Quakeland: On the Road to America's Next Devastating Earthquake

by Kathryn Miles

Overview

A journey around the United States in search of the truth about the threat of earthquakes leads to spine-tingling discoveries, unnerving experts, and ultimately the kind of preparations that will actually help guide us through disasters. It’s a road trip full of surprises.
 
Earthquakes. You need to worry about them only if you’re in San Francisco, right? Wrong. We have been making enormous changes to subterranean America, and Mother Earth, as always, has been making some of her own. . . . The consequences for our real estate, our civil engineering, and our communities will be huge because they will include earthquakes most of us do not expect and cannot imagine—at least not without reading Quakeland. Kathryn Miles descends into mines in the Northwest, dissects Mississippi levee engineering studies, uncovers the horrific risks of an earthquake in the Northeast, and interviews the seismologists, structual engineers, and emergency managers around the country who are addressing this ground shaking threat.

As Miles relates, the era of human-induced earthquakes began in 1962 in Colorado after millions of gallons of chemical-weapon waste was pumped underground in the Rockies. More than 1,500 quakes over the following seven years resulted. The Department of Energy plans to dump spent nuclear rods in the same way. Evidence of fracking’s seismological impact continues to mount. . . . Humans as well as fault lines built our “quakeland”.

What will happen when Memphis, home of FedEx's 1.5-million-packages-a-day hub, goes offline as a result of an earthquake along the unstable Reelfoot Fault? FEMA has estimated that a modest 7.0 magnitude quake (twenty of these happen per year around the world) along the Wasatch Fault under Salt Lake City would put a $33 billion dent in our economy. When the Fukushima  reactor melted down, tens of thousands were displaced. If New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant blows, ten million people will be displaced. How would that evacuation even begin?

Kathryn Miles’ tour of our land is as fascinating and frightening as it is irresistibly compelling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698411463
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/29/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

KATHRYN MILES is an acclaimed journalist and writer-in-residence for Green Mountain College, as well as a faculty member for Chatham University’s MFA program. With a BA in Philosophy from St. Louis University and a PhD in English from the University of Delaware, Miles is also a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council and a member of the Terrain.org editorial board. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, Popular Mechanics, Outside, and The New York Times.

Read an Excerpt

Their Campsite, Our Core

Picture a campsite-one of the standard-issue kinds replicated in national forests and parks around the country. In a lot of ways, it's the quintessential American image: the kind of image you'd find on a postage stamp or in an ad for a new made-in-the-USA truck or maybe even in your favorite Brady Bunch episode. In so many ways, these sites represent our collective values: After all, these campgrounds exist because of good national policy, good government-real bedrock stuff.

At the particular site I have in mind, there's a little gravel pull-off for a vehicle and a bare pad just large enough for a four-person tent. Off to the side, a picnic table cozies up to a well-used fire ring lined with blackened stones. Maybe you've slept at sites like this. Perhaps you and your kids have roasted marshmallows in that fire ring, feeling the chipped paint of the picnic table on bare legs as you stretched toasting sticks into the embers, liking the way the soles of your shoes heated up on the rocks.

Even if you haven't actually done this, I bet you can still imagine it. Why? Because it is a deeply American scene: "Go West, young man" meets wholesome family togetherness, complete with hot dogs and Jiffy Pop.

Now imagine the force required to cleave that land-to strike a fissure between that picnic table and fire ring. One moment, the two objects sit side by side, just a few feet separating them. The next moment, the fire ring and everything to the east of it drops twenty feet. Your toes are no longer touching warm stones. They're dangling off a cliff.

This scenario sounds like the sort of thing that can only happen in Hollywood. But sixty years ago, that's precisely what happened at the Cabin Creek Campground, just outside Yellowstone National Park. On August 17, 1959, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake ruptured with an epicenter just a few miles from there. The sheer force of that rupture caused the land to split and half of the site to plummet in what geologists call a scarp, or a sharp line of cliffs caused by seismic activity. As terrifying as that would have been for anyone there, it was the least of the damage to the area: Just across the river, the nation's biggest recorded rock slide-over 73 million metric tons of debris-roared down a canyon wall, burying nineteen people. They were never recovered. At least nine other victims died of their injuries. Today, a massive lake rests where their campsites once stood. Nearby, you can find geysers and fissures and sinkholes where there were none-all because of this single earthquake.

You can be forgiven for thinking that the ground beneath your feet is solid. For most of us, it certainly appears as much. When I was seven, I ran away with my motherÕs formal silverware, wrongly thinking there was a utensil shortage in China. Because I knew that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line, I also took my dadÕs shovel, figuring I could dig my way there in a couple of days. I lasted about an hour before I hit the dense clay that makes up so much of the Mississippi River corridor. To my scrawny arms, it was impenetrable. I assumed everything below it was equally unyielding. And so I returned home, defeated, before anyone had even noticed that the silver and I were missing.

If basic earth science had been covered in my first grade curriculum, I'd like to think I wouldn't have bothered with the shovel. Maybe you remember that iconic drawing of the planet cut into a cross section that's often used in geology textbooks. I always think it looks like a peach: thin outer skin, flesh that's not quite solid or liquid, a tidy pit. That outer layer, insofar as the planet is concerned, is called the crust. This is a misleading term. It's actually made up of a bunch of jagged pieces known as plates. The current best guess is that, right now, there are fifteen big ones and a handful of smaller ones floating around. The thicker and less dense ones are known as continental plates. The heavier ones are oceanic. We'll talk more about each in the next chapter.

What's important to know now is that these plates, which are forever in motion themselves, also bear the scars of billions of years of upheaval and trauma on this planet. For instance, beginning near Lake Superior, there's a 1000-mile forked crack down the center of this country known as the Midcontinent Rift. One tine of this crack snakes down to Oklahoma. The other works its way clear to Alabama. This rift exists because, about a billion years ago, the continent began to break apart. Scientists aren't sure why the rift began to form, though they think it might have been because of volcanic activity below it. Even more puzzling to them is why we're still in one piece (a similar rift threading through East Africa appears to be succeeding in ripping that continent in two).

Other marks are no less monumental. The Appalachian Mountains, the oldest on the planet, are actually scabs from a head-on collision of two plates. They are composed largely of rock that once made up the seafloor-and they were once taller than the Himalayas. This kind of dramatic shifting happens on our planet all the time. While I was writing this chapter, a new island, about a half mile wide, popped up just south of Fiji, thanks to an active volcano there. Another one appeared off the coast of Japan in 2013. Meanwhile, a new plate appears to be forming below the Indian Ocean, perhaps birthed by the 2012 Sumatran earthquakes.

While all this activity is visible on the crust, most of it is actually caused by what lies just underneath: the mantle, which is a combination of solid and liquid rock. The mantle makes up most of our planet's volume, and there's a huge variation in its temperature from top to bottom. Up near the crust, it's a cool 1800¡F. As you plunge deeper, it reaches a temperature of almost 7000¡F. (Silver, incidentally melts at 1763¡F, which is just one reason why my chosen path to China was a bad one-at least where the longevity of my mother's salad forks was concerned.)

This difference in temperature between the outer and inner mantle creates a dynamic heat exchange as hotter rock and magma rise to the surface and cooler rock falls back down. Want to see this in practice? Think of a lava lamp. Or, if that's too groovy for you, dump a can of minestrone into a pot and watch it boil on the stove. There's a certain rhythm to the rotation of carrots and macaroni as they are pushed to the surface and then back down again to the bottom of the pot. It's mesmerizing-at least until you remember that we're floating on top of a very similar process.

Soup eaters or not, seismologists love the mantle. It's where everything happens in one big, dynamic mess. Parts of the mantle are solid. Some of it is plastic or even viscous. Its movement is responsible for the drifting and colliding of our plates. Earthquakes occur there.

Below the mantle lies the core, which is probably the least interesting layer for any book about seismicity. First discovered in 1936, it's also the least understood. What is known is that the core is made up mostly of nickel and iron and is divided into two parts-the outer, which is molten, and the inner, which is solid but only because it is under immense pressure. It is also the very hottest part of our planet-scientists think it's temperature is probably between 9,000 and 13,000¡F (by comparison, the sun's chromosphere-the deepest layer we can currently observe-ranges between 6,700 and 11,000¡F).

To reach the middle of the earth's core, you'd have to travel down about 3400 miles. Then you'd have to go back up about another 3400 miles if you wanted to pop out on the other side of the planet. (It's about 6500 miles from Davenport, Iowa, to Beijing overland, which is yet one more reason my silverware reallocation plan was a lousy one.)

If you've been counting, I've already used the word "about" eight times in this chapter alone. It's a word you hear even more frequently among scientists who study the inner workings of our planet. In the past decade or so, they've come up with some sophisticated tools to help them visualize what's going on below us, including 3-D imaging techniques. Nevertheless, saying this instrumentation gives us any kind of definitive knowledge about what goes on inside the earth is a lot like saying you've mastered the inner workings of a human body because you've seen an X-ray or CAT scan. You might have a decent idea of what's in there, but you're missing a lot of nuance.

Where geology is concerned, these gaps are not for lack of trying.

In 1958, a group of American scientists attempted to drill into the place where the crust and mantle meet, which also, incidentally, is the place where most of our seismic activity occurs. Geologists call this boundary the Mohorovicic discontinuity, so named for Andrija Mohorovicic, the Croatian seismologist who discovered it in the early 1900s. (Pro tip: If you want to look like you know what you're doing at a seismology conference, refer to this space as "the Moho.") Like the crust, the Moho is far from uniform. On average, it tends to sit about five miles below the ocean floor and twenty miles below any continent. If you want to find it, you'd be much better off looking under an ocean instead of, say, Cleveland.

At least, that's what Walter Munk figured. A Vienna-born scientist who studied in the United States and applied for American citizenship after the Anschluss, Munk made a name for himself in World War II by correctly projecting wave heights, which allowed more than 160,000 Allies to land on the shores of Normandy during D-day. In the years immediately after the war, Munk played an integral role in our nation's early nuclear testing on Pacific atolls. His job? To look for and measure tsunamis created by the blasts. After that gig, Munk proposed Project Mohole: an attempt to drill into the Moho layer at depth. The project was endorsed by the American Miscellaneous Society, the loosest possible consortium of scientists: AMSOC, writes geologist and oceanographer Kenneth Hsu, "had no statutes or bylaws, no official membership, no officers, no formal meetings, no proceedings." Any scientist could become a member merely by saying so. The primary function of AMSOC was to support projects that had been rejected by other agencies, most notably the Office of Naval Research. Munk figured they were just the group to get behind his project. And so, one morning in the spring of 1957, he invited a few geology and oceanography friends over for breakfast. They appointed themselves an official AMSOC subcommittee. Together, they also submitted their Mohole proposal to the organization as a whole. The rest of AMSOC loved it. Theirs was maybe not the most prestigious endorsement for a project, but it nevertheless helped persuade the National Science Foundation to fund Project Mohole.

As presented, Munk's plan was a three-tiered attempt to bore below the earth's crust off the coast of Guadalupe, Mexico. This proposal raised no small amount of controversy in the geological world. Young radicals like Hsu tended to love it. Members of the establishment thought it was an absurd waste of money.

The Mohole group managed to overcome enough dissent and technical difficulties to begin their project. They succeeded in drilling down through the ocean floor about 600 feet before internal conflicts in the Miscellaneous Society led to its disbandment. The National Academy of Sciences took over the project in 1964. By then, the project's tab was over $1.8 million. Estimates for what it would take to finish the job were $68 million. That was a hard number for Congress to swallow. They cut off funding two years later.

The Soviet Union began a similar project in 1970 known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole. They made it down about 7.5 miles before incredible heat (about 350¡F) basically melted their drill bits. Team scientists tried a variety of different solutions, but eventually the problem of temperature proved too much.

There is no easy way to get to the Kola Peninsula, which lies near the top of Finland and entirely above the Arctic Circle. If you're willing to take eighteen hours' worth of flights on increasingly dubious-looking airplanes, followed by a very confused SUV ride across the tundra, you'll eventually reach the weirdly bombed-out remains of the dig site, which includes no small amount of discarded equipment and trash littered around. The actual borehole, which is just nine inches wide, is covered by a rusted cap. At the end of the project, engineers welded it shut and added twelve enormous bolts for extra measure. Even if you were able to remove them, you wouldn't find the Moho: The borehole got only about a third of the way down.

1

If you really want to see whatÕs going on inside our planet, your best bet is to go to places like Yellowstone National Park. There, you donÕt have to drill down thirty miles to see the guts of the planet. Instead, they come to you. The park itself actually sits in a caldera, a giant sinkhole created during a massive volcanic eruption. The caldera is what scientists sometimes call a Òsupervolcano.Ó While not actually a scientific term, that is the word scientists use to categorize any volcano capable of spewing a trillion tons or more of ash and debris in an eruption. Worldwide, there are only about a dozen supervolcanoes capable of that kind of explosion. Yellowstone is one of the biggest. Just over 2 million years ago, it erupted and spewed more than 585 cubic miles of magma-about 200 times more than Krakatau in its epic 1883 eruption. That same Yellowstone eruption left an enormous ash bed that blanketed much of what is currently the United States. Think of an equilateral triangle with its top in Winnipeg and two bottom corners in San Diego and New Orleans, respectively. ThatÕs how far the ash spread.

Fueling Yellowstone today are two reservoirs of magma. Geologists call these reservoirs "blobs" (that's a technical term). They're still not sure just how much magma is in those reservoirs, but current best guesses are that the two blobs probably total about 35,000 cubic miles of magma. For comparison's sake, it takes about 2900 cubic miles to fill Lake Superior.

In general, magma tends to stay deep within the earth. Most of our planet's volcanoes occur in places where two plates meet and one slides under the other (what geologists call a subduction zone). That sliding melts the otherwise solid mantle and allows a column of magma to escape. The Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire is a great example of this process in action. So is Mount Saint Helens, which is also located on a subduction zone. Yellowstone, on the other hand, is smack-dab in the middle of a continent. So how did it come to be?

Editorial Reviews

Quakeland is less interested in…deep geological details, but Miles did remind me about what's best in humanity, reminded me of our value. She peppers her book with quick bits of information about scientists and the work they do in service of understanding our planet and its earthquakes. Whether it's Zhang Heng, the Chinese mathematician who in A.D. 132 developed the first seismograph or the geophysicists Heather Savage and Charles Merguerian, who study the faults below New York City, it's clear that Miles loves scientists. Her book becomes, in part, a love letter to the tedium and wizardry that is scientific discovery.

The New York Times Book Review - Victor LaValle

06/26/2017
Science journalist Miles (Superstorm) details a potential new source of anxiety for Americans: seismicity. She cites the unpredictable nature of earthquakes and the fact that there are over 2,100 known faults on the U.S. geological map. Sketching grim scenarios of potential disaster, Miles suggests that the American infrastructure is wholly unprepared to withstand the next rupture. She begins with the Hebgen Lake, Mont., quake of 1959, which caused $11 million in damages ($70 million today), to illustrate the suddenness of tremors and their devastating ripple effects. Miles then takes readers on a cross-country tour of seismic hot spots. She meets with colorful engineers and geologists to peer below the Earth’s surface and gauge the pressure being imposed on it internally as well as externally by human constructions such as the Hoover Dam, Mississippi River levees, and the Steinway Tunnel (which connects Manhattan and Queens). Miles also confronts hydraulic fracturing in Oklahoma, where increasingly powerful earthquakes have spread over a larger territory, making it the most seismically active of the Lower 48 states. Yet despite myriad technological advances, predicting the next earthquake remains nearly impossible. Mixing geological primer with apocalyptic warning, Miles makes clear “how fragile—and volatile—the ground beneath our feet really is.” Agent: Wendy Strothman, Strothman Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

[Miles] peppers her book with quick bits of information about scientists and the work they do in eservice of understanding our planet and its earthquakes. … Her book becomes, in part, a love letter to the tedium and wizardry that is scientific discovery.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“That fear you feel? It's intended... Quakeland seeks to rattle us free of the ignorance, uncertainty and short memory that have paralyzed plans for prevention and survival.”
—Time Magazine

“Miles’s treatment of earthquake mechanics is clear and crisp... Does she succeed in shaking us out of our complacency? I will confess that, although I don’t live in a seismic hot zone, the day I finished reading “Quakeland” I found myself in a grocery store stocking up on bottled water.”
—Wall Street Journal

“an earthquake-themed road trip that is popular science in the Mary Roach mold: the writer as intrepid explorer of science and amiable, wisecracking proxy for the lay reader.”
—Oregonian

"fascinating and frightening... a startling reality check."
—Christian Science Monitor

“Thanks largely to Miles’s conversational, somehow cheery writing style, I was riveted throughout and heartily recommend this book to people living everywhere. For policymakers, Quakeland should be required reading.”
—Sierra Magazine

“[Quakeland] takes the form of a road trip to visit seismic disasters both past and potential, and seismologists and earthquake engineers who have first-hand knowledge of them. Their colourful personalities, opinions and prejudices tell a story of scientific discovery and engineering remedy... a engaging read.” 
—Nature

“Quakeland is everything a popular science book should be: well-researched, anecdotal, sometimes humorous, and easily understood.”
—Shelf Awareness

"Quakeland is a mesmerizing, eye-opening read—not only for those interested in science but for anyone who wants to be better informed about these enigmatic phenomena.”
—Bookpage

“Engrossing, timely, thoroughly researched… Smart, compelling, and fearless in its embrace of science, Quakeland is full of fascinating people imparting big truths. We ignore their knowledge at our peril.”
—Booklist

“Accessible... Readers interested in the history of plate tectonics, seismic risk, and our society’s vulnerability would likely enjoy...”
—Science

“Journalist Kathryn Miles charms and entertains as she crisscrosses the US, talks with experts, draws deft profiles of scientists and engineers and citizens, heads deep into mines or the NYC subway system and ultimately makes clear that earthquakes are the least trackable natural disaster and are NOT just a problem for San Franciscans… And somehow she does it with a light touch, though any homeowners will be sure to check up on their insurance plan right after reading it....
—Huffington Post

“A wide-ranging account of earthquakes, the least understood of natural disasters, with vivid stories of the havoc they create and a warning about what will someday happen in the United States… readable and engaging—not to mention eye-opening, as the author delivers a firm warning to policymakers as well as individual citizens.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"Mixing geological primer with apocalyptic warning, Miles makes clear “how fragile—and volatile—the ground beneath our feet really is.”
—Publishers Weekly

"It would be hard to imagine a more vividly readable extended warning than this book by Kathryn Miles, but Quakeland makes one conclusion all but inescapable: nobody’s listening."
—Open Letters Monthly

“Quakeland by Kathryn Miles scared the hell out of me. If you think earthquakes happen only in California, you need to read this book. What an eye opener! Based on the latest unimpeachable and carefully sourced scientific research, this book lays out not only the extreme danger of massive quakes in unexpected places (like the Northeast, Memphis, and Salt Lake City) but also documents the crazy things we are doing that are vastly increasing the frequency and threat of earthquakes. Well-written, gripping, fascinating, harrowing—Quakeland is a book we all need to read, if only to know how to survive when the big one hits.“
—Douglas Preston, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

“This book is as terrifying as it is enthralling. With eye-opening historical context, Kathryn Miles describes the surprisingly wide scope of seismic hazards, the frightening deficiencies of our infrastructure, and the people striving to protect us all. Quakeland is an urgent call to action, one that we would be witless to ignore.”  —Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us From Missiles to the Moon to Mars 

“With seismic prose and John McPhee's gift for translating science with metaphor, Kathryn Miles makes you wonder at the tremendous forces continuously shaping our landscape. You need not live near a fault line (spoiler: you probably do) to enjoy this well-reported, entertaining foray into the scientific subculture of earthquakes. Miles is sparring with Mary Roach for top spot on my science bookshelf.”
—Kim Cross, New York Times best-selling author of What Stands in a Storm

“Full of wit and wisdom, Quakeland takes readers on a journey into what for most of us is an unknown world—the planet beneath our feet. Read this book and you will return from the unknown not only informed and entertained, but even more in awe of the world than you might already have been.”
—Paul Bogard, author of The Ground Beneath Us
 
“Quakeland was a mesmerizing companion on a trip I took to the Northwest. It's a revelation about the treachery of the crust beneath your feet. This could be the most important book you ever read.”
—Alanna Mitchell, author of Sea Sick


Praise for Superstorm

"Superstorm reads like the script of a blockbuster movie, transforming that Halloween storm into a nightmarish monster come to life. She provides horrifying vignettes of the storm's many personal tragedies." —Washington Post  

"Wise and harrowing." —The Associated Press

"Fascinating...Meticulous...Heartbreaking...Miles's account—this year's Five Days at Memorial—is an important record for future planners and a gripping read." —Library Journal (starred review)

"Deeply reported and richly detailed narrative...A masterful job of telling the human tale of the storm." —Miami Herald

"Explains how a storm so strong it filled the windows of the International Space Station managed to catch the nation flat-footed." —New York Post

"[A] wide-angle, ticktock account of the massive Atlantic storm system that slammed the Eastern Seaboard on Oct. 29, 2012." —Newsday

"Thrilling...Even for those of us who have heard countless hurricane stories, Superstorm, is a valuable addition. It goes beyond the scary radar screens and harrowing photos of the aftermath to the ongoing, massive problems of predicting and surviving such storms." —Tampa Bay Times

"Deftly describes the intricacies of meteorology, government bureaucracy and maritime travel while weaving together several narrative strands into a compelling tapestry." —Roanoke Times

From the Publisher

09/15/2017
Seismic science is popularly focused on California and the region's San Andreas fault, but new research is showing that many faults (fractured rock as a result of movement) are not confined to the West Coast; in fact, they are quite numerous throughout the United States, including in places that were once considered fault-free such as New York and Oklahoma. As journalist Miles argues, this means that many of these "earthquake-free" areas, which were built up without any seismic codes, are not as well prepared should the Big One hit their region. By traveling to such places and focusing on the recent science, Miles takes a hard look at seismology's new findings and applications. In addition, not only is there current research on naturally occurring quakes, there is evidence of a rise in human-induced earthquakes from activities such as reservoir building, mining, and even fracking. Miles's fascinating volume is an eye-opener, demonstrating how this new knowledge impacts long-held beliefs about earthquakes, their occurrences, and their behavior. VERDICT A cautionary look at how changes to the Earth, both natural and human-made, are transforming the scientific field as well as what those changes might hold for cities and individuals. A relevant topic that any reader will find compelling.—Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

Library Journal

Kathryn Miles lays bare the U.S.’s lack of earthquake preparedness. The news is pretty grim, but Miles has a light touch and a sense of absurdist humor, and Bernadette Dunne’s narration is conversational, energetic, and wry. Miles explains the science and tells lots of fascinating stories, and Dunne brings it all to life with warmth and spirit. Together, they are the proverbial spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Most communities don’t build according to earthquake codes, and the dire state of dams is ignored. Seismic activity has increased, thanks to fracking for natural gas, and now Oklahoma has more earthquakes than any other continental U.S. state. Nuclear power plants sit atop fault lines. Miles encourages listeners to do what they can—pack a go-bag and have a family emergency plan to prepare for a natural disaster. A.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Kathryn Miles lays bare the U.S.’s lack of earthquake preparedness. The news is pretty grim, but Miles has a light touch and a sense of absurdist humor, and Bernadette Dunne’s narration is conversational, energetic, and wry. Miles explains the science and tells lots of fascinating stories, and Dunne brings it all to life with warmth and spirit. Together, they are the proverbial spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Most communities don’t build according to earthquake codes, and the dire state of dams is ignored. Seismic activity has increased, thanks to fracking for natural gas, and now Oklahoma has more earthquakes than any other continental U.S. state. Nuclear power plants sit atop fault lines. Miles encourages listeners to do what they can—pack a go-bag and have a family emergency plan to prepare for a natural disaster. A.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

2017-05-31
A wide-ranging account of earthquakes, the least understood of natural disasters, with vivid stories of the havoc they create and a warning about what will someday happen in the United States.Journalist Miles (Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, 2014), a writer-in-residence at Green Mountain College, took an extended road trip across the country to report on the myriad risks of seismic disasters. Along the way, she picked the brains of cooperative engineers and scientists and chatted with miners and emergency managers, people with whom she established immediate rapport. A daring investigator, she descended into deep mines, gained entry to nuclear power plants (some of which are built on fault lines), and ventured into the interiors of high dams, observing, asking questions, and conjuring some scary conclusions—e.g., earthquakes happen, our infrastructure is in a sorry state, and many localities have no seismic codes to regulate construction. Miles lightens this grim picture with her conversational writing style. She shares her thoughts, emotions, and experiences, even the most commonplace ones, effectively taking readers along on her cross-country wanderings. In the Midwest, where fracking is common and quakes are frequent, her conversations with people waiting for the big one while living regularly with toppled chimneys and broken china are spot-on. While she describes past earthquakes in other countries, the author focuses mostly on the prospects of a major quake in this country and what can be done to prepare for it. After looking at struggles to develop technology that can predict earthquakes, Miles reports on the success of early warning systems, which can make a major difference in survival rates, and she sets forth a scenario in which a few seconds of warning and some preparedness measures can ameliorate the devastation of a major quake. Occasionally long-winded but readable and engaging—not to mention eye-opening, as the author delivers a firm warning to policymakers as well as individual citizens.

Kirkus Reviews