The Big One

[00:00:01] Astonishing Legends Network

[00:00:04] Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here.

[00:00:10] But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

[00:00:15] Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Killari.

[00:00:18] And I'm Ed Vecola.

[00:00:19] And if you've been paying attention, you know that we live in Southern California.

[00:00:22] Our actual addresses will remain a secret, but you get the basic idea.

[00:00:26] Although we do have a P.O. box that not enough people use. Send us some mail, creeps.

[00:00:30] Send some mail, scaredy cats.

[00:00:32] We get that every once in a while, but it's always like stuff we have to end up paying for later, which was weird.

[00:00:35] Send anything you'd like except for bullets with our names actually written on them.

[00:00:39] No.

[00:00:40] Don't send that.

[00:00:41] This economy, bullets are so expensive.

[00:00:43] They can't, they'll be a waste of bullet for them.

[00:00:44] For most of the 20th and 21st century, this area of the country has been portrayed as an idyllic heaven on earth.

[00:00:50] A land of beaches, palm trees, babes, bros, sunny skies, and at one time, something called the film industry.

[00:00:58] Some people spend their entire lives dreaming about making a move to the West Coast.

[00:01:02] They envision a place they can escape their humdrum reality, their dreary existence, their driveways that need to be shoveled come winter.

[00:01:09] And while I'm not here to shit on anyone's fantasies, the reality of living in Southern California doesn't always live up to the promise.

[00:01:15] Take it from us, two East coasters adrift on LA's pleasure cruise.

[00:01:19] It's increasingly expensive, increasingly warm, and about 100 years overdue to experience one of the most destructive earthquakes in history, ominously called the big one.

[00:01:30] Ed and I wake up every morning not knowing if today will be the day that gentle rumble we sometimes feel will keep going, getting stronger, rolling and tumbling until we can hear distant buildings crumbling to the ground while all we can do is hide underneath the table.

[00:01:43] And if it's a table we own, it's probably one of those shitty ones from Ikea, and last I checked, those are not rated for natural disasters.

[00:01:50] So join us this week as we discuss one of the most pressing real-life fears that Ed and I experience on a daily basis, death by the biggest, baddest quake the country has ever seen.

[00:02:01] What are we?

[00:02:02] Scared.

[00:02:03] When are we?

[00:02:04] All the time.

[00:02:06] Join us.

[00:02:06] Join us.

[00:02:07] Join us.

[00:02:08] Now it is time for...

[00:02:10] Time for...

[00:02:11] Scared all the time.

[00:02:13] Hey, everybody.

[00:02:14] Welcome back to the show.

[00:02:15] We want to kick off our first episode in November with a list of our producers in good standing.

[00:02:22] If you have subscribed to the I'm Terrified level, then you not only get a button of the month along with access to our live shows and everything else, but you are a producer, an official producer of the show.

[00:02:34] And so we want to kick off our first November episode with a list of producers in good standing.

[00:02:41] So, Mr. Vecola, with that said, let's read the names.

[00:02:45] All right.

[00:02:46] Yeah, sure.

[00:02:46] These are producers in good standing as of October 31st.

[00:02:49] So as of Halloween, we start with Amanda.

[00:02:51] I always don't do the last names, but if people want me to, let me know.

[00:02:54] Amanda M.

[00:02:55] Amanda M.

[00:02:55] Ambrosio L.

[00:02:56] Anne-Marie V.

[00:02:57] Ariel M.

[00:02:58] Audra M.

[00:02:59] Buttercup Honeycutt.

[00:03:00] Cassandra O.

[00:03:01] Christopher F.

[00:03:02] Christopher M.

[00:03:03] Who I owe an email to.

[00:03:05] Claire B.

[00:03:06] David V.

[00:03:07] Diana E.

[00:03:08] Donna B.

[00:03:09] Gabrielle G.

[00:03:11] Ibis, Ebis, or Ibis.

[00:03:12] They told me how to say their name and I don't remember now.

[00:03:15] K.

[00:03:16] Isabella C.

[00:03:17] B.

[00:03:17] Who I also owe an email to.

[00:03:19] Jeff Q.

[00:03:20] Jonathan B.

[00:03:21] Justin H.

[00:03:22] Carly C.

[00:03:22] Catherine L.

[00:03:23] Kevin W.

[00:03:24] Kristen T.

[00:03:25] Kristen S.

[00:03:26] Lauren M.

[00:03:27] Lisa F.

[00:03:28] Lucas P.

[00:03:29] Madeline M.

[00:03:30] W.

[00:03:31] Marshall K.

[00:03:32] Matthew S.

[00:03:33] Melissa L.

[00:03:34] Nicole T.

[00:03:35] G.

[00:03:36] Sure.

[00:03:37] Rio K.

[00:03:40] Royce D.

[00:03:41] Samantha C.

[00:03:42] Scott P.

[00:03:42] Sean K.

[00:03:43] Tabby F.

[00:03:44] And Timothy M.

[00:03:45] So there we go.

[00:03:46] That's who makes this show possible as of last month.

[00:03:49] Thank you guys.

[00:03:49] Round of applause.

[00:03:50] Woo!

[00:03:52] All right.

[00:03:52] On to housekeeping.

[00:03:53] Producers in good standing.

[00:03:55] On to the not once a month housekeeping.

[00:03:57] Well, we are going to read some five star reviews.

[00:04:01] We, a lot of times if you leave a five star review, we will read the five star review.

[00:04:07] We love our five star reviews.

[00:04:09] So this first one I want to read is called Have No Fear from Jade 23.

[00:04:16] This review says,

[00:04:17] Scared All The Time has become one of my favorite podcasts.

[00:04:20] I thoroughly enjoy listening to Ed and Chris talk about scary topics.

[00:04:24] Their humor and candor are refreshing and I love listening to their honest dialogue.

[00:04:28] It feels like I'm hanging out and laughing with my friends.

[00:04:31] I look forward to every new episode.

[00:04:33] And that's pretty much what we're going for.

[00:04:35] Except Ed and I are lying all the time.

[00:04:37] There is no honest dialogue on this show.

[00:04:39] We're not who you think we are.

[00:04:40] Oh, geez.

[00:04:41] Secrets out.

[00:04:43] We also got a five star review in our email from Jessica.

[00:04:47] If you leave us five star reviews on Apple Podcasts, that's the best place to leave them.

[00:04:52] But since we just did our massive email episodes, I don't want to leave out our email contacts.

[00:04:57] So Jessica says,

[00:04:59] Hey, Chris and Ed, I stumbled across your podcast on Spotify in its early inception and have been hooked ever since.

[00:05:05] I don't listen to many podcasts.

[00:05:06] It's hard to find ones that deliver witty banter the way y'all do.

[00:05:10] The comedic relief makes the hard pill of fears to swallow much easier.

[00:05:14] And the well-researched episodes lend unique perspectives to topics I only had surface level understandings on.

[00:05:20] Just listened to the Jack-o'-lanterns episode.

[00:05:22] I too make Over the Garden Wall a must watch every year during spooky month.

[00:05:26] Hell yeah.

[00:05:28] It's so good.

[00:05:28] Everyone who hasn't seen it, even if you're going to watch it in November, just go and do it.

[00:05:31] It's great.

[00:05:32] It's very fall feeling.

[00:05:33] Yeah.

[00:05:33] The metaphors and imagery give nod to Dante's Inferno, in my opinion.

[00:05:38] Thank you for the work y'all do putting out episodes each week.

[00:05:41] Best, Jess S.

[00:05:43] So thank you, Jess, for that.

[00:05:45] And Ed, do you want me to do one more?

[00:05:48] I wasn't prepared, so I'll just read whatever the latest one is.

[00:05:50] So I'm reading this cold, people.

[00:05:52] So hopefully it's not you pieces of shit.

[00:05:54] Well, it's a five-star review.

[00:05:55] So if it started with you pieces of shit, they clicked the wrong star number.

[00:06:00] No way.

[00:06:00] Five-star review, that's a guaranteed way to get our attention.

[00:06:03] So you know we're going to read whatever's on five stars.

[00:06:05] True.

[00:06:06] It's like the teleprompter in Anchorman.

[00:06:08] You put it up there.

[00:06:09] We're going to read it.

[00:06:10] You'll read it.

[00:06:10] All right.

[00:06:12] DSLTO 157.

[00:06:13] Says, never change.

[00:06:13] I've been an off and on listener since almost the beginning.

[00:06:16] Off and on.

[00:06:17] Come on, buddy.

[00:06:18] Lately, I've been listening nonstop on my commutes back and forth to the hospital.

[00:06:22] Oh, my God.

[00:06:22] I guess I'll back this up.

[00:06:24] Seems like it gets serious.

[00:06:26] Starts with never change.

[00:06:28] I've been an on and off listener since almost the beginning.

[00:06:30] Lately, I've been listening nonstop on my commute back and forth to the hospital while

[00:06:34] my kiddo recovers from a nasty respiratory bug.

[00:06:37] All right.

[00:06:38] I hope that kid's doing well now.

[00:06:40] Sat is a perfect blend of funny and informative to make the commute bearable.

[00:06:44] Never change.

[00:06:45] I don't know how old your kid is.

[00:06:47] Maybe they're learning some new words and getting healthy quick.

[00:06:49] So that's pretty fun.

[00:06:50] Yeah.

[00:06:50] Don't let them.

[00:06:51] Not the being sick part, but the like doing it together.

[00:06:53] Yeah.

[00:06:54] Don't let them listen to any of the more medically based episodes.

[00:06:57] That's probably not going to not going to help the recovery.

[00:07:01] No, maybe not.

[00:07:02] It might just amp up some issues on the way there.

[00:07:04] Yeah.

[00:07:04] All right.

[00:07:05] Well, yeah, that's five star review corner for this week.

[00:07:07] Um, I also just want to say we did our first live discord watch along this morning.

[00:07:13] It's a test.

[00:07:14] We watched the UAP hearings in the house, or I guess the day we're recording this, you'll

[00:07:19] be hearing this a day or two later, but it was a great time.

[00:07:22] We had a couple of people show up, even though we didn't even really announce it.

[00:07:26] We just sort of put the link out there.

[00:07:28] So we're going to be doing more of that.

[00:07:29] So keep an eye out.

[00:07:30] Well, probably not because, well, I mean, we're going to do more live stuff.

[00:07:33] I think Chris is mad that I showed up and I was like, talk, talk, talk.

[00:07:36] And he's like, this is important.

[00:07:37] I know.

[00:07:38] No, no, no, no.

[00:07:39] I can't learn about UAPs if Ed's being Ed.

[00:07:41] No, I'm glad Ed showed up.

[00:07:44] I was being too.

[00:07:45] I think I was being too quiet.

[00:07:46] I was too focused on the material and not focused enough on being an entertainer.

[00:07:50] Yeah, I'll just say that the watch along seemed to work in the sense that technically it worked,

[00:07:54] which is good.

[00:07:55] And there are some interesting things on Discord that I was like, oh, I like that feature.

[00:07:58] I like this feature.

[00:07:59] Yeah.

[00:07:59] But yeah, we'll probably do something that we can be a little bit more irreverent with

[00:08:02] and not feel like we fucked it up.

[00:08:04] But Discord does have the ability, which I did like, where you can just turn the fucking

[00:08:07] host off and just watch whatever's being streamed.

[00:08:10] Right.

[00:08:10] Which is pretty cool.

[00:08:11] We'll do movies that way or something.

[00:08:13] So yeah, that was really fun.

[00:08:14] So yeah, guys, like, subscribe, leave reviews, check out the Patreon.

[00:08:18] Patreon, we've got lots of great stuff coming.

[00:08:21] And with that said, let's get on to this earth-shaking new episode.

[00:08:26] Which I'll say before we really get started, I QC in bed.

[00:08:28] So I'll like lay in bed at night listening to the episode to see if there's anything wrong.

[00:08:32] And now I'm just thinking about fucking earthquakes, like in bed in LA the whole fucking time.

[00:08:36] So the energy I'm bringing to the end of this housekeeping is kind of the energy you're

[00:08:40] going to hear throughout.

[00:08:41] It's this sucks.

[00:08:41] This episode sucked to do.

[00:08:43] By sucks, he means it's just very frightening for both of us.

[00:08:46] I said sucked, like sucked to do.

[00:08:48] Not this episode sucks.

[00:08:49] Like this episode sucked to do.

[00:08:51] This episode rocks.

[00:08:52] It's just...

[00:08:53] This episode rocks.

[00:08:53] All episode rocks.

[00:08:54] But now I'm thinking about what rocks are going to fall off the fucking hills onto my

[00:08:58] house soon when the earthquake happens.

[00:09:00] All right.

[00:09:01] It's on.

[00:09:01] Starting now.

[00:09:02] Starting in three, two, one.

[00:09:04] All right.

[00:09:04] We're in.

[00:09:05] So if you guys were watching our Instagram stories the other day, you may have seen a

[00:09:10] photo of Ed and I holding little nips or as Ed's dart friends call them, rippers of Jim Beam

[00:09:18] bourbon whiskey.

[00:09:19] And we are going to start this episode by pounding these because this is genuinely a fear that

[00:09:27] we have.

[00:09:28] The big one is very real and very frightening.

[00:09:31] And this episode is going to put our nerves to the test.

[00:09:36] So Ed, cheers.

[00:09:37] Cheers to kicking this off with a fucking ripper.

[00:09:39] Oh God.

[00:09:40] All right.

[00:09:41] Ripper of Jim, dude.

[00:09:42] We're good.

[00:09:43] I feel 21 again.

[00:09:45] I feel like I need to lay down.

[00:09:48] So to get us started, I was diving back into my memory and trying to remember all of my

[00:09:53] earthquake encounters out here in LA.

[00:09:55] We've been out here since 2007, 2008.

[00:09:58] We got out here in 2008, got here just for the Great Recession.

[00:10:01] So there's been no shortage of earthquakes since then.

[00:10:04] Yeah, we've had them.

[00:10:04] Economic and otherwise.

[00:10:05] Yes, economic and otherwise.

[00:10:06] Yeah, I've definitely experienced them.

[00:10:08] I wouldn't say the biggest earthquake I've experienced was like a movie poster frame fell

[00:10:14] off the wall type of thing when I was working at a job.

[00:10:16] And that was a rolling earthquake, which I hate, my least favorite earthquakes.

[00:10:19] Okay.

[00:10:20] Well, that's what I was going to ask was what's the most frightened you've ever been during

[00:10:23] an earthquake?

[00:10:23] What's the biggest quake you remember?

[00:10:25] And that's it?

[00:10:25] A movie poster fell off the wall?

[00:10:26] Well, it's hard to explain.

[00:10:28] This was a development companies.

[00:10:29] They were like the big, heavy glass, big frames.

[00:10:32] They're proud of those movies.

[00:10:33] It's not like my tacked up picture fell off the wall.

[00:10:36] Got it.

[00:10:37] But we're going to talk more about movie posters in a second and earthquakes.

[00:10:40] I would say the most scared I've ever been was unearthquake related.

[00:10:45] It was a tsunami thing.

[00:10:46] But the most scared earthquake wise I think I've ever been.

[00:10:49] Do you remember what year was it?

[00:10:51] It was a holiday.

[00:10:52] It was a 4th of July, like two years ago, three years ago, where we had like multiple

[00:10:56] earthquakes in the same day.

[00:10:57] And it was very annoying.

[00:10:58] Oh, you know, I was.

[00:11:00] Yes.

[00:11:00] I was house sitting for my cousin when that happened.

[00:11:03] So I actually didn't feel them because I was like an hour and a half south of the city.

[00:11:07] But yes, I remember seeing everyone being like, whoa, oh, another one.

[00:11:10] Yeah, it was very annoying because it was like everything shook and everything was like

[00:11:14] shaking in the kitchen and stuff.

[00:11:16] It's like glasses and stuff like wine glasses will still be kind of like ding, ding, ding,

[00:11:19] ding, ding.

[00:11:19] You know what I mean?

[00:11:19] After it kind of happens.

[00:11:21] And so that happened.

[00:11:22] And it's, you know, you immediately if you're us, if you're me, I get so anxious.

[00:11:25] I'm like, fuck, well, is that the beginning of something?

[00:11:28] Is that the end of something?

[00:11:29] Right.

[00:11:30] And then, yeah, it wasn't long after I was sitting there just starting to feel comfortable

[00:11:33] again as everything started shaking again.

[00:11:35] And I'm like, fuck.

[00:11:36] So that was probably the one that I was most like, this is a bummer.

[00:11:39] Yeah.

[00:11:39] But the one that I was talking about with the movie poster frame, I was working at a development

[00:11:43] company and I was on like my hands and knees.

[00:11:45] Like I was on the ground doing like internship, whether it was like filing or I was doing something

[00:11:49] where like I was on the ground.

[00:11:50] So if people don't know, there's kind of different feeling earthquakes.

[00:11:55] There's like the shake ones.

[00:11:56] And in this case, it was like a rolling one where it feels like the world, like you get

[00:12:00] motion sick from it.

[00:12:01] Yeah.

[00:12:02] And that's the one where I was like, ooh, I got like all weirdly motion sicky all of a sudden

[00:12:07] and then the poster started falling off the wall and stuff.

[00:12:09] So I hated that.

[00:12:09] And the like glass doors at the front were like bowing.

[00:12:12] Right.

[00:12:13] But they moved all crazy.

[00:12:15] Right.

[00:12:15] So yeah, those are probably the two.

[00:12:17] The one where I was like an intern all those years ago.

[00:12:19] And then the one on whatever holiday, I think it was 4th of July, that it was like multiple.

[00:12:23] I hated that.

[00:12:24] Yeah.

[00:12:24] Well, and that is one of the scary things about earthquakes is that there's four shocks.

[00:12:28] There's aftershocks.

[00:12:29] Yes.

[00:12:30] There's I will say the saving grace of this episode is that we have had a lot of earthquakes

[00:12:35] lately, which is usually actually a good sign because it means that the tension that causes

[00:12:41] earthquakes is being released by multiple earthquakes happening.

[00:12:46] So that's a good thing.

[00:12:47] The more earthquakes there are, the less likely we're going to have the big one anytime soon.

[00:12:51] Now, is it better or worse for alleviating pressure for an earthquake if there's like a

[00:12:57] massive St. Helens explosion, like volcano eruption?

[00:13:00] I don't know.

[00:13:01] I mean, it would depend how the volcano would interact with the plates.

[00:13:05] Well, I just feel like they're very, they seem hand in hand, volcanoes and earthquakes.

[00:13:08] I don't, I mean, maybe.

[00:13:10] But I'm an idiot.

[00:13:10] I don't know if they were.

[00:13:11] So I mean, I don't know.

[00:13:11] I'm just, in my mind.

[00:13:12] One of our reviews called us moderately educated.

[00:13:15] I love it.

[00:13:16] So, and that's pretty accurate.

[00:13:17] That's true.

[00:13:18] We both had moderate educations and now we just have the internet.

[00:13:22] It's true.

[00:13:23] So what about you?

[00:13:24] So did you have a thing?

[00:13:25] Yeah, before we get into all the science and the technical stuff, I have a few.

[00:13:29] When I first moved to LA, I was so afraid of earthquakes, I couldn't sleep.

[00:13:33] Oh.

[00:13:34] I was like.

[00:13:34] Are we supposed to be talking about that?

[00:13:36] Well, we can.

[00:13:37] You can talk about whatever you want.

[00:13:38] It's our podcast.

[00:13:38] I want to say enough.

[00:13:39] I was supposed to bring it up later.

[00:13:40] Okay.

[00:13:40] So then I will say this now.

[00:13:42] Okay.

[00:13:43] I think I've talked about this in a previous episode where earthquakes do dictate a part of

[00:13:47] my life.

[00:13:48] I think, I don't remember what episode I talked about it on, but I've definitely talked about

[00:13:50] this where I don't shower for a long time.

[00:13:55] I mean, I shower.

[00:13:56] I mean, like I just don't spend time in the shower.

[00:13:59] I'm unclear how being filthy saves you from an earthquake.

[00:14:01] No, no, no.

[00:14:02] I don't.

[00:14:02] I mean, I shower at a regular basis.

[00:14:04] I'm saying I don't spend much time in the shower because I have this fear of earthquake

[00:14:09] happening when I'm in the shower and it being the big one and I'm discovered like naked

[00:14:13] and like in the rubble.

[00:14:14] And I just feel like I don't, I feel like being found in rubble is already kind of depressing

[00:14:18] enough to also just be like flaccid and fat.

[00:14:21] Yeah.

[00:14:21] Your back got snapped and now your lips are on your balls.

[00:14:25] Oh my God.

[00:14:25] Yeah.

[00:14:26] Look at this fucking idiot.

[00:14:27] Or I don't know if that's, they might be like, this guy was going, went out pretty

[00:14:30] good.

[00:14:30] Yeah, that's true.

[00:14:32] He died doing what he loved.

[00:14:33] I could not stop laughing.

[00:14:35] This is, I don't even remember.

[00:14:37] This was months ago.

[00:14:37] I was just hit with the thought that they discovered a new body at Pompeii.

[00:14:41] It was sucking its own dick.

[00:14:44] They couldn't stop laughing.

[00:14:46] That's good.

[00:14:47] It's funny.

[00:14:47] The idea of a guy who just was like, oh no.

[00:14:51] I don't, or no, I think it's realistically, I don't think anyone starts that process when

[00:14:55] they hear the explosions.

[00:14:57] I think they were just, you know, the ash covered that mid.

[00:15:00] And then all the archeologists are like trying to come up with like what he may have been

[00:15:03] trying to do, but the whole world is like, it's pretty clear what he was doing.

[00:15:07] Yeah.

[00:15:08] This is a, this is a, this is a hell of a way to be frozen in amber.

[00:15:13] But that said, I, yeah, I don't shower for a long period of time because I just don't

[00:15:17] want to be in there when it happens.

[00:15:20] And I'd probably be smarter of me just to be like, well, it was a drought in our state

[00:15:23] and I don't do it because of, you know, uh, fucking environmental reasons.

[00:15:28] No, I don't, I just don't want to be in there when it happens.

[00:15:30] To me, that's so, that's the worst possible place.

[00:15:33] But then the other way earthquakes dictate my life is I have framed artwork in my bedroom,

[00:15:39] but not above my bed.

[00:15:41] Above my bed, as everyone who's ever been in my room knows, is just like a rocketeer poster,

[00:15:46] the shittiest rocketeer poster, by the way.

[00:15:47] It's got like cheeseburger stains on it from a story we don't have time for.

[00:15:51] Okay.

[00:15:52] But it is, there's a lot of stuff in my room with like weird food stains that none of

[00:15:56] them I did.

[00:15:57] Okay.

[00:15:58] There's none of them I did.

[00:15:59] Anyway, it's got this rocketeer poster that's just tacked to the wall.

[00:16:02] Like it's a college dorm room because I just don't want something big, wood and glass falling

[00:16:07] on my head.

[00:16:07] I've never, I've never put anything over it.

[00:16:09] Well, my last apartment, my, my wife had a painting, but it was like a, it was like one

[00:16:14] of those paintings you buy at like home goods, you know, where it's like printed

[00:16:18] on, on pretty thin.

[00:16:20] It's not glass.

[00:16:21] It's not wood.

[00:16:22] It's, it's just like a pretty thin.

[00:16:23] Yeah.

[00:16:24] Kind of canvas over.

[00:16:25] Canvas.

[00:16:26] Yeah.

[00:16:26] Yeah.

[00:16:27] So that I was like fine, but generally, yeah, I wouldn't ever put anything over my bed.

[00:16:31] But yeah, those are the two ways I, that earthquakes directly impact my life.

[00:16:35] Gotcha.

[00:16:36] All right.

[00:16:36] Well, I couldn't sleep.

[00:16:38] So that directly impacted my life.

[00:16:40] Now, could you not sleep because you're anxious of earthquakes or could you not sleep

[00:16:44] because it's been my experience that a lot of the earthquakes we have out here wake

[00:16:49] you up.

[00:16:49] They're always at like four in the morning, five in the morning.

[00:16:53] I don't know why that is in my mind is because the earth is like still cool.

[00:16:56] Like there's dew on the ground, but like, it's just, I don't know.

[00:17:00] I don't know.

[00:17:00] Maybe the earth wakes up just like we do irritable and stretching.

[00:17:03] But like a lot of times it's really, I get woken up by earthquakes a lot.

[00:17:08] Okay.

[00:17:08] Well, to answer a couple of those questions.

[00:17:10] One, I don't think there are more earthquakes at night.

[00:17:13] If there's any geologists listening to this, feel free to write it and correct us.

[00:17:17] My guess would be that we feel even smaller earthquakes at night because we are still.

[00:17:24] So like, I feel like there are earthquakes that wake us up because we're like, whoa,

[00:17:29] what was that?

[00:17:29] Whereas if we're running around or we're outside or walking somewhere, you might not necessarily

[00:17:34] feel it.

[00:17:35] Cause I've been in cars when I've found out there was an earthquake.

[00:17:39] Like when I get home and I'll go on Twitter and there's earthquake posts and I'm like,

[00:17:43] oh, I didn't feel it.

[00:17:44] And I assume it's cause I was in a car and I just wasn't.

[00:17:47] Yeah.

[00:17:47] I've had that happen at work or when you're busy or when you're doing something or at

[00:17:50] the grocery store.

[00:17:51] I will say this.

[00:17:52] I'm glad you mentioned Twitter.

[00:17:53] Checking in about an earthquake on Twitter is kind of the only sense of community we have

[00:17:58] in Los Angeles.

[00:17:59] Yes.

[00:17:59] Like you don't know your neighbors.

[00:18:01] You don't say hello to people.

[00:18:02] But as soon as an earthquake happens, we are all on Twitter at the exact same time being

[00:18:06] like, was that an earthquake?

[00:18:07] Yeah.

[00:18:07] And it's the only time I really feel connected to the city of Los Angeles.

[00:18:11] I actually had it in the outline a little bit later to mention that, but since we're

[00:18:15] talking about it, yes, I do feel like it's your obligation as an Angelino to get on Twitter

[00:18:20] and say earthquake with a bunch of exclamation points as soon as there's an earthquake.

[00:18:24] And to the point where a lot of the tweets are just like, here's my obligatory earthquake

[00:18:29] tweet.

[00:18:31] Well, my sleep problems from earthquakes were more just because I'd never felt an earthquake

[00:18:37] before I moved to LA.

[00:18:39] And so I was concerned about an earthquake happening in the middle of the night.

[00:18:43] And it was that feeling of dread.

[00:18:45] Well, I don't know if I've ever actually mentioned this on the podcast before, but one of my favorite

[00:18:49] short stories is a short story called Dread by the King, Clive Barker.

[00:18:54] And without going into the whole thing, the idea is that the anticipation of a horrific moment

[00:19:00] is almost worse than the moment itself.

[00:19:02] Of course.

[00:19:03] And I was living that hardcore because I would be laying in bed waiting for like, was that

[00:19:10] an earthquake?

[00:19:10] Was that an earthquake?

[00:19:11] Was that an earthquake?

[00:19:12] This is pre-ever feeling one.

[00:19:13] Yeah, because I didn't know what it would be.

[00:19:15] So I just knew that they would happen.

[00:19:18] And I think I had the impression that they happened all the time.

[00:19:22] And obviously they weren't all deadly, but I assumed that like, well, when I moved to LA,

[00:19:29] I'll have felt an earthquake within a few weeks.

[00:19:30] I don't know how long it actually took to feel one.

[00:19:35] But I do know that after I started sleeping through the night, maybe six months after moving

[00:19:41] out here, I felt my first.

[00:19:42] And it was probably like a three on the Richter scale or something.

[00:19:46] But I shot up out of bed and was like, was that it?

[00:19:49] Was that it?

[00:19:50] That was an earthquake.

[00:19:51] Yeah, that's crazy.

[00:19:52] I mean, which is, I'll just go up and say, you need better help.

[00:19:55] But it is.

[00:19:56] Yeah, I didn't.

[00:19:57] They're not advertising on this episode.

[00:19:59] No, they're not.

[00:19:59] You need a friend to tell these experiences to.

[00:20:02] And if you want to pay for that friend.

[00:20:04] Better help is for you.

[00:20:05] Better help is for you.

[00:20:06] Now, the thing is, yeah, I guess to me, it's like, I didn't think about earthquakes at

[00:20:10] all, at all, at all when I moved here.

[00:20:11] That wasn't an issue until I felt it.

[00:20:13] And it happened pretty early because I was still an intern when I felt that one that was

[00:20:16] rolling.

[00:20:17] Yeah.

[00:20:17] Well, I think all of my anxieties increased when I moved to LA because I think

[00:20:22] I was in hindsight.

[00:20:23] This is taking me a lot of therapy speaking.

[00:20:26] Better help to figure this out.

[00:20:27] But I think I was just offloading my internal anxieties onto, oh, my God, am I going to

[00:20:34] get mugged?

[00:20:34] Oh, my God.

[00:20:35] Is there going to be an earthquake?

[00:20:36] Oh, my God.

[00:20:36] Is a car going to drive through my apartment?

[00:20:38] Because now I live right next to a busy street.

[00:20:40] Oh, my God.

[00:20:40] All of this?

[00:20:41] Yeah.

[00:20:41] All of these things happened.

[00:20:43] No, no, no.

[00:20:43] None of those things happened.

[00:20:44] No, I'm saying all of these things happened in your head.

[00:20:45] In my head, yeah.

[00:20:46] I was just the opposite in every way.

[00:20:49] I got to LA and I just felt overwhelmed by everything I felt like I needed to do, that

[00:20:55] I had no opportunity to be anxious about anything other than the immediate, is this intern going

[00:21:00] to lead to a job?

[00:21:01] Is this job going to lead to a whatever?

[00:21:03] Am I going to make rent?

[00:21:05] Am I?

[00:21:05] Like, those are my things.

[00:21:06] I had nothing that was, like, so existential as yours.

[00:21:09] I had those anxieties, too.

[00:21:11] But I think what I'm saying is I think a lot of them were processed existentially.

[00:21:15] As a person who has been mugged, you know, I had no anxiety about it prior to that.

[00:21:18] Yeah.

[00:21:19] Like, the week that I moved to LA, there were posters in the first neighborhood where I

[00:21:22] lived that an old man, I lived in this sort of, like, little Russia part of West Hollywood,

[00:21:28] and these posters that were taped to the light posts about an old man had been stabbed

[00:21:34] multiple times in broad daylight, and they were looking for his, the people who had assaulted

[00:21:39] him.

[00:21:40] And, like, part of me was like, this has to be a mob thing, right?

[00:21:44] And then I felt bad because I was, like, just kind of assuming since I lived in this, like,

[00:21:48] little Russia area that it was a Russian mob thing.

[00:21:50] I think now I do still feel like it probably was a mob thing.

[00:21:54] Like, why else do you stab an old man in the middle of the day?

[00:21:57] And don't, it didn't seem like they robbed him.

[00:21:59] They just stabbed him.

[00:22:00] No, that's a message.

[00:22:01] It's a message.

[00:22:02] It's a message for people who knew who he was.

[00:22:03] Anyway, all this to say, earthquakes are sort of, you know, they are, they are an existential

[00:22:09] anxiety.

[00:22:10] And if you've never experienced them and you move to LA and you know about the big one and

[00:22:13] you know, you know, I'm, I'm a person, Ed, you may be as well, who spends a lot of time

[00:22:18] thinking, and this will definitely be an episode, but I spent a lot of time thinking about what

[00:22:22] happens when the super volcano under Yellowstone goes off.

[00:22:25] You have mentioned that before.

[00:22:26] And when you mentioned it last, it was the first I'd ever heard of it.

[00:22:29] I don't think about that ever, ever, ever.

[00:22:32] But I think about the big one more than I'd like.

[00:22:35] I think about it all the time because do you have this happen where like an earthquake will

[00:22:39] happen and we won't give a fuck about it.

[00:22:41] And then like people in your family, 3000 miles away would be like, I just saw on the

[00:22:44] news.

[00:22:44] It was an earthquake.

[00:22:45] Are you okay?

[00:22:46] Yes.

[00:22:47] And it's like, yeah, no, I'm fine from the wildfires.

[00:22:50] Thank you for asking.

[00:22:51] And I'm fine from the earthquakes.

[00:22:53] Thank you for asking.

[00:22:54] I also get that every time there's any kind of civil unrest.

[00:22:57] Yeah.

[00:22:57] Like I think the news, I mean, LA has its fair share of problems.

[00:23:00] I mean, you were like right there for some of that fucking 2020 shit.

[00:23:04] Cop cars were on fire outside of your apartment.

[00:23:07] Yeah.

[00:23:07] No, literally outside of my writing partner's apartment was where a couple of cop cars got

[00:23:11] set on fire.

[00:23:12] And then I was a few blocks away from that at the time.

[00:23:15] And I was, I remember sitting on my roof with some of my building neighbors and we were looking

[00:23:20] around and it, I mean, it was the closest I've been to being in a post-apocalyptic movie.

[00:23:24] Like, because from the roof of my building, you could, there was a decent view of large

[00:23:28] portions of the city and there were, you know, there was smoke nearby.

[00:23:32] There were buildings on fire.

[00:23:34] There were cop cars going every direction.

[00:23:37] That's a whole other experience.

[00:23:38] And it was, it was really intense.

[00:23:41] Yeah.

[00:23:41] But if someone texted you at that moment, is everything all right?

[00:23:44] You'd be like, yeah, it's fine.

[00:23:45] Yeah.

[00:23:45] It's fine.

[00:23:46] Because this is not crazy to us.

[00:23:48] Yeah.

[00:23:48] Well, it's not crazy to us.

[00:23:49] And even in something like some of the unrest during BLM and stuff, it wasn't, it wasn't

[00:23:56] like armed people going door to door and dragging you out into the street and shooting you.

[00:24:00] Like it was people throwing bricks through storefronts.

[00:24:03] It wasn't great, but it was.

[00:24:05] Bricks that were probably dropped off by bad actors.

[00:24:07] Possibly.

[00:24:07] Very possibly.

[00:24:08] Yeah.

[00:24:09] I will say, I will say when it comes to, and I've told everyone in my life this, when

[00:24:14] it comes to the malleability of perspective of a news event, BLM really was an eye opener

[00:24:21] where I was, so there was a, there was this cop car that like, I don't want to say famously,

[00:24:26] but like there was one image that if you saw a cop car burning in LA, it probably was this

[00:24:30] image.

[00:24:31] And it was right down the street from where I live.

[00:24:33] And I was right there when the cop car started burning.

[00:24:36] And it was really interesting because there were hundreds or probably thousands of people

[00:24:42] in the streets and cops.

[00:24:44] And, you know, if you ask me, I would lean towards the cops, let that car get set on fire or, you know,

[00:24:52] otherwise encouraged it to be set on fire.

[00:24:54] So they would have a reason to assault protesters.

[00:24:57] But if you, but if you went on Twitter, every single person there was posting their perspective

[00:25:04] of what was happening in that moment.

[00:25:06] And everybody had different perspectives of the cops are doing this.

[00:25:10] The cops are doing that.

[00:25:11] I saw the protesters doing this.

[00:25:12] I saw the protesters doing that.

[00:25:14] It's a Rashomon situation.

[00:25:15] It was a Rashomon situation that really made me realize that every single event in our lifetime

[00:25:20] from here on out is going to be a Rashomon situation.

[00:25:23] And if you want to believe that the protesters are the bad actors, there will be somebody who

[00:25:28] is there who is telling you the protesters are the bad actors.

[00:25:31] If you want to believe the cops are the bad actors, the same thing will be happening.

[00:25:35] And it doesn't mean that one of those things isn't true, but it means that it is really,

[00:25:40] really hard to get to the objective truth of a situation because everyone's reality is

[00:25:46] slightly different based on their perspective and what they believe.

[00:25:50] And so it calls the entire idea of objective truth into question.

[00:25:55] Anyway, that's either here or there.

[00:25:56] That's not, that's nothing to do with earthquakes.

[00:25:58] Nothing to do with earthquakes.

[00:25:58] But I mean, we can't, that tangent's not surprising because we can't really talk about earthquakes

[00:26:03] without intrinsically tapping into living in Los Angeles for over a decade.

[00:26:08] Yes.

[00:26:08] Like, cause I don't think we're talking about earthquakes in any kind of firsthand way,

[00:26:13] unless we've lived in this weird fucking place where they happen.

[00:26:16] Well, and we're certainly not getting drunk talking about the big one unless we're living

[00:26:20] in LA because that's a very, I mean, it could happen while right now.

[00:26:23] It could happen while we're recording this episode.

[00:26:25] We have an episode that I guess maybe it might be an Ed written one.

[00:26:29] Might be a wacky one like homunculus.

[00:26:32] Homunculus was just an Ed suggested, but the next one might be Ed written, but we're going

[00:26:36] to be doing one in the next couple episodes that will hopefully on in case we manifest

[00:26:40] the big one with this episode, we'd like to manifest some other shit too.

[00:26:44] So we have a more fun episode coming down the pike, but the big one.

[00:26:50] Yeah.

[00:26:50] This is a tough episode for us because it could happen, you know, while recording.

[00:26:54] Yeah.

[00:26:55] I feel like you can tell we have a nervous energy recording this.

[00:26:57] We do.

[00:26:58] We do.

[00:26:58] We're talking a lot.

[00:27:00] Yeah.

[00:27:00] Like we're not really getting to the point and I'm sure this will come up and I'm hoping

[00:27:04] it comes up because I'm hoping one of us did this research.

[00:27:06] I'm going to ask you, Chris, right up before we even start.

[00:27:09] Yeah.

[00:27:09] I lived in LA.

[00:27:10] It's got to be close to 15 years.

[00:27:12] I hate to say it.

[00:27:13] Yeah.

[00:27:13] It'll be 20 years in 2028.

[00:27:15] So yeah.

[00:27:16] So it's like at this point, I'm basically from California.

[00:27:19] Yeah.

[00:27:20] Like if I was abroad and someone asked me, you know, where I'm from, I'd probably say LA

[00:27:23] at this point.

[00:27:24] I mean, in my heart, I'm not in my heart.

[00:27:26] I'm from New England, but I've spent most of my life at this point in California and

[00:27:30] you know, God help me.

[00:27:30] In none of that time have I ever truly dug into what am I supposed to do during an earthquake?

[00:27:37] I don't know if it's a door jam, if it's a fucking get in the bathtub under the table.

[00:27:42] Like I really don't know.

[00:27:44] I keep where I sleep.

[00:27:46] I keep a like fucking pry bar to the right of my bed in the event that like the house

[00:27:53] settled and I can't open my door.

[00:27:54] I need to pry it open with a fucking, you know, pry bar.

[00:27:58] Like I'm a wet bandit.

[00:27:59] Like that is next to my bed and I have a fucking wind up radio, like solar powered wind up radio

[00:28:07] also next to my bed in the events of this.

[00:28:09] Yes.

[00:28:10] And I have two that will absolutely not be accessible on the day.

[00:28:14] Earthquake kits that are in my closet.

[00:28:16] My earthquake kits, like all the food and all the shit in there like went bad.

[00:28:21] So I have to start a new one.

[00:28:22] But generally, I mean, generally the idea is wherever you are during an earthquake, drop,

[00:28:28] cover and hold on.

[00:28:30] The idea is it is much more likely like the most dangerous thing is something falling on

[00:28:36] your head during an earthquake.

[00:28:37] So you want to get under something, cover your neck and your head if you can and just hold

[00:28:43] on because if you run outside, you that's there's danger there.

[00:28:48] You could get knocked off your feet.

[00:28:49] If the earthquake's really strong, you could.

[00:28:51] Break something.

[00:28:52] Power line.

[00:28:52] Power line come down.

[00:28:53] So the idea is get under, get into some kind of cover and try to ride it out.

[00:28:58] However long that takes.

[00:28:59] What if you're in bed?

[00:29:00] I would just, I guess, put your hands over your head and just stay in bed.

[00:29:02] Yeah.

[00:29:03] I mean, I saw something that was that literally said, if you're in bed, stay in bed and just

[00:29:09] cover your your head and neck with a pillow.

[00:29:12] Because I think the idea is if something's going to collapse, it's going to collapse and you

[00:29:17] have a higher chance of surviving if you aren't getting tossed off your feet and through a

[00:29:22] wall.

[00:29:23] Yeah.

[00:29:23] You know, like if you're if you're where you are, the best chance of survival is just try

[00:29:28] to stay where you are and try to not have anything fall on you.

[00:29:31] So it's funny you say, like, get thrown off your feet because until you've felt an earthquake,

[00:29:36] you don't really know.

[00:29:38] It's kind of like people who try to pull a tablecloth off of a table and keep the flower

[00:29:44] standing like the dance floor of your life fucking moves.

[00:29:49] Yeah.

[00:29:50] Like you really are.

[00:29:51] It's someone pulling a rug out from under you, especially a very, very strong one.

[00:29:55] Like, you know, a smaller one, you probably won't feel if you're driving or even walking.

[00:30:02] You wouldn't necessarily.

[00:30:03] You might feel weird.

[00:30:04] You might notice the power lines are shaking a little bit or like they're swaying.

[00:30:08] But like a strong, sustained earthquake could can throw you into fucking traffic.

[00:30:13] It can throw you off a balcony.

[00:30:15] It can.

[00:30:15] And if you're on any kind of Los Angeles highway, I mean, the whole world has seen, although

[00:30:20] I've been to Houston and they got some fucking wild highways, too.

[00:30:23] But like that kind of multi-tiered on ramp, off ramp, big highway interchanges.

[00:30:29] I mean, obviously, our brain goes to any image of those collapsing down onto the cars below

[00:30:35] and stuff.

[00:30:35] So that is always on your mind when you're sitting in Los Angeles is also famously traffic

[00:30:41] based economy.

[00:30:42] And it's like a traffic based economy.

[00:30:44] It's a traffic based economy.

[00:30:46] Every time you're just like, oh, I'm under a bridge or I'm under a overpass.

[00:30:50] I really hope the big one doesn't happen right now.

[00:30:52] We're going to get to that in a little bit, too.

[00:30:54] We're never we're actually never going to get to this episode.

[00:30:56] We're just so nervous.

[00:31:03] So the next thing I want to talk about, though, is the most scared I've ever been.

[00:31:06] And I think you may have you might have hinted at this when you were talking about the

[00:31:10] most scared you'd ever been because you just said it was a tsunami thing.

[00:31:13] Oh, yeah.

[00:31:14] And the most scared I've ever been was 2011 when that earthquake, the Fukushima earthquake

[00:31:20] hit in Japan.

[00:31:20] I don't know if this is the same one that scared you.

[00:31:23] No, I'll get it.

[00:31:24] It's this earthquake inspired why I was so scared, though.

[00:31:27] And I'll get into it.

[00:31:28] But I so I remember I mean, obviously, we couldn't feel the quake in L.A., but when it

[00:31:34] hit, it was the nighttime here, maybe like 10 or 11 p.m.

[00:31:37] And you remember Hiroki?

[00:31:39] Oh, yeah.

[00:31:40] Our Japanese friend from Japanese friend Hiroki from college.

[00:31:42] I'm not in touch with him anymore.

[00:31:43] And I wasn't even in touch with him then.

[00:31:45] But I was on Facebook and I saw Hiroki had posted some earthquake video because I think

[00:31:49] he was maybe back in Japan or working in Japan or something.

[00:31:53] And it was a video of a major earthquake hitting Japan.

[00:31:56] And I was like, oh, man, that's that's crazy.

[00:31:59] So and that was how I heard that there was a quake.

[00:32:02] So I went and looked at the news.

[00:32:03] And over the next, you know, 20, 30 minutes, the story came out that there was this massive

[00:32:08] quake in Japan and it was going to result in these really ferocious tsunamis.

[00:32:12] And I don't remember exactly what I was reading, but my stomach plummeted because there was

[00:32:19] some speculation that L.A. might get hit with some strong tsunami.

[00:32:23] Pacific Ocean coming across the Pacific Ocean.

[00:32:25] And I've been in the city.

[00:32:26] I guess this is 2011.

[00:32:27] I've been in the city like four years, three or four years at that point.

[00:32:31] And I was living deep in West Hollywood.

[00:32:35] But I saw near the water, not near the water, but I don't know how this shit works.

[00:32:39] Like I'd never thought about it before.

[00:32:40] So I started panicking and I was like panic researching, like how far do tsunamis travel?

[00:32:45] What elevation is my part of town?

[00:32:47] What are the tsunami exit routes?

[00:32:49] Like I was ready to go.

[00:32:51] Wow, that's funny.

[00:32:52] I'm glad you said this.

[00:32:53] So I'll tell my tsunami story when you're done because wow.

[00:32:55] But go ahead.

[00:32:56] I was 25 at this point.

[00:32:58] I was definitely old to be 25 again.

[00:33:00] I know.

[00:33:01] God, my body would just.

[00:33:02] I would.

[00:33:03] I fucking think about that.

[00:33:04] Only thing I think about more than the big one is what it would be like to be 25 again.

[00:33:08] Well, drinking a ripper of Jack Daniels is getting close.

[00:33:13] But, you know, I was old enough to know.

[00:33:15] It was Jim Beam.

[00:33:17] We don't have Jack Daniels money.

[00:33:19] I was definitely old enough to know that even a 20 or 30 foot tsunami was not going to come crashing into West Hollywood.

[00:33:26] You know, like that is miles from the ocean.

[00:33:29] But in the moment I was like melting down.

[00:33:32] And our friends Tina and Tyler, shout out Tina and Tyler, they were in Hawaii at the time.

[00:33:37] Oh, no.

[00:33:37] And they were really panicking.

[00:33:39] That's the first line of defense.

[00:33:40] Before it hits us.

[00:33:41] They were posting like goodbyes on Facebook because they were like, we're going to get hit.

[00:33:45] As if Hawaii can have two days that would live in infamy.

[00:33:48] Yeah.

[00:33:49] But I ended up getting to sleep eventually.

[00:33:52] And I don't think more than even a couple of like maybe slightly larger than usual swells ever even made landfall in LA.

[00:34:00] But, man, I remember that being just a full on shot of like, oh, is this it?

[00:34:04] Kind of like energy.

[00:34:06] Yeah.

[00:34:07] But anyway, your story.

[00:34:08] Well, my story is crazy.

[00:34:09] I don't even want to say it.

[00:34:10] I'm so embarrassed a little bit by it.

[00:34:12] So I have an Amazon Alexa in my room.

[00:34:15] And I'm house sitting right now.

[00:34:17] And I do miss it, actually.

[00:34:19] Because I get in bed and I say, hey, you know, Alexa, turn off the lights or whatever.

[00:34:22] And I hope I didn't turn anyone's lights off right now and be saying that.

[00:34:24] But I'm just saying, hey, Alexa, turn off the lights.

[00:34:27] And then it turns it off and I'm in bed and I love it.

[00:34:29] That's all I really need it for.

[00:34:30] I don't use it for anything else.

[00:34:31] But it very annoyingly will tell me the national weather updates.

[00:34:35] And it's always like whatever says there's a wind advisory from 8 p.m. till whenever.

[00:34:40] And I'm constantly being told that because Los Angeles is also a very windy city.

[00:34:44] I actually wrestled with an outside umbrella two days ago.

[00:34:47] It was very annoying.

[00:34:49] And it's fucking early.

[00:34:51] I woke up early for some reason.

[00:34:52] And I see there's an alert on Alexa.

[00:34:54] And I was like, what's the alert?

[00:34:56] Just to get the fucking wind advisory off the things to do list here.

[00:34:59] And it was like, there's a tsunami advisory in your area between 8 a.m. and like 915.

[00:35:06] And it's like 755 or whatever.

[00:35:09] And I'm like, excuse me?

[00:35:12] And so I was like, Alexa, what's the notification?

[00:35:14] And just to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

[00:35:16] And it was like, there's a tsunami advisory in your area.

[00:35:21] In West Hollywood.

[00:35:22] Yeah, more or less West Hollywood.

[00:35:24] Super far from the water.

[00:35:25] And I'm like, there's no way Alexa would say in my area unless it's really in my area, right?

[00:35:31] Like it knows where I live.

[00:35:31] It knows all my information.

[00:35:32] It's fucking selling this data.

[00:35:34] And thinking back on it is the craziest thing I've ever done.

[00:35:37] I got out of bed.

[00:35:39] I put pants and shoes on.

[00:35:41] Because you didn't want to die nude.

[00:35:42] I didn't want to die nude.

[00:35:43] I didn't want to die like that.

[00:35:45] And I just got in my car and drove East.

[00:35:48] And I like didn't question it.

[00:35:49] I didn't Google it.

[00:35:50] I didn't go on Twitter.

[00:35:52] I didn't do anything.

[00:35:53] I just was like, deep impacts happening, Ed.

[00:35:56] You got to go.

[00:35:57] See, this is why we're friends.

[00:35:58] We have very similar reactions to these things.

[00:36:00] I'm just like, I need to get the fuck out of here before shit goes bad.

[00:36:05] Like Steve was not, Steve whom I live with, comic book Steve, he was not home.

[00:36:10] I think he was like back East or something.

[00:36:11] So it wasn't like craziness where I'd be like, leave him.

[00:36:14] Don't tell him.

[00:36:15] I just got in my car and I just drove East.

[00:36:17] And I was like, I'll check back in on this when I know more.

[00:36:22] And then I got all the way to like the Walmart in like Whittier or something.

[00:36:26] Like super far East.

[00:36:27] You're like, okay, I think.

[00:36:29] Like there's no way of way it's getting to Whittier.

[00:36:31] It had to be 500 feet tall to get in the Whittier.

[00:36:33] Yeah.

[00:36:34] So I got there and I just like, was like, oh, I'll find a diner or something, which is actually

[00:36:38] not prevalent in the West Coast, but I'll find somewhere to eat and then I'll go back.

[00:36:42] And I looked up online.

[00:36:43] It was like, it was never anything.

[00:36:45] It was never anything.

[00:36:46] I mean, I got war of the worlds.

[00:36:48] Yeah.

[00:36:48] I mean, tsunamis in LA are a genuine concern along the coast.

[00:36:53] But again, we're talking like to reach 15 miles inland.

[00:36:57] We're talking, I don't know.

[00:36:59] I mean, I'm making this up, but hundreds to thousands of feet tall to have that amount

[00:37:04] of force and energy and like Poseidon himself would have to like throw water in an apartment

[00:37:10] on the beach and you get hit with a 20 foot tsunami.

[00:37:13] Like, yeah, you're building my collapse.

[00:37:15] But you know, a few miles beyond that.

[00:37:17] But that's why I think it's fine.

[00:37:19] I think it's fucking reckless.

[00:37:20] Yes.

[00:37:20] Yeah.

[00:37:21] For Amazon to be like, tsunami warning in your area.

[00:37:24] So then I was like, well, now I'm super far away.

[00:37:26] And then when I did end up like kind of limping back to where I live, no one even knew what

[00:37:30] I was talking about.

[00:37:31] And so I just like from that moment on have kept this a secret until right now where we're

[00:37:36] telling thousands of people.

[00:37:37] Well, look, I mean, I get it.

[00:37:40] I get it.

[00:37:40] When you see an alert or a warning or a like, you know, you assume that the person sending

[00:37:46] it has some kind of authority or that they're correct.

[00:37:49] So you just kind of act like that's the whole idea.

[00:37:52] If you get now, they have these earthquake warning things for your phone that they're

[00:37:56] like.

[00:37:56] Have you have you been woken up by those?

[00:37:57] They're super loud.

[00:37:59] Yeah.

[00:37:59] Yeah.

[00:37:59] Yeah.

[00:37:59] I mean, I feel like they almost come like 15 seconds after the earthquake.

[00:38:03] Of course they do, because earthquakes can't be seen ahead of time.

[00:38:06] Right.

[00:38:06] But also, I think it's the same if I might be mistaken, but I think it's the same alert

[00:38:11] sound is like silver alerts or whatever when old people go missing.

[00:38:15] Yes.

[00:38:16] And so I'm like, oh, another oldie is gone.

[00:38:17] And then I look and I was like, oh, I was home in Pennsylvania.

[00:38:19] My mom's phone rang at like four in the morning and it was an automated phone call telling

[00:38:25] them that there was a frost warning in effect, which I guess for farmers.

[00:38:28] I mean, my mom's not a farmer, but I guess maybe the Pennsylvania County sends them out.

[00:38:33] But anyway, all this to say, the most scared I've ever been of the big one was a few months

[00:38:39] after Fukushima when the LA Weekly published an article called the first 15 minutes after

[00:38:45] the big one.

[00:38:46] That's barely a periodical.

[00:38:47] Right on Thanksgiving Day.

[00:38:49] I remember my sisters had come over.

[00:38:52] They were both living in LA at the time and we were going to make Thanksgiving dinner together.

[00:38:55] But on the way back from like picking up beer or something, I picked up a copy of the

[00:38:59] LA Weekly and I had this article and I read it and I was devastated.

[00:39:03] I don't remember exactly why the article got under my skin so deeply, although we're going

[00:39:07] to go through it in detail now.

[00:39:08] So we'll figure it out together.

[00:39:10] Maybe I was just really depressed in general.

[00:39:13] But that Thanksgiving, I was numb.

[00:39:15] I couldn't get this article out of my mind.

[00:39:17] I kept seeing the whole city crumbling and descending into chaos.

[00:39:22] Oh my God.

[00:39:22] Yeah.

[00:39:22] That LA Weekly thing you're discussing is kind of the same thing.

[00:39:25] I feel like since I lived out here, there's been at least four 60 minutes or like David

[00:39:31] Muir, ABC World News pieces about the big one.

[00:39:36] It will be forwarded to my mom or somebody like every four years, like clockwork where

[00:39:42] it's like they are now 101 years overdue for the big one.

[00:39:46] Yeah.

[00:39:46] They are now 104 years overdue for the big one.

[00:39:49] Yes.

[00:39:49] And so it's like, that's always, again, sent to me to people who don't live here.

[00:39:53] But anyway, yeah, let's get into it.

[00:39:54] But someone somewhere right now is on a deadline to send another article about telling us that

[00:40:00] any minute now, any minute now the big one's coming.

[00:40:03] But before we get that article and how much it scared me, I do think we need to take a minute

[00:40:06] to discuss what the big one is and why it's so scary because people who live in LA might

[00:40:11] not know this.

[00:40:12] So earthquakes happen because the ground beneath our feet is not as solid as it seems to us.

[00:40:17] That sounds like a relationship metaphor, but this is actually what we're living in.

[00:40:21] The Earth's surface is actually made up of about 12 to 14 tectonic plates that are constantly

[00:40:26] shifting.

[00:40:27] Sometimes the edges of these plates get stuck on each other due to friction.

[00:40:32] And it's along these spots where they get stuck that we call fault lines that tons of potential

[00:40:38] energy builds up of just these two plates stuck on each other and trying to move past each other.

[00:40:44] Also remains a relationship metaphor.

[00:40:48] When the stress finally overcomes the friction, the plates suddenly slip past each other,

[00:40:53] releasing energy and waves that travel through the Earth's crust and cause the ground to shake.

[00:40:58] Sure, like a tremor.

[00:40:59] Like a relationship.

[00:41:00] No, I was just saying a tremor like a beast, a movie monster.

[00:41:04] California's concern about the big one centers on the San Andreas Fault, which is an 800 mile

[00:41:10] long fault line running through the state where the Pacific Plate and the North American

[00:41:14] plate meet.

[00:41:15] And they both think the other has been cheated on.

[00:41:18] Ed is determined to make this a soap opera.

[00:41:21] Doesn't have to be, but it seems the easiest thing to turn into.

[00:41:24] If we could just have a conversation about it, babe, you don't understand.

[00:41:29] Historically, this fault produces a major earthquake roughly every 150 years, but the southern portion

[00:41:35] hasn't had a major rupture since 1857, which at this point is over 160 years ago.

[00:41:41] Don't love hearing that.

[00:41:41] Although a little bit, we'll get to that a little more in a minute, but yeah, generally

[00:41:46] we're overdue.

[00:41:47] Scientists estimate that the accumulated stress on the fault could trigger a magnitude 7.8

[00:41:53] or larger earthquake.

[00:41:54] Now to understand what that means, we have to establish a basic understanding of the

[00:41:59] scale we use to measure earthquakes, the Richter scale, which has spent its career in the shadow

[00:42:03] of the much more successful O'Brien scale, which is a joke for geriatrics like us who remember

[00:42:09] late night television.

[00:42:10] Yeah, with Conan had a second in command.

[00:42:12] His Ed McMahon, if you will, was Andy Richter.

[00:42:16] So Richter would be in the shadow of Conan.

[00:42:18] There are much more modern and accurate scales that geologists use to measure earthquakes, but

[00:42:23] the Richter scale is still the most commonly cited, even though if oftentimes in articles

[00:42:28] it's incorrectly cited and it should be a more modern scale, people still say on the

[00:42:33] Richter scale.

[00:42:34] Hey, if it ain't broke, baby.

[00:42:35] Yeah.

[00:42:36] I mean, it might be broke, but it's this thing that we all know.

[00:42:39] So there's a lot.

[00:42:40] I was like, oh, I'll give the people a quick understanding of the Richter scale.

[00:42:44] Turns out there is a lot of science and math and measurements and little doohickeys involved

[00:42:51] in all this shit.

[00:42:52] So it's not as simple as like the tornado one where it's just like a, it's like, okay,

[00:42:55] what's the amount of destruction?

[00:42:57] No.

[00:42:57] No, it is.

[00:42:58] It's like a measurement of the log number of the seismic wave.

[00:43:03] It's a whole, it's a whole thing.

[00:43:05] I couldn't understand it.

[00:43:06] It doesn't really matter.

[00:43:07] Basically, the scale measures the peak amplitude of an earthquake seismic wave.

[00:43:11] So like the worst it gets in the moment of that wave that's released, that wave of

[00:43:16] energy.

[00:43:16] Okay.

[00:43:17] And charts that energy on a scale from zero to 9.5.

[00:43:21] Now, in theory, the Richter scale has no upper limit, but in practice, no earthquake has

[00:43:25] ever been registered on the scale above a magnitude 8.6, which was the Richter magnitude

[00:43:31] for the Chile earthquake of 1960.

[00:43:34] The moment magnitude for this event, which is like the most peak moment of the seismic

[00:43:40] wave was measured at 9.5.

[00:43:43] So that's the, that's the highest anything's ever been measured.

[00:43:45] Technically it could go higher.

[00:43:47] At that point, I think you're talking about like Pangea breaking up or something.

[00:43:52] Yeah.

[00:43:52] So I don't think it's like comic book grading.

[00:43:55] There's, it's so, I think they've now done it.

[00:43:58] There's like a 10 you can get now, but forever a 9.8 is pretty much what you're going to get.

[00:44:03] Right.

[00:44:03] Like for some reason, yeah, there is like this weird thing about people in scales where

[00:44:07] they're just like, save it, just save a couple points just in case.

[00:44:11] I know we have some wrestling fans who listen to this podcast and, and they may or may

[00:44:15] not know, but there's a famous wrestling critic, historian guy who runs a dirt sheet named Dave

[00:44:21] Meltzer.

[00:44:22] And he has infamously over the past couple, I think really starting more than a decade

[00:44:28] ago because he grades matches on a five-star scale.

[00:44:32] And he's recently started going up to like six stars, seven stars for some of his favorite

[00:44:38] guys, which kind of renders the scale meaningless.

[00:44:40] Meaningless is now, I mean, what I'm talking about 10 is understood as the best and they

[00:44:44] just never, they just never give it.

[00:44:45] So what's really nuts about the Richter scale is that the increase of one unit on the scale

[00:44:51] represents a tenfold increase in the magnitude of an earthquake.

[00:44:55] So for those of you who are as bad at math as we are, that means a magnitude 6.0 earthquake

[00:45:01] is 10 times larger than a 5.0.

[00:45:04] A magnitude 7.0 is 100 times larger than a 6.0.

[00:45:09] Wait, what?

[00:45:10] And a magnitude 8.0 is 1000 times larger than a 5.0.

[00:45:16] Yeah, we're not great at math because I'm sitting here going like, I just melted into this

[00:45:19] couch I'm on.

[00:45:20] I'm like, wait a minute.

[00:45:21] So the first part made sense.

[00:45:23] Okay.

[00:45:23] It's a tenfold increase.

[00:45:24] Yes, but which from 5 to 6 made sense.

[00:45:26] It was like, okay, that's 10 times bigger.

[00:45:29] Right.

[00:45:29] Then all of a sudden you're like, then now it's tenfold of that previous tenfold.

[00:45:32] Yes, it's exponential.

[00:45:34] Oh my God.

[00:45:35] So not only is the magnitude exponential, but each increase of one unit also represents

[00:45:41] the release of about 31 times more energy than that represented by the previous whole

[00:45:46] number on the scale.

[00:45:47] So an earthquake measuring 5.0 releases 31 times more energy than an earthquake measuring

[00:45:54] 4.0.

[00:45:55] Got to calm down with that shit, earthquakes.

[00:45:56] Knowing that, we can look at two of the largest earthquakes in California history and get a rough

[00:46:01] sense of what we're in for if the big one hits.

[00:46:03] The largest earthquake in California history is-

[00:46:06] No.

[00:46:07] Oh, wow.

[00:46:07] The 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake measured a 7.9, but it took place in a relatively remote

[00:46:14] area and only killed two people.

[00:46:16] Sure.

[00:46:17] Those people are pissed.

[00:46:18] It did also, though, to give you a sense of how powerful a 7.9 was, it left a 220 mile

[00:46:25] long scar on the surface of the earth.

[00:46:28] Like it's like a- so it just looks like a big crack.

[00:46:30] A crack or a disruption.

[00:46:33] I don't know if it was literally a crack.

[00:46:35] It probably isn't now.

[00:46:36] Like if they had planes then, they would go up and go, oh shit, you can see-

[00:46:39] And that quake, the 1857 Fort Tejon quake is considered the last big one in California,

[00:46:45] but we dodged a bullet because of where it took place and how few people were living there.

[00:46:50] What's 1911?

[00:46:51] Why is that in my brain for some reason?

[00:46:53] Partially because you're a little bit incorrect, but very close.

[00:46:56] The second largest earthquake in California was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

[00:47:02] That's 100% what I'm thinking of.

[00:47:03] Yes.

[00:47:03] Yeah.

[00:47:04] And that registered as a 7.8 and it was a doozy.

[00:47:08] It killed around 3,000 people and displaced 225,000 people.

[00:47:13] Only about 700 of those 3,000 died during the initial quake.

[00:47:16] It was the massive fires the quake started in the city that killed the rest of the 2,300 people.

[00:47:22] And those numbers though are even scarier when you consider the population of San Francisco at the time was only about 400,000 people.

[00:47:29] So it made fully half the city homeless and killed 1% of the entire population of the city.

[00:47:35] Wow.

[00:47:36] Now my question, I'm not sure why the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 that registered as 7.8 as opposed to 7.9,

[00:47:44] it fell along the San Andreas, although much further north.

[00:47:48] It was felt from Southern Oregon to South of LA and inland as far as Central Nevada.

[00:47:53] It lasted 45 to 60 seconds, but it's not considered a big one.

[00:47:58] And I don't know why.

[00:47:59] Yeah, that's weird.

[00:47:59] My theory is that it may just have to do a little bit more with the drama of saying we're overdue for the big one.

[00:48:06] Because if you count 1857 as the last big one, we're overdue.

[00:48:10] If you count 1906, we're just about on time.

[00:48:16] Wow, that's interesting.

[00:48:17] Yeah.

[00:48:17] That's my guess.

[00:48:18] I don't know.

[00:48:18] Someone may know more.

[00:48:19] I did try to research a little bit why it wasn't considered a big one or the big one and didn't find any really satisfactory answers.

[00:48:27] But maybe I might have missed something.

[00:48:29] I certainly have in the past.

[00:48:31] But when they name the town or city or place they've named as the official moniker of the event is some random fort somewhere versus one of the major population centers of California at the time.

[00:48:47] It's also just weird that Fort whatever is technically bigger than the San Francisco earthquake, even though it killed two people.

[00:48:55] Yeah.

[00:48:55] Fuck off with that, even though it was technically bigger on the scale.

[00:48:58] Yeah.

[00:48:59] Yeah, I would agree that maybe San Francisco is also for our own selfish reasons.

[00:49:04] I would like to think that San Francisco is the last big one.

[00:49:06] Buy us a little more time.

[00:49:08] Yeah, to be overdue.

[00:49:09] San Francisco, love it or hate it.

[00:49:11] That place is ready for an earthquake again.

[00:49:13] I do love San Francisco.

[00:49:14] That place is a fucking mess.

[00:49:15] I have really great times in San Francisco.

[00:49:18] It's always colder than I want it to be.

[00:49:20] The hills are aggressive and the fucking homelessness is out of control.

[00:49:23] I know.

[00:49:24] I mean, it's certainly it's got problems.

[00:49:26] That an earthquake can solve.

[00:49:27] So let's just fucking deal with it.

[00:49:30] In any case, if Los Angeles gets hit with a big one that leaps into the eights or the nines on the Richter scale, we're talking about something that would be 10 times stronger than the biggest earthquake in the state's history.

[00:49:41] And now in a place and a time with a lot more people and a lot more buildings.

[00:49:46] And, you know, I'm sure there's some sort of like building codes that are in place for Southern California where it's like, oh, it has to be built like earthquake compliant or something.

[00:49:57] But even that's not going to do anything.

[00:49:59] If 45 seconds of a 7.9 destroyed cities, like what's 60 seconds of a nine going to do?

[00:50:06] Well, and there's only so much that the building codes can do when parts of the city are built on as we'll get into ground that may or may not be particularly stable to begin with.

[00:50:17] No, every couple of years there's mudslides and things.

[00:50:19] Hilariously, I didn't I didn't put this in the episode because I didn't want to shit on our alma mater too hard.

[00:50:25] But Emerson College built a new building out here in L.A. in 2010.

[00:50:31] Not the one we ever experienced.

[00:50:32] No, we never experienced.

[00:50:33] We were in a one.

[00:50:34] We shared one room across from Milton Eadie's dry cleaner, Suffolk University, or how they were called.

[00:50:40] But that's why I was sexually harassed by a professor.

[00:50:43] But that's a story for another time.

[00:50:45] Absolutely will be.

[00:50:46] Um, the new building, I'm pretty sure it came out at some point that it was it has been built directly on the fault line.

[00:50:54] And probably didn't probably didn't incorporate any earthquake because if this is a college from the city that famously did the big dig.

[00:51:02] Yeah, you know, they cut corners probably on this too.

[00:51:04] It's very green.

[00:51:05] It's good.

[00:51:06] It's a good building for the environment.

[00:51:08] But I have no idea how sturdy it is.

[00:51:10] So have fun, kids.

[00:51:12] No, it's as shaky as having a college degree can be.

[00:51:14] Yeah.

[00:51:15] It's a film degree.

[00:51:17] Yeah.

[00:51:18] So the article that brought the big one to terrible, terrible life for me that I mentioned a little bit earlier.

[00:51:24] The LA Weekly article.

[00:51:26] The LA Weekly article, the 15 minutes after the big one.

[00:51:29] And then the subtitle of that is good luck having Thanksgiving.

[00:51:32] Yeah.

[00:51:32] So the article that brought all of this to terrible, terrible life for me begins like this.

[00:51:39] Peggy Good Day sits paralyzed on her sofa as the world outside shrieks with an unearthly roar.

[00:51:46] The sound of millions of bits of lumber, metal, concrete and glass twisting and shattering echoes as downtown Los Angeles plunges into darkness.

[00:51:55] Good Day's TV is launched off its pedestal and smashes at her feet.

[00:52:00] Paintings jump from their hangers.

[00:52:01] Her clattering cup of tea falls off the coffee table and splashes onto her carpet.

[00:52:07] Good Day's eighth floor apartment in the historic Alexandria Hotel at Fifth and Spring Streets is convulsing like a paint shaker.

[00:52:14] And her emotions race from fear to fascination and back.

[00:52:18] All she can do is sit immobile in her suddenly pitch dark domicile.

[00:52:23] Good Day says,

[00:52:24] I would probably try to grab my glasses above anything.

[00:52:27] I am not prepared.

[00:52:29] I don't have a radio or a flashlight.

[00:52:32] The big one, the rupturing of the San Andreas Fault, which will bring Southern California to its knees, has just begun.

[00:52:39] The scenario is hypothetical.

[00:52:40] Good Day and others were asked by LA Weekly to envision their actions during the 15 to 20 minutes after the earthquake,

[00:52:47] a crucial window of time in which the fates of thousands are sealed and in which civilians must rely on themselves.

[00:52:54] Emergency crews will be rushing to major catastrophes and cell phones and landlines will be dead or jammed.

[00:53:00] First of all, what a lead.

[00:53:01] Yeah.

[00:53:02] Also, I haven't heard anything inaccurate yet.

[00:53:04] Kudos to author Ryan Deto or Deto, D-E-T-O.

[00:53:08] So we're not even a couple paragraphs into this and I am fully fear spiraling.

[00:53:13] And we're going to keep right on going.

[00:53:15] This article distills my fear so deeply that I feel like it would be remiss to try to speculate outside of its boundaries.

[00:53:24] When you read it originally, did you have any thoughts like, I also don't have a radio, I also don't?

[00:53:29] Correct.

[00:53:29] Yeah, okay.

[00:53:30] And I'm having those thoughts right now.

[00:53:31] You heard about me?

[00:53:32] I got door jammed things?

[00:53:34] You have a wind up radio, which I should have.

[00:53:36] I'm going to have a kid in a couple months.

[00:53:38] I need to have like an actual plan.

[00:53:40] No, yeah.

[00:53:40] I really don't.

[00:53:42] Steel cage style crib.

[00:53:44] Wasn't there a Nathan for you with like an earthquake bed or something?

[00:53:49] I've actually seen ads for earthquake beds that feel very Nathan for you.

[00:53:53] Oh, maybe that's what I'm thinking of.

[00:53:54] Where like it opens in the middle and like you collapse into it type of thing.

[00:53:57] Yes.

[00:53:58] That's a real invention.

[00:53:59] What's the one where he has the kid?

[00:54:00] Oh, it's a sex thing.

[00:54:01] Yeah.

[00:54:02] It's for the parents to have sex while the kid's in the room.

[00:54:04] That's correct.

[00:54:04] And they put the kid in the, yes, that's what I'm thinking of.

[00:54:07] Entirely.

[00:54:08] Very funny though.

[00:54:09] The article continues.

[00:54:10] To determine which communities will be left in ruins and how people will react.

[00:54:14] The weekly interviewed some two dozen geologists, sociologists, researchers, and others examined

[00:54:20] detailed permits showing which buildings have not been quake retrofitted and analyzed the

[00:54:25] shakeout scenario.

[00:54:26] A 312 page report by 300 scientists, United States Geological Survey or the USGS, which

[00:54:33] explains the likely consequences of a colossal quake on the Southern San Andreas fault.

[00:54:39] The USGS basic Caltech predicts the chance of a dreaded big one hitting in the next 30

[00:54:44] years at about 37%.

[00:54:47] That's high.

[00:54:48] That is high.

[00:54:48] And that's the shit I'm talking about where my mom would send me fucking 60 minutes about

[00:54:52] the like, it's probably exciting.

[00:54:55] These articles, these findings where it's like newest geological group finds that Ed's

[00:54:59] bedroom specifically is going to have the big one and 90 plus percent.

[00:55:03] Well, to give you a sense of how high of a percentage 37 is, an earthquake struck Virginia the year

[00:55:18] that this article was written, 2011, and that area had been given just a 4% chance of an

[00:55:24] occurrence of an earthquake.

[00:55:26] So 37, much higher.

[00:55:29] Yeah, but-

[00:55:29] Now, granted-

[00:55:30] All sounds like bullshit.

[00:55:31] This is more than a decade ago, and we still have yet to have the big one.

[00:55:36] So-

[00:55:37] Every night I sacrifice goats and stuff to make sure we don't.

[00:55:40] So it's working out, dude.

[00:55:42] The Weekly used the ShakeOut Scenario's postulated 7.8 earthquake.

[00:55:47] Again, there are people who think it could be an 8 or even into the 9s.

[00:55:52] And set the disaster date on a cool November night during Thanksgiving week of 2011 at precisely

[00:55:58] 7 p.m.

[00:55:59] Its epicenter is 100 miles away in the dying desert hamlet of Bombay Beach on the eastern

[00:56:04] shore of the Salton Sea, which is an incredibly depressing place.

[00:56:09] Have you been there?

[00:56:10] Have you been out to the Salton Sea with all the homes or just like-

[00:56:13] Yeah.

[00:56:13] I mean, I've driven by it.

[00:56:14] Yeah.

[00:56:14] It's pretty bad out there.

[00:56:16] I guess most of those people probably would actually be safe because there's nothing to

[00:56:20] fall on them.

[00:56:21] Nothing to fall on you.

[00:56:21] You know, you're-

[00:56:22] You're already at rock bottom.

[00:56:23] You can't go any further into the earth.

[00:56:24] That is nowhere else to go.

[00:56:26] Your shack may tip over, but you'll probably be okay.

[00:56:31] Scientists say the rupturing of the strike slip fault will last an interminable 55 seconds.

[00:56:38] Ugh!

[00:56:38] The 1994 Northridge quake, described by some as endless, lasted-

[00:56:44] You want to guess how long?

[00:56:45] 31 seconds.

[00:56:46] Seven.

[00:56:47] Oh my god!

[00:56:49] Seven seconds, and people described it as endless.

[00:56:52] Because when these things fucking hit, I was in an office building two months ago.

[00:56:56] I was having a meeting during the last-

[00:56:59] I don't want to say major earthquake, but it was like a five or something.

[00:57:02] And it probably was less than 10 seconds.

[00:57:04] And it fully felt like, oh my god, what do I do?

[00:57:08] Where do we go?

[00:57:09] Is there a table?

[00:57:09] Do we get under it?

[00:57:10] How bad is this going to get?

[00:57:11] I bet you it feels like 10 seconds to us.

[00:57:14] Like, I bet you it'd be like a jello mold, where a tiny shake makes the whole mold feel

[00:57:20] like it's moving a lot.

[00:57:21] And so I bet you, in our minds, we're like, oh, that was 10 seconds of freak out.

[00:57:25] But reality is, it might have just been 1.5 seconds of actual shake that we're then experiencing.

[00:57:32] Yeah.

[00:57:32] Everything about earthquakes is exponential.

[00:57:34] So yeah, it could be like 10 seconds feels like 60 days.

[00:57:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:57:38] And then you have to worry about, you know, aftershocks and all that stuff.

[00:57:42] But Northridge, I think about Northridge.

[00:57:44] So my house that I live in, which is a piece of shit, but for some reason sold for $2 million

[00:57:49] to my new landlord.

[00:57:50] I mean, it hasn't been fucking touched since San Francisco earthquake, but it's survived

[00:57:56] a couple of these, like the Northridge and stuff.

[00:57:58] It's got cracks and shit, but I'm saying like, it hasn't fallen down.

[00:58:01] And I do find like that's, for me, there's a little bit of confidence in being like, well,

[00:58:05] it's survived all of them so far.

[00:58:06] It definitely was here for Northridge.

[00:58:08] If anything makes me feel, you know, okay about living in LA is looking around it.

[00:58:13] There's a lot of older buildings and a lot of them have survived Northridge and a lot

[00:58:17] of other earthquakes too.

[00:58:19] So it's not to say that the minute the big one hits, the whole city is going to collapse,

[00:58:23] but we're going to get to some of the bad shit that's going to happen.

[00:58:27] The nearly one minute rupture will be followed in some areas by up to four terrifying minutes

[00:58:34] of seismic waves as the Los Angeles basin with its 30,000 foot thick layer of sediment upon

[00:58:41] which about 10 million people live, shutters like jello, violently jessling.

[00:58:47] I just said jello.

[00:58:48] There you go.

[00:58:49] You were correct.

[00:58:51] Violently jostling everything built upon it.

[00:58:54] Precise predictions about which buildings will pancake or crumble and whose neighborhoods

[00:58:59] will burn are impossible.

[00:59:01] And even though this was written a little more than a decade ago, let me reassure you, even

[00:59:05] the most cutting edge science doesn't seem to have much more to say about whose neighborhoods

[00:59:10] will burn or which buildings will crumble.

[00:59:13] You have to leave that to politicians who are causing all that shit.

[00:59:16] We do know.

[00:59:17] We do know that brick is a bad, bad, bad, bad choice for LA.

[00:59:22] Not for pigs.

[00:59:23] What do you mean not for pigs?

[00:59:25] The brick house survived the wolf blow or whatever.

[00:59:27] Oh, well.

[00:59:29] Puffed and he puffed and it was fine.

[00:59:30] And earthquake's a lot more than a huff and a puff.

[00:59:33] That's cool.

[00:59:33] Oh, it's like a large wolf stepping as hard as he can on the ground.

[00:59:36] We're East Coasters.

[00:59:37] We love a brick building.

[00:59:38] But when brick buildings are exposed to violent shaking from below, the mortar holding those

[00:59:43] bricks together gives way and the entire structure can collapse.

[00:59:47] This is what happened to a lot of brick buildings in Long Beach during the earthquake of 1933,

[00:59:51] including 120 school buildings, 70 of which fully collapsed.

[00:59:57] I mean, schools are that's a brick heavy community for sure.

[01:00:00] Luckily, luckily school wasn't in session when the 6.4 magnitude quake hit or the casualties

[01:00:07] would have been much higher than the reported 120.

[01:00:11] Oh, man.

[01:00:12] The quake was the largest known to LA at the time.

[01:00:15] And oddly enough, it's thought to have been man-made, a result of the crazy amount of

[01:00:20] oil and gas extraction happening beneath the city at the time.

[01:00:25] Speaking of man-made disasters beneath LA, Ed had mentioned this in a previous episode,

[01:00:30] but when he took his dad to the La Brea Tar Pits and actually read the signs instead of just

[01:00:35] walking around at stone like years previous, he was shocked to learn that the tar pits were

[01:00:39] not some leftover ice age thing where woolly mammoths hung out.

[01:00:42] But basically an environmental disaster caused by asphalt mining operations that the guy who

[01:00:47] owned it was like, hey, if you want these fossils, then I guess I'll donate this completely

[01:00:52] ruined land to the city as a write-off.

[01:00:54] Peace out, suckas.

[01:00:56] Enjoy the goop.

[01:00:57] And whatever genuine science-y stuff you can find down there.

[01:01:01] I didn't know this, but the Wikipedia page on the Long Beach quake mentions that drilling

[01:01:06] methods at the time, quote, didn't replace the millions of barrels of removed oil with other

[01:01:11] liquids, which I guess means we replace extracted oil with other liquids to prevent earthquakes.

[01:01:16] What the fuck is that?

[01:01:17] I couldn't find a ton-

[01:01:19] I don't understand what that means at all.

[01:01:19] I couldn't find a ton about these methods, but one blog I found noted that, quote,

[01:01:24] the wide adoption in the late 1950s of water flooding wells to recover more oil from waning

[01:01:31] reserves likely resolved the problem by balancing the volume of oil extracted with water injected,

[01:01:38] a technique now used around the world.

[01:01:40] And it goes on to say that oil production does not cause earthquakes in Los Angeles today.

[01:01:46] Okay, I'm sure there's an asterisk next to that said, written by Exxon Mobil.

[01:01:49] Yeah.

[01:01:49] But two things.

[01:01:51] One, it sounds like we drill oil in a, like, Indiana Jones bag of sand style, like,

[01:01:58] the earth can't notice we took this, so we'll just replace it with water and it'll be fine.

[01:02:03] And then the two is, are we treating, like, oil reserves the same way that I treat, like,

[01:02:09] when I run out of soap and I just add water to the hand dispenser and now I have more soap suddenly?

[01:02:14] Yes to the second one. I don't think so to the first one.

[01:02:19] These are both reaches.

[01:02:20] So I followed this particular rabbit hole a little, and it sounds like yes.

[01:02:24] Like, basically what we do now in oil wells or into certain types of oil wells,

[01:02:29] we force water into the wells that have already been tapped out in order to drive the remaining

[01:02:35] oil out because water and oil don't mix.

[01:02:37] So yeah, it's more like me getting more soap from the stone, if you will.

[01:02:41] Shoot water into it and it drives the oil out, but at the same time, the water then takes the

[01:02:45] place of that oil and stabilizes the ground. I think it's probably a little bit more complicated

[01:02:50] than that, but that seems to me the basic understanding is that we don't get these oil

[01:02:56] earthquakes. Although you do hear about earthquakes in, like, Kansas and stuff from fracking now,

[01:03:00] which rabbit hole I did not go down for this episode, but seems like also a similar problem.

[01:03:06] So what other horrors does this article hold for us? It continues.

[01:03:11] General truths are known about how people will die and which areas will be destroyed in this

[01:03:17] inevitable cataclysmic event. Again, I'm putting a turkey in the oven, trying to talk to my sisters,

[01:03:24] reading this with one hand and just being like, what the fuck's the point? We're all fucking dead.

[01:03:30] So what if it is dry? We're all dead.

[01:03:32] Yeah. In LA proper, the USGS shaking intensity map, which is a real thing,

[01:03:40] shows the harder hit areas will be the East side, downtown, South LA and Central District.

[01:03:46] Wait, so you're saying the hardest hit areas are also going to be the poorest areas in town?

[01:03:50] That's kind of fucked up.

[01:03:51] Yeah. I mean, yes, you are correct. It will be the East side, downtown, South LA and Central

[01:03:57] districts such as Hollywood will be the hardest hit. The Wilshire District, the West side, San

[01:04:02] Fernando Valley and the coast will be better off, largely because of San Andreas cuts through

[01:04:06] San Bernardino County in northern parts of LA County and thus is farther from these areas.

[01:04:11] Wow. Fucking the rich knew what they were doing, huh?

[01:04:14] And it will cut directly beneath the Emerson building and swallow it into the earth.

[01:04:19] Adios.

[01:04:19] After the initial shock wrecks havoc, minutes of long lasting seismic waves will indiscriminately

[01:04:25] damage scores of Southland cities. Within LA County, 73 of the 86 cities, including most of

[01:04:31] Los Angeles itself, are perched atop the LA Basin deposit, whose sediment is so deep it could fully

[01:04:38] immerse Mount Everest. Oh, wow.

[01:04:40] So yeah, we're just, our whole city is built on a, essentially a Mount Everest height pile of sand.

[01:04:47] I think it's sort of like what we're learning.

[01:04:49] But we have a desert climate, so that makes sense. Apparently the desert is just all under us.

[01:04:53] Kimberly Schoaf, a UCLA disaster expert who is among the 300 scientists who created the

[01:04:58] ShakeOut study, says the rupture and seismic waves will set off thousands of fires, which will kill

[01:05:04] 50% of those who die from the big one. Some 70% of those blazes will be in residential areas.

[01:05:12] Despite extensive efforts at earthquake retrofitting, 40% of the deaths and 90% of the injuries will be

[01:05:19] caused by building collapses and lesser damage, such as falling decorative beams or air conditioning

[01:05:24] units. The remaining 10% of deaths will be transportation related. Cars, trucks, and buses

[01:05:30] will crash, fall, or be flattened. Rail and subway cars will derail or be crushed. Bridges and roads will

[01:05:37] buckle or topple. Which brings us to something we brought up earlier. The only thing worse than being

[01:05:42] stuck in LA traffic is being stuck in LA traffic underneath an overpass. Yeah. Because every single

[01:05:48] time, without fail, I imagine the feeling of the ground rumbling and then shaking and then the whole

[01:05:53] thing collapsing on top of me. Weirdly, that particular fear was actually born in Pennsylvania

[01:05:58] because I remember growing up, maybe in like middle school, an overpass collapsed on top of morning

[01:06:03] traffic one day, like on the way to Harrisburg. I think it was winter and had something to do with

[01:06:08] like wear and tear and just general disrepair of the overpass. Pick your city in America and find

[01:06:14] where snow made it collapse. But it just scared the shit out of me because it literally was like some,

[01:06:19] I think it only killed the one car that happened to be going under it like as it collapsed. It was

[01:06:24] just some poor guy going to work. Boom. The whole thing fell down. And you know that person. It's not

[01:06:29] who you'd hope it would be. It wasn't like, there goes that rapist. Yeah, I know. It was just like,

[01:06:33] person who did everything right dies and only death and bridge collapse. Ever since then, I've

[01:06:40] been afraid a highway would collapse on me. Maybe we'll probably do tunnels or bridge collapses or

[01:06:45] highway collapses. Earthquake fears just intensify that particular concern. And that's not to mention

[01:06:52] the fear I have of sitting on an overpass when the shaking starts, because if that overpass collapses

[01:06:57] with me on it, I don't know that I'll do too much better falling than being fallen on. You're going to want

[01:07:02] to be in a Honda for that, dude. No, you don't want to be in the Honda Fit. No, you do want to be in a

[01:07:06] Honda for that, I'm saying. Oh, I do? Every Honda I've been in that crash, I'm doing fine. That's true.

[01:07:12] That's true. So the article then takes us to 6.59 p.m., seconds before the big one. Inside her one

[01:07:26] bedroom corner apartment in the Alexandria Hotel, the lid on Peggy Good Day's pot of boiling pasta water

[01:07:31] starts to rattle. Good day, watching the end of The Simpsons. Here's the friendly mealtime sound

[01:07:37] echoing off her 12-foot ceilings. What year was this written? 2011. That's kind of wacky. On their

[01:07:43] 23rd season of The Simpsons or whatever. And 12-foot ceilings. This must be a nice place. I've never been in

[01:07:49] Alexandria, I don't think, but goddamn. Fuck this place. I hope they fucking died. I'm just kidding.

[01:07:55] They're doing well. They're doing well. But as she rises, her floor jolts back and forth violently,

[01:08:00] and she's thrown into the cushions. Though unhurt, Good Day freezes. Two bookcases spill to the floor.

[01:08:06] A short antique ladder topples, flinging a porcelain lamp against the wall where it shatters.

[01:08:11] When her laptop crashes off the dining room table, she snaps out of it and crawls under the coffee table.

[01:08:17] I understand standing in the doorway is obsolete, she remembers, and she's right. Is it?

[01:08:22] Apparently. Even back when this was written, where The Simpsons was the biggest show in America,

[01:08:25] apparently. Her ring-adorned hands cover her neck as a heavy mirror. She's ring-adorned hands?

[01:08:30] This is fucking Corral de Vil's apartment? Movement Desmond? Fucking 12-foot ceilings,

[01:08:34] ring-adorned hands, fucking easy access to The Simpsons. She fell into a couch and not like,

[01:08:40] I don't know. Onto a folding chair? That's the only thing she can eat from? Exactly. Into my shelf made of

[01:08:45] cinder blocks and spare wood. In total darkness, Good Day closes her eyes and waits out the shaking,

[01:08:51] but she can't believe how long it lasts. She says ruefully,

[01:08:54] people like me, well, we tend to make plans, but then we get complacent. I think, yeah, I should do

[01:09:01] that. And then I just watch The Simpsons instead. So this article, this lady's just like us. Yeah,

[01:09:07] she is, but like doing way better. Yeah. It's a little too relatable though. Yeah,

[01:09:11] I should do that. And then I just watch The Simpsons instead. The only thing I haven't done

[01:09:16] earthquake related because I do have my door jam. Yeah. And my radio is I do have an unopened package

[01:09:24] of like earthquake straps for this bookcase I had moved, but I did. I went through the whole process

[01:09:31] of buying the straps to like install behind there because where I've moved it, it's right next to my

[01:09:36] couch. And I just, I see it and I'm like, well, I should do something about that in case of an

[01:09:40] earthquake. I don't want to be crushed by fucking mad about you DVD sets or whatever. And then I just

[01:09:46] never opened it, never installed it. So in that way, I'm like her, but I did purchase it. All right,

[01:09:50] that's a good start. I'm sure this, I mean, this lady sounds like she's purchased a lot of things,

[01:09:54] including an apartment with 12 foot ceilings. So fucking Peggy, good day. If you're still alive,

[01:10:00] I'm sorry. We're talking shit on you, but she's probably a made up person. There's no one known

[01:10:04] with that name. I did. They said that these are based on actual interviews. Yeah. Based on true.

[01:10:08] Her real name is probably like Patrice Smith or something that does exist, but I will say Patrice

[01:10:13] Smith does seem wealthy enough where she doesn't own any physical media. She just thinks it's all

[01:10:17] going to be here forever. So she just definitely, she's someone who's purchasing like episodes of TV

[01:10:22] from fucking iTunes. Yeah. She's going to be very upset when the big one takes out her wifi and she

[01:10:28] loses access to all the episodes of the Simpsons on Disney plus, which are cropped and shitty. Yeah.

[01:10:34] Fuck that. The seismic waves initiated a hundred miles away. The article tells us are amplified by

[01:10:40] the 30,000 foot deep pit of silt beneath most residents feet in LA County. Often confused with

[01:10:46] liquefaction, which requires lots of groundwater. This reaction is better defined as seismic

[01:10:51] reverberation. A shorthand for LA is going to collapse into a sand pit. When the horrible shrieking from

[01:10:58] twisted metal and wood quiets, good day hears screams from a neighbor, a few floors above her,

[01:11:03] as he is crushed by his caved in ceiling. Soon there's no sound from him. Oh shit. Just the

[01:11:10] sounds of Homer Simpson saying boy down below it's street level two diners at gourmet restaurant,

[01:11:18] the Gorbals in, like Joseph Gerbel, the Gorbals. Oh, so it's not like the famous Nazi Joseph

[01:11:26] gobbles. Okay. Um, this is, this article is subversive. Yeah. Uh, the gourmet restaurant,

[01:11:32] the Gorbals in the Alexandria unwisely dash into the dark lobby. Other patrons dive under the tables.

[01:11:38] The Alexandria is huge chandelier with its eight frosted globes suddenly shatters and knife-like

[01:11:43] shards fall on the two fleeing diners delivering mortal wounds. This is a guy who wrote a found

[01:11:49] destination script that never went anywhere. And now they're like, well, I'll convert it into an

[01:11:53] earthquake article. Just outside the lobby, a woman and a child on fifth street are killed instantly,

[01:11:59] gruesomely pinned beneath the Alexandria's historic 400 pound stone griffin, which is cleaved off a lower

[01:12:05] corner of the hotel. About three minutes after the massive jolt, the trembling slowly comes to a halt

[01:12:11] downtown. Good day emerges from beneath her table at the Alexandria and walks to her front door.

[01:12:17] Fragments of the mirror stud the soles of her purple Crocs.

[01:12:20] Oh my God. She dead bolts the lock on her door. She knows the chaos is not over in her neighborhood

[01:12:28] in the city's historic spring street financial district with its mix of upscale and downtrodden

[01:12:34] residents. She seems like a mix of an upscale and downtrodden residents. She's got all these nice

[01:12:38] things, which is also like, yo, purple Crocs. Yeah. Below a group of young hipsters who'd been

[01:12:44] cheerfully heading to the rooftop bar at the standard on flower street is sobbing as they pull concrete

[01:12:50] scraps off three badly hurt friends and two bleeding strangers. It's rush hour and crashing cars have

[01:12:56] veered off fifth street and onto the sidewalk. Their headlights eerily illuminate the darkened

[01:13:01] grisly scene. Many people participate in acts of heroism and selflessness, but some see the bedlam

[01:13:07] as an opportunity to get theirs shop windows, two blocks from the Alexandria hotel and the jewelry

[01:13:12] district on Hill street are shattered by the big one. Their thick metal security gates left badly warped

[01:13:18] with gaping openings. I, this next sentence is a little rough. Is it racist coded? Young toughs

[01:13:24] scurry into the blacked out stores like cockroaches using the cover of darkness. They definitely tap

[01:13:31] dance through a minefield there, but it could have been a lot worse. Honestly, that's a pretty decent

[01:13:35] sentence. I think there will be looting and rioting right after it happens. Good day predicts, which

[01:13:39] there was looting and rioting after the Dodgers won the world series. I think it's a pretty safe bet.

[01:13:46] There will be looting and rioting with streets in the spring street area filled with rubble and

[01:13:51] crushed cars and no way to call for aid word spreads among those trying to help victims.

[01:13:56] The California hospital medical center, the only hospital in downtown proper white memorial medical

[01:14:02] centers in Boyle Heights across the LA river and County USC medical centers three and a half miles

[01:14:07] away is 12 blocks away close enough to go for help. People who are listening at home. The LA river

[01:14:13] is like four inches of water in a, like if you needed to cross the LA river, you could like,

[01:14:19] it's not like, it's like, Oh, it's on the, all the way on the other side of the LA river. It's not,

[01:14:23] it's not the Mississippi. It's like four inches of basically standing water where there's like a

[01:14:29] hobo sleeping. No, but if the bridges collapse, you'd have to, you know, shimmy down and shimmy back up,

[01:14:35] which if you're trying to carry injured people, that's, that's not something I would be doing.

[01:14:39] No, I'd be like, I'll find help. And the bodybuilders are all out at Venice beach,

[01:14:44] which is way too far away to come help carry. They can't help carry anybody. So then there's

[01:14:48] a big section about how some of the older hospitals are going to become disaster zones of their own

[01:14:53] because they are also going to collapse. Or as the article says, quote, according to an OSHPD 2010

[01:14:59] report, 78 other medical facilities in LA County lack retrofitting. Some may be unable to help anyone

[01:15:06] but themselves. Yeah, that sounds right. Then seven minutes after the quake, we get a discussion

[01:15:11] of the fires that are going to engulf the city. Oh boy. Well, I think we're making less shit out

[01:15:15] of wood today. So it's still not pretty. The USGS conservatively estimates that 1600 fires will spread

[01:15:23] to 130,000 individual buildings, a checkerboard like conflagration unseen since much of San Francisco

[01:15:30] burned to the ground as a result of the 1906 earthquake. But does San Francisco make any changes

[01:15:35] after that? The way the Chicago included alleyways after? I'm sure they probably did. They were like,

[01:15:40] hey, we can't have this happen again. Fires will- We gotta stop making everything out of

[01:15:43] Duraflame logs. I think it's less the- I mean, yes, what the buildings are made out of is important,

[01:15:49] but I think it's also just- we have a lot more things. I think I was going to talk about this a

[01:15:54] little bit later, but we have a lot more gas pipes, electrical lines. There's a lot more ways for

[01:16:00] fires to start and spread now than there were in the 1900s. So, you know, even though the buildings

[01:16:06] might be less prone to burning- And we're removing asbestos on a fucking daily basis.

[01:16:13] So we don't have fire stopping asbestos anymore. Fires will blaze in the Inland Empire, San Fernando

[01:16:19] Valley, San Gabriel Valley, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles. But the worst hit will be Southeast LA

[01:16:25] County. According to Kyoto University professor Charles R. Scawthorn's fire- Sorry, some guy in

[01:16:30] Japan has told us we're the worst fucking- He's saying that, like, Mexican-American community is

[01:16:37] going to lose their fucking neighborhood? A guy who sounds like a Dickens villain, Charles R.

[01:16:42] Scawthorn. Oh my god. That's not a traditional Japanese name. No. He's definitely an expat with an

[01:16:48] eye patch. His study singles out, for the worst blazes, the sector south of the 10 freeway and east

[01:16:58] of the 110, including Downey, Compton, Bell, Southgate, Watts, Huntington Park, Whittier, Montebello,

[01:17:05] Bellflower, Linwood, Pico Rivera, Commerce, Paramount, South Central, and Central Alameda.

[01:17:11] To me, it's like, I don't necessarily believe in the Illuminati, but when I hear shit like this,

[01:17:15] where it's like, according to the latest research, just the fucking disenfranchised neighborhoods are

[01:17:21] going to get obliterated. And it's like, okay, well, there was a bigger plan in place here than

[01:17:28] like, they're looking at all the angles to make sure that like only poor people can get rid of.

[01:17:33] Well, part of that is because those areas have a lot of wood-constructed homes and apartments that

[01:17:38] are densely packed on small post-World War II lots that housed returning soldiers and their families.

[01:17:43] So they were built-

[01:17:45] Out of a Sears catalog.

[01:17:47] Yeah, basically, they were built in a way that was meant to provide housing for lots of people

[01:17:52] kind of flooding into an area after World War II. And unfortunately, that was the priority,

[01:17:58] not how earthquake safe and fire safe they were.

[01:18:01] But I can't help but notice that all those GIs have since moved to better neighborhoods.

[01:18:05] True. Yeah, I mean-

[01:18:06] And so the neighborhoods in 2024 standards that you are talking about are neighborhoods that are not

[01:18:14] necessarily incredibly affluent.

[01:18:16] Correct.

[01:18:17] Unthinkably, if the Santa Ana winds are blowing-

[01:18:20] Oh, this is the winds I was talking about earlier! People who were listening earlier and are still

[01:18:24] listening now, those are no fucking joke. I wrestled with an umbrella.

[01:18:28] The Santa Ana winds are no joke. They are very strong.

[01:18:31] Kid, you think you're sitting in Ohio with fucking allergies? You haven't experienced allergies until the Santa Ana winds blow.

[01:18:38] And they often do in late autumn, which is when this article has decided that this earthquake would happen.

[01:18:45] And I-

[01:18:45] This is also times out with when I wrestled with an outside umbrella!

[01:18:50] It was-

[01:18:50] I would argue that last week was late autumn.

[01:18:53] Ed-

[01:18:53] Did you win this wrestling match? Because I feel like you have a stick up your ass about it.

[01:18:57] It took-

[01:18:57] I have an umbrella up my ass.

[01:18:58] It took-

[01:18:59] So you lost.

[01:18:59] It took way longer than I would have liked it to.

[01:19:03] And the people whose house I'm house-sitting at have cameras out back, and I'm sure they saw me really struggle to make sure that this umbrella didn't blow away.

[01:19:12] Well, Maggie, if you saw that, please share the video with the Facebook group.

[01:19:16] Don't you dare.

[01:19:17] In the first ten minutes after the quake, falling lamps and candles set furniture ablaze, while sparks from electrical shorts touch off natural gas spewing from snapped-off lines that fed heaters or stoves.

[01:19:30] Blazes in greater Los Angeles will overwhelm local police and fire departments.

[01:19:35] Even mutual aid forces from elsewhere, who won't arrive immediately, will put only a dent in the relief effort, according to L.A. County Fire Department Battalion Chief Larry Collins.

[01:19:46] Lucy Jones of the USGS says, bottom line, fires will double the amount of losses.

[01:19:54] Meanwhile, 7.15 p.m., 15 minutes after the quake, in the Inland Empire, one man has long been ready.

[01:20:01] And I will say this is my favorite part of the article.

[01:20:03] Is it Dog the Bounty Hunter?

[01:20:04] Basically.

[01:20:06] After all, he lives and works just yards from the fault itself.

[01:20:10] Quote, if an earthquake happened, people here would not panic, says Anthony Perez, who runs the Victory Outreach Christian Rehab Center in Cajon Pass, which links the Mojave Desert to urban Southern California at the western edge of San Bernardino County.

[01:20:25] Quote, we do not fear death.

[01:20:27] Yeah, I've been to where they're talking about.

[01:20:29] No shit, Anthony Perez does not fear death.

[01:20:32] This is the description of him.

[01:20:34] Perez, a large man from Pomona, leads the prayer, his black hair falling over his eyes.

[01:20:41] Despite the unearthly sounds and bright explosions in the night sky from felled power lines and what he suspects is a train derailment.

[01:20:48] Oh my God, Anthony suspects he heard a train derailment in the air.

[01:20:53] He remains exceptionally calm.

[01:20:55] I would feel safe with God's protection, he says simply.

[01:20:58] His 39 years have been filled with trauma and tragedy.

[01:21:02] As a person who's close to that, I don't look back at my life and ever refer to as my 39 years on this earth.

[01:21:09] Well, this guy's 39 years have been wild.

[01:21:12] No, he had some city miles on those.

[01:21:13] A former meth addict.

[01:21:15] The tracks.

[01:21:15] He's been struck by cars four times.

[01:21:18] And a smooth criminal.

[01:21:19] His body is marked by stab wounds and bullet scars.

[01:21:22] To be the roadmap of pain.

[01:21:23] And he has a metal plate in his back.

[01:21:25] Oh my God.

[01:21:26] This guy could be scared all the time as you mascot.

[01:21:28] He's faced half the fears we've covered.

[01:21:32] If he'd been attacked by a mountain lion and a galookagoo, I think he would have experienced all of our shows.

[01:21:38] He's standing right at the top of the podium.

[01:21:39] Yeah.

[01:21:40] For sure.

[01:21:40] Thanks to Perez's smart precautions, patients at Victory Outreach don't hang things on walls and all the furniture is bolted down.

[01:21:47] But now it's time to evacuate.

[01:21:49] The longer it takes, the less likely their lives will be spared.

[01:21:52] All right, guys, let's load up into the van, Perez orders.

[01:21:56] Not far away, wooden crosses holding up telephone and power lines have plummeted into the sagebrush, crackling loudly.

[01:22:02] Smoke, yells a young patient as the smell reaches them.

[01:22:06] They hear a massive, deep whoomp.

[01:22:09] Perez's heart rate climbs.

[01:22:10] Cajon Pass is a notorious tinderbox.

[01:22:13] With 15 to 20 mile an hour winds sweeping north of the canyon daily, a fire can reach them in minutes.

[01:22:19] 7.18 p.m.

[01:22:20] 18 minutes after the quake.

[01:22:21] A mile away, a giant globe of fire illuminates the night sky, setting shrubs aflame and carving an otherworldly crater into a hillside.

[01:22:30] The blazing orb is created by one of hundreds of bizarre chain reactions set off by the big one.

[01:22:37] As envisioned by earthquake engineer Porter, a landslide in the San Gabriel Valley mountain foothills has toppled an 80-foot transmission tower and snapped a gas line.

[01:22:47] Because the gas line is copper, a fantastic conductor.

[01:22:52] Oh my god.

[01:22:53] And electric arc forms fed by the energy from the fallen lines.

[01:22:56] We have to just let these fucking hobos strip all the copper out of these homes so that we don't have to deal with the fire orbs that copper make.

[01:23:03] Despite an emergency shutoff valve, enough gas escaped to create an explosion that blasts away part of the hill.

[01:23:10] Perez's rehab patients hardly begin to pile into the center's big van, youngest and oldest first.

[01:23:15] If not everyone could fit into the van, Perez says, then we might have to make two trips.

[01:23:19] Oh, like the movie Titanic, but there was no second trip.

[01:23:22] I don't think people on the second trip, yeah.

[01:23:24] But with fire visible over the hill, there's no coming back.

[01:23:27] There are only seats for 12, but all 33 patients squeeze on top of and next to each other, creating a tense, uncomfortable crush.

[01:23:35] The dirt road to victory outreach was a slow go before, but now the slip in the fault has moved the road 10 feet.

[01:23:42] Perez drives off the shoulder and over bushes, and when he reaches the 15 freeway, he finds traffic at a standstill and fire heading their way.

[01:23:49] The earthquake has shattered the freeway's surfaces.

[01:23:53] So this is a question to stop this probably illegal amount of reading of this article we're doing.

[01:23:59] Like, is there no advantage to having kind of like a tornado-style underground bunker for something like this?

[01:24:07] Is it understood that the underground bunker would just shatter from the earthquake?

[01:24:11] Well, I would imagine...

[01:24:12] It's like, why go to the 15 freeway and sit in traffic when the ball comes?

[01:24:17] I think the issue is that, as this article has mentioned, LA is sitting on a Mount Everest's worth of silt.

[01:24:25] And so if you're putting a bunker in that ground, I don't know how much safer that bunker really is than anything above ground.

[01:24:32] It's probably dangerous in a different way.

[01:24:35] I don't know...

[01:24:36] We should get hot air balloons.

[01:24:37] Yeah, we should.

[01:24:38] Hot air balloons are a good fucking thing!

[01:24:40] We just go jump in the basket, and then we float up.

[01:24:44] Honestly.

[01:24:44] Now we're off the ground, no one to worry about power lines or shaky ground, and we're above the fireballs.

[01:24:50] And we'll just hopefully float east.

[01:24:52] Yeah, and whatever fireballs there are, the massive fire engulfing the city, killing thousands, will raise our balloon even higher.

[01:25:00] And then we're up there just waving goodbye to it.

[01:25:02] Yeah.

[01:25:02] Fuck, man.

[01:25:03] We gotta invest in hot air balloons.

[01:25:05] Well, anybody listening to this podcast who wants to be an investor in a million dollar idea...

[01:25:11] Or just, if you own a hot air balloon place, fucking shoot us one, dude.

[01:25:15] Send us a hot air balloon, and we'll use it on the day.

[01:25:18] This is not necessarily the worst idea I've ever had.

[01:25:21] We'll just fireproof that wicker basket.

[01:25:23] It's a pretty good idea.

[01:25:24] I know, dude.

[01:25:24] I'm fucking jazzed about it.

[01:25:27] That's more or less where the article ends.

[01:25:29] People burning to death on the shattered highways trying to escape a collapsing city.

[01:25:33] I mean, that's deep impact after tomorrow.

[01:25:36] Through and through.

[01:25:37] You know what I mean?

[01:25:37] As we know from the history of the San Francisco quake in 1906, the fire is killed almost three times as many people as the quake.

[01:25:44] And I think LA is for sure going to be hit with that again.

[01:25:47] We have so many more, like I was saying earlier, we have so many more underground gas lines, power lines.

[01:25:52] It sounds like we should be getting fire extinguishers.

[01:25:55] We might want fire extinguishers.

[01:25:56] I mean, I have two in my kitchen.

[01:25:58] Do you?

[01:25:58] No, I have none.

[01:25:59] You have zero fire extinguishers.

[01:26:01] That I'm aware of.

[01:26:04] No, I have two.

[01:26:05] I have two for sure.

[01:26:07] We have one in the closet and one like right to the right of my own.

[01:26:09] But I think if there's if I think if a giant electrical arc leaps from a down power line to your copper pipes, I don't know if a fire extinguisher is going to do much help.

[01:26:19] I'll spray myself.

[01:26:20] And then now I'm covered in extinguishing.

[01:26:22] Yeah, that's a word or not.

[01:26:23] Extinguishing.

[01:26:24] It sounds like a word.

[01:26:25] Either way, that's me.

[01:26:26] I do panic also thinking about the government's response to Katrina.

[01:26:32] Wasn't great.

[01:26:33] It wasn't great.

[01:26:33] And I don't think the federal government has gotten a lot better at disaster relief since then.

[01:26:38] It's good to have FEMA, though.

[01:26:39] It is.

[01:26:40] But I just like I think the thing that scares me the most about the big one is the idea that this thing's going to hit.

[01:26:47] And there is a pretty good chance that most of us will survive the actual earthquake itself.

[01:26:52] I think I saw one time when I was really going on like a panic Google search.

[01:26:56] I saw something about how the big one is expected to kill one in 10,000.

[01:27:01] It's not bad.

[01:27:01] That's not bad.

[01:27:02] That's pretty good odds.

[01:27:03] Like think about the neighborhood you live in.

[01:27:05] Think about 10,000.

[01:27:06] I mean, but I also thought that I would drive home safely and a truck drove into the side of me.

[01:27:10] So it's like I'm, you know, I'm right in that realm of of like the odds are high, but it can happen to anybody.

[01:27:16] So chances are we're going to survive the earthquake.

[01:27:18] We're not going to be able to call each other.

[01:27:20] I'm not going to know where any of my friends are.

[01:27:22] I guess you got to use a Thomas guy to get around.

[01:27:24] Well, but like, like I'm not going to know where anyone burn up.

[01:27:27] It's going to be a week before I know if my friends are alive.

[01:27:30] I mean, my my writing partner, her parents were stuck in near Asheville in the hurricane.

[01:27:37] And that was like, you know, in some ways that probably was about as bad as an earthquake,

[01:27:41] but they couldn't contact each other for days and you don't know what's going on.

[01:27:46] It's going to be that.

[01:27:47] But in the city itself, all the highways are going to be shut down.

[01:27:50] There's going to be no way in and out of this fucking city.

[01:27:52] I have a wind up radio.

[01:27:54] I have that.

[01:27:55] I have the wind up radio.

[01:27:56] Folks, you'll get the podcast.

[01:27:58] Ed has a radio.

[01:27:59] No, the radio doesn't.

[01:28:00] It's not a fucking ham radio.

[01:28:02] I'm not going to be able to send anything out.

[01:28:03] I've got a wind up radio so I can get the top 40.

[01:28:06] I've got Casey Kasem can't be stopped.

[01:28:09] Casey Kasem can't be stopped.

[01:28:10] I have a wind up radio.

[01:28:11] I have the door wedge thing.

[01:28:14] I have the expired MREs.

[01:28:17] I have a gun, which is always great.

[01:28:19] And I have fire extinguishers.

[01:28:20] So I feel pretty good about just like hanging out in the rubble until shit calms down.

[01:28:25] But that's a couple of days.

[01:28:27] Like it could take, I mean, this is for the rest of this episode is just going to be speculation

[01:28:31] because I don't know the facts behind any of this.

[01:28:34] But like, I don't know how many more people and how much bigger Los Angeles is compared

[01:28:38] to Louisiana.

[01:28:40] Like doing a Katrina comparison.

[01:28:42] Yeah, I mean, it's a lot bigger.

[01:28:43] It's both physically larger.

[01:28:44] It's a sprawl and there's more people.

[01:28:47] The comparison they just made was between Los Angeles and New Orleans, not Los Angeles

[01:28:52] and Louisiana.

[01:28:53] The other LA, you know, when writing out an address.

[01:28:56] So they're right.

[01:28:57] Los Angeles is bigger, coming in at 502 square miles with a population of 3.8 million people.

[01:29:04] New Orleans stands about 350 square miles, much of it water, with a population of 364,000

[01:29:11] people.

[01:29:12] That said, Hurricane Katrina is said to have affected 90,000 square miles of the United States.

[01:29:18] Jeez Louise, you can fit that whole area inside the state of California, which comes in at

[01:29:23] 163,696 square miles, with the San Andreas Fault running through basically all of it.

[01:29:29] Guys, America is fucking huge huh?

[01:29:32] Also, Lex Luthor might have really been onto something with his post the big one, oceanfront

[01:29:37] property idea.

[01:29:39] Right.

[01:29:39] I worry that I would be stuck for, I don't know, a month before anyone actually is like

[01:29:45] getting people out of the city or restoring power or...

[01:29:48] I mean, a month.

[01:29:49] I mean, how far can you walk in a month?

[01:29:51] To Vegas, probably.

[01:29:53] Yeah.

[01:29:53] So fucking fill up your bag with shit like your go bag?

[01:29:56] Like my baby?

[01:29:57] Like my baby?

[01:29:58] No.

[01:29:58] See, I don't have a baby.

[01:30:00] So I have a go bag.

[01:30:01] That's good to go.

[01:30:02] Mm-hmm.

[01:30:03] It's already set.

[01:30:04] So me and my fire extinguisher, my firearms, we're walking to Vegas.

[01:30:08] Nice.

[01:30:09] You can meet my dad out there.

[01:30:10] Absolutely will.

[01:30:11] The only thing I don't have is a motorcycle, which anything we learned from Deep Impact

[01:30:15] is it's so much better to get through traffic.

[01:30:17] But that's the problem.

[01:30:18] I mean, if you are...

[01:30:19] The thing is, if you are in the city when the big one hits, you're not...

[01:30:22] Even on a motorcycle, you're not getting out.

[01:30:24] It's going to be better than driving a car.

[01:30:26] It'll be better than driving a car, but you're not...

[01:30:28] You get some sort of like Terminator 2 dirt bag fucking dirt bike?

[01:30:31] Dude, I can imagine you with your fire extinguishers and your firearms trapped to your back on a

[01:30:35] motorcycle, just like the cars are stopped and the road's like all fucked up and there's

[01:30:40] a big piece of it jutting out and you like hit it like a ramp.

[01:30:43] Yeah.

[01:30:43] You know, and then you're like out of the city and I'm just watching you go.

[01:30:46] No, realistically, you're watching me on Citizen App or fucking YouTube eating shit after

[01:30:51] hitting that first bump.

[01:30:52] That first bump.

[01:30:53] You're like, I got it.

[01:30:54] Boom.

[01:30:54] It's just like the motorcycle stops immediately.

[01:30:57] All the wheels come off.

[01:30:58] Both wheels come off because I got it on fucking wish.com.

[01:31:02] Got a motorcycle.

[01:31:03] Got some fucking Wuhan wheels and it just fucking gets destroyed immediately.

[01:31:07] It's going to be bad.

[01:31:08] I mean, I did just move recently to Pasadena.

[01:31:10] So I used to know where the like, because most neighborhoods do have some kind of like

[01:31:15] an earthquake shelter.

[01:31:17] Yeah.

[01:31:17] You'll see like signs, old signs of like, go this way.

[01:31:20] And I actually, I don't know where that is in Pasadena right now.

[01:31:23] And I'm less worried in Pasadena about buildings falling on me.

[01:31:27] I'm more worried about fires because it's closer to the mountains.

[01:31:30] It's an old city.

[01:31:30] It's old.

[01:31:31] It's old wooden shitty stucco.

[01:31:33] Yeah.

[01:31:34] The big one is scary in so many ways.

[01:31:36] And really, one of the biggest things outside of the physical and natural disaster elements

[01:31:42] is just the, we're all going to be at the mercy of our neighbors and each other.

[01:31:49] And it's going to be a long, difficult recovery process.

[01:31:53] And Northridge, I think they bounced back in like a week, most places, because there wasn't

[01:31:57] really that much damage.

[01:31:59] What was the Northridge Richter scale?

[01:32:01] Let's see.

[01:32:01] I think it was like a 7.4.

[01:32:04] Which is big compared to what we normally deal with.

[01:32:07] Yeah.

[01:32:07] It was pretty big.

[01:32:08] Oh no, I'm sorry.

[01:32:09] A 6.7.

[01:32:10] So.

[01:32:11] It's even smaller.

[01:32:11] 10 times smaller than a 7.

[01:32:13] Yeah.

[01:32:14] So I just know it in my bones that like the week where I'm like, I'm finally done with

[01:32:19] this fucking city is when it's going to happen.

[01:32:21] The week when I'm like, I have the movers prepped.

[01:32:24] The truck is coming.

[01:32:26] Oh my God.

[01:32:26] The earthquake hits while all your shit is loaded into a moving truck.

[01:32:30] You can't even get to it.

[01:32:31] That's why the last things that go in that truck are guns, ammunition, fire extinguishers.

[01:32:36] And dirt bike motorcycles.

[01:32:38] I don't know about that.

[01:32:39] Make an attempt to leap off the broken.

[01:32:41] I gotta see if I have dirt bike money in the equation at that point, but I own everything

[01:32:45] else.

[01:32:45] So.

[01:32:45] Yeah, man.

[01:32:46] I don't know.

[01:32:47] I feel bad.

[01:32:48] I feel bad talking about this.

[01:32:50] Not feel bad as in like, I don't feel responsible or I just personally feel in a bad place imagining

[01:32:58] how this is going to go.

[01:33:00] Do you think this conversation happens?

[01:33:01] I doubt it does.

[01:33:02] No, because they don't give a shit.

[01:33:04] I was going to say like, oh, places like Oklahoma or something where it's like tornadoes are

[01:33:07] prevalent or something, but tornadoes, it's like, it's a bad time for a 560 foot stretch

[01:33:14] of a straight line.

[01:33:15] It's not a bad time for a city of millions of people.

[01:33:19] Right.

[01:33:20] All at once being placed into this like orbs of fire tinderbox.

[01:33:26] Well, and it's, I mean, the interesting thing about earthquakes, I think, is that they are,

[01:33:30] I mean, I don't know the relative amount of like giant big one style earthquakes in comparison

[01:33:37] to how many F5s do we get or how many, you know, massive hurricanes do we get.

[01:33:43] But I do feel like they're rare enough that it's this interesting thing where like society,

[01:33:49] it's not that humanity hasn't experienced massive earthquakes.

[01:33:51] And I'm sure humanity has experienced even, you know, that 9.5 or bigger, you know, in the

[01:33:58] past before anyone was really writing it down or there were natives somewhere that felt it.

[01:34:02] Like, I'm sure that's happened.

[01:34:03] But there's so few and far between that society has like outpaced the earth in the sense that

[01:34:09] they don't happen enough to have a really good sense of what's going to go down.

[01:34:14] Yeah.

[01:34:14] Or any kind of preparation or even like every during COVID and stuff where it was like,

[01:34:19] turns out we only have one vial of this important fucking smallpox thing.

[01:34:26] It's just like, oh, it turns out we had no stockpiles of important shit.

[01:34:29] But I feel like, yeah, earthquake is definitely one where it's like I can see people on a national

[01:34:34] budget being like, oh, earthquakes, let's we can move that till next year is a problem.

[01:34:38] I'm sure.

[01:34:38] I mean, most natural disasters because they are rare.

[01:34:41] So when you need the money to put it in something else, you go, well, fuck it.

[01:34:44] I mean, or the planning or infrastructure in place to mitigate those issues.

[01:34:49] Yeah.

[01:34:50] I feel like are just kicked down the fucking road.

[01:34:52] Humans are very good at dealing with the problems.

[01:34:55] This is this is why I really think global warming is going to be the thing that does

[01:35:00] us in.

[01:35:00] We're very good at dealing with problems right in front of our faces.

[01:35:03] We're very bad at making the tradeoffs to solve problems that we can see fully coming.

[01:35:10] Yeah.

[01:35:10] But but we go, well, I mean, fuck, we have all these problems right now.

[01:35:14] Are we really not going to deal with these problems right now so that we can save money

[01:35:18] or offset climate issues or or whatever to protect from this future that we are ninety

[01:35:24] nine point nine percent sure is coming.

[01:35:26] But we don't know when and we don't know exactly what it's going to be.

[01:35:30] So we go, well, we'll deal with the problem here and now and fix the things here and now

[01:35:34] worry about the here and now.

[01:35:36] But then when the bad thing happens, we are almost always caught flat footed.

[01:35:40] I mean, that's future Ed, future Chris's problem on a national and global scale.

[01:35:44] Yeah.

[01:35:44] Yeah.

[01:35:45] Dentsis appointment next week and kind of just started flossing this week.

[01:35:49] And, you know, they're going to like they're going to be like, this seems like a week's

[01:35:52] worth of flossing when I get there.

[01:35:54] Yeah.

[01:35:54] And they're like, you know, you knew this dentist appointment was coming for six months

[01:35:57] to a year.

[01:35:58] Yeah.

[01:35:58] And you did nothing.

[01:35:59] And so on a micro scale, I am America and the world when it comes to stuff like earthquakes.

[01:36:05] Yeah.

[01:36:06] But the problem with earthquakes is and it's different than a hurricane, different than a tornado.

[01:36:09] Well, it's a less extent different in tornado.

[01:36:11] It's different for sure, which is every piece of science that we've ever put into earthquake

[01:36:16] prevention or prediction.

[01:36:18] It's like, what are we at now?

[01:36:20] Like we can now confidently say we can see an earthquake up to four seconds before it happens.

[01:36:25] Yeah.

[01:36:25] Like there's so fucking an earthquake is still such a roll of the dice.

[01:36:29] It's just it's upsetting.

[01:36:31] There's no way to mitigate it.

[01:36:32] It's not like, oh, we frack too much.

[01:36:35] If we stopped fracking, earthquakes would stop.

[01:36:37] Or we do this too much.

[01:36:40] If we just chilled out, like at least with global warming, it's like, hey, with carbon,

[01:36:43] whatever.

[01:36:44] Earthquakes.

[01:36:45] It's like, do what you want.

[01:36:46] I'm showing up fashionably late to this party anyway.

[01:36:49] I'm coming whenever I want.

[01:36:51] Well, yeah.

[01:36:51] Go fuck yourself.

[01:36:52] It's a natural feature of the earth, just like most weather is, but in an even more mysterious

[01:36:57] way, because we're talking about geological time scales, you know, like when we're tracking

[01:37:03] the weather, we have enough science to generally know the way that cool and warm air travels

[01:37:10] around the earth and the jet stream and all that.

[01:37:12] And we can track it.

[01:37:13] And there's a...

[01:37:14] Yeah, we have tornado warnings.

[01:37:16] Right.

[01:37:16] We have hurricane warnings.

[01:37:18] We don't have earthquake warnings.

[01:37:20] But I think part of that's because what I'm saying is I think part of that is because

[01:37:23] the weather happens on a more human friendly time scale.

[01:37:28] Like it happens on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, whereas earthquakes, the tectonic

[01:37:33] plates move at, you know, glacial speeds.

[01:37:37] So we don't...

[01:37:38] It's harder to collect and process the data because it's not something that happens in a

[01:37:42] time frame that makes it easy to do that.

[01:37:44] It's a loop growl, which people listening in a couple of weeks will understand.

[01:37:48] We are foreshadowing our own episodes.

[01:37:51] Yeah, I did.

[01:37:52] Which we can do with considerably more assurance and accuracy than an earthquake person can

[01:37:58] predict anything.

[01:37:59] Yeah.

[01:38:00] So yeah, man, the big one.

[01:38:02] I'll start and say on the fear tier, this is probably the top.

[01:38:07] Interesting.

[01:38:08] Interesting.

[01:38:09] Yeah.

[01:38:09] I don't know if it's the top for me.

[01:38:12] Well, we don't even remember what the top currently is.

[01:38:14] The top is flesh eating bacteria.

[01:38:16] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:38:18] Yeah.

[01:38:18] It's funny because like when I get in the shower, I'm like, this could be when the big

[01:38:21] one happens, which has been going on for a while.

[01:38:23] But only since starting the podcast have I been like sending you photos of like I cut

[01:38:28] my hand cutting an onion.

[01:38:29] Do you think this is going to be flesh eating bacteria?

[01:38:32] But you're not a never nude because of flesh eating bacteria.

[01:38:35] You're never nude because of earthquakes.

[01:38:37] Well, and my dad.

[01:38:39] For someone who hasn't gotten to those episodes, you'll get to him.

[01:38:43] Yeah, you're right.

[01:38:44] It's interesting because earthquakes dictate a fair number of things in my life.

[01:38:49] I guess it should be higher than flesh eating bacteria.

[01:38:52] But flesh eating bacteria, it's the new hotness.

[01:38:54] It really is like it's exciting to know about and to be scared about versus earthquake, which

[01:38:59] I've kind of been courting for a while.

[01:39:01] I do get I don't know if I say lots.

[01:39:03] I've gotten a number of photos of small wounds on his finger or hand and going.

[01:39:12] Is this going to be it?

[01:39:13] I mean, I'm constantly cutting stuff.

[01:39:15] I'm like, oh, I was trying to change this belt in the car.

[01:39:18] I was building a fire.

[01:39:19] I was making dinner and I have all these new scratches and cuts and stuff where I'm

[01:39:24] like, is that look red to you?

[01:39:26] My fucked.

[01:39:27] So I would say, yeah, it's up there.

[01:39:29] Fuck.

[01:39:29] Fuck.

[01:39:29] Yeah, it's interesting because if I'm strictly going off of what is the thing that most dictates

[01:39:34] decisions I'm currently making, it's not being eaten by a bear.

[01:39:37] It's not necessarily fleshing bacteria.

[01:39:40] I guess it is earthquakes.

[01:39:42] Yeah.

[01:39:42] Earthquakes dictate what I do pretty frequently.

[01:39:45] I mean, if we lived in Oklahoma, it would probably be twisters.

[01:39:48] You know, like it's the thing that is most likely to be a life changing tragedy in your

[01:39:53] life.

[01:39:54] Oh, man, that's I mean, being out of work.

[01:39:56] Oh, well, sudden death is pretty high.

[01:39:58] Sudden death.

[01:39:59] That's up there.

[01:40:00] But I did Eskimo kissed sudden death this year.

[01:40:03] Is that not a term we can use?

[01:40:04] No, I thought you were going to say we were Eskimo twins with death.

[01:40:07] No, no, no, no, no.

[01:40:08] If you had also almost died.

[01:40:10] And yeah, maybe I was close with sudden death.

[01:40:13] Fuck.

[01:40:14] Yeah.

[01:40:14] I would say it's it's pretty up there like a seven or an eight for sure.

[01:40:18] Like the big one top of maybe a nine point six or nine point five.

[01:40:23] Yeah, I would say it's not a 10.

[01:40:24] Just like earthquake skills as we've established them.

[01:40:27] I would say it's not a 10.

[01:40:28] I'm going like seven, eight, eight and a half, nine.

[01:40:31] What are you doing?

[01:40:32] I'm tying it.

[01:40:33] I think my top three are probably the big one, sudden death, flesh eating bacteria.

[01:40:39] And I think sudden death and the big one are probably tied.

[01:40:42] The big one and sudden death are pretty hand in hand.

[01:40:45] And earthquake is as sudden a natural disaster as you're going to get.

[01:40:48] But the death isn't as I mean, again, it could be if I'm standing under a overpass.

[01:40:54] It could be sudden.

[01:40:56] But if you're in shower when it happens, that's just like a kill me now.

[01:40:59] It's not sudden.

[01:41:00] But you're like, please don't let me be found all flaccid and fucked up.

[01:41:03] Yeah.

[01:41:04] Don't need that.

[01:41:04] No.

[01:41:05] Well, guys, I hope you've enjoyed or been terrified.

[01:41:10] If you don't live in L.A., you're probably less terrified.

[01:41:12] You're like, this is so it's a two on your scale.

[01:41:15] Yeah.

[01:41:15] Yeah.

[01:41:15] Yeah.

[01:41:16] But fuck you.

[01:41:17] You probably have some other natural disaster that's going to take you out.

[01:41:20] Just wait till we get to that one.

[01:41:22] Yeah.

[01:41:22] And it's going to take out you in the home you own.

[01:41:24] Yeah.

[01:41:24] So fuck you.

[01:41:25] We're transients out here.

[01:41:27] Yeah, dude.

[01:41:28] I'll put my shit in a suitcase.

[01:41:30] Yeah.

[01:41:30] I mean, me and my bindle are getting on a dirt bike.

[01:41:32] I don't own to try and escape the city.

[01:41:35] To ride a boxcar out of this fucking town.

[01:41:38] After we establish that the rail system is going to be completely destroyed.

[01:41:42] Yeah.

[01:41:43] Well, until next time, I'm Chris Killary.

[01:41:45] And I'm terrified.

[01:41:47] And the show is Scared All the Time.

[01:41:48] And we will see you next week.

[01:41:50] Bye bye.

[01:41:51] Bye bye.

[01:41:51] Scared All the Time is co-produced by Chris Killary and Ed Ficola.

[01:41:55] Written by Chris Killary.

[01:41:56] Edited by Ed Ficola.

[01:41:58] Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel.

[01:42:01] Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

[01:42:04] And Mr. Disclaimer is...

[01:42:07] And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon and get all kinds of cool shit in return.

[01:42:12] Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access, and inclusive merch.

[01:42:18] So go sign up for our Patreon at ScaredAllTheTimePodcast.com.

[01:42:22] Don't worry.

[01:42:23] All scaredy cats welcome.

[01:42:25] No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

[01:42:27] Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

[01:42:30] Night.

[01:42:30] We are in this together.

[01:42:32] Together.

[01:42:32] Together.

[01:42:32] Together.

[01:42:33] Together.