Cascadia's Fault The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America

by Thompson, Jerry; Winchester, Simon

• ISBN13: 9781582438245
• ISBN10: 1582438242
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-17
• Publisher: Counterpoint

Summary

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a fracture in the Earth's crust roughly 100 kilometers offshore, running 1,100 kilometers from Northern California to Northern Vancouver Island. This fault generates monster earthquake about every 500 years. There is roughly a 30 percent chance that just such a disaster could happen within the next fifty years. Or it could happen tonight.

Author Biography

Jerry Thompson is an award-winning documentary filmmaker living outside of Vancouver. For twenty years, he worked as a as a network news correspondent and a documentary film producer for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has written articles for Equinox and Vancouver magazine, and has produced and narrated a half-dozen highly regarded television documentary specials on Cascadia’s fault that received wide critical praise.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. vii
Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. xvii
Tremors and Riffles
Mexico City: Preview of Coming Events	p. 3
Lessons from the Rubble: A Front-Page Story	p. 13
The Alaska Megathrust: Cascadia's Northern Cousin	p. 29
Against the Wind of Convention: Plafker, Benioff, and Press	p. 43
Cauldron and Crust: The Rehabilitation of Continental Drift	p. 53
Nuke on a Fault: Early Clues in Humboldt Bay	p. 61
Proving the Doubters Wrong: The Chile Connection	p. 70
Mount St. Helens: Cascadia's Smoking Gun?	p. 78
Setbacks and Breakthroughs
Mud Cores and Lasers: The Search for Evidence	p. 95
The Whoops Factor: Cascadia's True Nature Revealed	p. 113
Quake Hunters: Finding Cascadia's Ghost Forest	p. 125
Cedars, Peat, and Turbidites: A Tipping Point at Monmouth	p. 134
Cascadia's Segmented Past: Apocalypse or Decades of Terror?	p. 147
Digital Water: Catching Waves in a Computer	p. 161
Defining the Zone: Hot Rocks and High Water	p. 177
Cracks, Missing Rings, and Native Voices: Closing In on a Killer Quake	p. 190
The Orphan Tsunami: Final Proof of Cascadia's Last Rupture	p. 200
Episodic Tremor and Slip: Tracking Cascadia with GPS	p. 212
Turbidite Timeline: Cascadia's Long and Violent History	p. 221
When's This Going to Happen? The Problems with Prediction	p. 233
Shockwaves
Facing Reality: Cascadia Equals Sumatra	p. 269
The Next Wave: Thinking the Unthinkable	p. 278
Watching It Happen, Wishing It Wouldn't	p. 288
Cascadia's Fault: Day of Reckoning	p. 300
Epilogue: Survival and Resilience, a State of Mind	p. 309
Afterword	p. 319
Acknowledgments	p. 337
Suggestions for Further Reading	p. 339
Index	p. 349
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