MICHAEL TOTTEN: Off The Richter Scale: Can the Pacific Northwest prepare for the cataclysmic quake that’s coming? “Americans have long dreaded the ‘Big One,’ a magnitude 8.0 earthquake along California’s San Andreas Fault that could one day kill thousands of people and cause billions of dollars in damage. The Big One, though, is a mere mini-me compared with the cataclysm forming beneath the Pacific Northwest.”

Plus: “Local governments can’t possibly stockpile enough food to feed millions during a disaster; they aren’t, in fact, stockpiling anything. People will have to feed themselves until FEMA arrives, and the agency won’t be on the scene in a day, or even a week. Not a single road will be passable. An entire region 100 miles wide and 600 miles long will be ravaged. Many Americans have bemoaned the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, but we’ll have hundreds of de facto islands in the Pacific Northwest. . . . Local governments once told everyone to have at least three days’ worth of food on hand that can be prepared without gas or electricity. They have since raised the bar to two weeks. Is that enough?” No. Next question?

Also: “‘If you have a community in rural Oklahoma hit by a tornado,’ he says, ‘the volunteers can render aid until the proverbial cavalry arrives. After a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, the cavalry won’t show up for weeks. So my volunteers need to know more than simply first aid. They need to know wilderness first aid.'”

But beware: NAACP Declares Portland Earthquake Warnings To Be Racist.

Meanwhile, a New Madrid quake would be almost as bad, and economically might be worse, since it would effectively cut the country in half for months.