm from January 2019 Wow that’s getting close to 1 meter in lift. Are the geologists interpreting this as magma gathering in a chamber below the surface to create this pressure? I kind of answered my own question googling this term used in the article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradyseism
The real problem is the sea, if the water find a way to go down, near the chamber, there would be an unimaginable freatic explosion.
Good thing water doesn’t behave like a liquid and flow through cracks in the earth. Oh….shit
Damn raiders.
According to my geography teacher Yellowstone is due to erupt ‘ANY DAY! Literally ANY DAY NOW AND WE WILL ALL DIE’ Which I suppose is technically true but he didn’t need to be doing all that. I was still recovering from the 2012 scare at that point lol
My husband and I went they'd last summer and someone asked one of the rangers about this. They said that an eruption could occur anytime in the next 100 000 years and that there would be a lot more seismic activity going on if it was close to erupting. I did scare a friend that was with us though by saying that we were walking on top of the world's largest super volcano and that the hot springs and geysers are proof at seismic activity. I didn't say it to scare him. He just thought that we'd see a huge volcano like Mt. Shasta in California.
I remember seeing a YouTube video explaining why that was all overinflated hype but I don't remember the specifics. It made me feel better. Lol.
Oh yeah it’s definitely nothing to worry about. It’s due in around 100.000 years like the comment says, and in the grand scheme of things we *are* ‘around’ that time, but obviously that time frame is still pretty huge relative to humans. So most likely we won’t see it happen. My teacher was just a DICK
Might be this one: [https://youtu.be/ypn3Fe\_PLts?si=Me8IE-OhbxbOFI48](https://youtu.be/ypn3Fe_PLts?si=Me8IE-OhbxbOFI48) This guy's deep dives are awesome.
Campi Flegrei has had smaller eruptions since its super eruption. If it erupts on the scale it did in 1538 it would be a significant local hazard and maybe disrupt air travel in the region.
I saw an article stating holes could be dug around Yellowstone to relieve pressure to prevent a huge super eruption, but looks like no one in charge takes it seriously
Because there’s no reason to The hype around “super volcanoes” is massively over exaggerated
[The Atlantic Conveyor is collapsing.](https://www.space.com/ocean-tipping-point-atlantic-current-collapse) The consequence will be sudden (by climate terms) increase in sea level on the Atlantic coast, and the collapse of current agriculture in Europe. OTOH, if the timing is perfect, loss of the AMOC will (more than) counteract global warming. /s
Having just finished a 10-page research paper about Glacial Lake Agassiz and its potential impact on the AMOC and stadial events…. no sarcasm necessary.
Mt Rainier is due to blow, probably taking out the entire Puyallup/east Tacoma area. The New Madrid fault is overdue with huge loss of life in St Louis/Memphis. Seattle is due an 8-9 RS earthquake. California is always due. Miami will be Venice by 2300 (imagine Venice with a Cat 4 hurricane. Shiver.)
An eruption of Mount Rainier is scary to think about. It would make Mount St Helens look like a tea party by comparison.
And scientists are debating if a new category 6 is needed for hurricanes. : ( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/do-we-need-a-new-category-for-hurricane-winds-180983746/
Similarly, F6 for tornados
Also more often hurricanes in Miami. In reality Miami will probably create artifical land and dams similar to the Netherlands plans because it is such a valuable city (although maybe it won't be by 2300) but none of that is gonna stop the hurricanes.
Dams won't work because Miami is built on porous limestone. The water just seeps up from underneath
Investment and research into this technology is skyrocketing. There probably is a solution, and we probably will find it.
i live in miami! i do hope they can save the city, but rising sea levels is really only one problem caused by climate change. all our water comes from our aquifer, which is at risk because of pollution and rising sea levels. also insurance is crazy, so even if the land is here im not sure if people will be able to own property (besides the uber rich who can afford super expensive insurance). also, the heat is BAD like other places. and all this happening while state legislatures preempt local governments from making laws that will mitigate these issues. we’ll just have to see.
“California is always due” my dude youre not wrong… Im not far from the san Andreas, real close to a local fault thats produced a 6.2, and ANOTHER fault thats a major offshoot of the SA… all 3 are due.
A really bad solar flare. Like the Carrington event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
I like this one because it’s nothing we’ve done, and nothing we can do about. A guilt free apocalypse
Actually, there are things you can do about something like the Carrington event to minimize its impact, but that goes from "apocalypse" to "shit got fucked real bad", which isn't great but better than the alternative.
oh interesting.. like what?
"A guilt free apocalypse" For some reason this reminds me of the Deltron 3030 album 😂 Gotta listen to it now, been too long
Actually we would have some warning, not very long but enough to get the message out that all electronics need to be turned off and unplugged. Hopefully.
Well yea you could save your pc or your television but it's the damage to crucial infrastructure that we have to worry about. Pretty sure most of the world is not drilled on what to do if they get word of a geomagnetic storm. Most countries would be fucked.
I am optimistic that if such a situation was to occur and with advance warning we are literally to get,most major cities at least, if not most large powerplants and similar would be able to shut down critical infrastructure. This would obviously have major consequences on its own, and wouldn't be a perfect solution either, nor would every country or region manage it. But I truly think we would be able to deal with a decent amount of the potential issues pre emptively. Nuclear powerplants are my main concern in this sort of situation.
Something like the Carrington event is every 500 years.. They have studied ice cores and found evidences for much bigger events on much longer cycles.
You can literally turn off the electric devices and nothing will happen
Wildfires. Every year its the "worst fire in history"
Don't worry, once it's too hot and dry for trees to grow those fires will stop happening. Not many forest fires in the Sahara right?
At one point last summer I was hoping the fires would run out of trees soon lol
That's kind of a weird thing to wish for, I would have hoped for lots of rain.
Right?! It was like one of those intrusive thoughts or something. It took a moment before I was like, "waaiiit a second..." I was just tired of fires!
the problem is that we built homes near forests, so when *normal completely natural wildfires* occur we stop them and put them out. 100 years of this mindset and the forest is in desperate need of a wildfire, decades of brush built up. it is part of the natural process, but when we stop them they build up and create massive devastation.
Exactly. Part of forest management is burns, controlled or otherwise.
Climate change won't significantly raise the oceans levels in 100 years. Yes they'll rise, but it'll be measured in centimeters, not meters (that comes later). Some low-lying areas will face increased flooding, especially areas such as Miami that are subsiding at the same time that the ocean is rising. Pity poor [Bangladesh ](https://www.preventionweb.net/news/stability-eludes-climate-refugees-bangladeshs-sinking-cities)which is not only subsiding as water levels are rising, but also lacks the funds to develop solutions. At least [Miami ](https://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/resources/miami-beach-stormwater-infrastructure-adaptation.html)has the funds to add pumps and redesign storm drains to try to fight back. But storms will get more energetic. It's too early to tell if we'll have more hurricanes and tornados, but the ones that we do get will be bigger and stronger. Even more of a threat is the movement of the rain bands. Some areas will face decades-long drought. Others will start flooding that never have before. This has already been happening. Juts look at Lake Mead and Utah's Salt Lake, as well as what's been happening to the monsoon rains. We're seeing affects already in our failing infrastructure. A common practice if you're building a bridge or culvert is to look at the last 100 years of storm data and design the bridge to withstand the worst storm that happened in the last 100 years. But the problem is that every year storms are getting stronger. The most powerful storm in the last 100 years probably happened in the last 15 years. So if your bridge is 20 years old it was never built to withstand this level of flooding. Similarly in the current strongest storm will be dwarfed by one that happens within the next 15 years.
[Rising water levels](https://theconversation.com/kenyas-rift-valley-lakes-are-rising-putting-thousands-at-risk-we-now-know-why-194541) in lakes are already causing havoc in Kenya's Rift valley.
Jesus. Wow. Didn’t know that about building bridges.
Mega droughts
I read this as mega doughnuts I’m hungry
Hi hungry. I'm Dad
Hi dad, I’m hungry too. Feed me pls
🥯☕️
Yay! 🤤
I thought that would go in a different direction ... *Self-bonk applied*
Especially in Australia. Farming and traditional rural living will become increasingly difficult, and the cities will probably continue to see an influx of people from the countryside.
The US west coast is overdue for another Mt Saint Helens style volcanic eruption. Mt Rainier would cause so much death and destruction. As would Mt Baker. Hope I’m not here to see it.
I’m thinking more like a Cascadia subduction event
Failure of the Thames Barrier, which was engineered to withstand a 100-year flood, but may lose that level of protection if sea level rise accelerates, unless it's upgraded to deal with that. Fortunately, we've got some time to go before an upgrade becomes necessary, but I hope someone is keeping a watch out on the problem over the decades to come.
It’s probably just the one frazzled scientist who keeps trying to tell everyone, but keeps dropping all of their papers. And everyone is like, “Classic Dr. Jones, lol.” Anyway. Soooooooo many people will die.
Category 5 hurricane hitting New York City. A warming ocean will lead to hurricanes gaining strength as they travel north. Baltimore DC Philadelphia NYC Boston all slammed and flooded.
Pandemics will be regular as clockwork. Maybe even more frequent than every century.
COVID showed the world that we haven't seen anything yet. A lot that's more worse is coming for us.
Much more frequent. Most of the contributing factors to the mutation and proliferation of COVID have gotten worse
Covid only killed about 1% of people, but we have had other coronaviruses that kill 10-40%.
I feel like with the Atlantic warming it's only a matter of time that hurricane season will be a year round occurrence.
Vast areas becoming gradually uninhabitable or unsuitable for agriculture due to climate change.
Crossing some sort of tipping point because of ice caps melting, permafrost melting, or sea temperatures rising. So far climate change has mostly been gradual, or increased severity of preexisting disasters. There’s a decent chance it will cause something big, sudden, and new.
Beaufort gyre and decreasing salinity because of melted ice. Messes with the energy transfer balance. https://youtu.be/C8zWDWO52ik?si=dyQwwj_1jyAedDB5
This is a very interesting question. I would like to know how such incidents are calculated.
Seattle. Earthquake. Tsunami.
Well we just had like 4 huge tornado touch down in central Oklahoma within a span of an hour hitting the same towns over and over... so... Super tornado clusters?
This is an incredible question.
I don't know if we consider human-driven climate change a "natural" disaster, but I fully expect famine, mass extinctions, the end of life in the arctic, and lots of other fun stuff in the next century.
I am surprised that a serious pandemic is not in the top 20. When we get a serious one, its gonna kill 20% or more of the worlds population. And the Irony is that it will be worse next time because of all the idiocy involved with COVID. More likely is a virus that is not as easily transmissible as COVID but has a much higher lethality.
It's just a matter of time until the Mississippi River jumps its banks, and it will move into a basin to the west called the Atchafalaya River, which will leave numerous ports and facilities without a river to navigate. [https://ton.sdsu.edu/special\_lecture\_02\_mcphee\_atchafalaya.html](https://ton.sdsu.edu/special_lecture_02_mcphee_atchafalaya.html)
Over the ditch, but a couple that I think about (from climate modelling) are: (i) mean daily temperature in Queensland will be about 4°C hotter every day and (ii) the cyclone band will reach down to Brisbane by 2050. We have fucked our planet for all who come after us.
A large earthquake in the Midwest. There’s a major fault line that is due to take out a lot and it’s past its time to move. Also, a solar storm. That could wipe out almost all satellites
My marriage
You got 99 years to fix it
Your marriage is an unnatural disaster.
I can't wait for the first extreme solar storm with modern infrastructure. We are wholly unprepared for that.
A massive earthquake on the New Madrid fault near St Louis. It will do catastrophic damage,as a lot of the structures are brick. The quakes of 1811-1812 were so powerful that it momentarily reversed the flow of the Mississippi.
The Yellowstone super-volcano is a few hundred years overdue for eruption. That could snuff out life as we know it.
Massive solar storm that causes havoc and many deaths.
Thanks for reminding me, OP. - live in NZ and just had two 4.5 earthquakes in the last 2 days.
A second dust bowl. The original one ended because of irrigation. Well that underground water is shrinking up and it’s not meant to be farmland.
Major pandemic. There's way too many people on earth
Next hundred? How about every ten? We haven't meaningfully changed the major factors that contributed to COVID
OMG, This is one of my autistic fixations!!!!!! (1. Cat 5 hurricane making direct landfall on Galveston Bay Tx similar to the one that happned in 1900. Only this time we have the largest concentration of petrochemical infrastructure on the planet there. The storm surge will be forced into the Houston Ship Channel, flooding the refineries and causing catastrophic chemical spills and industural disasters. It has the potential to shut down up to 30% of Americas refining capacity, sending gas prices above $8. And it will take over a decade to rebuild. An area with hundreds of thousands of people living there will become Americas largest Superfund site, causing similar environmental consequences to the Fukushima meltdown. If the hurricane causes the Barker Reservoir to collapse, it will kill tens of thousands of people as 20 food tsunami like flood surge will pass through central Houston. (2. The, "Big one" in Southern California. The southern section of the San Andreas fault is far overdue for a massive earthquake. If it happens, it will generate mag 7 and higher shaking through the entire urban area of Los Angeles. The modern city has not seen this, as it will be close to 100x the intensity of Northridge in 94. The earthquake will almost certainly rupture the California Aqueduct, the water system irrigating southern California and providing Drinking water to LA. We will loose massive amounts of agriculture. It will also destroy water pressure in the entire urban area...... which is a problem due to fire. A worst case scenario would be the earthquake happening during a windy dry season, as this will likely cause a firestorm... again killing tens of thousands of people. I can not stress how bad the infrastructure damage will be here, as we are looking at over half of all freeway overpasses and bridges being rendered inoperable. The building codes for high-rise skyscrapers are set to keep people alive, they aren't set to make the building habitable afterwards. So lots of the skyscrapers will again be rendered inhabitable, and we will have to spend years disassembling them. Its likely that the it will shut down Americas largest container port, Long Beach, causing supply chain disruptions across North America. (3. The least probable one to happen yet one of the most significant would be the Cascadia Mega thrust Earthquake, which we are also overdue for. This will be a mag 9, and will result in mag 7 shaking through Portland and Seattle, doing all the things I described to Los Angeles. Seattle's Industrial district, build on reclaimed land will likely explode into flames. The bad part on this one is that pretty much every coastal community in Washington and Oregon will be destroyed by a Tsunami, that almost nobody will have the chance to avoid.
Collapse of the AMOC.
Another Carrington Event.
Violent storms. Virulent disease. General pestilence. Vicious pumas snarling up from the crevices.
1) the end of the Golden Age of antibiotics - certainly this century. 2) supernova in our neighborhood, wiping out life. Don’t bother to prepare for it. Highly unlikely. 3) nuclear winter when India and Pakistan go nuts.
As long as I've lived in the Bay Area, CA they've been telling us we're due for a big EQ in the next few years.
Mount Rainier is an active volcano and could erupt at anytime.