Planning a summer vacation on the Oregon coast? Maybe you should have a Plan B.
“Roughly 100 miles off the West Coast,” writes Michael J. Totten, “running from Mendocino, California, to Canada’s Vancouver Island, lurks the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca Plate is sliding beneath the North American Plate, creating the conditions for a megathrust quake 30 times stronger than the worst-case scenario along the notorious San Andreas, and 1,000 times stronger than the earthquake that killed 100,000 Haitians in 2010. Shockwaves will unleash more destructive force against the United States and Canada than anything short of nuclear war, a giant asteroid strike, or a civilization-threatening super-volcano.”
It’s not a question of if, but when. And we’re definitely due. Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, says it’ll be “the worst natural disaster in American history,” with conceivably more American deaths in a single hour than an entire decade of the Vietnam War.
“Three urban areas,” adds Totten, “home to millions of people across an international boundary, will be more cut off from the civilized world than even the wilderness areas. They’ll be Walking Dead landscapes, minus the zombies.”
“The Great PNW” my arse.
