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The recent New Yorker article made me wonder: When the cataclysmic earthquake hits, how far up the Columbia River will the tsunami go, assuming it's as big as predicted?
—Not Buying a Beach House
In the weeks following the July 12 publication in The New Yorker of Kathryn Schulz's "The Really Big One," I got several letters asking this question.
You'll be pleased to learn that the coming tsunami will not wipe Portland's godless ass off the map. A recent Oregon State University study predicts the 13-foot wave will dissipate to nothing by the time it reaches Longview's slightly more godly ass, about 50 miles inland.
This is cold comfort if you (or your parents or grandparents) live on the coast, which by all accounts will evoke memories of Banda Aceh after it's all over.
Even so, Schulz lays it on pretty thick, with plenty of "as much as" and "up to" to punch up the body count. When she has to drop in the official estimated death toll—a measly 13,000 souls!—she hastens to add that if conditions are right, that figure "could be off by a horrifying margin."
This is typical of the ongoing media conversation about the quake: brief bursts of hair-on-fire hysteria followed by long interludes of wondering whether Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj are going to kiss and make up..
Make no mistake: When the quake comes, we're screwed. But Schulz tries to make it sound like we're asteroid-impact-level screwed, when it seems more likely we'll be Fukushima-level screwed. (At least there's no nuclear power plant in Seaside.)
It's amazing how imminent the disaster seemed right after that article came out. For a moment, I even considered buying some canned goods and bottled water. But already, through the soothing chatter of my Twitter feed, I can feel the danger receding, like an elderly person's house borne away on the tide.
WWeek 2015