The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: jaydub on October 31, 2007, 04:07:49 am
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We just had a mild 'quake in the San Francisco Bay area. Probably in the mid 5's. Chandeliers swinging, paintings rattling, otherwise no damage. My daughter thought it was fun. Took a while for her to calm down for bedtime though. Funny what kind of adrenaline charge you can get.
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Well, you guys had Fires and everything. I figure this was some sort of karmic rebalancing. Except for no-one lost their home - or life.
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You need to plan your disasters around the news cycle.
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You need to plan your disasters around the news cycle.
Or at least move over here and let the east coast bias work for you.
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You guys still have Albertsons? I thought they got bought out-- al ours changed to Homeland or Williams.
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Wow, California sure sounds like a party! Flood, famine, fire, landslides, black tar heroin, earthquakes, San Francisco. Have fun dealing with that madhouse. Ill be over here where we are void of almost every natural disaster and we get to see pretty snow in the winter.
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I dunno, man.
I've been in minor earthquakes that move radios off tables and I've been in... fuckin' blizzards that trap you in your house for three straight days and... y'know? I'm going with Door Number One.
Any natural disaster that takes lives is equally horrible, of course, but if we're talking non-lethal-but-annoying acts of God, I'll take the earthquakes every day and twice on Sundays over -20 degrees at noon.
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I've been in minor earthquakes that move radios off tables and I've been in... fuckin' blizzards that trap you in your house for three straight days and... y'know? I'm going with Door Number One.
What I loved about my childhood in Alaska: experience with both.
LFM speaks the truth. Snow is lovely, but blizzards blow (in more ways than one), and most earthquakes are novelties at best.
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Ive seen like 2 major bizzards in my life. And after years of experience I have come to the scientific conclusion that, well, snow melts. Fires roaring through housing developments dont rebuild the homes once the fire is out.
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Ive seen like 2 major bizzards in my life. And after years of experience I have come to the scientific conclusion that, well, snow melts. Fires roaring through housing developments dont rebuild the homes once the fire is out.
Uh, no offense, dude, but... damage done to buildings and trees and such by snow doesn't magically disappear when the snow melts, either. It's especially bad if it's an early-season blizzard; the first year we lived in Nebraska, we had a blizzard in mid-October that caused massive tree damage because most of the trees hadn't even lost their leaves yet. After having bought a house that summer with a beautiful tree-shaded back deck, we lost all the trees around it in that blizzard.
(Admittedly, this may have been a blessing in disguise, since they were apple trees that dropped tons of hell of nasty green apples on the lawn, and I might have gone insane had I had to clean them up for more than one summer. Nonetheless.)
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Uh, no offense dude, but I am sorry you lost your trees. That is horrible compared with thousands of people being out of their homes permanently (not that you don't have a point, but bad, bad counter example.)
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I was on the BART train just outside San Francisco at the time of the earthquake, from what I gather. I'm still not too sure. All I know is that the train stopped for like 10 minutes at around eight, but I didn't bother taking off my headphones to hear the driver's explanation on what was going on.
What can I say? A really good podcast is more interesting than a mild natural disaster sometimes.
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your trees fell down? Oh yeah? well... I died in an earthquake! I died, and my family died, and all of my friends couldn't come to the funeral because they were so busy running from the mutant radioactive roaches which came out from the rift in the earth.
MY PROBLEMS ARE SO MUCH MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN YOURS! HOW DARE YOU?
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(Admittedly, this may have been a blessing in disguise, since they were apple trees that dropped tons of hell of nasty green apples on the lawn, and I might have gone insane had I had to clean them up for more than one summer. Nonetheless.)
Buy yourself a lacrosse stick and annoy the neighbors!
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your trees fell down? Oh yeah? well... I died in an earthquake! I died, and my family died, and all of my friends couldn't come to the funeral because they were so busy running from the mutant radioactive roaches which came out from the rift in the earth.
MY PROBLEMS ARE SO MUCH MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN YOURS! HOW DARE YOU?
Dude how can you be so insensitive to make jokes at a time like this. Trees in Nebraska are freezing to death and all you can do is make jokes? For Shame, Dan.
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My point wasn't that my tragedy was infinitely more meaningful than the wildfires -- merely that, while snow melts, damage caused by snow does not.
Nonetheless: you weren't there, man!! You didn't see the awakening of the RADIOACTIVE CICADAS FROM THE EARTH'S CORE that that blizzard caused!!! Even noisier than a regular cicada!!
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no, I was agreeing with you. I was mocking the idea of "oh man, my disasters are so much worse than yours!"
Personally I am less ok with blizzards, but mostly because even cold by itself completely freaks me out.
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Cold weather can eat a dick. I'll take the hurricanes and humidity.
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We got tornadoes around here.
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I dunno, man.
I've been in minor earthquakes that move radios off tables and I've been in... fuckin' blizzards that trap you in your house for three straight days and... y'know? I'm going with Door Number One.
Any natural disaster that takes lives is equally horrible, of course, but if we're talking non-lethal-but-annoying acts of God, I'll take the earthquakes every day and twice on Sundays over -20 degrees at noon.
What I loved about my childhood in Alaska: experience with both.
LFM speaks the truth. Snow is lovely, but blizzards blow (in more ways than one), and most earthquakes are novelties at best.
I only lived through one earthquake when I was in Alaska. I think it was a 5 or 6 on the Richter scale? I can't even remember, only that it happened at like 4AM and was scary as hell. Fortunately there was no major structural damage.
I, however, happen to love cold weather. Any opportunity to layer up in cozy clothes is A-OK in my book. Gettin' heatstroke while doing fieldwork in Arizona is not my idea of a good time (well, actually, doing any kind of outdoor work in extreme temperatures really sucks). I hate breaking a sweat unless I'm working out or having Maximum Cuddles.
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hmm. I was in multiple earthquakes when I lived in LA as a kid, but I don't remember them. I was also in 2 in Chile, but, they were more cool than scary? The first time, I was half-asleep, and thought my brother was shaking the bed to wake me up.
It kind of kept me from freaking out that... my grandfather laughed at my mom for making us stand in the doorway, and sat there in an easy chair watching the World Cup the whole time.
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It's weird how normal things are here, with fires still burning in parts of the county and other parts without vital services like, say, water. But still, fire is a very localized natural disaster. If you were a half mile away from it, you maybe have a little extra cleaning to do at this point. It's a lot like tornadoes -- total destruction surrounded by complete normalcy.
I will take a wildfire over a damn hurricane any day. Seriously. Hurricanes don't move fast, they aren't localized, and they leave shit everywhere. They do widespread damage to every infrastructure grid you can think of, causing hundreds of small breaks that take weeks to fix. If your roof wasn't ripped clean off, it was damaged, and it's going to take months to get a contractor to fix it unless you go for someone who isn't licensed. For months you'll find random bits of people's houses blown into places you thought you checked, and there's usually a rusty nail or two sticking out of it. Hate. Haaaaate.
I'll take the risk of a fire (the danger from which can be mitigated) over anything involved with Florida any day.
Maybe not rent. But anything else.
Earthquakes I can't speak to yet. The one I was awake for that was big enough to feel? I thought the dump truck had dropped a dumpster outside.
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Sad but true: Like all years, there were a few fires in Reno this summer, and one was somewhat close to my house. One day, when returning from work, I found the house completely empty and dark. I tried to call my parents to find out if we had to evacuate, but their cellphones were off, and I panicked and started packing emergency supplies. Five minutes later, my parents came home to find me running around the house with a backpack full of crap. Guess where they had been? Watching the fire.