The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on July 19, 2015, 04:28:19 pm ---If you haven't already, go immediately to your July 20 issue and read Kathryn Schulz's "The Really Big One." Then, when you are thoroughly freaked out and terrified, read Dave Eggers' "Hollister," which has a sort of serious point but iis light and funny much of the time.
I made the mistake of going in the opposite order. So now I've started reading George Packer's "Dark Hours: Violence in the age of the war on terror." So, you know, that should be realaxing.
--- End quote ---
I read "The Really Big One" first, then "Hollister." They were both good articles. I can't say I was terrified or freaked out. Maybe I am deadened to crises since there have been so many of them.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on July 20, 2015, 12:06:08 am ---I read "The Really Big One" first, then "Hollister." They were both good articles. I can't say I was terrified or freaked out. Maybe I am deadened to crises since there have been so many of them.
--- End quote ---
I was freaked out because, while I myself have never endured a life-threatening crisis firsthand, I did have many friends who lived in New Orleans during Katrina and I endured a close-call hurricane while i lived there and I've known towns around here get struck by tornadoes now and then -- including, on Saturday, the hometown of a former best friend -- and of course, there's the odd blizzard and so on.
But this described a crisis that would dwarf those, that would be far worse than the Japanese tsunami and for which the area is far less prepared. When it said (quoting from memory) "Of all natural disasters, a tsunami offers the least chance of survival" or talked about how, once the earthquake devastated your big city and entire coastline, your problems had only just started, because once the shaking stopped, you'd have less than 10 minutes to get your shit together enough to run like hell for your life -- disregarding the lives (the article implied, though of course I could never totally do this) of anyone else, including your family members -- but that you probably wouldn't make it anyway and would immediately find yourself under 100 feet of water floating amid submerged semis and the like ... well, yes, I found that fairly freaky. Give me a blizzard any day. Even a hurricane.
And what I found most astounding of all is how few people have ever even heard this was a problem. I know I hadn't.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on July 20, 2015, 01:00:33 am ---But this described a crisis that would dwarf those, that would be far worse than the Japanese tsunami and for which the area is far less prepared. When it said (quoting from memory) "Of all natural disasters, a tsunami offers the least chance of survival" or talked about how, once the earthquake devastated your big city and entire coastline, your problems had only just started, because once the shaking stopped, you'd have less than 10 minutes to get your shit together enough to run like hell for your life -- disregarding the lives (the article implied, though of course I could never totally do this) of anyone else, including your family members -- but that you probably wouldn't make it anyway and would immediately find yourself under 100 feet of water floating amid submerged semis and the like ... well, yes, I found that fairly freaky. Give me a blizzard any day. Even a hurricane.
And what I found most astounding of all is how few people have ever even heard this was a problem. I know I hadn't.
--- End quote ---
The Weather Channel--leave it to the good ol' Weather Channel--has a program, the title of which now escapes me (of course), about hypothetical natural disasters striking major metropolitan areas. I once caught one, or part of one, episode about an earthquake--and, presumably--a tsunami--striking Seattle, so the idea of something like that happening has at least crossed my radar.
Jeff Wrangler:
Started to read the Schulz piece at lunch today. Holy crap! :o
Kinda cool how they put together the history of the earthquake of 1700.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on July 20, 2015, 01:37:25 pm ---Started to read the Schulz piece at lunch today. Holy crap! :o
--- End quote ---
I know, right? That piece was so vivid that since reading it on Saturday a couple of times I've found myself thinking for half a second that an earthquake and tsunami actually HAVE hit the Northwest
--- Quote ---Kinda cool how they put together the history of the earthquake of 1700.
--- End quote ---
She leaves no stone unturned in building the airtightness of the case. (Block that metaphor!)
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