The Golden Gate Bridge

[ysabetwordsmith]

... is preparing for the Big One. 

The seismic modifications look promising.  I estimate they will be very helpful against "typical" earthquakes of 6-7 magnitude.  They might  withstand up to level 8.  I sincerely doubt that they will stand up to level 9 let alone more than that.  (Remember, this is a logarithmic scale and each level is ten times worse than the previous one.)

The Ring of Fire is a bucking hellhorse.  The West Coast is primed for a full rip.  That doesn't mean it will happen that way, but it's quite likely.  Several major faults have been locked long enough that they are overdue for a massive quake.  One of those is the Cascadian Subduction Zone, the key to the "Really Big One," because when it rips it tends to cause catastrophic damage.  Another is the San Andreas.  Because the faults are connected, it's possible for an earthquake to travel in chain reaction from one to another, something I've only seen mentioned in the last few years but is pretty obvious if you look at a fault map or have ever played a game of Jenga.

Bluntly put, extant technology cannot stand up against a magnitude 9 earthquake, and very little will withstand even an 8.  The one thing we have that really stands a chance is a monolithic dome, and that's less about human engineering than it is about geometry and physics.  That'll stand up to a lot of bucking and shaking, but not even a dome will survive if the ground shears right underneath it -- or liquifies, or gets buried under a landslide, all things likely to happen in higher-level earthquakes.

By all means, prepare for earthquakes.  Update your infrastructure as best you can.  But understand the limits of technology against the power of a planet that's about to let out its belt a notch.  The best thing you can do is get the hell out of the way.

Extensive information about the Ring of Fire, the West Coast, and its earthquake / tsunami risks is available in the notes for poems in my thread on the Big One.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

That first link is malformed and goes nowhere.

[dantesspirit]

Even the New Madrid Faultline over here in the Appalachian Mountain area is overdue for a good one. And we don't typically build for earthquakes here.