Featured Image Credit: Brigitte MERLE / Getty
It seems we just can't catch a break these days.
If dealing with the threats of AI uprisings and world leaders hovering their fingers on red buttons weren't enough to worry about as we dodge World War III, Mother Nature herself threatens to wipe us out. As Jonathan Bailey's Dr. Henry Loomis says in Jurassic World Rebirth, when the Earth is done with humans, it'll shake us off like a summer cold.
Scientists have already warned us about the hundreds of dormant volcanoes ready to erupt, or what about the so-called harbinger asteroid that could wipe out whole cities?
There are also 'unsurvivable' earthquakes and extreme weather conditions due to hit us within the next 20 years.
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It all sounds a bit doom and gloom, and although some are brushing off these warnings and getting on with their day, you only have to look at how the Japanese tourist industry has been affected by tsunami prophecies to see others are taking it very seriously.
Adding another foreboding foreshadowing to our ever-growing list, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the USA's (potential) worst natural disaster could be about to get a whole lot worse.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a massive fault line that stretches from northern California to British Columbia. After sitting dormant for 300 years, its eventual rupture is expected to unleash chaos on the US West Coast and endanger lives as a tsunami crashes ashore with 100-foot waves.
This area is where the Oceanic Juan de Fuca Plate slips beneath the North American Plate, but as the pair tend to get stuck, strain builds up over the centuries and eventually releases as a massive earthquake.
Cascadia can produce quakes of magnitude 9.0 or more, with the last one occurring on January 26, 1700, and said to have been anywhere between 8.7 and 9.2. Major events happen every 450 to 500 years, so scientists are rightly concerned that the clock is ticking.
Worryingly, this is said to just be the start of Cascadia’s cataclysm, with land along the coast expected to plummet by eight feet in a matter of minutes. Speaking to BBC's Science Focus, lead author Professor Tina Dura explained: "We talk about climate-driven sea level rise, which is occurring at three to four millimetres a year, and that does eventually add up. But here we’ll have two metres of sea level rise in minutes. Why aren’t we talking about that more?”
It's said that 1960's Valdivia earthquake in Chile was the biggest of all time as it boasted a magnitude of 9.5, and even if Cascadia doesn't break that record, the death toll could be catastrophic before we even get to the aftereffects.
The US National Seismic Hazard Model has suggested there's a 15% chance of a magnitude 8.0 or greater earthquake striking this area in the next 50 years.
According to predictions from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a quake of this size could be responsible for 5,800 deaths, with another 8,000 from the resulting tsunami. More than this, we could be facing 100,000 injuries, 618,000 buildings being damaged or destroyed, and an economic cost of $134 billion. As Dura warns: "This is going to be a very catastrophic event for the US, for sure."
“After the tsunami comes and eventually recedes, the land is going to persist at lower levels. That floodplain footprint is going to be altered for decades or even centuries."
It's apparently for the best if the earthquake happens sooner rather than later, as with sea levels set to rise by another two feet or more by 2100, Dura concludes that it's a 'dual threat'.
