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xtruss · 3 years ago

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The sun shines on the rocky ridges of the Valley of the Moon in Chile's Atacama Desert. Photograph By Giulio Ercolani, Almay Stock Photo

Exploring Chile's Atacama Desert! Barren Yet Beautiful, Chile's Atacama Desert is an Alluring World of Sand and Rock.

— By Chris Leadbeater | Published January 4, 2017

It’s there as soon as I emerge from El Loa Airport—a vision so colossal that I find myself taking an unconscious step backwards, as if this will somehow help me to fit the entire thing into my field of vision. Licancabur returns my stare, a peak of such conical perfection that it might almost be the model volcano—an idealized poster image to which less symmetrical fire mountains can aspire. It rears to an astonishing 19,420 feet (5,919 meters), a geographical god among mortals, the rest of the Atacama Desert praying at its broad feet.

I’m so entranced by its majesty that, for two minutes, that crucial word "desert" loses its meaning. But for a vague rumor of snow around the volcano’s pursed summit mouth, I would swear my position was somewhere stormily tropical—some verdant mid-Pacific island or other such enclave where magma-born krakens typically rise from the ground. And yet, all around me, orange dust is swirling, cloaking my boots, sticking to my face—the first reminder that this is not a place of shirt-soaking humidity or deep jungle foliage. This is a realm of sand and rock, baked by the arrogant forcefulness of an unfettered sun.

The Atacama Desert is a conflicted prospect—unflinchingly flat in parts, yet fringed by the last, westernmost outriders of the Andes; a 49,000-square-mile (78,850 square kilometer) pocket that sits at an elevation of 7,900 feet (2,408 meters) yet manages to be one of the most persistently dry corners of the planet (receiving only 15 millimeters of rainfall a year), an inhospitable context for human life that’s sustained busy settlements for millennia—barren and yet beautiful.

You could argue that it’s Chile at its most alluring. True, in a country that supports the grassy expanses of Patagonia and the glaciers and forests of Torres del Paine National Park, that’s quite a statement. Not least because, with a slight redrawing of Latin borders, the Atacama would not be Chilean at all. Wedged as it is into a 600-mile strip in the extreme north of the state, its salt plains and boulders push firmly against the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. Yet this merely supplies it with a remoteness that adds to its charm. The Atacama Desert is Chile at its most serrated; Chile without a safety net.

Or, at least, that’s the theory. When I arrive at the Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa, I could barely feel more comfortable. Tucked into a gulch just outside the local "capital," San Pedro de Atacama, this luxury hideaway might feasibly be missed by the unobservant passerby; its adobe-walled suites all but camouflaged by the sandstone ridges framing them. Within, there’s a little spa, a gourmet house restaurant, and a cluster of swimming pools gasping in the morning heat (maybe as much water as can be seen in any one spot in this arid zone).

Over three days, I use the Alto Atacama as a base for forays into the wilderness. The hotel’s daily guided tours sneak guests out through the piercing rays to sample the starkness of their surroundings in small doses. And it soon becomes obvious that, while at first glance only volcanic titans would seem to be at home here, the Atacama Desert has witnessed the ascent and retreat of a long parade of communities—flinty souls carving out a living amid the unforgiving stones. On a low bluff immediately above the hotel, a tumbledown fortress recalls the Licanantay people who constructed it in the 12th century—and the marauding Incas who took it from them in the 15th. These warriors, too, were swept away, by the Spanish conquistadors who barrelled into the region in the 1540s, changing the language of a continent and leaving a mark that’s still visible in San Pedro de Atacama, where compact plazas and squat whitewashed churches still talk of Madrid.

The tale goes back further, to the dim recesses of the eighth century B.C., when the mud-brick village of Tulor (the oldest archaeological site in Chile) stumbled into being under this fierce sky. And to the relatively recent past of A.D. 200, when Calima tribesmen painted their existence onto the clay of a narrow gully—a chorus line of shepherds and sheep, each scratchy line singing through the centuries of stubborn survival in this harsh environment.

Night Sky: The Atacama Large Millimeter Array, located north of Santiago, Chile, in the Atacama Desert, is an international astronomy facility that uses high-precision antennas to advance scientific knowledge of the universe. It is open for public visits by reservation. Photograph By National Geographic Image Collection, Almay Stock Photo

It is, though, precisely this harsh environment that speaks most loudly of the Atacama Desert’s magnificence. Another excursion takes me into the Valle del Arcoiris—"Rainbow Valley" revealing its colors in cobalt, gypsum, and lamprophyre, illuminating the flanks of a forgotten river course in a blend of green, blue, pink, and yellow, as if some geological graffiti artist has been in residence. Valle de la Luna proves aptly named—very much a "Moon Valley" in its extraterrestrial appearance, all cracked earth and unfriendly terrain, pillars of salt torturing the thirsty soil. Valle de la Muerte is also appropriately christened—"Death Valley" issuing a palpable threat to onlookers in its waterless chasms and ravines.

It’s easy, in such a setting, to peer downwards, at the dirt and desolation below your feet. It’s only as the day ends I remember to look up. For all its sharp teeth, the Atacama Desert bathes in a soft glow every evening, revelling in its status as one of the globe’s stargazing hotspots. Everything that makes midday so ferocious—the desiccated air, the lack of cloud cover, the lung-tugging altitude—allies itself to a near-complete absence of light pollution to produce gloriously clear night skies. In fact, so perfect are conditions that the European Southern Observatory operates two bases here: La Silla Observatory and Paranal Observatory, windows on worlds beyond worlds.

Astronomical interest isn’t, however, limited to the professionals. The Alto Atacama features its own high-powered telescope, concealed a short walk from the accommodation complex so as to shut out even this meager possibility of luminous interruption. After dinner I find myself padding through the dusk to its hidden platform, where six lounge chairs are arranged around the device’s metal torso. I’m not alone—five other guests are also here, each as eager as me to scan the heavens. Nor do I feel alone when my turn comes. The sky, through the lens, is twitching with dots and dabs of white, incomprehensible in its enormity. As I crane my neck, I become aware of something on the periphery of my eyeline. There it is again: Licancabur, black against the constellations—a silent guardian of ageless authority.

Four Ways To Take This Trip:

Journey Latin America offers group tours, self-driven excursions, and private trips to Chile. The itineraries cover the length of the country and provide a mix of adventure and cultural experiences.

High Lives Travel runs trips for visitors to the Atacama Desert, through Chile's wine country, and up into the Andes. The group also curates trips specifically focused on wellness.

The Hotel Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa functions as the perfect home base from which travelers can explore the Atacama. Settled amidst the desert's red hills, the hotel offers comfortable rooms and plenty of excursions.

Located in the Atacama Desert, Tierra Atacama Hotel and Spa, a National Geographic Unique Lodge, is a stunning figment of glass and adobe that blends with its natural surroundings and features guest rooms with mountain and volcano views.

— The National Geographic

🇨🇱

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bitchcakegreen · 7 years ago

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A View from Behind the Camera - GoT Episode 6 x 5 - Planning scene

It’s that time again! With episode five I’m going to look at things a little differently because this episode is actually set up differently then others in the series. Most GoT episodes are spliced together with each story-line intertwining not necessarily in a linear time frame. For example we may see a scene with Tyrion and Dany in Dragontsone followed by one of Cersi at The Red Keep followed by one of Jon and Sansa in Winterfell and then back to Cersi. However those scenes don’t always fall sequentially after each other in the sense of time. Some events could happen simultaneously while others have a time span of days or months. With episode 5 - The Door - most of the episode is sequential. This is also a very Sansa, Jon, and the Winterfell crew heavy episode. If everyone is ready, let’s get started!

We are going to look at the planning to retake Winterfell scene. It’s a beaut to be honest. The scene transitions from Bran becoming the three eyed raven directly into our Retake Winterfell brigade. As the scene opens we have an overhead shot of the map of The North with painted stones as markers for the fine houses that have available troops. Remember in an earlier post we talked about how the overhead shot is primarily, but not exclusively, to show vulnerability. I would argue that this is its very purpose once again. Jon, Sansa, and Co. are very vulnerable as they don’t have enough men or support to really take back Winterfell. The focus on the map shows us exactly how divided the North is at the moment. Jon’s dialogue is giving us the verbal clues we need to decipher the stones on the map as he explains the statuses of the houses and their loyalties. The camera cuts to a wide shot of Brienne seated at the table next to Sansa who is seated to the left of Jon, Jon standing, and Edd is seated at to Jon’s right. Davos and Tormund out of the shot on the other side of the table. The focus of the actors is on the map. Jon tosses a stone angrily and the POV switches briefly to a medium close-up of Davos.

This is followed by the POV switching once more to the same wide angle shot of the other side of the table but this time it is angled so that Edd is out of the frame but Tormund, who had been standing, is now visible to the audience. He sits and POV shifts as Davos begins to speak. The camera moves to a wide shot of the entire room now and the audience gets it’s first glimpse that the Red Woman is also there. She at the end of the table, farthest away from the rest, turned inward on the bench she is seated on. Tormund and Melisandre almost bookend Davos in demeanor.

We can also see that Brienne has positioned herself very close to Sansa. Clearly the direction for Gwendolyn is “ever ready” which makes sense considered the very next scene that follows this. Kit has been directed to be agitated. He has been blocked to turn his body away from the table for a moment on a half cheat and focus his attention to the wall. He turns back when Davos stands.

Davos continues his dialogue about the houses that have declared for the Boltons and at this point the POV shifts to an overhead shot as he moves stones across the map and then to a wide angle shot from the edge of the table closest to Brienne. This angle is an interesting one as Sansa is blocked by Brienne, Jon is out of the shot as are Edd and Tormund. Basically we are looking at Brienne, Davos, and the Red Woman. I believe this is an intentional callback by the director to the previous scene between the three of the in episode 4. We had what are essentially three enemies now working together.

We shift POV to a medium shot of Brienne and Sansa. Sansa’s line is important. “The Umbers gave RIckon to our enemies, they can hang” This gives ups some insight into the changes that are occurring within Sansa. Davos is noticing too. Despite having only spent a brief amount of time with her, this close up tells us all we need to know.

Now comes the time in the scene when the director has given both Kit and Sophie some interesting notes to work with. Sansa begins to speak on the differences of Northern men to those in the West and South. She talks about their loyalties. When she begins to speak her acting choice is to still play lady of the keep but to not back down. “How well do you know the North, Ser Davos?” This young girl, who has been through hell and back, is about to take this seasoned warrior out for a stroll. The POV shift to Jon tells us that his intrigued by this conversation and by his sister’s backbone and her devotion to her home.

There is a volley of POV camera shifts between Davos and Sansa as they go back and forth for a moment. I really like the direction of this section of the scene. Sophie and Liam have clearly been given the note that Sansa and Davos have a mutual respect for each other. It would be easy to have a scene where Davos shuts Sansa down because she’s a woman but that’s not how it’s written. Instead he counters her with logic. If I was directing the note I would have given Liam is that this course of action from him stems from his great respect for Jon and building respect for Sansa.

We have a medium close up on Jon as he talks about the other smaller houses they can approach. Sansa is in the out of focus position on his left again. The camera shifts back and forth between Edd, Jon and Davos until we get to the end of the speech and we had a shot of Davos, nodding to Jon’s order.

Off camera we hear Sansa say “The North remembers…” camera shift to Tormund, framed between Brienne - who is in profile in the shot focused on the map - and Sansa’s shoulder. Then finally to Sansa as she ends her speech.

We shift to Davos again and now we are in what could be considered the peak of the scene. “But Jon doesn’t have the Stark name.” The next shot is a medium shot from a lower angle on the table, angled up a bit, with Sansa in the favor on position and Jon in the background. He is standing and physically he’s the alpha in the scene…until Sansa’s line. “No, but I do.” In that instant SHE becomes the alpha.

Jon then becomes the favor on position in the shot and the camera casts Sansa into the out of focus position. Kit is playing shock and disbelief BUT I don’t think he is playing fear of betrayal at her words. His body language doesn’t suggest it. He trusts Sansa. We also get a reactionary shot from Edd. Clearly everyone at the table was directed to be taken back a bit by this comment. Sadly we are only afforded Edd and Jon’s face. I would have loved to see the other actors reactions as well.

Back to Sansa, this time squarely on her on her alone, and likely the direction is “clarify what you mean a bit” hence her almost flustered delivery and hasty eye contact over her shoulder to Jon on “Jon is just as much Ned Stark’s son…”

Now we come to the Blackfish and Riverrun comments. There are some very subtle acting choices going on in this small section. Jon’s half whispered “How do you know that?” gives the audience the impression that while he trusts her, he has doubts. Sansa’s clasping of her hands together before turning and telling Jon, while a slight catch in her throat, “ that Ramsey received a raven” clasping the hands together is a non-verbal signal of self-pacification. Sansa is doing this to calm herself down. (Also Jon does this throughout the scene as well.) Finally Brienne’s subtle looking away with only her eyes on Sansa’s fib about the Blackfish.

The last bit of the scene is a simple POV shift between Jon and Davos and ends on Sansa smiling. I read her expression as a choice of hope and possibility. She believes that they can take back Winterfell and go home.

That’s all for this post. Sorry it’s such a doozy in length. I hope you all hung in there with me as we went through the scene. Next I will be looking at the cloak scene, parting of ways at Castle Black, and riding out the gates together. Also in the next few posts we will be exploring the blocking of Sansa and Jon when seated together in a scene or standing beside each other. Since the North is the GoT equivalent of Scotland there are historical protocols for the King and his consort in these cases. I think the directors of the episodes have been utilizing that bit of historical knowledge.

Until next time!

#jonsa #actually jonsa #jonsa is coming #jonsa is endgame #Jon x Sansa #jon and sansa #jon snow #sansa stark #directorial analysis #Female directors

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losbella · 5 years ago

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boldlykeenblizzard · 5 years ago

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markets: How the longest bull run in history ended in pandemic panic

SINGAPORE/HONG KONG: As a collapse in the oil price unleashed chaos in financial markets, Madrid money manager Diego Parrilla phoned a colleague who agreed: they had better head to work early in the morning.

By daybreak in Europe, the price of crude oil had fallen by a third. The shock had turned worry about the coronavirus to full-blown panic, wiped trillions of dollars from Asian stocks and sent futures for European and US markets plunging.

“We assessed the book,” said Parrilla, 46, who runs a 300 million euro ($332 million) fund that is long gold and bonds and uses options to bet on just about everything but dollars and volatility falling.

“We were in a good position,” he said. “We decided which parts of the portfolio we would take profits on first.”

So began what became the worst week on Wall Street since 2008, which has left Parrilla one of the few winners in the shakeout that ended the longest bull run in US history. His Quadriga Igneo fund is up 30 per cent for the year to date.

The wipeout has also exposed the complacency of investors as markets marched toward record peaks in February, and the inadequacy of their protection as traditional risk correlations broke down in the rout.

And for others it holds both clues as to what happens next and great promise.

“It’s these times that great fortunes are built, not bull markets,” said James Rosenberg, private client advisor at brokerage and wealth manager Baillieu Holst in Sydney.

“But you have to buy the right companies, you have to have an appetite for some pain and misery and you have to be patient.”

Oil Shock

The twist that sent markets already stressed by the global coronavirus outbreak into a tailspin was a plunge in the already weak oil price that followed Saudi Arabia’s move to launch a price war with Russia last weekend.

The 30 per cent drop had oil-linked currencies cratering – the rouble fell 9 per cent – and the stock prices of household-name oil majors from Shell to ExxonMobil were down by double digits.

By day’s end, the bonds of heavily indebted energy firms were trading many times beneath their face value, and fears of a credit crunch were growing.

It was at this point that Parrilla, who had argued for years that equities were overvalued and that the cost of betting against them in the options market was good value, was laying fresh bets.

“We came in on Monday, and we see things are happening. And from a disciplined point of view, we were actually putting more trades, on things that were lagging, such as the VIX,” he said, referring to the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index.

Talk on trading floors and at funds from Sydney to Singapore, Hong Kong, London and New York, was of crisis.

“When these big things happen, then you have no floor,” said Sean Taylor, chief investment officer for Asia-Pacific at German asset management firm DWS. “You can’t really work out the fundamentals, it’s not priced in,” he said.

Taylor spent the evening on a phone hook-up with other regional chiefs to discuss the oil move, followed by another meeting the next evening to go over global economic forecasts.

“When it happens, you can’t do much about it,” said Taylor, whose experience in the Mexican, Russian and Asian financial crises in the 1990s and the global financial crisis in 2008, taught him hard lessons about liquidity and helped him prepare.

“People laugh at the old-fashioned techniques of the older guys, but when it happens we come out slightly better, because you’re not caught with midcaps and liquidity. It’s liquidity that really gets you in these markets,” he said.

Wrong-Way Wednesday

Which is more or less what played out through the rest of the week, after what proved to be a dead-cat bounce on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of surprise restrictions on travel from 26 European nations, his failure to mention medical measures that would be taken to combat coronavirus and disappointment over the European Central Bank’s decision not to cut interest rates didn’t just put stock indexes into freefall.

Rather than fleeing into safe havens, investors sold them to cover other losses. Bond yields, which had dived only days earlier, rose. At the same time volatility in the currency market shot higher with the squeeze in liquidity.

“The amounts are smaller, but the spreads are much wider because liquidity is starting to disappear from the system,” said Stuart Oakley, Nomura’s global head of flow FX in Singapore.

“The markets have become so disorderly the correlations between assets and currencies have completely broken down. We’re in an entirely different world. It’s unnerving bigtime, because it tells you people are being forced to unwind positions.”

Black Thursday

By Thursday it had become a mad scramble for dollars and nothing else, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffering its worst day since 1987. After a big rebound on Friday, the index was down 10.4 per cent for the week while the S&P 500 index had shed 8.9 per cent.

When Australian fund manager Geoff Wilson woke at 2 a.m., as is his custom, the tone of voice alone on CNBC was enough to know the crash he had begun to prepare for was on.

“This has happened so quickly,” said Wilson, whose firm Wilson Asset Management runs roughly A$3 billion ($1.84 billion) and has more than doubled its cash exposure over the past three weeks.

“To me this is a combination of ‘87 and the global financial crisis,” he said, having spent the week between work and home revisiting every investment thesis to weed out weak stocks.

“We’d bought them because when interest rates are low and the economy’s going reasonably well, then debt wasn’t a major concern … now that’s out the door.”

By the end of the week Europe’s benchmark STOXX 600 index had fallen 18 per cent. Australia’s ASX 200 index was down 11 per cent and the S&P 500 was headed for its worst week since 2008.

Like Parrilla in Madrid, who has another leg of bets on a further downturn in China, Wilson expects things to get worse before they get better.

Others, though, are finding some of the discounts irresistible.

Scott Flanders, former chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises and the head of online insurance marketplace eHealth, called his brokers in New York at breakfast time in Palo Alto, California, on Monday.

“I’m putting money to work right now,” he said.

“I bought 5,000 shares in JPMorgan, I bought Bank of America and Citigroup. They’re getting hit hard … but they’re so much better capitalized than they were during the ‘08 crisis.”

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j0sgomez-blog · 6 years ago

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By Michael Lanza

Over many years of taking wilderness trips of all kinds, I’ve gotten pickier about my backpacking and other backcountry adventures. The best-known trails, peaks, and wilderness waters are usually beautiful; but sometimes, for various reasons, they just don’t do it for me. More and more, I seek out the places and multi-day adventures that inspire a powerful sense of awe. It often requires getting farther from civilization, onto paths less traveled, and occasionally entails greater physical, navigational, or technical challenges. But those adventures feel wilder. And that’s what I’m after.

The 10 places shown in the photos below are exactly that: They still remain wild.

If you feel the same way I do about what you’re looking for in a backcountry experience—or even if your sense of that is just beginning to evolve—I think you’ll find yourself drawn to the trips on this list. Each short description has a link to a feature story about that trip at The Big Outside, and those stories include many more photos and details on the itinerary and how to plan each trip yourself.

I’d love to read your thoughts about my list or any suggestions you have for similarly awe-inspiring adventures. Please share them in the comments section at the bottom of this story.

Todd Arndt nearing Island Lake and Titcomb Basin in the Wind RIver Range.

The Wind River Range

You could count on the fingers of one hand—without needing every finger—the number of Lower 48 mountain ranges where you can hike for days below rows of jagged 13,000-foot peaks, seeing more of the prettiest alpine lakes you’ve ever seen than other people. And one of those places is Wyoming’s Wind River Range.

On a roughly 41-mile loop from Elkhart Park, two friends and I spent a night in one of the most awe-inspiring spots in the West, Titcomb Basin, an alpine valley at over 10,000 feet where evening alpenglow painted a granite wall of 13,000-footers above us golden. Our route crossed three 12,000-foot passes, one via an adventurous, off-trail route over 12,240-foot Knapsack Col that led into a mystical hanging valley.

As I’ve learned on several trips into the Winds: Being there can make you believe that those are the most magnificent mountains you’ve ever seen.

See my stories “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin” and “A Walk in the Winds: A One-Day, 27-Mile Traverse of Wyoming’s Wind River Range,” and all of my stories about the Winds at The Big Outside.

Find your next adventure in your Inbox. Sign up for my FREE email newsletter now.

A campsite at Precipice Lake in Sequoia National Park.

Sequoia National Park

Backpacking a 40-mile loop with my family from Sequoia’s Mineral King area, we crossed passes up to 11,630 feet with sweeping views of the majestic southern High Sierra, had groves of giant sequoias to ourselves, and camped beside crystalline mountain lakes reflecting the cliffs and clean, granite peaks embracing them.

The trip showed us a side of the High Sierra that can prove elusive in the popular areas of this range—hyper scenic, certainly, but also often with few other backpackers around. And beyond its wild qualities, this trip was incredibly photogenic, with many spots like Precipice Lake (photo above) and the High Sierra Trail (lead photo at top of story).

See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park” and all of my stories about adventures in California national parks.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside, which has made several top outdoors blog lists. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Subscribe now to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Please follow my adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.

Backpackers on the Pacific Crest Trail in the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

The Glacier Peak Wilderness

The most remote volcano in the Cascade Range lords over this sprawling wilderness in Washington’s North Cascades region, serving as both powerful visual image and a powerful metaphor for the hiking that’s stunning as often as it is rugged and lonely. My family and three friends discovered its wild heart while backpacking the 44-mile Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass loop—a route with a reputation as adventurous, which helps keep the crowds down, for the off-trail crossing of Spider Gap at 7,100 feet.

The scenery blows you away every day, from views of Glacier Peak floating above a sea of jagged mountains to moments of pure magic. Alpenglow lighting up the cliffs and spires ringing the cirque of Phelps Basin. Mountain meadows riotous with flowers, including on a sunset hike up Liberty Cap above Buck Creek Pass. Glacier Peak hovering above the glassy waters of Image Lake.

See my story “Wild Heart of the Glacier Peak Wilderness: Backpacking the Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop.”

Want to read any story linked here? Get full access to ALL stories at The Big Outside, plus a FREE e-guide. Subscribe now!

David Gordon on day one in The Narrows, Zion National Park.

Zion’s Narrows

Few would disagree that The Narrows of Zion National Park ranks among America’s top 10 backpacking trips, and certainly among the best in the Southwest. But I’ll go a step further and argue that you should backpack this 14-mile route from top to bottom, spending a night in the canyon, rather than dayhiking from the bottom partway up it, or hiking its length in a (long) day, as some people do.

Much of the magic lies in seeing it change as you literally walk deeper into the earth, wading the river through dark, tight passages, seeing springs gush from solid red rock, creating lush oases in the desert—and taking your time to do it, as well as enjoying the solitude of an evening below walls that soar up to 1,000 feet tall, and a slice of black sky bursting with skies.

See my story “Luck of the Draw, Part 2: Backpacking Zion’s Narrows,” and all of my stories about Zion National Park at The Big Outside.

Click here now to get my e-guide The Complete Guide to Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.

Rock Slide Lake, in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.

The Southern Sawtooth Mountains

Anyone following my blog for very long knows my affection for Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains—my backyard wilderness. But after having explored them for years, I took a 57-mile hike with a friend in the southern end of the range, getting about as far as is possible from roads in the Sawtooths.

We visited numerous, stunning lakes arranged like a twisting string of jewels amid peaks that seem to me like the love child of the Tetons and High Sierra. Many of these lakes might rank among your favorite backcountry campsites. And this area of the Sawtooths lies far enough from the few relatively popular trailheads to get little backpacker traffic.

See my story “Going After Goals: Backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” and all of my stories about Idaho’s Sawtooths.

I can help you plan any trip you read about at my blog. Find out more here.

Kris Wagner backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop.

The Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop

In a landscape of incomparable scenery and notoriously challenging multi-day hikes, the 34.5-mile Royal Arch Loop stands out as a premier adventure that pushes the limits of the most-experienced backpackers—and exceeds all expectations.

It includes long stretches that lack a discernible trail, difficult and exposed scrambling, and a 20-foot rappel (from fixed anchors—you’ll need a short rope, harness, and rappel device). But the payoff ranges from vast panoramas to slot-canyon oases, campsites anyone would list among their best ever (including one, below Royal Arch, that’s on my list of 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites)—and, not surprisingly, hours of solitude every day.

See my story “Not Quite Impassable: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop,” and all of my stories about Grand Canyon National Park.

Make your next backpacking trip better with my “Top 5 Tips for Better Ultralight Backpacking.”

Kayakers hiking below the Lamplugh Glacier, Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Alaska’s Pristine Glacier Bay

Merely listing the wildlife my family saw while sea kayaking for five days in the upper West Arm of Glacier Bay National Park, a park the size of Connecticut, speaks volumes about its wildness: sea otters, seals, sea lions, mountain goats, bald eagles, puffins, and countless other birds, and a brown bear wandering the beach (as well as bear scat that convinced us to choose another campsite one afternoon).

We also listened to the concussive explosions of bus-sized chunks of ice calving from giant glaciers into the sea, and gazed up at ice-cloaked mountains rising thousands of feet above the water. Our beach campsites ranked among the wildest and prettiest I’ve ever enjoyed. This wilderness resembles what the planet looked like right after the last Ice Age. Go there and really learn what awe is.

See my story “Back to the Ice Age: Sea Kayaking Glacier Bay.”

Stay warm in cold places. See my “Review: The 10 Best Down Jackets” and “Ask Me: How Can You Tell How Warm a Down Jacket Is?”

Ramona Falls, along the Timberline Trail around Oregon’s Mount Hood.

Mount Hood’s Timberline Trail

The 41-mile Timberline Trail around Oregon’s Mount Hood may not rival the renown (or distance) of the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier—but it does rival the Wonderland for wildflower displays in mid-summer, waterfalls, and views of the rocky and icy flanks of a big volcano: 11,239-foot Mount Hood.

And the Timberline probably has the edge in wildness, mostly for being a bit less civilized: On the Wonderland, many creeks have log bridges, whereas on the Timberline, you will get wet in frigid water several times. For its challenge, incredible views, campsites, and periods of solitude, the Timberline stands out as a far better trip than many backpackers appreciate.

See my story “Full of Surprises: Backpacking Mount Hood’s Timberline Trail.”

Any trip goes better with the right gear. See my picks for “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs” and “The 5 Best Backpacking Tents.”

A hiker on Bondcliff, on the Pemi Loop in the White Mountains, N.H.

The Wilderness Heart of the White Mountains

The so-called Pemi Loop, a 32-mile hike following high ridges in the Pemigewasset Wilderness of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, crosses nine summits and long stretches above treeline with 360-degree panoramas of the wildest and most rugged mountains in the Northeast, while amassing some 10,000 vertical feet of elevation gain and loss on extremely rocky trails.

But its highlight is arguably not even one of its highest points. The summit ridge of 4,265-foot Bondcliff—the last peak when hiking the loop clockwise—raises a long band of cliffs above the dense forest, with views for miles in every direction virtually devoid of any sign of civilization. In a region where it can be difficult to escape crowds, Bondcliff remains one of the loneliest, most enchanting, and hardest summits to reach—but worth the effort.

See my story “Being Stupid With Friends: A 32-Mile Dayhike in the White Mountains,” and all of my stories about hiking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

For many of these trips, you want one of my picks for “The 5 Best Rain Jackets For the Backcountry.”

David Gordon on the Beehive Traverse in Capitol Reef National Park.

Capitol Reef National Park

This one you won’t likely be able to pull off without a guide. But take my word for it, exploring the labyrinthine slots, sandstone towers, and twisting canyons of Capitol Reef’s Waterpocket Fold is well worth the cost. A mostly off-trail hike from Grand Wash to Capitol Gorge, it zigzags a circuitous 17 miles through canyons, up and down steep scree and slickrock, and over passes—a no-man’s land of topography so violently tortured and wildly convoluted it boggles the mind.

Steve Howe of Redrock Adventure Guides (a friend and former field editor colleague of mine at Backpacker magazine) told me before I did it that it’s “just as nice as the John Muir Trail.” That seemed like an impossibly high bar—until I did the hike.

See my story “The Most Beautiful Hike You’ve Never Heard Of: Crossing Utah’s Capitol Reef” and all of my stories about Capitol Reef National Park and hiking and backpacking in southern Utah at The Big Outside.

Tell me what you think.

I spent a lot of time writing this story, so if you enjoyed it, please consider giving it a share using one of the buttons below, and leave a comment or question at the bottom of this story. I’d really appreciate it.

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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Disillusioned By Two Decades of Dreams, Discerning ‘10 Illusions’ of the US From the ‘Kabul Moment’

— Shao Xia | September 26, 2021 | Global Times

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

In 2001, the US entered Kabul, and it was the Taliban who confronted the US. In 2021, the US fled Kabul in chaos, and it was still the Taliban who "sent off" the US. What's different, however, is that the Taliban updated their weapons with captured high-tech American armaments, and has learned from their opposition during the 20 years of US occupation.

This Kabul moment is far more dramatic than the Saigon moment of 1975. When the US started the war in Afghanistan two decades ago, its national strength was almost at its peak. But now the US became another superpower lost in the Graveyard of Empires, just like the Soviet Union and Great Britain. As Russian President Vladimir Putin noted, the US is now walking the Soviet Union's path.

Perhaps what the US is most worried about today is that the Kabul moment might just be the first domino to fall down and the first hole of the Broken Windows theory. History never ends. History is proceeding.

The world is undergoing a great change unseen in a century, and the momentum of change is accumulating fast. However, imperialists and hegemonists will never willingly admit their defeat, and will never honestly admit the end of "American mythology". They did their utmost to project the aura of the peak era into the shadow of today's America, and created "10 illusions" for those who yearn for America and fear America. These illusions should be considered in detail.

Illusion 1: America is invincible

Relying on advanced weapons and equipment, the US military killed numerous lives, including those of Afghan civilians, as if the operators of high-tech weapons were "playing video games."

However, in the long term, "weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor. It is the people, not things, that are decisive." Calculating the strength of the two sides is not a simple mathematical question of comparing GDP, but an analytical problem of political economy.

An economic "star" may indeed be a "black hole" in politics. For example the Wall Street titans may earn a lot, but they are also powder kegs that cause polarization between the rich and the poor, creating national turmoil. America's strength is glamorous, but it is by no means invulnerable, let alone invincible, as the Taliban has confirmed.

Illusion 2: The US could play with the concepts of grand geopolitical strategy at will

The US always boasts of its military supremacy-based strategies, while completely ignores the gap between its capabilities and aspirations.

John Gaddis, an American scholar, pointed out in his book On Grand Strategy that to succeed in geostrategy, you must recognize what kind of restrictions and constraints exist. There is a saying in Sun Tzu's Art of War, "plan before moving, gain something by stopping." Napoleon, who rushed into Russia and eventually lost the war, and Perikles, who blindly pursued hegemony and eventually lost Athens to Sparta, were unwilling to be bound by realistic conditions and stubbornly pursued their overambitious goals, thereby doomed to failure.

Today, the American hegemony is falling apart, as the Economist bluntly points out that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan had demonstrated Biden's "Great Defeat." Under such circumstances, the US is still addicted to playing with a grand geostrategy out of its control, making excuses for the Kabul moment, arguing that withdrawing troops from Afghanistan is a great turn to the grand strategy of the Indo-Pacific, as laid out by former president Barack Obama.

Even if the US does pivot to the Indo-Pacific, regional countries might have to ponder: Will the US run away again as it did in Afghanistan?

Illusion 3: American democracy could heal itself

American democracy has died in Afghanistan, and has been admitted to an intensive care unit in the US. The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan is not the end of disasters in the past 20 years, but the beginning of an American political civil war in the next 20 years. We saw its origins in the forced storming of Capitol building earlier this year.

Francis Fukuyama said recently that the Afghan crisis marks the end of American hegemony, while the real crisis in the US lies in internal polarization, which will result in almost no consensus on all issues. There is no sign of American democracy healing itself. On the contrary, American democracy has become an accelerator of political division and social confrontation.

Biden came to power in the general election controversy and congressional riots, talking endlessly about vaccination and infrastructure plans, rather than taking care of the American people in their time of great need. Afghanistan issues have hit Biden's approval rate hard, leading the US into a fierce political battle before the mid-term elections. No matter what happens on the US domestic political scene, the current political division in the US will not be the worst seen, it will become worse.

Illusion 4: The US could still do whatever it wants by virtue of its position of strength

People with real strength never talk about strength all the time, but recently the "position of strength" has become the mantra of American diplomacy.

The US made use of its so-called position of strength to engage in unilateral sanctions and "exerting maximum pressure," but all its expected goals have failed. Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Anti-sanction, anti-pressure, anti-bullying. More countries and people are on the way to an era of awakening.

Americans often say, don't "bet on America to lose." This makes America look like an anxious gambler, who wants to win too much but only loses more. The international community is not a casino, and no country would like to place its future and destiny on the roulette wheel.

More peace-loving countries now stand up and say no to the US, and safeguard the morality, conscience and justice of the international community.

Illusion 5: America is 'back'

Biden made a high-profile announcement, "America is back" at the Munich Security Conference in early 2021, trying to create the impression that America is returning to the world stage and intends to expand again. However, the Kabul moment has shown that this was not the case. "America is back" has changed to "America is home." The Republican Party has sarcastically stated: "The Taliban is back, not the United States."

Whether it is the crazy withdrawal from international treaties in the Trump era, or the failure to fight the epidemic, or the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, it all confirmed what Czech President Zeman noted, Americans have lost "the prestige of a global leader."

The expansionist America needs to go home, have a physical check-up, and seek remedies while reflecting on its past. On the other hand, the US should engage in true multilateralism, learn to listen and discuss, resort to problem-solving through political dialogue instead of the wanton and futile use of aircraft and artillery.

Illusion 6: The American alliance system has been 'repaired'

The Biden administration expects to create a "Grand West" through its European allies, the Group of Seven (G7), the QUAD mechanism, the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" and the "Summit for Democracy". However, the US did not consult or even inform its allies about before deciding on the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Europeans lament that the United States merely treats its allies as a tool.

It is not difficult to tell whether it is "America first" or putting allies interest first. It is the US that forced its allies to revise bilateral free trade agreements on the grounds of trade deficit. It is again the US that hoarded scarce anti-epidemic materials such as vaccines, regardless of the demands of its allies. The fate of its interest-based alliance system is doomed as it will break up upon the exhaustion of interests.

Britain, the devoted supporter of the US in the group, has repeatedly vented its dissatisfaction with the US recently. The British defense secretary expressed the idea that the US was no longer a superpower. Britons may still remember that the US betrayed Britain and dealt the last blow to "the empire on which the sun never sets" during the Suez Canal crisis in 1956. Will history repeat itself? Let's wait and see.

The Anglo-Saxons believe strongly in self-interest. "Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost." A man may be stabbed with a knife in the back as soon as it is deemed expedient to do so.

Illusion 7: Universal values are the soft power of the US

"When poor, you get no friends. When rich, you get more friends than you know." The soft power depends on the hard power. When the hard power of the US declined sharply, e.g. at the Saigon moment in the 1970s, it kept a low profile and turned from ideological diplomacy to realistic diplomacy, with Kissinger as the representative.

However, it is different this time. The Biden administration propagated "universal values" vigorously and even arranged the "Summit for Democracy" after the "Kabul moment".

"Universal values" are "luxuries" given to the "third world" by the US. At the moment of severe lack of national strength, the US, unable to fulfill its promise to the followers, has only brought disgrace on itself in Afghanistan.

The Afghans who believed in the commitment of the US for democracy were either abandoned without mercy, fell from airplanes they cling to and died, or became miserable refugees. I'm afraid it will be difficult to reproduce the highlight of "universal values" at the "Summit for Democracy" in December as we still remember the Afghan children murdered in drone strikes.

Illusion 8: The economies will continue to rely unilaterally on the US

The supremacy of the US dollar has created economic dependence on the US. The US frequently abuse other economies by using tools such as tariffs, sanctions or even decoupling when necessary.

However, the epidemic has hit the US economy continuously, and the crazy financial capital injection used as a "cure" has caused the skyrocketing of prices and inflation. The trade war with China revealed the long-standing industrial and financial problems of the United States. The US's deficit with China even rose rather than fell.

More and more countries have begun to enhance their autonomy in economy and finance. A "de-dollarization" movement has begun. Countries have started to reduce their US debts substantially, give up anchoring US dollars, and increase commodity trading in currencies other than US dollars and non-US dollar currency or gold reserves.

The dominance of the US dollar is not guaranteed by sufficient real economy and a gold standard; instead, it is endorsed by national credit. A mudslide of the dollar collapse is not far away when the US Congress continually abuses its credit without any restraint every year.

Illusion 9: America would have the last laugh on epidemic prevention and control

COVID-19 has infected tens of millions of Americans and caused more deaths than the sum of those lost in World Wars I and II, accompanied by more severe social conflicts and crisis.

In the past few days, the daily average number of confirmed cases has exceeded 150,000 consecutively. There have been over 1,000 new fatalities each day, drawing sharp criticism even from its own allies. The European Council decided to take America off the "EU safe travel list" and suggested its member countries take epidemic prevention restrictions against American travelers. Despite "natural disaster" factors at the beginning of the epidemic, America's current situation where a large number of hoarded COVID-19 vaccines still cannot reverse the tide of considerable deaths of its people can only be called a "man-made disaster".

However, America attempts to shirk its responsibility and hide its incompetence by blaming China. It declared that "China's so-called anti-pandemic achievement is the result when authoritarianism defeated "human rights" and China's "Zero-Covid" policy would lead to huge economic costs and would only make itself into an "island isolated from the world".

In fact, the countries imitating American anti-pandemic measures have had to swallow bitter pills. Europe once interrupted their lockdowns against the epidemic and is now suffering from a variant of the virus that is bouncing back. India, passively taking measures for epidemic prevention and control, has been completely trapped in uncontrollable consequences. Vietnam, a country that relaxed its vigilance during the fight against the epidemic, has been faced with tough results.

America may have false hopes that vaccines will save its people from misery, the economy would reinvigorate itself, and it would successfully shirk its responsibility for its repeated mistakes in the fight against the epidemic. Please wake up. The result can only be that, American measures against the epidemic will meet the final failure, American people will be the victims, and the whole world will have to face the resulting consequences.

Illusion 10: America could determine the development of history

30 years ago, the dissolution of the Soviet Union once gave America a reason to cheer. The "end of history" has made America unreasonably believe that it could determine the development of history.

Today, history does not advance straight along the designed route of "end of history", instead it shifts to other paths. Today, America stands against global trends of history, and heads towards a mirage of ideology built on hegemonism and neoliberalism. The "American myth" has been stricken by a financial crisis, Donald Trump's failed administration, failure in the anti-epidemic fight, riots on Capitol Hill, defeat in Afghanistan, and America has arrived on the brink of an edifice falling apart under the weight of its own dreams.

It should be remembered, America's historical view was built on its short story of 250 years, and thus it has no concept of "sunset", only "sunrise". There has never been any era of America solely. America was, is and will be only a country in the era.

— The author is an observer on current affairs. [email protected]

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ofstormsandwolves · 8 years ago

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Generation 5000 (2/5)

Catch up here

Written for @doctorroseprompts for this week’s ‘reunions’ prompt.

10/Rose, Donna Noble, Jenny, Martha Jones, original character(s).

The Doctor’s Daughter rewrite- Canon Divergence.

A changed Rose lands on a strange planet while trying to find her way back to the Doctor, and finds herself being ‘processed’ by a group of soldiers who want help winning a war. Is it just a distraction, or will it help lead her back to the Doctor?

Read on AO3 (account needed)| Whofic

“You primed to take orders?” Cline asked, and he sounded a little cautious. “Ready to fight?”

The young woman smiled brightly. “Instant mental download of all strategic and military protocols, sir. Generation 5000 soldier primed and in peak physical health. Oh, I’m ready.”

She moved to take her place with Cline and the other soldiers then, and two of the soldiers shared a look with Cline.

“So what happened earlier wasn’t a machine malfunction then?” one of them noted to Cline. Cline pointedly ignored them.

Across the room, Donna and Martha were still trying to wrap their heads around what had happened.

“Did you say daughter?” Donna asked, still feeling like she was several minutes behind everyone else.

The Doctor hummed in agreement. “Technically.”

Martha looked up at him. “Technically how?” she questioned.

“Progenation,” the Doctor responded, watching the young woman- his daughter- across the room. “Reproduction from a single organism. Means one parent is biological mother and father. You take a sample of diploid cells, split them into haploids, then recombine them in a different arrangement and grow. Very quickly, apparently.”

Across the room, his daughter had startled, as had many of the other soldiers.

“Something’s coming,” she told them, and shadows began appearing on the tunnel wall, along with the sound of heavy boots.

Almost as soon as the figures came into view, guns were being fired.

“It’s the Hath!” Cline called out, and the soldiers began retaliating with their own fire.

“Get down!” the young woman called out, and no sooner had the words left her mouth that the Doctor, Martha and Donna were ducking for cover.

There was more gunfire, the Hath- some sort of strange mutated fish species with breathing apparatus- were drawing closer, and Cline shouted out another command.

“We have to blow the tunnel! Get the detonator!”

At that, the Doctor’s face went cold. He was nearest the detonator, it seemed, but he didn’t move. “I’m not detonating anything.”

Instead, he crossed the floor to attend to a wounded soldier, not long before the Hath breached the makeshift barrier Cline and the others had been defending. Martha was grabbed from behind by a Hath, dragged quite literally kicking and screaming from Donna, and somewhere in all the confusing and heavy boots, it was the Doctor’s daughter who ended up with the detonator in hand.

“Blow the thing!” Cline shouted, and he sounded frantic. “Blow the thing!”

The Doctor, who had by now processed what was happening in all the chaos instead started towards the Hath, and Martha. “Martha!” He spun around to where the young woman was clutching the detonator. “No. Don’t-”

The button was hit, a klaxon sounded, and there was a kerfuffle of running soldiers before the impending explosion. One big boom and the roof was falling down around them. As the Doctor and Donna scrambled to their feet, they saw that where Martha and the Hath had once been, there was instead a huge pile of rubble.

“You’ve sealed off the tunnel,” the Doctor stated, before rounding on the woman from the machine. “Why did you do that?”

“They were trying to kill us!” she protested.

The Doctor came right back with a counter-argument. “But they’ve got my friend!”

“Collateral damage,” the woman said calmly. “At least you’ve still got her.” She nodded towards Donna. “He lost both his men. I’d say you came out ahead.”

At that, Donna, who had still been trying to make sense of everything in her head, rounded on the younger woman. “Her name’s Martha. And she’s not collateral damage, not for anyone! Have you got that, G.I. Jane?”

“I’m going to find her,” the Doctor said suddenly, in a tone that suggested that he wasn’t going to argue with anyone about it.

But apparently, Cline didn’t get the message. “You’re going nowhere. You don’t make sense, you two. No guns, no marks, no fight in you. You’re the second lot we’ve had through here like that today.” A shadow passed over his face at that. “I’m taking you to General Cobb. Now, move.”

~0~0~

Halfway into being led to see this ‘General Cobb’, Donna attempted to strike up a conversation with the woman from the machine.

“I’m Donna,” she told her as she fell into step with the younger woman. “What’s your name?”

The blonde shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said. “It’s not been assigned.”

Donna blinked. “Well, if you don’t know that, what do you know?”

“How to fight,” the woman replied, as if it should be obvious.

“Nothing else?” Donna asked, not believing that violence was the only thing this woman knew.

“The machine must embed military history and tactics but no name,” the Doctor piped up from behind him. He was still glaring, and he sounded none too happy as he spoke. “She’s a generated anomaly.”

“Generated anomaly,” Donna echoed. “Generated. Well, what about that? Jenny.”

At that, the younger woman blinked, before smiling slightly. “Jenny. Yeah, I like that. Jenny.”

By the time they arrived at what the assumed was the soldiers’ main base a little while later, they had quickly established that the Doctor was still none too keen to accept the possibility that Jenny could actually be his daughter. His mood did, however, improve as he took a look around the large room.

“So, where are we? What planet’s this?”

“Messaline,” Cline told him. “Well, what’s left of it.”

Over the tannoy came a message then, and the Doctor and Donna shared a look. “Six six three seventy five deceased. Generation six six seven one, extinct. Generation six six seven two, forty six deceased. Generation seix six eight zero fourteen deceased.”

It continued on like that as Donna took in their surroundings. “But this is a theatre,” she noted, taking in the gallery and the decor.

“Maybe they’re doing Miss Saigon,” the Doctor responded.

Donna didn’t laugh. “It’s like a town or a city underground. But why?”

A man with white hair and a white beard approached then, and the Doctor surveyed him carefully.

“General Cobb, I presume,” he said when the man reached them.

“Found in the western tunnels, I’m told, with no marks,” Cobb said, looking the Doctor and Donna over. “There was an outbreak of pacifism in the eastern zone three generations back, before we lost contact. Is that where you came from? Along with the woman we dealt with earlier?”

Donna frowned at the mention of another person being ‘dealt with’, but the Doctor nodded quickly.

“Eastern zone, that’s us, yeah. Yeah. I’m the Doctor, this is Donna.”

“And I’m Jenny,” Jenny piped up happily.

Cobb eyed her a little warily. “Don’t think you can infect us with your peacemaking. We’re committed to the fight, to the very end. Even that little stunt from your woman earlier won’t deter us.”

“Well, that’s alright,” the Doctor said, although he had no idea just what Cobb meant by something happening earlier. Hoping it didn’t prove obvious, and that it wouldn’t give them away, he pretended to know what the other man was talking about. “Earlier was a... Mistake. I can’t stay, anyway. I’ve got to go and find my friend.”

“That’s not possible,” Cobb responded. “All movement is regulated. We’re at war.”

The Doctor nodded slowly, hands deep in his pockets. “Yes, I noticed. With the Hath. But tell me, because we got a bit out of circulation, eastern zone and all that. So who exactly are the Hath?”

~0~0~

Less than ten minutes later, the Doctor had accidentally led Cobb to discover the secret layer of the map that would allow them to attack the Hath.

“Tell them to prepare to move out,” Cobb ordered. “We’ll progenate new soldiers on the morning shift, then we march. Once we reach the Temple, peace will be restored at long last.”

The Doctor interrupted then. “Er, call me old-fashioned, but if you really wanted peace, couldn’t you just stop fighting?”

Cobb gave him a disgusted look at that. “Only when we have the Source. It’ll give us the power to erase every stinking Hath from the face of this planet.”

He turned away then, but the Doctor was talking again. “Hang on, hand on. A second ago it was peace in our time. Now you’re talking about genocide.”

Cobb turned back, fixing the Doctor with a steely gaze. “For us, that means the same thing.”

“Then you need to get yourself a better dictionary. When you do, look up genocide. You’ll see a little picture of me there, and the caption will read ‘over my dead body’.”

Cobb scoffed at that. “And you’re the one who showed us the path to victory. But you can consider the irony from your prison cell. Cline, at arms.”

Cline levelled his gun at them and Donna immediately protested.

“Oi, oi, oi! Alright. Cool the beans, Rambo.”

“Take them,” Cobb instructed darkly. “I won’t have them spreading treason. And if you try anything, Doctor, I’ll see that your woman dies first.”

The Doctor blinked at that. “No, we’re, we’re not a couple,” he insisted.

“I am not his woman,” Donna added quickly.

But Cobb clearly didn’t care. “Keep them away from that woman,” he instructed Cline. “Don’t want them plotting anything.”

Cline gave a swift nod, before gesturing with his gun to Donna and the Doctor. “Come on. This way.”

“I’m going to stop you, Cobb,” the Doctor told the older man, levelling his gaze at him and not moving. “You need to know that.”

But Cobb just smirked. “I have an army and the Breath of God on my side, Doctor. What’ll you have?”

The Doctor’s response was one single word. “This.” He tapped at the side of his head.

Cobb didn’t look impressed, and instead just turned to Cline again. “Lock them up and guard them.”

“What about the new soldier?” Cline asked, gaze flicking briefly to Jenny.

Cobb eyed the young woman carefully for a moment before making his decision. “Can’t trust her. She’s from pacifist stock. Take them all.”

~0~0~

Cline led them to the cells without saying a word. They were herded into a cell and the door was locked securely behind them before Cline went off to take a seat at the end of the corridor to survey everyone who came and went. The Doctor was taking in the appearance of the cell- or maybe checking for a way out, Donna wasn’t sure- but it was Jenny who noticed that the cell opposite theirs was also occupied.

“Are you pacifists too?” she asked the tall blonde man in the opposite cell.

The man smiled with a tongue-touched smile, his hazel eyes sparkling even in the low light. “Somethin’ like that,” he agreed, slightly amused.

“I’m Jenny,” Jenny said with a smile. “What’s your name?”

At that, the man faltered. “I wasn’t assigned-” he broke off, looked behind him further into the cell, and there was a murmuring.

“Is that the woman Cobb was talking about?” Jenny asked, a little eagerly. “The woman who tried to trick him?”

The man frowned at that, looking confused.

“See,” the Doctor began, already talking as he turned to face the opposite cell, “Cobb told us there’d been an incident earlier, a woman who-”

He trailed off as he stared at the prisoners in the opposite cell.

“Doctor?” Donna prompted, a little worried that he’d suddenly gone silent.

Even Jenny and the other man were blinking at him in confusion. The man’s cellmate had come to stand beside him while the Doctor spoke, and watched him carefully.

“Hello, Doctor.” Rose gave him a small, slightly nervous smile.

The Doctor blinked. “Rose,” he murmured after a moment. “But how-?”

“That’s Rose?” Donna asked quickly, her confusion giving way to excitement.

Jenny frowned. “Who’s Rose?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor was saying again, and Rose arched an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, charming,” she told him, though she was smiling so he knew she wasn’t being serious. “I crossed universes for you, and that’s what you say when I get back!”

There was the sound of footsteps, and Cline appeared, looking a little nervous as he looked at Rose, before turning his attention to the Doctor. “You’re not supposed to talk to her.”

“Well there’s not much else to do to pass the time!” Donna groused.

Cline ignored her, but gave another wary glance at Rose. He looked back at the Doctor again. Then, he sighed, and walked away.

“I’m glad you’re here,” the Doctor said once Cline had retreated, wide-eyed and more than a little giddy, “but it shouldn’t be possible.”

At that, Rose simply smiled sadly. “I’ve changed, Doctor.”

He took in her appearance. Her hair was a little longer than it used to be, she’d finally lost those last few remnants of baby fat, and she looked more grown up on the whole. But she was still his Rose.

“Doctor,” she said again, and he forced his gaze back to her face. “The Bad Wolf. It changed me.”

A shadow passed over the Doctor’s face.

“Bad Wolf?” Donna asked with a frown. “What’s that?”

She didn’t get an answer.

“Changed you how?” the Doctor asked, his voice tight. “It shouldn’t... I took it out of you. The Vortex.”

“Yeah, you did,” Rose agreed softly. “But the power of the Vortex didn’t make me the Bad Wolf, and you know it. It just... Unlocked it. An’ I think I changed the timelines, or myself, or both, while I still had the Vortex in me. ‘Cause there’s no other explanation for what’s happened to me, other than that...”

“Rose,” the Doctor urged, eyes wide and face pressed against the bars of his cell, almost like he was hoping they’d simply melt away and he could just step through. “What’s happened?”

She gave him a small, slightly sad smile at that. “I have two hearts.”

Time, if possible, stood still.

~0~0~

“So you’re a... What do you call female Time Lords?” Donna asked, gaze moving from Rose to the Doctor and back again.

“Time Ladies,” the Doctor answered for her. “And I don’t know if Rose is one, until I can get her back to the TARDIS to check. But it sounds like it.” His eyes shut then, and Rose watched him sadly from the other side of the corridor. “So that’s why you came back.”

“Well, not just that,” Rose told him quietly. “I, well, I missed you.”

A ghost of a smile was on the Doctor’s lips then, but it didn’t last long. “Your parents?”

Rose smiled slightly at that. “Mum put up a bit of a fuss,” she admitted softly, “but not as much as I thought she would. She understood. She got a second chance, with Dad, and while she wasn’t happy about me being a whole other universe away, she understood. I think Dad found it hard, though. We’d only just started properly seeing each other as family when my chest pains started, and when Torchwood discovered my body was growing a second heart, he almost hit the roof. He wasn’t angry, just... Scared, I guess. But they’ve got my little brother now anyway. Tony. And like I said, they sort of understand why I’d take the chance.”

“But you won’t see them again. Your own family,” the Doctor reminded her, and he knew he was unwittingly echoing his words in the lever room all those years ago.

Rose seemed to know too, because she gave him a small smile. “I made my choice a long time ago. Besides, you’re my family. You and the TARDIS. And, well...” She trailed off awkwardly, glanced at the young man standing beside her before looking to Jenny.

The Doctor sniffed and didn’t respond. Donna shifted awkwardly, and started looking around the room to try and give them the illusion of space and that she wasn’t listening. Which was rather difficult, considering the parameters of the cell. But above the door, there was a string of numbers. 60120716.

“More numbers,” she murmured, accidentally catching the Doctor’s attention. “They’ve got to mean something.”

“Makes as much sense as the Breath of Life story,” the Doctor commented dryly.

Across the corridor, Rose wrinkled her nose. “The what?”

“Breath of Life story Cobb told us,” the Doctor explained. “Tried telling us that a great god breathed life into the universe.”

Jenny frowned. “You mean that’s not true?”

Donna shook her head. “No, it’s a myth. Isn’t it, Doctor?”

“Yes, but there could still be something real in that temple,” he admitted, sparing a brief glance at Rose and the young man. “Something that’s become a myth. A piece of technology, a weapon.”

“So the Source could be a weapon, and we’ve just given directions to Captain Nutjob?” Donna asked.

Across the corridor, Rose grinned. “Sounds about right,” she admitted to the redhead.

“We need to get out of here,” the Doctor spoke up, glancing between Donna and Rose. “We need to find Martha and stop Cobb from slaughtering the Hath.” He trailed off as he saw Jenny watching him carefully. “What? What are you staring at?”

Jenny grinned at him. “You keep insisting you’re not a soldier, but look at you, drawing up strategies like a proper general.”

Even from the opposite cell, Rose and her son could see the Doctor stiffen.

“No, no,” the Doctor retorted, “I’m trying to stop the fighting.”

“Isn’t every soldier?” Jenny asked.

At that, the Doctor spluttered. “Well, I suppose, but that’s, that’s... Technically, I haven’t got time for this. Donna, give me your phone. Time for an upgrade.”

Donna handed her mobile over, looking slightly perplexed. As the Doctor pulled the sonic from his pocket and set about fiddling with Donna’s phone, Jenny turned her attention to the opposite cell.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked Rose’s son, who blinked back at her uncertainly. “He’s a soldier, he’s drawing up strategies and giving orders.” She nodded at Donna’s phone in the Doctor’s hands. “Creating weapons.”

In the opposite cell, Rose’s son shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not... Don’t make me part of this.”

Jenny’s smile faded a little at his words. “But you came out of the machine!” she protested. “You’re the same as me.”

“I’m not,” he insisted, and even the Doctor stopped tinkering for a few moments to watch him. “I’m not like you.”

The Doctor gave Rose a questioning look and she shrugged. “Cobb thinks I contaminated him,” she told him with a small grin. “Seems he picked up a bit of the Bad Wolf in my DNA. His eyes glowed earlier.”

Donna blinked, and looked at the Doctor, who looked just as stunned.

“So he doesn’t...” the Doctor began slowly. “He’s not a soldier?”

Rose looked at her son for a few moments before turning back to the Doctor. “Don’t know, but he wouldn’t take the gun they tried to give him.”

On the opposite side of the corridor, Jenny shifted uncomfortably.

#ficandchips #Generation 5000 fic #10th doctor #rose tyler #canon divergence

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smythfamilytree · 8 years ago

Photo

Lassen Peak pool. Lassen Peak, also known as Mount Lassen, is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range. It is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc which is an arc that stretches from southwestern British Columbia to northern California.

The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent.

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars’ worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.

When Goldfinger looked at his watch, it was quarter to three. The conference was wrapping up for the day. He was thinking about sushi. The speaker at the lectern was wondering if he should carry on with his talk. The earthquake was not particularly strong. Then it ticked past the sixty-second mark, making it longer than the others that week. The shaking intensified. The seats in the conference room were small plastic desks with wheels. Goldfinger, who is tall and solidly built, thought, No way am I crouching under one of those for cover. At a minute and a half, everyone in the room got up and went outside.

It was March. There was a chill in the air, and snow flurries, but no snow on the ground. Nor, from the feel of it, was there ground on the ground. The earth snapped and popped and rippled. It was, Goldfinger thought, like driving through rocky terrain in a vehicle with no shocks, if both the vehicle and the terrain were also on a raft in high seas. The quake passed the two-minute mark. The trees, still hung with the previous autumn’s dead leaves, were making a strange rattling sound. The flagpole atop the building he and his colleagues had just vacated was whipping through an arc of forty degrees. The building itself was base-isolated, a seismic-safety technology in which the body of a structure rests on movable bearings rather than directly on its foundation. Goldfinger lurched over to take a look. The base was lurching, too, back and forth a foot at a time, digging a trench in the yard. He thought better of it, and lurched away. His watch swept past the three-minute mark and kept going.

Oh, shit, Goldfinger thought, although not in dread, at first: in amazement. For decades, seismologists had believed that Japan could not experience an earthquake stronger than magnitude 8.4. In 2005, however, at a conference in Hokudan, a Japanese geologist named Yasutaka Ikeda had argued that the nation should expect a magnitude 9.0 in the near future—with catastrophic consequences, because Japan’s famous earthquake-and-tsunami preparedness, including the height of its sea walls, was based on incorrect science. The presentation was met with polite applause and thereafter largely ignored. Now, Goldfinger realized as the shaking hit the four-minute mark, the planet was proving the Japanese Cassandra right.

For a moment, that was pretty cool: a real-time revolution in earthquake science. Almost immediately, though, it became extremely uncool, because Goldfinger and every other seismologist standing outside in Kashiwa knew what was coming. One of them pulled out a cell phone and started streaming videos from the Japanese broadcasting station NHK, shot by helicopters that had flown out to sea soon after the shaking started. Thirty minutes after Goldfinger first stepped outside, he watched the tsunami roll in, in real time, on a two-inch screen.

In the end, the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than eighteen thousand people, devastated northeast Japan, triggered the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant, and cost an estimated two hundred and twenty billion dollars. The shaking earlier in the week turned out to be the foreshocks of the largest earthquake in the nation’s recorded history. But for Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at Oregon State University and one of the world’s leading experts on a little-known fault line, the main quake was itself a kind of foreshock: a preview of another earthquake still to come.

Most people in the United States know just one fault line by name: the San Andreas, which runs nearly the length of California and is perpetually rumored to be on the verge of unleashing “the big one.” That rumor is misleading, no matter what the San Andreas ever does. Every fault line has an upper limit to its potency, determined by its length and width, and by how far it can slip. For the San Andreas, one of the most extensively studied and best understood fault lines in the world, that upper limit is roughly an 8.2—a powerful earthquake, but, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, only six per cent as strong as the 2011 event in Japan.

“Perhaps I’ve said too much.”

Just north of the San Andreas, however, lies another fault line. Known as the Cascadia subduction zone, it runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and terminating around Vancouver Island, Canada. The “Cascadia” part of its name comes from the Cascade Range, a chain of volcanic mountains that follow the same course a hundred or so miles inland. The “subduction zone” part refers to a region of the planet where one tectonic plate is sliding underneath (subducting) another. Tectonic plates are those slabs of mantle and crust that, in their epochs-long drift, rearrange the earth’s continents and oceans. Most of the time, their movement is slow, harmless, and all but undetectable. Occasionally, at the borders where they meet, it is not.

Take your hands and hold them palms down, middle fingertips touching. Your right hand represents the North American tectonic plate, which bears on its back, among other things, our entire continent, from One World Trade Center to the Space Needle, in Seattle. Your left hand represents an oceanic plate called Juan de Fuca, ninety thousand square miles in size. The place where they meet is the Cascadia subduction zone. Now slide your left hand under your right one. That is what the Juan de Fuca plate is doing: slipping steadily beneath North America. When you try it, your right hand will slide up your left arm, as if you were pushing up your sleeve. That is what North America is not doing. It is stuck, wedged tight against the surface of the other plate.

Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year. It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it cannot do so indefinitely. There is a backstop—the craton, that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent—and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one.

Flick your right fingers outward, forcefully, so that your hand flattens back down again. When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries. Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. (Watch what your fingertips do when you flatten your hand.) The water will surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the earthquake begins. By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”

In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover* some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America. Roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. “This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.

“I’ll do what everybody does—sell this startup just before we have to hire a female employee.”

In May of 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, together with their Corps of Discovery, set off from St. Louis on America’s first official cross-country expedition. Eighteen months later, they reached the Pacific Ocean and made camp near the present-day town of Astoria, Oregon. The United States was, at the time, twenty-nine years old. Canada was not yet a country. The continent’s far expanses were so unknown to its white explorers that Thomas Jefferson, who commissioned the journey, thought that the men would come across woolly mammoths. Native Americans had lived in the Northwest for millennia, but they had no written language, and the many things to which the arriving Europeans subjected them did not include seismological inquiries. The newcomers took the land they encountered at face value, and at face value it was a find: vast, cheap, temperate, fertile, and, to all appearances, remarkably benign.

A century and a half elapsed before anyone had any inkling that the Pacific Northwest was not a quiet place but a place in a long period of quiet. It took another fifty years to uncover and interpret the region’s seismic history. Geology, as even geologists will tell you, is not normally the sexiest of disciplines; it hunkers down with earthly stuff while the glory accrues to the human and the cosmic—to genetics, neuroscience, physics. But, sooner or later, every field has its field day, and the discovery of the Cascadia subduction zone stands as one of the greatest scientific detective stories of our time.

The first clue came from geography. Almost all of the world’s most powerful earthquakes occur in the Ring of Fire, the volcanically and seismically volatile swath of the Pacific that runs from New Zealand up through Indonesia and Japan, across the ocean to Alaska, and down the west coast of the Americas to Chile. Japan, 2011, magnitude 9.0; Indonesia, 2004, magnitude 9.1; Alaska, 1964, magnitude 9.2; Chile, 1960, magnitude 9.5—not until the late nineteen-sixties, with the rise of the theory of plate tectonics, could geologists explain this pattern. The Ring of Fire, it turns out, is really a ring of subduction zones. Nearly all the earthquakes in the region are caused by continental plates getting stuck on oceanic plates—as North America is stuck on Juan de Fuca—and then getting abruptly unstuck. And nearly all the volcanoes are caused by the oceanic plates sliding deep beneath the continental ones, eventually reaching temperatures and pressures so extreme that they melt the rock above them.

The Pacific Northwest sits squarely within the Ring of Fire. Off its coast, an oceanic plate is slipping beneath a continental one. Inland, the Cascade volcanoes mark the line where, far below, the Juan de Fuca plate is heating up and melting everything above it. In other words, the Cascadia subduction zone has, as Goldfinger put it, “all the right anatomical parts.” Yet not once in recorded history has it caused a major earthquake—or, for that matter, any quake to speak of. By contrast, other subduction zones produce major earthquakes occasionally and minor ones all the time: magnitude 5.0, magnitude 4.0, magnitude why are the neighbors moving their sofa at midnight. You can scarcely spend a week in Japan without feeling this sort of earthquake. You can spend a lifetime in many parts of the Northwest—several, in fact, if you had them to spend—and not feel so much as a quiver. The question facing geologists in the nineteen-seventies was whether the Cascadia subduction zone had ever broken its eerie silence.

In the late nineteen-eighties, Brian Atwater, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey, and a graduate student named David Yamaguchi found the answer, and another major clue in the Cascadia puzzle. Their discovery is best illustrated in a place called the ghost forest, a grove of western red cedars on the banks of the Copalis River, near the Washington coast. When I paddled out to it last summer, with Atwater and Yamaguchi, it was easy to see how it got its name. The cedars are spread out across a low salt marsh on a wide northern bend in the river, long dead but still standing. Leafless, branchless, barkless, they are reduced to their trunks and worn to a smooth silver-gray, as if they had always carried their own tombstones inside them.

What killed the trees in the ghost forest was saltwater. It had long been assumed that they died slowly, as the sea level around them gradually rose and submerged their roots. But, by 1987, Atwater, who had found in soil layers evidence of sudden land subsidence along the Washington coast, suspected that that was backward—that the trees had died quickly when the ground beneath them plummeted. To find out, he teamed up with Yamaguchi, a specialist in dendrochronology, the study of growth-ring patterns in trees. Yamaguchi took samples of the cedars and found that they had died simultaneously: in tree after tree, the final rings dated to the summer of 1699. Since trees do not grow in the winter, he and Atwater concluded that sometime between August of 1699 and May of 1700 an earthquake had caused the land to drop and killed the cedars. That time frame predated by more than a hundred years the written history of the Pacific Northwest—and so, by rights, the detective story should have ended there.

But it did not. If you travel five thousand miles due west from the ghost forest, you reach the northeast coast of Japan. As the events of 2011 made clear, that coast is vulnerable to tsunamis, and the Japanese have kept track of them since at least 599 A.D. In that fourteen-hundred-year history, one incident has long stood out for its strangeness. On the eighth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of the Genroku era, a six-hundred-mile-long wave struck the coast, levelling homes, breaching a castle moat, and causing an accident at sea. The Japanese understood that tsunamis were the result of earthquakes, yet no one felt the ground shake before the Genroku event. The wave had no discernible origin. When scientists began studying it, they called it an orphan tsunami.

Finally, in a 1996 article in Nature, a seismologist named Kenji Satake and three colleagues, drawing on the work of Atwater and Yamaguchi, matched that orphan to its parent—and thereby filled in the blanks in the Cascadia story with uncanny specificity. At approximately nine o’ clock at night on January 26, 1700, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck the Pacific Northwest, causing sudden land subsidence, drowning coastal forests, and, out in the ocean, lifting up a wave half the length of a continent. It took roughly fifteen minutes for the Eastern half of that wave to strike the Northwest coast. It took ten hours for the other half to cross the ocean. It reached Japan on January 27, 1700: by the local calendar, the eighth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of Genroku.

Once scientists had reconstructed the 1700 earthquake, certain previously overlooked accounts also came to seem like clues. In 1964, Chief Louis Nookmis, of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation, in British Columbia, told a story, passed down through seven generations, about the eradication of Vancouver Island’s Pachena Bay people. “I think it was at nighttime that the land shook,” Nookmis recalled. According to another tribal history, “They sank at once, were all drowned; not one survived.” A hundred years earlier, Billy Balch, a leader of the Makah tribe, recounted a similar story. Before his own time, he said, all the water had receded from Washington State’s Neah Bay, then suddenly poured back in, inundating the entire region. Those who survived later found canoes hanging from the trees. In a 2005 study, Ruth Ludwin, then a seismologist at the University of Washington, together with nine colleagues, collected and analyzed Native American reports of earthquakes and saltwater floods. Some of those reports contained enough information to estimate a date range for the events they described. On average, the midpoint of that range was 1701.

It does not speak well of European-Americans that such stories counted as evidence for a proposition only after that proposition had been proved. Still, the reconstruction of the Cascadia earthquake of 1700 is one of those rare natural puzzles whose pieces fit together as tectonic plates do not: perfectly. It is wonderful science. It was wonderful for science. And it was terrible news for the millions of inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. As Goldfinger put it, “In the late eighties and early nineties, the paradigm shifted to ‘uh-oh.’ ”

Goldfinger told me this in his lab at Oregon State, a low prefab building that a passing English major might reasonably mistake for the maintenance department. Inside the lab is a walk-in freezer. Inside the freezer are floor-to-ceiling racks filled with cryptically labelled tubes, four inches in diameter and five feet long. Each tube contains a core sample of the seafloor. Each sample contains the history, written in seafloorese, of the past ten thousand years. During subduction-zone earthquakes, torrents of land rush off the continental slope, leaving a permanent deposit on the bottom of the ocean. By counting the number and the size of deposits in each sample, then comparing their extent and consistency along the length of the Cascadia subduction zone, Goldfinger and his colleagues were able to determine how much of the zone has ruptured, how often, and how drastically.

Thanks to that work, we now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle.

It is possible to quibble with that number. Recurrence intervals are averages, and averages are tricky: ten is the average of nine and eleven, but also of eighteen and two. It is not possible, however, to dispute the scale of the problem. The devastation in Japan in 2011 was the result of a discrepancy between what the best science predicted and what the region was prepared to withstand. The same will hold true in the Pacific Northwest—but here the discrepancy is enormous. “The science part is fun,” Goldfinger says. “And I love doing it. But the gap between what we know and what we should do about it is getting bigger and bigger, and the action really needs to turn to responding. Otherwise, we’re going to be hammered. I’ve been through one of these massive earthquakes in the most seismically prepared nation on earth. If that was Portland”—Goldfinger finished the sentence with a shake of his head before he finished it with words. “Let’s just say I would rather not be here.”

“This heat is killing me. Let’s get a drink in Little Antarctica.”

The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover. The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. When the Cascadia earthquake begins, there will be, instead, a cacophony of barking dogs and a long, suspended, what-was-that moment before the surface waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, lower-frequency waves that move the ground both up and down and side to side: the shaking, starting in earnest.

Soon after that shaking begins, the electrical grid will fail, likely everywhere west of the Cascades and possibly well beyond. If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness. In theory, those who are at home when it hits should be safest; it is easy and relatively inexpensive to seismically safeguard a private dwelling. But, lulled into nonchalance by their seemingly benign environment, most people in the Pacific Northwest have not done so. That nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass. Anything indoors and unsecured will lurch across the floor or come crashing down: bookshelves, lamps, computers, cannisters of flour in the pantry. Refrigerators will walk out of kitchens, unplugging themselves and toppling over. Water heaters will fall and smash interior gas lines. Houses that are not bolted to their foundations will slide off—or, rather, they will stay put, obeying inertia, while the foundations, together with the rest of the Northwest, jolt westward. Unmoored on the undulating ground, the homes will begin to collapse.

Across the region, other, larger structures will also start to fail. Until 1974, the state of Oregon had no seismic code, and few places in the Pacific Northwest had one appropriate to a magnitude-9.0 earthquake until 1994. The vast majority of buildings in the region were constructed before then. Ian Madin, who directs the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), estimates that seventy-five per cent of all structures in the state are not designed to withstand a major Cascadia quake. FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings—more than three thousand of them schools—will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake. So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers, and two-thirds of railways and airports; also, one-third of all fire stations, half of all police stations, and two-thirds of all hospitals.

Certain disasters stem from many small problems conspiring to cause one very large problem. For want of a nail, the war was lost; for fifteen independently insignificant errors, the jetliner was lost. Subduction-zone earthquakes operate on the opposite principle: one enormous problem causes many other enormous problems. The shaking from the Cascadia quake will set off landslides throughout the region—up to thirty thousand of them in Seattle alone, the city’s emergency-management office estimates. It will also induce a process called liquefaction, whereby seemingly solid ground starts behaving like a liquid, to the detriment of anything on top of it. Fifteen per cent of Seattle is built on liquefiable land, including seventeen day-care centers and the homes of some thirty-four thousand five hundred people. So is Oregon’s critical energy-infrastructure hub, a six-mile stretch of Portland through which flows ninety per cent of the state’s liquid fuel and which houses everything from electrical substations to natural-gas terminals. Together, the sloshing, sliding, and shaking will trigger fires, flooding, pipe failures, dam breaches, and hazardous-material spills. Any one of these second-order disasters could swamp the original earthquake in terms of cost, damage, or casualties—and one of them definitely will. Four to six minutes after the dogs start barking, the shaking will subside. For another few minutes, the region, upended, will continue to fall apart on its own. Then the wave will arrive, and the real destruction will begin.

Among natural disasters, tsunamis may be the closest to being completely unsurvivable. The only likely way to outlive one is not to be there when it happens: to steer clear of the vulnerable area in the first place, or get yourself to high ground as fast as possible. For the seventy-one thousand people who live in Cascadia’s inundation zone, that will mean evacuating in the narrow window after one disaster ends and before another begins. They will be notified to do so only by the earthquake itself—“a vibrate-alert system,” Kevin Cupples, the city planner for the town of Seaside, Oregon, jokes—and they are urged to leave on foot, since the earthquake will render roads impassable. Depending on location, they will have between ten and thirty minutes to get out. That time line does not allow for finding a flashlight, tending to an earthquake injury, hesitating amid the ruins of a home, searching for loved ones, or being a Good Samaritan. “When that tsunami is coming, you run,” Jay Wilson, the chair of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC), says. “You protect yourself, you don’t turn around, you don’t go back to save anybody. You run for your life.” [#unhandled_cartoon]

The time to save people from a tsunami is before it happens, but the region has not yet taken serious steps toward doing so. Hotels and businesses are not required to post evacuation routes or to provide employees with evacuation training. In Oregon, it has been illegal since 1995 to build hospitals, schools, firehouses, and police stations in the inundation zone, but those which are already in it can stay, and any other new construction is permissible: energy facilities, hotels, retirement homes. In those cases, builders are required only to consult with DOGAMI about evacuation plans. “So you come in and sit down,” Ian Madin says. “And I say, ‘That’s a stupid idea.’ And you say, ‘Thanks. Now we’ve consulted.’ ”

These lax safety policies guarantee that many people inside the inundation zone will not get out. Twenty-two per cent of Oregon’s coastal population is sixty-five or older. Twenty-nine per cent of the state’s population is disabled, and that figure rises in many coastal counties. “We can’t save them,” Kevin Cupples says. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll go around and check on the elderly.’ No. We won’t.” Nor will anyone save the tourists. Washington State Park properties within the inundation zone see an average of seventeen thousand and twenty-nine guests a day. Madin estimates that up to a hundred and fifty thousand people visit Oregon’s beaches on summer weekends. “Most of them won’t have a clue as to how to evacuate,” he says. “And the beaches are the hardest place to evacuate from.”

Those who cannot get out of the inundation zone under their own power will quickly be overtaken by a greater one. A grown man is knocked over by ankle-deep water moving at 6.7 miles an hour. The tsunami will be moving more than twice that fast when it arrives. Its height will vary with the contours of the coast, from twenty feet to more than a hundred feet. It will not look like a Hokusai-style wave, rising up from the surface of the sea and breaking from above. It will look like the whole ocean, elevated, overtaking land. Nor will it be made only of water—not once it reaches the shore. It will be a five-story deluge of pickup trucks and doorframes and cinder blocks and fishing boats and utility poles and everything else that once constituted the coastal towns of the Pacific Northwest.

To see the full scale of the devastation when that tsunami recedes, you would need to be in the international space station. The inundation zone will be scoured of structures from California to Canada. The earthquake will have wrought its worst havoc west of the Cascades but caused damage as far away as Sacramento, California—as distant from the worst-hit areas as Fort Wayne, Indiana, is from New York. FEMA expects to coördinate search-and-rescue operations across a hundred thousand square miles and in the waters off four hundred and fifty-three miles of coastline. As for casualties: the figures I cited earlier—twenty-seven thousand injured, almost thirteen thousand dead—are based on the agency’s official planning scenario, which has the earthquake striking at 9:41 A.M. on February 6th. If, instead, it strikes in the summer, when the beaches are full, those numbers could be off by a horrifying margin.

Wineglasses, antique vases, Humpty Dumpty, hip bones, hearts: what breaks quickly generally mends slowly, if at all. OSSPAC estimates that in the I-5 corridor it will take between one and three months after the earthquake to restore electricity, a month to a year to restore drinking water and sewer service, six months to a year to restore major highways, and eighteen months to restore health-care facilities. On the coast, those numbers go up. Whoever chooses or has no choice but to stay there will spend three to six months without electricity, one to three years without drinking water and sewage systems, and three or more years without hospitals. Those estimates do not apply to the tsunami-inundation zone, which will remain all but uninhabitable for years.

How much all this will cost is anyone’s guess; FEMA puts every number on its relief-and-recovery plan except a price. But whatever the ultimate figure—and even though U.S. taxpayers will cover seventy-five to a hundred per cent of the damage, as happens in declared disasters—the economy of the Pacific Northwest will collapse. Crippled by a lack of basic services, businesses will fail or move away. Many residents will flee as well. OSSPAC predicts a mass-displacement event and a long-term population downturn. Chris Goldfinger didn’t want to be there when it happened. But, by many metrics, it will be as bad or worse to be there afterward.

On the face of it, earthquakes seem to present us with problems of space: the way we live along fault lines, in brick buildings, in homes made valuable by their proximity to the sea. But, covertly, they also present us with problems of time. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, but we are a young species, relatively speaking, with an average individual allotment of three score years and ten. The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism—an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own.

[#unhandled_cartoon]

This problem is bidirectional. The Cascadia subduction zone remained hidden from us for so long because we could not see deep enough into the past. It poses a danger to us today because we have not thought deeply enough about the future. That is no longer a problem of information; we now understand very well what the Cascadia fault line will someday do. Nor is it a problem of imagination. If you are so inclined, you can watch an earthquake destroy much of the West Coast this summer in Brad Peyton’s “San Andreas,” while, in neighboring theatres, the world threatens to succumb to Armageddon by other means: viruses, robots, resource scarcity, zombies, aliens, plague. As those movies attest, we excel at imagining future scenarios, including awful ones. But such apocalyptic visions are a form of escapism, not a moral summons, and still less a plan of action. Where we stumble is in conjuring up grim futures in a way that helps to avert them.

That problem is not specific to earthquakes, of course. The Cascadia situation, a calamity in its own right, is also a parable for this age of ecological reckoning, and the questions it raises are ones that we all now face. How should a society respond to a looming crisis of uncertain timing but of catastrophic proportions? How can it begin to right itself when its entire infrastructure and culture developed in a way that leaves it profoundly vulnerable to natural disaster?

The last person I met with in the Pacific Northwest was Doug Dougherty, the superintendent of schools for Seaside, which lies almost entirely within the tsunami-inundation zone. Of the four schools that Dougherty oversees, with a total student population of sixteen hundred, one is relatively safe. The others sit five to fifteen feet above sea level. When the tsunami comes, they will be as much as forty-five feet below it.

In 2009, Dougherty told me, he found some land for sale outside the inundation zone, and proposed building a new K-12 campus there. Four years later, to foot the hundred-and-twenty-eight-million-dollar bill, the district put up a bond measure. The tax increase for residents amounted to two dollars and sixteen cents per thousand dollars of property value. The measure failed by sixty-two per cent. Dougherty tried seeking help from Oregon’s congressional delegation but came up empty. The state makes money available for seismic upgrades, but buildings within the inundation zone cannot apply. At present, all Dougherty can do is make sure that his students know how to evacuate.

Some of them, however, will not be able to do so. At an elementary school in the community of Gearhart, the children will be trapped. “They can’t make it out from that school,” Dougherty said. “They have no place to go.” On one side lies the ocean; on the other, a wide, roadless bog. When the tsunami comes, the only place to go in Gearhart is a small ridge just behind the school. At its tallest, it is forty-five feet high—lower than the expected wave in a full-margin earthquake. For now, the route to the ridge is marked by signs that say “Temporary Tsunami Assembly Area.” I asked Dougherty about the state’s long-range plan. “There is no long-range plan,” he said.

Dougherty’s office is deep inside the inundation zone, a few blocks from the beach. All day long, just out of sight, the ocean rises up and collapses, spilling foamy overlapping ovals onto the shore. Eighty miles farther out, ten thousand feet below the surface of the sea, the hand of a geological clock is somewhere in its slow sweep. All across the region, seismologists are looking at their watches, wondering how long we have, and what we will do, before geological time catches up to our own. ♦

*An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the area of impact.

Kathryn Schulz joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2015. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and a National Magazine Award for “The Really Big One,” her story on the seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.”

Earthquakes

Seismology

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