Are you scared too?

[Lime]

Like the title says, are you scared too? They say a huge earthquake is going to hit Bc I'm really worried but are you?

[Renwaldo]

Ever been hit by a ton of concrete before?
Me neither, but the nerve damage is so quick you don't feel it when you get squished.

Squished like a spider.

Under a dump-load of gravel.

SPLAT!!!

0_0

[Temrin]

I've heard "we are going to get hit by a huge earthquake" for like 10+ years now. (well. longer then that.)

Is there some kind of new evidence now? (though. predicting earthquakes is kinda moot. sure you can be like "well there is a lot of activity in the area, maybe?" But theres really no predicting it up until the moments before it happens. And word wouldn't get out fast enough from the earthquake centers anyways.)

Theres a lot of fear mongering about this epic quake. Though for good reason. Many places in BC arent up to snuff as they should be. Many public places are but i do know a lot of homes arent nearly as sturdy as they should be. Information on what to do/where to hide/etc is always different from each person you talk to, too.

[Carl Foxmarten]

Not scared, no. A little concerned, but that's my normal state of mind...

[Drake Wingfire]

Great, now our government is gonna introduce an "earthquake tax" in the hopes that we can reduce our chance of an earthquake happening by having us all give them more money. You know kinda like how taxing gas got everyone to magically stop driving!  :roll:

But in all seriousness I remember being in grade 6 and getting all scared cause everyone was going earthquake crazy, people kept saying stuff like "man the big one is coming real soon!" It seems around here that every few years there is a revival of the earthquake panic.

[Tony Greyfox]

Meh, I've been hearing that since a babysitter scared me by saying we'd all die from earthquakes and tidal waves ... in 1980. Still around!

Yeah, we're in a quake zone, but if it happens it happens. Be prepared just in case; I've got emergency kits in my house and car with food, emergency stoves, and such. (which reminds me, I need water in the car...) a little bit of prep is never a bad thing.

[Zetta]

We don't have too much to worry about so long as you don't live in really tall buildings.
Earthquake proofing only works so far in construction before everything /but/ the supports start to crack.

That and unlike the earthquake in japan, we don't have too many nuclear power plants in BC, so the chance of something happening of that scale is unlikely.

That and the lower mainland has us islanders as a shield before they get hit by any large tidalwaves, so I don't see why anyone would be too worried.


Natural disasters are natural anyways, Can't do much about them and there isn't a single biome thats 100% safe on this planet.

[Neox]

A group of scientists predicts that we are supposed to have a record-breaking earthquake any time within the next 100 years.

People shit bricks.

Nobody predicts the semi to lose its breaks before the intersection and T-bone your car.

And we go on living happily like it'll never happen.

If a disaster is going to happen, it's going to happen.  The only difference is that when someone TELLS you it's going to happen, we all start freaking out.  I don't know which form of terrorism is worse: the kind they face over in the Middle East with car-bombs and martyrs... or the psychological kind that puts you in a state of terror for the rest of your life, fearing that the worst will happen.

If there is going to be an earthquake, nobody is going to predict exactly WHEN it will happen, so fuck it.  Go on with your life.  Forget about it.  What are you going to do to prepare anyway?  Anything short of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars fortifying your house to be "earthquake proof" is just useless, so don't worry about it.  Worry about it WHEN it happens.

The BEST thing you could do is familiarize yourself with survival tactics, but those are invaluable skills to know for anything, not just earthquakes.  Know where to go to find clean drinking water (mountain springs, unpolluted streams), learn how to scavenge or hunt for food, learn to build a fire from scratch...  I can tell you that if a natural disaster ever occurred that would ruin the city I live in, I'd be heading straight for the mountains.

[Fuzzum]

Ya i remember those days in school "EARTH QUAK TEST! EVERYONE UNDER THE DESK's" it was eather that or a tornado test not to shure.

but we stopped that almost right away like 3 days of that and it was gone. the desk were a "POS" anyway and the Beams above are head were huge and we were lined up under them so im shure the desk wouldnt have helped us at all if anything it would have made things worse. lol

[Ryokx]

We live on the surface of a ball with molten magma flowing underneath us. We have a whole universe that has who-knows-what hurdling towards us. Actually NASA probably knows, but, really, nature will run its course, and there's nothing we can do. Except create fear, and the Regional Board District to make lives miserable. So there's nothing really to worry about!

[Kirkus]

Yeah pretty much everyone in here has it the nail hammered on the head pretty well- I'll provide what I know from a couple biogeography classes to ease your mind a bit pal :3

Basically, an earthquake prediction is based on two things: the positioning of tectonic plates, and the current seismology of the small earthquakes that they're causing. Now for the latter, what's pretty cool about the internet is you can actually track the seismology of BC yourself on this site: http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/index-eng.php?tpl_region=west- as you can see, the earthquakes are typically on the coast as they should be and are pretty small in nature.

So what's causing these earthquakes? Well there are two plates that are connected off the coast of Vancouver Island: the Juan de Fuca, and the North American. What makes these plates' connection peculiar is that they're one of the few places in the world where subduction, obduction and belting are occurring all at the same time- the three possible ways that plates can interact with each other. This is what's causing regions of relatively high tectonic activity and hence the occasional small earthquake you feel in Van. When a large interaction happens, such as a plate slipping under the other from immense pressure, you get a large earthquake like San Francisco's in 1906.

Now despite this sounding pretty awful and hazardous, keep in mind that there are 8 huge plates in the world doing interactions just like our two, including the infamous San Andreas fault line that separates LA and Vegas (which frankly, lies directly underneath many nuclear powerplants that aren't meeting their safety standards). It's also incredibly difficult to make a decent prediction as to when these plates will finally give; many geologists claim "within the next few thousand years", simply because that's how broad these interactions are and how grand of a scale a large slip really is. Now if you take this time scale and the large uncertainty of how powerful an earthquake may be and apply it to things that could directly happen to you, such as an automobile accident or diabetes or cancer, then it quickly becomes very unreasonable for you to be scared about a potential earthquake. It could happen tomorrow, or in the year 4000, and when it does it may not even be a large-scale disaster. So RELAX, there are far more important things to worry about, like when Schrodinger's Cat may have died ;3

[spuug]

As Prof. Tom Lehrer sings:
"Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared... Be Prepared!"
( Tom Lehrer- Be Prepared )

[H u nn Y]

Ever been hit by a ton of concrete before?
Me neither, but the nerve damage is so quick you don't feel it when you get squished.

Squished like a spider.

Under a dump-load of gravel.

SPLAT!!!

0_0

Depending on how it falls on you, you may still be able to feel pain. How do I know this? Torchwood. I can't remember specifically which episode, but Toshika, the asian lady on their team, in the episode they go back to way before she worked for Torchwood, and after the whole said flash back of how they discovered her, Toshika, stuck under a PILE of concrete, is in PAIN, struggling to free herself from the debris, as 3 of her co-mates try and lift up the concrete from her, and that being really heavy, just moving it makes it worse as it presses down on her more and more.... so yeah, you can still possibly feel pain from a ton of cement... also Renwaldo, not a good thing to mention to people when they have enough to worry about XD

[Tito42]

I heard the earthquake is supposed to hit sometime in the next 200 years so that doesn't scare me too much.  I'm more scared about what would happen if the value of the dollar dropped drastically and no one was paying the cops or public servants and power fails and highways fail and food supply to the cities fail and water lines fail and people start killing each other for basic necessities and everyone's inner sociopath comes out and buildings are burnt down with people inside and bodies litter the streets and anarchy reigns... part of me is kinda excited for that though too.  At least with an earthquake there will still be someone in charge and we may only get a little bit of looting.

[Aeturnus]

I've been hearing about the 'big one' for at least twenty years, and people go as far as to say we're overdue for one. What's said is they don't consider the six point eight we had back in 2001 to be the big one. The thing I find the funniest: I didn't know earthquakes were on a schedule.

Although I'll admit I'm a little nervous, especially if we have an earthquake like the one that struck Japan a year ago. When that happens, you can pretty much kiss Downtown Seattle good-bye. We are nowhere near as prepared as Japan.