Comments on: Earthquake Update

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:23:23 +0000

Actually they would really like Siberia and Korea because they don’t like the water all that much.

By: ellroon

ellroon — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:04:25 +0000

Applying the Bush logic, if for every 3K deaths you get to acquire two countries … can China now bomb and invade Taiwan and Australia because of the earthquake?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:37:50 +0000

Liquification was also a problem with the SF ‘quake and in some of the areas around San Diego, as they are beginning to discover in neighborhoods built on hillsides in the 1950s – the wrong type of fill was used. The houses maintain their integrity … as they slide down the hill.

There are a lot of areas in Germany that have similar problems with infrastructure, you are better off with a motorcycle than a car once you leave a rail line because the roadbeds were established by the Romans and haven’t been widened.

A death toll above 30K is very likely before this is all over.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:57:07 +0000

Uhm, China’s transportation infrastructure is working just fine outside of the affected area. The problem is that inside the affected area, the train tracks are wrecked — and China is a train-centric society that relies on trains for long distance hauling. The roads outside the cities are terrible because they’re only used for short hauls by light buses and light trucks plus the government is still trying to dissuade farmers from heading to the cities by making it hard to get from point A (farm) to point B (city). Unfortunately, this also hinders efforts to get from point B to point A and if the train tracks that get you close to point A are wrecked, it becomes almost impossible. The operative word being “almost”. The Chinese know how to hump things on foot over destroyed infrastructure, though it’s not something they’ve had to do for a while. And they have a *lot* of troops. That said, their Army’s lack of logistical transport (it’s set up as a defensive army, which doesn’t need a whole lot of logistical support since it is not intended to operate beyond China’s borders) is going to be a big problem here until the railroads get fixed… and with those kinds of aftershocks, that might be a *long* time :-(.

As for what 7.9 means: This is worse than the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, which severely damaged or destroyed every masonry building in San Francisco. The only reason there wasn’t massive loss of life was that it hit in the early morning when most people were at home asleep in their wood-frame homes, and wood frame homes survive earthquakes much better than masonry buildings do. Well, that and the fact that SF was a port, thus aid could reach it quickly via ship. Even the most stringent earthquake codes are challenged by a 7.9 earthquake, if one hit the SF area today you’d get less loss of life but the transportation infrastructure would still be wrecked by the ‘quake.