The Cascadia Subduction Zone, is a megathrust fault that runs offshore along the coast from northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino, California. This zone has the physical potential to fault, and in so doing generate a mega-earthquake, with tsunami waves of 100 feet high, travelling at around 500 miles per hour, hitting the west coast of the United States. Where it was once thought that the Zone was continuous, it has been discovered that there are actually four zones that could slide over each other creating even more destruction.
We are subjected to no end of reports of existential threats today, most of which are illusory, such as climate change. So, what is the likelihood of the mega-earthquake occurring, in the near future? There is no question that if this event does occur it would be as devastating to the US and world economy, including Australia, as a nuclear attack. And it would be the perfect time for China to invade Taiwan. The material below indicates that the time for such an earthquake is overdue, and it could happen tomorrow, or in decades: https://www.iflscience.com/megathrust-earthquakes-and-the-worlds-largest-tsunamis-what-is-the-cascadia-subduction-zone-74614; https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl3198. The thing here is that there is no way to stop such large-scale geo-physical events from happening, so the best people in the area can do is to make sure that the government has early-warning systems and that they are prepared to "get out of Dodge," as the saying goes.
https://michaeltsnyder.substack.com/p/scientists-warn-that-a-90-earthquake
"We are being told that someday an absolutely massive earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone will send a gigantic wall of water toward the west coast of the United States. We are talking about a disaster that would be greater than anything we have ever witnessed in the entire history of our country so far, and scientists are openly warning us that it is just a matter of time before this happens. It is being projected that the wall of water could be up to 100 feet tall, and it will cause immense devastation. Buildings will be flattened, vehicles will be picked up and tossed around like toys, and countless numbers of people will instantly go to their watery graves. If you are directly in the path of such a tsunami, there will be no escape.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone has been making lots of headlines lately. The following comes from an article that was recently posted by NBC News…
A silent colossus lurks off the Pacific coast, threatening hundreds of miles of coastline with tsunamis and devastating earthquakes.
For decades, scientists have warned about the potential of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a megathrust fault that runs offshore along the coast from northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino, California. When the fault — or even a portion of it — next snaps, it will reshape life in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.
It has been more than 300 years since we have seen a megathrust earthquake happen along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and so for most of us it is difficult to imagine what that would look like.
According to IFL Science, such an earthquake could produce tsunami waves that travel at speeds of up to 500 miles an hour…
Megathrust earthquakes are the most powerful on Earth and they arise from subduction zones, where one of Earth's plates is slipping over another. When rock on a convergent plate boundary gets compressed and bent, it builds up elastic energy. When this gets too much, there is an abrupt release as the overriding plate slides up the fault.
As the plate slips and releases, it generates enormous amounts of energy that goes out into the surrounding seawater. That energy displaces water as it rises to the sea surface, raising it above the normal surface level. It then comes crashing down thanks to gravity, sending the energy shooting out horizontally in the form of a tsunami.
The resulting waves can travel over 804 kilometers per hour (500 miles per hour).
I am sitting here trying to imagine what a wall of water traveling at 500 miles per hour would look like, and I am having a very difficult time envisioning it.
In addition to moving at astonishing speed, we are also being told that the wall of water could be "100 feet high or more"…
The plates can periodically lock up and build stress over wide areas―eventually to be released when they finally lurch against each other. The result: the world's greatest earthquakes, shaking both seabed and land, and generating tsunamis 100 feet high or more.
A team of scientists that has been studying the Cascadia Subduction Zone just released their findings, and what they discovered is extremely alarming.
They found that the Cascadia Subduction Zone is actually made up of four different segments, and that actually makes it even more dangerous than previously believed…
Using underwater mapping techniques, scientists have mapped the Cascadia Subduction Zone – a 600-mile fault line extending from southern Canada to northern California – in never before seen detail.
It has revealed that the fault splits into four segments instead of being one continuous strip like most fault lines. The discovery could prove more catastrophic because the tectonic plates can slide under each other, creating more pressure and more severe earthquakes.
The researchers concluded the Cascadia Subduction Zone has the potential to unleash a nine-plus magnitude quake.
This particular team of scientists is also warning that when the next megathrust earthquake happens in the region it could cause more than 80 billion dollars in damage…
If an earthquake of over 9 magnitude struck the West Coast US it could generate tsunamis reaching 100 feet high or more, kill more than 10,000 people and cause over $80 billion in damages in just Oregon and Washington alone.
Disaster emergency plans in Oregon and Washington warn that in the aftermath of a quake that big, they could face a wave of long-term deaths due to disease from exposure to dead bodies, animal carcasses, contaminated water and Hazmat spills from commercial, industrial and household sources.
I know that this sounds really bad, but others actually believe that the damage will be even worse.
In an article that I published last year, I included a very ominous quote from the former head of FEMA's Region X. He once warned that when a really big earthquake finally strikes the Cascadia Subduction Zone "everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast"…
If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That's the very big one.
…By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA's Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast."
In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of Interstate 5 covers some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people.
This isn't a hypothetical scenario which may or may not happen someday.
Scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before a big quake happens.
And I am entirely convinced that it will happen sooner rather than later, because our planet has become very unstable.
As I discussed earlier this week, the number of "billion dollar disasters" hit an all-time high in 2023.
Sadly, we will probably break that record again this year.
If you live in a high risk area, you may want to take note of what is happening.
Things have been relatively quiet along the west coast for a while, but someday disaster will suddenly strike and millions of lives will be completely turned upside down.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13513943/underwater-fault-line-west-coast.html
'An underwater fault line along the US West Coast could trigger a megaquake that would be more devastating than California's 'Big One,' a new study suggests.
Using underwater mapping techniques, scientists have mapped the Cascadia Subduction Zone - a 600-mile fault line extending from southern Canada to northern California - in never before seen detail.
It has revealed that the fault splits into four segments instead of being one continuous strip like most fault lines. The discovery could prove more catastrophic because the tectonic plates can slide under each other, creating more pressure and more severe earthquakes.
The researchers concluded the Cascadia Subduction Zone has the potential to unleash a nine-plus magnitude quake.
California's San Andreas is poised for an up to 8.3-magnitude quake, for comparison.
If an earthquake of over 9 magnitude struck the West Coast US it could generate tsunamis reaching 100 feet high or more, kill more than 10,000 people and cause over $80 billion in damages in just Oregon and Washington alone.
Disaster emergency plans in Oregon and Washington warn that in the aftermath of a quake that big, they could face a wave of long-term deaths due to disease from exposure to dead bodies, animal carcasses, contaminated water and Hazmat spills from commercial, industrial and household sources.
A similar fault zone off the coast of Japan erupted in 2011, creating a magnitude 9 quake that caused a devastating tsunami to strike the country, killing nearly 20,000 people.
Now scientists are worried that a similar calamity could impact the US in the coming years, reporting that quakes caused by Cascadia occur roughly every 500 years, with the last one taking place in 1700.
'The recurrent interval for this subduction zone for big events is on the order of 500 years,' Wang said.
'It's hard to know exactly when it will happen, but certainly, if you compare this to other subduction zones, it is quite late.'
Cascadia's four segments make it more dangerous than other major fault lines because they have different rock and sediment, with the most concerning section extending along northern Oregon, into Washington and southern British Columbia.
'It requires a lot more study, but for places like Tacoma and Seattle, it could mean the difference between alarming and catastrophic,' said study co-author Harold Tobin, a geophysicist at the University of Washington.
This section of Cascadia is flatter and smoother than the other three sections, meaning it could cause the largest earthquakes, extending further into the US and impacting all of Washington's coastal communities.
'We have the potential for earthquakes and tsunamis as large as the biggest ones we've experienced on the planet,' Tobin told NBC News.
'Cascadia seems capable of generating a magnitude nine or a little smaller or a little bigger.'
Suzanne Carbotte, the study's lead author and marine geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said this is the first clear picture of the Cascadia zone, adding that all emergency response models are based on 'old, low-quality 1980s-era data.'
The researchers hope their findings help states in the impact zone prepare for a worst-case scenario emergency response and evacuation if the Cascadia Subduction Zone ruptures.
Neither Oregon nor Washington state is sufficiently prepared for this type of disaster because of the limited information in the 1980s Cascadia model, according to the researchers.
However, they said new preparedness assessments could be published as early as next year.
The subduction zone map was created using active source seismic imaging - which emits sounds down to the ocean floor and processes the echoes - that gives a sharper insight into how it can impact the surrounding area.
Researchers at the Columbia Climate School attached a streamer - a nine-mile-long cable - to the back of the boat which used 1,200 hydrophones that captured the echoes to update their ocean acoustic tomography models that provide images of the fault.
Hydrophones measure the amount of time it takes for sound to bounce off the structures on the ocean's floor and reach the surface, allowing them to detect the differences in the elevation of rocks that signify recently active fault lines.
'The accuracy and this resolution is truly unprecedented. And it's an amazing data set,' Kelin Wang, a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada who was not involved in the study, told NBC News.
'It just allows us to do a better job to assess the risk and have information for the building codes and zoning.''