The Really Big One; The Feared Cascadia 9.0 Earthquake

In the United States, there is one disaster which geologists fear above all else; a megathrust earthquake occurring in the Cascadia subduction zone. This exact disaster occurred in the year 1700, creating a destructive Pacific wide tsunami and causing thousands of casualties on the mainland. Yet, today there are now 20 million more people who live in the area than there were when the last disaster struck. So, what exactly might occur if the Cascadia subduction zone was to produce a major megathrust earthquake in the near future? This video will answer this question, by running a simulation of sorts based off of the exact same earthquake which struck offshore of Oregon in the year 1700.

This video was solely sponsored by the YouTube channel, EarthquakeSim. Be sure to subscribe to his channel at    / @earthquakesim  , where he makes numerous videos revolving around earthquake damage simulations and earthquake education!

Thumbnail Photo Credit: Google Earth, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Image Landsat / Copernicus, Image IBCAO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAA. This image was overlaid with text, and overlaid with GeologyHub made graphics (the image border & the GeologyHub logo).

This video's thumbnail image displays MMI whole numerber contours for the 1700 magnitude 9.0 Cascadia subduction zone earthquake.

Note: This video is not saying that the Cascadia megathrust earthquake will soon occur. Rather, this video's purpose it to help to portray what might be at risk in the event such a disaster did occur. Earthquakes cannot be predicted; we can only look at long term trends and note a general average frequency of major earthquake events on specific fault lines.

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Google Earth imagery used in this video: ©Google & Data Providers

This video is protected under "fair use". If you see an image and/or video which is your own in this video, and/or think my discussion of a scientific paper (and/or discussion/mentioning of the data/information within a scientific paper) does not fall under the fair use doctrine, and wish for it to be censored or removed, contact me by email at [email protected] and I will make the necessary changes.

Various licenses used in sections of this video (not the entire video, this video as a whole does not completely fall under one of these licenses) and/or in this video's thumbnail image (and this list does not include every license used in this video and/or thumbnail image):
Public Domain: https://creativecommons.org/publicdom...
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Sources/Citations:
[1] U.S. Geological Survey
[2] Miller, Ian & Garrison-Laney, Carrie. (2017). Tsunamis in the Salish Sea: Recurrence, sources, hazards. 10.1130/2017.0049(04).
[3] Janiszewski, Helen & Gaherty, James & Abers, Geoffrey & Gao, Haiying & Eilon, Zachary. (2019). Amphibious surface-wave phase-velocity measurements of the Cascadia subduction zone. Geophysical Journal International. 217. 1929–1948. 10.1093/gji/ggz051. Note: The location of various offshore sensors was retrieved from figure 1 in this scientific paper.
[4] Oregon Public Broadcasting: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/2...
[5] KOIN 6 News: https://www.koin.com/news/politics/mu...
[6] Multnomah County: https://www.multco.us/multnomah-count...
[7] Oregonlive: https://www.oregonlive.com/environmen...

0:00 If Trees Could Scream...
0:18 Widespread Subsidence
2:06 Megathrust Earthquakes
3:09 Geologic Setting, US/Canada West Coast
4:07 Hypothetical Earthquake Simulation
7:43 Liquefaction
8:23 Tsunami Impacts
11:12 Damage Estimate
11:46 Effects on Volcanoes
12:57 EarthquakeSim Sponsorship