We shouldn't fault (!!) anyone or anything for its own mortality, including the planet. Most of us choose to live here in Seattle where there is a quake risk, and pretty much all of us are free to decide whether or not we go on living, but why get all antsy over all this.

Of course, now that I've said that, if a big quake comes in the next few hours the schadenfreude will come rolling in.

This makes me happy I live in a place that's relatively immune to natural disasters. No earthquakes, no volcanos, no todal waves, no hurricanes. About the worst thing I have to worry about is a bad snowstorm.

Make that "tidal waves." Fucking BlackBerrys.

Shifting continents and subsequent destruction gave us both religion and environmental changes that have charted the path of our own evolution.
Nothing stays the same and nothing changes.

I'd be more worried about the sun that is going to go nova next week followed by the instantaneous collapse of the entire universe back into a singularity the next day.

I'm not going to waste time being worried. It's just silly.

(fart joke)

The scary part isn't dying in the apocalypse. It's surviving.

On the positive side of things at least Seattle would be spared from the primary shock from a tsunami.

Time for an Eyman initiative -- we clearly tax too much for earthquake monitoring, since it may be another 100+ years!

Charles, you're a fucking idiot and I can't believe a newspaper actually wastes ink (or in this case bits) on you. No, the death of an individual is not remotely like the death of everybody. No apocalypse doesn't happen all the time, or EVER. dipshit.

@11 You clearly don't read up on philosophy or psychology much, eh?

Read up on Solipsism, for starters. He was being deep -- if you die, to your perspective, the world does go with you.

so we can dither on the viaduct for about 200 more years?

@13 But when you die you don't have perspective anymore. When you die it doesn't matter to you anymore.

@9 Actually Seattle would be hit by multiple tsunamis because at magnitudes above 9 Puget Sound is like a bowl of water that is shaken. In the past, 200 ft. waves hit the Seattle waterfront.

Actually, it's going to happen this weekend, which is why I'm doing a trek to Discovery Park on Turkey Day, before it gets hard to get there ....

(ducks)

Nah. But it will happen when it does and we are NOT prepared for it.

So this could happen sometime within the next 250 years. Why are people fretting? Might as well worry about a cataclysmic asteroid strike. You really don't want to survive that.

Actually I've read my fair share of philosophy and psychology and I can still say with confidence that his statement is just fucking stupid. If that makes me a prick so be it.

I wouldn't even disagree with your Stalin quote but tragedy vs statistic is not the same as 1 person dead vs everyone (much less everything) dead.

Charles,
I understood what you meant. I agree somewhat. When a human dies the worlds around him or her, young or old die as well. However, one hopes a good legacy lives on either through children, work or art. But that's a luxury or fortune. There are two things worse than individual death and that is mass death (and destruction) as through war, genocide or epidemic where there is very little chance of individual legacies left and of course extinction when there is no chance of reproduction. So, while death is as natural as being born, it is important to keep it in perspective and live well.

BTW, I can only imagine a monstrous prick like Stalin concocting a quote like "the death of one is a tragedy..." That man was responsible for millions of human deaths in systematic murder, famine, the Gulag or just executions carried out. A ghastly legacy. I suggest reading "The Great Terror" by Robert Conquest and "In the Court of the Red Tsar" by Sebag Montefiore. That man was the avatar of evil.

Never mind the average; what's the expected variance?

eclexia -
You are right to ask. The variance is huge. So, if the variance is huge, the last recorded fault rupture occurred in the year 1700, and the average time differential is 550 years . . . then the fault could be due for rupture at any time.