Summer location recommendations?

[akrvbob]

My first choice would be Colorado, give thought to what Mr. Noodly said, he is very wise!! Often if you slowly move upward you can acclimate to higher elevations. There is nowhere better than Colorado.

I think Oregon should still be on the list, just move inland away from the coast and even a big earthquake won't do you any harm. Tons of National Forests to camp in. I loved Sisters Oregon and could easily spend the whole summer there. But there is so much more to see you don't have to. The Wallows in NorthEast Oregon are spectacular and the Klamath Falls area is great. No sales tax will save a lot of money and gas was average priced when I was there, higher than average but not terrible.

My next choice would be Wyoming but I have no idea about their laws on marijuana.

 

[akrvbob]

I was in the good Friday earthquake in Anchorage Alaska on March 27th 1964. It was the third largest earthquake in recorded history and the largest in North America. It was 9.3 (10 is utter destruction, nothing is left standing) and the aftershocks were 8 on the Richter scale. I remember it like it was yesterday. My school was heavily damaged and was closed for two years to be rebuilt.

I lived in Alaska for the next 42 years and have literally been in dozens of 7.0 and higher earthquakes in that time. I would never give a thought to the risks of earthquakes and still go back as often as I can. My son still live there

I think making major life decisions based on the fear of earthquakes is unwise.

 

[Richard]

You didn't say whether you tried acclimating yourself by moving gradually to higher elevations. I spend late winter, all of spring and early summer working my way up from less that 200 feet in the Yuma AZ area up to 10,000 feet in places like Leadville CO. By the time I drove to the top of Mt. Evans -- 14,000 feet -- I was only short of breath and felt a small headache coming on. But that was just a short visit, so no big deal. Sure, everyone reacts differently to high elevations, but I think it's possible to adapt. However, my Colorado friends say not to encourage any more people to come there.

I didn't ascend gradually. I lived in Albuquerque near the foot of the Sandias at 5,600' above sea level for nearly 7 years without any problem so I probably assumed, subconsciously, that I'd be fine. Makes perfect sense now that you mention it, though, because both times I experienced symptoms, I'd gone from about 800' to 7k+ over a 2-day long drive from Pennsylvania.

Thank you for mentioning acclimatization, MrNoodly. I suppose the best approach would be to pay attention to my body but I wonder whether there's some rule-of-thumb about how much to increase elevation at a time, and for how long before the next increase. I imagine a thousand feet per week would be a bit much, but maybe a thousand feet every 2-3 weeks is realistic? Thoughts?

 

[Richard]

My first choice would be Colorado, give thought to what Mr. Noodly said, he is very wise!! Often if you slowly move upward you can acclimate to higher elevations. There is nowhere better than Colorado.
...

Yep, I hadn't thought about it that way until he asked. And, after giving it some thought, I do recall spending about 3-weeks in Colorado Springs. I went there after having been in Albuquerque for almost 2-years straight so the change in elevation was relatively minor and I had no problems during that visit.

How exciting for Colorado to be back in the running! Thank you.

...
I think making major life decisions based on the fear of earthquakes is unwise.

Agreed. You know, it doesn't feel like fear when I'm doing the analysis, though. Having spent a couple decades in software development, gathering data and analyzing it have become so habituated that I no longer think about it as an activity to be consciously chosen -- I just approach most of life that way. Could it be fear masking itself as analysis? Hm... have to give that some thought.

 

[Richard]

Yeh, I think it is.

May I ask what leads you to think that? For example, here are just two of several examples from the follow-up piece:

Novelists and screenwriters can terrify people, feel pretty good about themselves, and call it a day. But for journalists, or at least this one, fear is not an end in itself. At best, it is a means to an end, a way to channel emotion into action. To achieve that, however, you need to navigate between the twin obstacles of panic (which makes you do all the wrong things) and fatalism (which makes you do nothing). In an effort to help people to do so, I’ve answered, below, some of the questions I’ve heard most often since the story was published, and also provided a little advice about how best to prepare for the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami, and their aftermath.

and

Are we overdue for the Cascadia earthquake?

No, although I heard that word a lot after the piece was published. As DOGAMI’s Ian Madin told me, “You’re not overdue for an earthquake until you’re three standard deviations beyond the mean”—which, in the case of the full-margin Cascadia earthquake, means eight hundred years from now. (In the case of the “smaller” Cascadia earthquake, the magnitude 8.0 to 8.6 that would affect only the southern part of the zone, we’re currently one standard deviation beyond the mean.) That doesn’t mean that the quake won’t happen tomorrow; it just means we are not “overdue” in any meaningful sense. The odds I cite in the story are correct: there is a thirty-per-cent chance of the M8.0–8.6 Cascadia earthquake and a ten-per-cent chance of the M8.7–9.2 earthquake in the next fifty years.

If you still believe the pieces are best characterized as fear-mongering, I'd like to understand your point of view. Would you cut and paste a segment or two from either article that, taken in context of the whole, gives you this impression?

It's about as likely as a Yellowstone Supervolcano wiping out all life in the western US.

Actually, it's far more likely than Yellowstone. Consider:

QUESTION: What is the chance of another catastrophic volcanic eruption at Yellowstone?

ANSWER: Although it is possible, scientists are not convinced that there will ever be another catastrophic eruption at Yellowstone. Given Yellowstone's past history, the yearly probability of another caldera-forming eruption can be approximated as 1 in 730,000 or 0.00014%. However, this number is based simply on averaging the two intervals between the three major past eruptions at Yellowstone — this is hardly enough to make a critical judgment. This probability is roughly similar to that of a large (1 kilometer) asteroid hitting the Earth. Moreover, catastrophic geologic events are neither regular nor predictable. --from the USGS Yellowstone page titled Questions about Supervolcanoes.

in contrast with this:

Written by researchers at Oregon State University, and published online by the U.S. Geological Survey, the study concludes that there is a 40 percent chance of a major earthquake in the Coos Bay, Ore., region during the next 50 years. And that earthquake could approach the intensity of the Tohoku quake that devastated Japan in March of 2011. --from 13-year Cascadia study complete – and earthquake risk looms large.

When one's perception of the chance of something doesn't agree with a sensible evaluation of available data, it's better to adjust the perception than to ignore the data

*Could* it happen next week? Yep. But I won't hold my breath worrying about it. (shrug)

Some people seem to consider any mention of a potential risk as equivalent to worrying. It's not at all the same thing. To mischaracterize in that manner is to employ what's commonly termed a straw man fallacy. The straw man gets dismissed, and the impression left is that the original point -- rather than the mischaracterized 'straw man' version of that point -- has been refuted. Even when the straw man fallacy is unintentional, it remains a fallacy because to refute a mischaracterization of a point isn't the same thing as refuting the original point.

Surely you don't believe that all researchers gathering data are 'worrying' about the matters they're researching... do you? By extension, do you believe that all people who read that research because they wish to be informed about a subject -- are they necessarily 'worrying' about the matter? Finally, if someone shares what they've learned about a matter, does that necessarily imply that they're 'worried' about it?

I mean these as rhetorical questions; food for thought. Not trying to troll you

 

[akrvbob]

The greatest risk from earthquakes is from a tsunami, fire or explosions, and building collapse. It's very easy to be in Oregon and virtually eliminate all those risks. Camp inland in the National Forest and then just take trips into the coastal cities. Your risk then would be so teeny tiny that if you're still afraid, it would not be a healthy or reasonable fear.

 

[slynne]

I'll bet a van would be pretty good in an earthquake, especially if you are away from the coast.

 

[Honeys Park]

Honeys park. Legal weed two hours south in Nevada. Stock up. Wouldn't be the first guy to do it.