In March 2010, USA Today ran this headline: “Chilean Earthquake Hints at Dangers of ‘Big One’ for USA.” “One of the really ‘Big Ones’ to shake the United States was a magnitude-9.0 earthquake along the Pacific Northwest coast more than 300 years ago, before the arrival of huge numbers of people and development, that sent a catastrophic tsunami to Japan,” the article reported. “Were something like that 1700 quake to occur today—and it certainly could, seismologists say—enormous destruction and loss of life would result in a region that is home now to big cities and millions of people. The magnitude-8.8 earthquake that rocked Chile and sent tsunami fears across the Pacific on Saturday—nearly seven weeks after the enormously deadly quake that destroyed parts of Haiti—serves as a vivid reminder of the perils posed to the United States by countless fault lines and shifting plates. ‘It’s not a matter of if, only of when an event like this strikes the people of the United States,’ says Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey. ‘Shame on us if we don’t prepare.’”[275]
Such fears are grounded in historic reality. In 1906, a powerful earthquake rocked San Francisco, California, and triggered a horrendous fire. The quake—which some scientists say was magnitude 7.7; others say it hit 8.3 on the Richter scale—was felt from Oregon to Nevada. The damage was extensive. An estimated three thousand people were killed, some 28,000 buildings were destroyed, and nearly a quarter of a million people were made homeless. The cost of rebuilding topped $400 million, an enormous sum at the time.[276]
What if the same quake occurred in San Francisco this year or next? “The ‘Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake’ is one of the strongest ever recorded on the North American continent,” noted a group of earthquake experts at the California Institute of Technology. “If a similar earthquake occurred in northern California today, after many decades of rapid urban growth, thousands of people would likely be killed and economic losses might be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Such an event would easily be the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.”[277]
What Is the Probability of a Catastrophic Earthquake?
Just how likely is it that such a devastating quake will happen in northern California again? “Because of extensive urban development in northern California since 1906, the strong earthquakes expected in the coming decades may be very destructive,” the CIT scientists wrote. “For example, a magnitude-7 earthquake occurring today on the Hayward Fault (a part of the San Andreas Fault system, along the densely populated eastern side of San Francisco Bay) would likely cause hundreds of deaths and almost $100 billion of damage. In 1999, the USGS reported that there is a 70 percent chance that one or more quakes of about magnitude 6.7 or larger will occur in the San Francisco Bay area before the year 2030.”[278]
Residents of Southern California also fear the “Big One.” They experience small and moderate quakes rather frequently, but in 1994, a 6.7-magnitude quake rocked the Northridge area of Los Angeles, killing fifty-seven people, injuring thousands, and doing between $20 billion and $40 billion worth of damage.[279]
Could something worse be coming? Unfortunately, the experts say yes. A well-respected 2007 study known as the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast offered dismal news—it found that “powerful quakes . . . are inevitable in California’s future.” According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the federal government’s main earthquake research and tracking agency, “In a new comprehensive study, scientists have determined that the chance of having one or more magnitude-6.7 or larger earthquakes in the California area over the next 30 years is greater than 99 percent.” That, in scientific terms, is essential certainty. “Such quakes can be deadly, as shown by the 1989 magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta and the 1994 magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquakes. The likelihood of at least one even more powerful quake of magnitude 7.5 or greater in the next 30 years is 46 percent—such a quake is most likely to occur in the southern half of the state. Building codes, earthquake insurance, and emergency planning will be affected by these new results, which highlight the urgency to prepare now for the powerful quakes that are inevitable in California’s future.”[280]
Killer Quakes Threaten Supercities
A 2003 article in National Geographic warned that urbanization is making the world more vulnerable to catastrophic earthquakes. As more people move to cities and more buildings are erected closer together, the probability of great destruction increases. The article noted that some of the world’s largest “supercities” of 2 million or more people—including major American cities—are becoming extremely vulnerable to extinction-level events.
“Unless protective measures are taken, once every century or so when the earth trembles in a violent release of pent-up tension, buildings will tumble, streets will buckle, and pipelines will snap, leaving upwards of a million people crushed beneath the debris,” noted reporter John Roach, referencing the research of Roger Bilham, a geological scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[281]
Other scientists around the world share this view. “As population grows, and it is growing in earthquake-prone regions, we are susceptible to large earthquakes causing huge numbers of fatalities,” said Andy Michael, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Earthquakes Hazard Team in Menlo Park, California, in an interview with National Geographic.[282]
“People do not like to think in terms of an earthquake disaster of one million fatalities. Nevertheless, I am convinced this is possible,” Max Wyss, director of the World Agency of Planetary Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction in Geneva, Switzerland, was quoted in the article as saying.[283]
Perhaps the big question, however, is not whether merely one such catastrophic quake could hit one major American city but whether the U.S. could be hit with multiple “killer quakes.”
The Threat of Tsunamis
Recent devastating tsunamis in Asia and India left untold destruction and stunned and saddened people all over the world. Could such events ever happen here in the U.S.? Bible prophecy certainly warns us to be watching for such disasters in the last days. In fact, the Lord Jesus himself said in Luke 21:25 that prior to his return, there will be “dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves.”
Consider, then, this disturbing headline from a 2005 article in National Geographic: “Tsunamis More Likely to Hit U.S. than Asia.”[284] Scientists believe that tsunamis resulting from major earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean are actually more likely to reach the United States than the Asian continent, and Americans living along that coast would have precious little time to get to safety if a cataclysmic event occurred.
“If a magnitude-9 earthquake were to strike in the Pacific Northwest and generate a tsunami, we’d have less than 15 minutes’ warning [before it hit the shore],” said Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus of geosciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis.[285]
Obviously, major tsunamis are rare along the Pacific Coast of the United States, but they have happened. “A 1946 Aleutian quake, which generated a tsunami that struck Hawaii, and the 1964 Alaska event led the United States to establish a federal tsunami-monitoring system, managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,” National Geographic reported. “Today six deep-ocean monitors, located from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, watch for patterns that could hint at an earthquake or landslide capable of generating a tsunami. A recorder’s readings are beamed up to a buoy and relayed to NOAA’s network of weather satellites. The satellite data is analyzed at NOAA’s tsunami warning centers in Hawaii and Alaska, which issue alerts to emergency officials and the U.S. military in the event of a tsunami.”[286]
Is it possible, then, that a series of massive, unprecedented earthquakes or tsunamis could level American cities, kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, and cause such extensive damage that the U.S. would be hard-pressed to recover emotionally or economically? Given that Bible prophecy tells us massive earthquakes are coming, one
cannot rule out the possibility of the U.S. being neutralized by them.
The Threat of Hurricanes
Hurricanes along the East Coast and Gulf Coast also pose grave dangers for us.
While I was writing this book, Hurricane Irene swept the East Coast of the United States in August 2011, causing the largest evacuation in American history as millions of Americans fled the storm’s path.[287] When Irene hit, some 5 million Americans were left without power.[288] Thousands of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, and dozens of people lost their lives. Irene became one of the top ten costliest hurricanes in American history.[289] Yet it could have been much worse. At its peak, Hurricane Irene was about six hundred miles wide, or about the size of the state of Texas.[290] Had it remained a category 3 storm—or even increased in intensity—it could have created the greatest natural disaster catastrophe in the history of the United States.
Fortunately, that’s not what happened. The storm lost speed and power as it approached land, and by the time it reached New York City, most of its “teeth” had been removed. As the cleanup began, critics said the storm was hyped up and overblown by government officials and weather forecasters. But did the experts really badly misjudge Irene, or did God hear people’s prayers and have mercy on us by weakening the storm faster than the experts had predicted? I think both are true. I am grateful to the Lord for his grace and mercy on us.
But what if God had not been so gracious? What if rather than shaking us and waking us up to what he could do, he actually let us experience what other nations around the world have experienced?
What if a Hurricane Hit New York City?
As Hurricane Irene was approaching, the New York Times noted that “tropical cyclones in and around New York City and the northeastern United States are fairly rare but not unprecedented” and that since 1900, at least twenty such serious storms “have made landfall north of the Mason-Dixon line with tropical-storm-force winds (at least 39 miles per hour) or higher, twelve of which made direct hits on either Long Island or New Jersey.”[291]
The Times then offered a sobering analysis by hurricane experts of some worst-case scenarios. Reporter Nick Silver wrote that a hurricane that hit Manhattan at its full category 2 storm strength would likely flood New York’s subway system, flood homes and businesses in neighborhoods throughout the city, and cause $35 billion in damage, which the story noted is “equivalent to roughly half of New York City’s annual budget.”[292]
“It is theoretically possible that an even stronger storm might hit the city at some point in the future,” Silver added. “A category 3 hurricane, one with wind speeds of 111 miles per hour or higher, could plausibly produce an economic impact in excess of $100 billion if its eye were to pass directly over Manhattan.” A stronger category 3 storm, Silver reported, “could rival or exceed the roughly $235 billion in economic damage estimated to have been caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. What happens beyond that gets into highly speculative territory: in recorded history, no storm has made landfall in the northeastern United States while stronger than a category 3.”[293]
Silver reported that “meteorologists debate whether a category 4 storm hitting New York is literally physically impossible, so unlikely as to be practically impossible, or a plausible occurrence but one that will happen less than once in a generation.” But he wrote that “if such a storm were to occur, it would be exceptionally devastating to New York City, and its economic effects would plausibly run into the trillions of dollars, tantamount to the estimates that some scholars have provided of a Tohoku-strength earthquake striking directly under Tokyo (something that almost certainly is physically possible).”[294]
Specifically, a category 4 direct hit on Manhattan could do $2 trillion to $6 trillion dollars in damage. What’s more, since New York’s annual gross domestic product is roughly 10 percent of the nation’s GDP, “if much of the city were to become dysfunctional for months or more, the damage to the global and domestic economies would be almost incalculable.”[295]
Are Other Parts of the U.S. at Risk?
Is it really possible that American cities could be wiped out—or nearly wiped out—by direct hits from major hurricanes? Before Hurricane Katrina, few could have even imagined such a horrific scenario. Now anything seems possible.
Seven of the deadliest hurricanes in American history have occurred in the past twenty-five years, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), run by the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Two-thirds of the costliest hurricanes occurred during the same period.[296]
An August 2011 report by the agency warned that the NHC has “repeatedly emphasized the great danger of a catastrophic loss of life in a future hurricane if proper preparedness plans for vulnerable areas are not formulated, maintained, and executed.” The study showed that “85 percent of U.S. coastal residents from Texas to Maine had never experienced a direct hit by a major hurricane,” and that now “an estimated 50 million residents have moved to coastal sections during the past twenty-five years” and are in jeopardy of the next major storms.[297]
None of us can know precisely what the future holds. But the experts are warning that some of history’s worst hurricanes have happened quite recently, raising the possibility that even worse is still ahead. During the course of my research, for example, one piece of data really caught my attention and, I have to admit, unnerved me. “The biggest hurricane ever recorded was Typhoon Tip,” reported a website called Live Science, noting that hurricanes in the western Pacific Ocean are called typhoons. “The 1979 storm, which made landfall in southern Japan, was nearly 1,400 miles wide at one point. That’s almost half the size of the continental United States.”[298]
Could that ever happen here? I wondered. Is it possible that a hurricane half the size of the U.S. could hit the continent—and do so at a category 3, 4, or 5 intensity? Could we recover from such a disaster? Such an apocalyptic event might neutralize America for years to come.
“Weather historians who have studied the cycles of Atlantic hurricanes said such a massive storm so far north was long overdue,” noted a story in the Wall Street Journal as Hurricane Irene made landfall. “As a fading hurricane, it was the first major storm to cross Long Island since 1991. If the historical pattern holds true, the northeastern U.S. can expect even stronger hurricanes soon.”[299]
Hurricane scholar Richard Schwartz in Alexandria, Virginia, author of Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States, told the Journal, “Irene wasn’t a fluke, and we are due for worse.” Schwartz, who has analyzed hurricanes dating back to the 1600s, added that “we have been in an active hurricane cycle that began in 1995. It is amazing that there has not been a hurricane like Irene or worse coming into the New York area in all that time.”[300]
The Threat of Volcanoes
The first time I ever recall hearing of a volcano erupting in the United States was in 1980, when I was thirteen years old and Mount St. Helens in Washington State erupted. Back then, I didn’t really look closely at what happened. After all, I was growing up in upstate New York, on the other side of the country, and this was before the days of cable news and Google. When I eventually looked into that eruption, however, I was stunned by the destructive impact of that fateful day.
An article on a U.S. government website offers the following description:
Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall, symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. In a few moments this slab of rock and ice slammed into Spirit Lake, crossed a ridge 1,300 feet high, and roared fourteen miles down the Toutle River. The avalanche rapidly released pressurized gases within the volcano. A tremendous lateral explosion ripped through the avalanche and developed into a turbulent, stone-filled wind that swept over ridges and toppled trees. Nearly 150 square miles of forest was blown over or left dead and standing. At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skywar
d and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. Wet, cement-like slurries of rock and mud scoured all sides of the volcano. Searing flows of pumice poured from the crater. The eruption lasted nine hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments.[301]
Though most people in the area had been evacuated, fifty-seven people lost their lives. Prior to Mount St. Helens, only two people in American history had died from volcanic eruptions. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than two hundred houses and cabins were destroyed, as were 185 miles of roads and fifteen miles of railways. “Many tens of thousands of acres of prime forest, as well as recreational sites, bridges, roads, and trails, were destroyed or heavily damaged.”[302]
Could volcanoes in the future pose even more serious threats to life as we know it in the United States? Apparently, they could.
Consider this MSNBC headline from the summer of 2011: “Keeping an Eye on Yellowstone’s Supervolcano: When Next ‘Big One’ Will Be Is Anyone’s Guess—But You Don’t Want to Be Here.” The story begins:
It’s no mere doomsday pseudoscience: The Yellowstone supervolcano really could be the end of us all. When the Yellowstone Caldera—the name of the national park’s geographic structure, which roughly translates as cauldron—blows its lid, much of the continental United States will get covered in a blanket of ash. That ash will clog the atmosphere enough to block out the sun, disrupting the global climate enough to cause mass extinctions.[303]
Consider, too, this headline from the London Daily Mail in the winter of 2011: “Could Yellowstone National Park’s Caldera Super-Volcano Be Close to Eruption?” The article paints a bleak picture:
Scientists are predicting that the world’s largest supervolcano in one of America’s most popular national parks could erupt in the near future. Yellowstone National Park’s caldera has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another eruption. They said that the supervolcano underneath the Wyoming park has been rising at a record rate since 2004—its floor has gone up three inches per year for the last three years alone, the fastest rate since records began in 1923. It would explode with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. Spewing lava far into the sky, a cloud of plant-killing ash would fan out and dump a layer ten feet deep up to 1,000 miles away. Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes. But hampered by a lack of data, they have stopped short of an all-out warning, and they are unable to put a date on when the next disaster might take place. When the eruption finally happens, it will dwarf the effect of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which erupted in April last year, causing travel chaos around the world.[304]
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