30 Second Earthquake Warnings

Bill Kendrick writes "A new network of seismic stations may help give as much as a 30 second warning before a major earthquake, giving time to shut down gas lines, stop public transit, etc. Yahoo! News has the story." There are lots of qualifiers in here ("as much as," "some earthquakes") but any warning is probably better than none.

Comments

Now all we need

[anthony_dipierro]

Is a way to buy earthquake insurance online in 30 seconds.

Muhahaha. That is all.

[realgone]

Turn off gas mains? Shut down public trasport? Bah! Let's put this power to some real use -- beeper notification, for instance.

Potential Employer: Well, we've reviewed your resume and references and, if we may be frank, you're entirely unqualified for this position.

*sound of beeper going off*

Me: Did I mention I can destroy you all with the power of my mind?

Potential Employer: Okay, that's just about enough of that. Securit--

*cue 7.1 earthquake*

Me: $400k sound good to start?

Statistics. Security.

[Nyarly]

Ultimately, though, for this to be useful, it would have to be automated from end-to-end. Thirty seconds isn't enough to double check the system, and introducing humans into the mix just adds error. But the automated system has problems:

First, "near 100 percent accuracy" isn't 100% accuracy. There's no information here about false positives, but my guess is that, like many testing and alarm problems, tuning out one way, opens up the other side disproportionately. So you'll always have issues where the gas mains don't cut off in time, but people'll understand. But when the gas cuts out from too many false positives, people'll call for the whole thing to be turned off.

The other side of this is: I hope it's not supposed to be wired to the Internet. How's that for a script kiddie prank. "1 4m 2 733t 4 j00! 1 0wn3d CA! h4h4h4h4h!" Punks. Still, even with a large private network, being able to fake an earthquake isn't a small thing.

What could you do with 30 seconds?

[Spamalamadingdong]

It might take 30 seconds to leave your house, but it takes a lot less than that to go stand in a doorway. A list off the top of my head:

• Electronic-ignition gas appliances could shut themselves off until the "all clear" sounded.
• Trains, buses and other public transit could come to a halt before the rails or roadway ruptured.
• Traffic signals could go 4-way red for half a minute.
• Electrical systems could prepare for shutdown to prevent fires and other damage from short circuits (kill the circuit breakers at the first heavy shaking), and hospitals and the like could automatically start their emergency generators to prepare for cutover.

None of these things would have large costs from false alarms, but might prevent a lot of death and destruction if a real tremblor hit. Just being able to shut down the electrical grid would prevent transformers from being damaged by shorts and make it much easier to bring the system back up, and killing most open flames from water heaters and furnaces would prevent a lot of fires. This has real potential.