Intelligence from boots on ground:

I had the opportunity to visit briefly with a career military official yesterday that is in charge of regional disaster relief and logistics for a branch of the U.S. Military. He works closely with FEMA and other US agencies with regard to disaster preps and logistical coordination when those disasters (natural or otherwise) occur.

Anyway, I asked him what he was doing today, in a region of the country that rarely (if ever) sees a disaster of any scale beyond the occasional tornado maybe, figuring that he had to be bored out of his mind. He said that he wasn’t bored at all, as they were now preparing for the “big one” along the New Madrid Fault! No shit.

He went on to say that they are intensely planning for that event, and are 100% certain that it will hit sometime in the near future. He said that we were in “the window”, that not only do they have evidence through recent seismic data, but also historical evidence from previous major earthquakes around the world. For instance, he said that just a few years before the last New Madrid quake that caused the Mississippi to flow backwards and create Reelfoot Lake, there was a similarly sized earthquake (and Tsunami) in Japan. Said he’d actually seen the high watermark from that time in the late 1800’s (that someone had etched into a certain cave in Japan). In other words, with regard to earthquakes, history truly repeats itself (due to plate tectonics).

So, the word from those that know a bit more than most laymen is that we should see a major quake along the New Madrid fault “any day now,” with the caveat that this window extends out to 2030, but that we are in the peak period of expectation right now.

He went on to describe (briefly) the damage expected, and it was much worse than anything I’d ever heard before (other than here maybe). Basically, anything west of I-65 (stretching several hundred miles) would be susceptible to total destruction via the quake or resultant flooding from the numerous rivers and tributaries in the areas surrounding the fault (primarily along the Mississippi, but also a number of others). Said cities along or near the Mississippi (like Memphis for instance) would see total destruction, with much of the areas in midtown and downtown for instance actually sliding into the river due to the soil composition there. In fact, liquification is of significant concern. Combined with the fact that literally none of our infrastructure has been built to withstand anything beyond an occasional low magnitude quake, many buildings and bridges are expected to come crashing down.

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