April 25, 2018 • 12 mins
George Noory and seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones discuss her research into earthquakes and other natural disasters, and whether we are overdue for a massive earthquake that could cause major destruction and death in a major American city and how to prepare to survive.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast,
and if you want to hear more than just this
highlight from the show, become a Coast Insider and you
can listen to the complete program, plus recent episodes about
out of body experiences, the scientific search for extraterrestrial life,
and biblical prophecies which may have foretold our current state
of global turmoil. So head on over to Coast to
(00:21):
Coast a m dot com and sign up for Coast
Insider to catch up on what you may have missed
from Coast to Coast. Now here's a highlight from Coast
to Coast AM on iHeart Radio. George Norri with you.
Dr Lucy Jones with US seismologists for the U S
Geological Survey for more than thirty years, most recently a
science advisor for risk reduction. She created the Great Shakeout
(00:45):
Drill that was an earthquake preparedness experiment that by two
thousand sixteen included fifty three million participants around the world.
She founded and as the chief scientists of the Dr
Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, a research associated
cal Tech. She holds a PhD in geophysics from M
I T and a b A in Chinese Language and
(01:07):
Literature from Brown University. Dr Lucy Jones with us first
time on Coast of Coast. Lucy, Welcome, Thanks for having me.
How did you get involved in your interest in geophysics?
How did that happen? Well? I as a child. My
dad was an aerospace engineer and worked on the Apollo project.
(01:27):
We watched the Moon landing together and I told him,
as pretentiously as only a child candid, I was going
to become an astrophysic. Of course, by the time I
got my degree, was pretty clear we weren't getting to
the Moon anytime soon. And I also began to realize
that physics was really in the seventies was mostly about
(01:47):
making bombs, and geophysics turned out to be about playing
in the mountains and getting paid for it. Does it
drive you nuts when you hear people say we never
went to the moon? Oh? Yeah, I mean it's you know,
one thing about being a scientist is you believe that
there is objective reality and you use your tools to
try and understand what that is. And looking at all
(02:10):
the evidence, it's pretty clear what actually happened. Of course,
I was there. I saw the Apollo, you know, went
to my dad's office and saw it and touched at
and it was a very real experience. And I knew
a couple of astronauts, Edgar Mitchell, the late Edgar Mitchell
being one, buzz Aldron. I know these guys went to
the Moon. I know it's uh, but I think there
(02:32):
is actually I sometimes think we need to wonder why
people are driven to refuse to believe that. It's, you know,
some deep psychological need is being satisfied or distrust. There's
distrust in government, I think, and that's unfortunate too. It's
you know, and I've always contended that if anything happened, uh,
(02:53):
you know, some of the pictures that were done on
the settings. I remember watching Walter Cronkite when this happened.
I was nine teen years old, and they had mock
you know, they would have astronauts on a mock set
trying to show us what was happening on the moon.
I'm wondering if some pictures like that got mixed in
with the real stuff and these people said, ah, they
(03:14):
never went Look. I don't think people who are saying
that need evidence. I think it is being driven more
by psychological needs that could be out there that could
be So tell me about the shakeout drill and how
did you get fifty three million people around the world
to become part of that. Well, it began much smaller
than that though. Um I was the scientist leading an
(03:36):
effort called the shakeout scenario, which was trying to make
the science more usable by connecting it to what people
were really thinking about. So we have all our papers
about what's going on in various geophysical phenomenon, turn it
into a coherent picture of what the big earthquakes really
going to be like. And um we called it the
(03:58):
shakeout scenario. And there were some aspects of it that
we're surprising even to us, understanding how bad the fire
after the earthquakes we're going to be, for instance. And
we wanted to help people understand what was in there,
what they should really be concerned about, and we came
up with the Well we talked to social scientists and said,
(04:20):
how do we get people to do this? Yea, how
do we get them to listen? And one of the
strong messages is we needed to do something that you
could see people getting ready for earthquakes, that the strong
human need that you do what you see other people doing.
The visual reinforcements important. So we came up with doing
practicing what's the best action during an earthquake, which is drop, cover,
(04:42):
hold on, meaning dropped to the ground before the earthquake
sends you there, hold onto something and you know, hopefully
haven't cover your head. And you know, that's a very
visual picture people jumping under their desk, and that would
show people getting ready for earthquakes. So we did it
for or that the shakeout scenario, and we tried to
(05:04):
get it to as many people in southern California as possible,
about twenty million residents in the area, and we ended
up getting five million people participating in that first drill,
and I was sort of like, great, we got them
to listen, and about the state went you could get
one quarter of the population to participate. Wow, we better
do this again. At which my first thought was over
(05:27):
my dead body, you know, a year this is enough.
But other people have really you know, wanted, stepped in
and helped put it together. A big part of it
is all uh internet driven, so we don't have to
talk individually to everybody we're engaging. It's they can sign
up through it, and as you know, California did it.
(05:47):
Other states noticed, Washington started doing it, Oregon, and then
you know, other states noticed, and then other countries started noticing.
And the fifty three million people is actually involving people
from around own the world. When Japan joined that was
a large group of people. And actually the Korea has
(06:08):
eight million people participating, mostly through their schools. And then
actually Iran joined in. They have one of the biggest
earthquake risks in the world, and their schools have started
doing it too, and their buildings crumble pretty darn fast.
Don't think there's some pretty bad buildings there. Yes, Is
it my perception dr drones or are we facing the
(06:31):
big one in this country? What I'm trying to say
within the book is that every city, every significant city
in the world, has a big one in their future.
It's not necessarily an earthquake, but all of the things
that make human life work, rivers and oceans that lead
(06:52):
to um the potential for natural disasters, and we all
will at some point, but we don't know when, and
it may be hundreds of years or more for many cities.
UM and that bothers us as human beings, we don't
like it being random, But we don't know which one
will be next. We just know it's going to happen somewhere.
(07:14):
It's not it's not a matter of if, it's just when.
And that's the same with an asteroid strike, I think
right now. But when on the asteroids strike? You know,
it's on average, what is it, every fifty million years,
So it's not something you should be keeping high your
your worries sphere. There's a lot of other things to
hurt you before then. But I just want to hope
you're not wrong. Well, on average, I'm pretty sure I'm right.
(07:39):
I just don't know whether the next ones in fifty
million years or tomorrow. That's right, that's right. They've always
remember being in the Midwest during the Great flood there
and they called it the five year flood. But the
problem is is once you've had that flood, you don't
know if the next five year flood is going to
(07:59):
start the next day or not. There's actually been quite
a bit of discussion that we shouldn't be using the
terminology because what's called the five your flood is really
the flood that has a one in five chance and
happening in any one year, and that's a random distribution.
Whether you have it this year or not does not
(08:19):
affect your chances of having it next year. Earthquakes aren't
that far off that process. I mean, we don't think
they're going to show up one year right after the other.
Um But for instance, there's one part of the San
Andreas where we've dug in and been able to map
out the soils disrupted in previous earthquakes and date them,
(08:42):
and one place where the average time between earthquakes is
about a hundred years. We have three of them that
were less than fifty years apart, one only thirty years apart,
and another one there was a three d and fifty
year interval. So the earthquakes are very erratic as well.
What makes these tectonic plates move doctor heat. Just like
(09:05):
in the the basis of storms in the end is
heat in the atmosphere, the basis of the earthquake motions
is heat within the earth. The core of the Earth
has a lot of radioactive material. It generates heat. Uh,
things that are hot want to get cooler, things that
are cooler want to get hotter. The we you end
(09:28):
up getting convection cells that move the hot rock from
down below up to the surface where it cools down. Um,
just like you know, pouring cream into your coffee and
the to the cop and the cold liquid. Mixed rocks
of course move much more slowly, so a few hundred
million years for these convection cells to turn over. But
(09:49):
it's the same fundamental physics. I'm concerned about the caldera
at Yellowstone. They say it pops every six hundred thousand
years and its way overdue. How danger rish is that?
I am not overly concerned about it because overdue doesn't
mean a lot for what I just said. Uh, we
may have a long average time, but how long it's
(10:11):
been since the last one doesn't matter very much in
setting the risk, and a once every six hundred thousand
year recurrence time doesn't doesn't lead to a lot of
risk right now. Isn't there any telltale signs when something
like this could happen? It depends on your your hazard. Now. Volcanoes, yes, you, Uh.
(10:33):
The magma have to get from the magma chamber to
the Earth's surface, and you can often see it moving
through earthquakes and bulging and maybe some gases being released.
So volcanoes don't usually erupt completely without notice earthquakes. There's
nothing that has to happen before the earthquake can begin.
(10:54):
So those really do come completely out of the blue.
Now they do say if called there were ohs, it
could be a disaster of biblical proportions. Do you agree
with that? If it goes in that full you know,
if we get an absolute repeat of what we saw
three quarters of a million years ago, yes, Uh, there
(11:16):
are a lot of ways it could erupt that wouldn't
be so catastrophic. Now, what fault is the worst in
this country? San Andreas are the new Madrid? Oh? I'd
actually say the Cascadia fault in in the Pacific Northwest?
Really okay? Well, all right, So it depends on what
you mean by worst. What is it the biggest earthquake,
(11:37):
the most damage, or the most frequent damage? Well, I
guess most damage has to do with exactly where it
would hit, right right, Well, alright, So the epicenter doesn't matter.
What matters is what surface moves in the earthquake, because
every point on the surface gives off energy. To be
a magnitude, that surface needs to be two d and
(11:58):
fifty three s long. So when the southern San Andreas moves.
That won't matter which where the epicenter shows up, because
it will be the whole southern San Andreas that wraps
around Los Angeles, runs through San Bernardino and Palm Springs,
and is one of the most damaging. Actually, that's probably
(12:21):
about the most damaging earthquake that we can imagine. Listen
to more Coast to Coast a m every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to Coast
am dot com for more
Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast,
and if you want to hear more than just this
highlight from the show, become a Coast Insider and you
can listen to the complete program, plus recent episodes about
out of body experiences, the scientific search for extraterrestrial life,
and biblical prophecies which may have foretold our current state
of global turmoil. So head on over to Coast to
(00:21):
Coast a m dot com and sign up for Coast
Insider to catch up on what you may have missed
from Coast to Coast. Now here's a highlight from Coast
to Coast AM on iHeart Radio. George Norri with you.
Dr Lucy Jones with US seismologists for the U S
Geological Survey for more than thirty years, most recently a
science advisor for risk reduction. She created the Great Shakeout
(00:45):
Drill that was an earthquake preparedness experiment that by two
thousand sixteen included fifty three million participants around the world.
She founded and as the chief scientists of the Dr
Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, a research associated
cal Tech. She holds a PhD in geophysics from M
I T and a b A in Chinese Language and
(01:07):
Literature from Brown University. Dr Lucy Jones with us first
time on Coast of Coast. Lucy, Welcome, Thanks for having me.
How did you get involved in your interest in geophysics?
How did that happen? Well? I as a child. My
dad was an aerospace engineer and worked on the Apollo project.
(01:27):
We watched the Moon landing together and I told him,
as pretentiously as only a child candid, I was going
to become an astrophysic. Of course, by the time I
got my degree, was pretty clear we weren't getting to
the Moon anytime soon. And I also began to realize
that physics was really in the seventies was mostly about
(01:47):
making bombs, and geophysics turned out to be about playing
in the mountains and getting paid for it. Does it
drive you nuts when you hear people say we never
went to the moon? Oh? Yeah, I mean it's you know,
one thing about being a scientist is you believe that
there is objective reality and you use your tools to
try and understand what that is. And looking at all
(02:10):
the evidence, it's pretty clear what actually happened. Of course,
I was there. I saw the Apollo, you know, went
to my dad's office and saw it and touched at
and it was a very real experience. And I knew
a couple of astronauts, Edgar Mitchell, the late Edgar Mitchell
being one, buzz Aldron. I know these guys went to
the Moon. I know it's uh, but I think there
(02:32):
is actually I sometimes think we need to wonder why
people are driven to refuse to believe that. It's, you know,
some deep psychological need is being satisfied or distrust. There's
distrust in government, I think, and that's unfortunate too. It's
you know, and I've always contended that if anything happened, uh,
(02:53):
you know, some of the pictures that were done on
the settings. I remember watching Walter Cronkite when this happened.
I was nine teen years old, and they had mock
you know, they would have astronauts on a mock set
trying to show us what was happening on the moon.
I'm wondering if some pictures like that got mixed in
with the real stuff and these people said, ah, they
(03:14):
never went Look. I don't think people who are saying
that need evidence. I think it is being driven more
by psychological needs that could be out there that could
be So tell me about the shakeout drill and how
did you get fifty three million people around the world
to become part of that. Well, it began much smaller
than that though. Um I was the scientist leading an
(03:36):
effort called the shakeout scenario, which was trying to make
the science more usable by connecting it to what people
were really thinking about. So we have all our papers
about what's going on in various geophysical phenomenon, turn it
into a coherent picture of what the big earthquakes really
going to be like. And um we called it the
(03:58):
shakeout scenario. And there were some aspects of it that
we're surprising even to us, understanding how bad the fire
after the earthquakes we're going to be, for instance. And
we wanted to help people understand what was in there,
what they should really be concerned about, and we came
up with the Well we talked to social scientists and said,
(04:20):
how do we get people to do this? Yea, how
do we get them to listen? And one of the
strong messages is we needed to do something that you
could see people getting ready for earthquakes, that the strong
human need that you do what you see other people doing.
The visual reinforcements important. So we came up with doing
practicing what's the best action during an earthquake, which is drop, cover,
(04:42):
hold on, meaning dropped to the ground before the earthquake
sends you there, hold onto something and you know, hopefully
haven't cover your head. And you know, that's a very
visual picture people jumping under their desk, and that would
show people getting ready for earthquakes. So we did it
for or that the shakeout scenario, and we tried to
(05:04):
get it to as many people in southern California as possible,
about twenty million residents in the area, and we ended
up getting five million people participating in that first drill,
and I was sort of like, great, we got them
to listen, and about the state went you could get
one quarter of the population to participate. Wow, we better
do this again. At which my first thought was over
(05:27):
my dead body, you know, a year this is enough.
But other people have really you know, wanted, stepped in
and helped put it together. A big part of it
is all uh internet driven, so we don't have to
talk individually to everybody we're engaging. It's they can sign
up through it, and as you know, California did it.
(05:47):
Other states noticed, Washington started doing it, Oregon, and then
you know, other states noticed, and then other countries started noticing.
And the fifty three million people is actually involving people
from around own the world. When Japan joined that was
a large group of people. And actually the Korea has
(06:08):
eight million people participating, mostly through their schools. And then
actually Iran joined in. They have one of the biggest
earthquake risks in the world, and their schools have started
doing it too, and their buildings crumble pretty darn fast.
Don't think there's some pretty bad buildings there. Yes, Is
it my perception dr drones or are we facing the
(06:31):
big one in this country? What I'm trying to say
within the book is that every city, every significant city
in the world, has a big one in their future.
It's not necessarily an earthquake, but all of the things
that make human life work, rivers and oceans that lead
(06:52):
to um the potential for natural disasters, and we all
will at some point, but we don't know when, and
it may be hundreds of years or more for many cities.
UM and that bothers us as human beings, we don't
like it being random, But we don't know which one
will be next. We just know it's going to happen somewhere.
(07:14):
It's not it's not a matter of if, it's just when.
And that's the same with an asteroid strike, I think
right now. But when on the asteroids strike? You know,
it's on average, what is it, every fifty million years,
So it's not something you should be keeping high your
your worries sphere. There's a lot of other things to
hurt you before then. But I just want to hope
you're not wrong. Well, on average, I'm pretty sure I'm right.
(07:39):
I just don't know whether the next ones in fifty
million years or tomorrow. That's right, that's right. They've always
remember being in the Midwest during the Great flood there
and they called it the five year flood. But the
problem is is once you've had that flood, you don't
know if the next five year flood is going to
(07:59):
start the next day or not. There's actually been quite
a bit of discussion that we shouldn't be using the
terminology because what's called the five your flood is really
the flood that has a one in five chance and
happening in any one year, and that's a random distribution.
Whether you have it this year or not does not
(08:19):
affect your chances of having it next year. Earthquakes aren't
that far off that process. I mean, we don't think
they're going to show up one year right after the other.
Um But for instance, there's one part of the San
Andreas where we've dug in and been able to map
out the soils disrupted in previous earthquakes and date them,
(08:42):
and one place where the average time between earthquakes is
about a hundred years. We have three of them that
were less than fifty years apart, one only thirty years apart,
and another one there was a three d and fifty
year interval. So the earthquakes are very erratic as well.
What makes these tectonic plates move doctor heat. Just like
(09:05):
in the the basis of storms in the end is
heat in the atmosphere, the basis of the earthquake motions
is heat within the earth. The core of the Earth
has a lot of radioactive material. It generates heat. Uh,
things that are hot want to get cooler, things that
are cooler want to get hotter. The we you end
(09:28):
up getting convection cells that move the hot rock from
down below up to the surface where it cools down. Um,
just like you know, pouring cream into your coffee and
the to the cop and the cold liquid. Mixed rocks
of course move much more slowly, so a few hundred
million years for these convection cells to turn over. But
(09:49):
it's the same fundamental physics. I'm concerned about the caldera
at Yellowstone. They say it pops every six hundred thousand
years and its way overdue. How danger rish is that?
I am not overly concerned about it because overdue doesn't
mean a lot for what I just said. Uh, we
may have a long average time, but how long it's
(10:11):
been since the last one doesn't matter very much in
setting the risk, and a once every six hundred thousand
year recurrence time doesn't doesn't lead to a lot of
risk right now. Isn't there any telltale signs when something
like this could happen? It depends on your your hazard. Now. Volcanoes, yes, you, Uh.
(10:33):
The magma have to get from the magma chamber to
the Earth's surface, and you can often see it moving
through earthquakes and bulging and maybe some gases being released.
So volcanoes don't usually erupt completely without notice earthquakes. There's
nothing that has to happen before the earthquake can begin.
(10:54):
So those really do come completely out of the blue.
Now they do say if called there were ohs, it
could be a disaster of biblical proportions. Do you agree
with that? If it goes in that full you know,
if we get an absolute repeat of what we saw
three quarters of a million years ago, yes, Uh, there
(11:16):
are a lot of ways it could erupt that wouldn't
be so catastrophic. Now, what fault is the worst in
this country? San Andreas are the new Madrid? Oh? I'd
actually say the Cascadia fault in in the Pacific Northwest?
Really okay? Well, all right, So it depends on what
you mean by worst. What is it the biggest earthquake,
(11:37):
the most damage, or the most frequent damage? Well, I
guess most damage has to do with exactly where it
would hit, right right, Well, alright, So the epicenter doesn't matter.
What matters is what surface moves in the earthquake, because
every point on the surface gives off energy. To be
a magnitude, that surface needs to be two d and
(11:58):
fifty three s long. So when the southern San Andreas moves.
That won't matter which where the epicenter shows up, because
it will be the whole southern San Andreas that wraps
around Los Angeles, runs through San Bernardino and Palm Springs,
and is one of the most damaging. Actually, that's probably
(12:21):
about the most damaging earthquake that we can imagine. Listen
to more Coast to Coast a m every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to Coast
am dot com for more
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