What a major earthquake would do to San Francisco

[dubu]

sf isnt a good city to have a quake, the whole thing would fall. just like portland would, but portland has mor houses and houses survive and downtowns wont.

[The North One]

I'm just glad I live nowhere near the cascadia subduction zone.

[chris08876]

Would definitely reduce home prices to affordable levels and provide a house flipping mecca.

I know, its a crude joke, but true!

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

That was my thought as well. What exactly do you do if you don't have water for 3 months?

You move to water. Chicago welcomes you.

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

True, but isn't nuclear waste still there until they can figure out how to remove it and store it elsewhere?

Waste isn't the biggest issue. Sure, it's far from ideal, but the problem at Fukushima, like Chernobyl and Three Mile and others was primarily a meltdown, not stored waste. So if it's not operational, it's not going to melt down.

Originally Posted by IMBY

...
It appears that most of the mega-quakes occur closer to the North or South Poles. Recall the mega quakes they've had in Chile, or the 9.2 that hit Alaska in 1964, the biggest quake to ever hit North America.

The epicenter of the 1960 Chile quake was near the 39th South parallel. For reference, San Francisco is near the 37th North parallel, so a comparable distance from the Poles, respectively.

I'm not aware of tectonic theory that would make the Poles influential for earthquakes or for earthquake strength. The overriding influence is simply plate boundaries, wherever they lay. For longitude-based influences, I'd think the equator would be of greater sensitivity simply because of the influence of the centrifugal force and gravity's centripetal force dueling it out. But even that would be much less than the localized tectonic plates' forces.

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ interesting, but is that really true about earthquakes clustering toward the poles? or just coincidence? hmm, there must be studies about that kind of thing.

It's not true. It's not even a coincidence, because I don't think there's any correlation, pole-wise.

[llamaorama]

I watched the old bond movie View to a Kill a few weeks ago...

Now I want to fix the affordable housing crisis by triggering the big one, watching Silicon Valley crumble from my supervillian blimp. Once it’s destroyed the state can pass my emergency legislation removing local control of land use policy, ostensibly to support the rebuilding effort.