perfidy

Live science has a top ten possible US disasters list. Here it is, with some commentary.

10. Pacific Northwest Megathrust Earthquake The fault line up there by Seattle is apparently a lot like the one that caused the Christmas Tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

9. New York Hurricane Hurricanes very rarely get this far north. But when they do, it’s bad. 1938 was the last time one hit, and 600 people died. There’s a lot more people there, and given the unpredictability of hurricanes once they head north, warning times might be in hours.

8. Asteroid Impact Depending on where it hits, and how big the rock is, this could range from annoying to devastating. An asteroid like the one that created the meteor crater in Arizona could easily take out a city if it hit the wrong spot. Given the way that earth-crossing asteroids can sneak up on us out of the sun, like the red baron, there might be no warning whatsoever.

7. Los Angeles Tsunami Another goddamned tsunami. Imagine the big one, the earthquake we all know is coming, combined with the flooding of Katrina.

6. Yellowstone Supervolcano I don’t know why this is ranked six, seeing as if this one lights up, we are all done for. A super volcano once knocked humanity down to under a few thousand people. This one, at the very least, would gut the entire middle of the country.

5. Midwest Earthquake This one would also gut the middle of the country. If the New Madrid fault slips, all those non-earthquake resistant cities in the heartland will fall over. St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Vicksburg… All gone. Plus, flooding as the Mississippi evades centuries of Army Corps of Engineer constructed restraints.

4. Heat Waves We all felt a bit of schadenfreude when the French were unable to cope with a heat wave, and thousands died. It could happen here, but even if we avoided that, a serious, long term drought would cost a shitload of money.

3. East Coast Tsunami This list posits an asteroid impact as the root cause of an East Coast Tsunami. But there is another possibility, a little more down to earth. There is a volcano on the Canary Islands that, should it rip, could drop twenty cubic miles of dirt into the Atlantic. Given the westward facing alignment of this slab, it’s like a shotgun aimed at the East Coast of the United States. Regular Tsunamis are limited in the scope of their destruction because an earthquake is only going to move so much – thirty feet in the case of the Christmas Tsunami, and that becomes an upper bound on the size of the resultant waves. But when you drop large amounts of stuff in the water, there’s no limit. If all that rock dropped in at once, you could have 150 foot waves from Savannah to Boston. Of course, it might not all drop at once.

2. Gulf Coast Tsunami I didn’t know about this one, but apparently only the north coast of the United States is safe from tsunamis. This would probably do a lot more lethal damage on the islands, but it’s not like it’d be a picnic on the mainland.

1. Total Destruction of Earth This takes you back to a list of ways the whole shebang could go up in flames. Makes any run of the mill, regional disaster seem a little small.