Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Alaska Earthquake of 1964
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- 0:11Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
- 0:13Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is Stuff you
- 0:16Speaker 2: should Know about earthquakes in Alaska in nineteen sixty four.
- 0:21Speaker 2: I'm going to talk like this, Oh the rest of
- 0:23Speaker 2: the podcast. What do you think?
- 0:26Speaker 1: I think that sixty percent of the people just stop listening.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Well, they are going to be sorry, because this is
- 0:34Speaker 2: going to be an interesting episode.
- 0:36Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know, I had no idea how
- 0:40Speaker 1: earthquake prone Alaska is was and is until doing this
- 0:45Speaker 1: kind of research.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Oh. I was raised on that knowledge. My family talked
- 0:49Speaker 2: about it a lot.
- 0:51Speaker 1: No comment in Toledo.
- 0:53Speaker 2: Hey, Chuck, I have a question. Will you ask me
- 0:56Speaker 2: the first time I was ever in an earthquake or
- 0:59Speaker 2: ever felt in earthquake?
- 1:01Speaker 1: When's the first time you ever felt to earthquake?
- 1:04Speaker 2: Yesterday? Chuck? Will you ask me a follow up question?
- 1:08Speaker 2: Ask what I was reading while I experienced that first earthquake?
- 1:13Speaker 1: Well, where were you and what were you reading?
- 1:15Speaker 2: I was reading this article about Alaska earth the Alaska
- 1:20Speaker 2: earthquake of nineteen sixty four, and I was at home.
- 1:23Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that you guys felt a trimmer.
- 1:25Speaker 2: There was one in Cuba, like a six point eight,
- 1:28Speaker 2: and I felt it in Central Florida, plain a day.
- 1:31Speaker 1: Wow, I've never I lived in LA for five years
- 1:34Speaker 1: and I never felt a single anything.
- 1:36Speaker 2: Yeah. I pretty much assumed I would go the rest
- 1:39Speaker 2: of my life with that feeling an earthquake, and nope, nope.
- 1:43Speaker 2: Cuba had other ideas.
- 1:45Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean after reading about how like far away,
- 1:49Speaker 1: Like there's some pretty startling stuff in this episode, like
- 1:53Speaker 1: as far as how far away could feel things, and
- 1:56Speaker 1: like the upset that it caused like around the world,
- 2:00Speaker 1: it's nuts.
- 2:01Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people were upset about this for sure.
- 2:05Speaker 1: All Right, Well, we're talking about the Good Friday earthquake
- 2:08Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty four in Alaska, which at the time
- 2:12Speaker 1: was the biggest, well the second largest ever in the
- 2:16Speaker 1: world that they had recorded at nine point two, just
- 2:20Speaker 1: behind the nine point five that hit Chile in nineteen sixty. Yeah,
- 2:25Speaker 1: and considering the devastation that happened in Alaska, and probably
- 2:28Speaker 1: only because it happened in Alaska, it only killed one
- 2:32Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one people, which is a lot. But
- 2:36Speaker 1: I think the earthquake itself in Alaska. How many people
- 2:40Speaker 1: It's like fifteen people.
- 2:41Speaker 2: Maybe, yeah, I think there was actually in the whole
- 2:44Speaker 2: state something like.
- 2:46Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm saying how many people it killed?
- 2:48Speaker 2: Was only oh oh, sorry, I thought you're saying how
- 2:50Speaker 2: many people lived in Alaska.
- 2:51Speaker 1: No, just like the literal earthquake of people in Alaska.
- 2:55Speaker 2: I think it was like, yeah, fifteen or sixteen people.
- 2:57Speaker 2: That was it from the actual earthquake. Yeah, I wonder
- 3:00Speaker 2: why he laughed. Yeah, that was why, because I thought
- 3:03Speaker 2: you were making a joke and I thought it was hilarious.
- 3:06Speaker 1: So let's get to today.
- 3:08Speaker 2: Well, there was one other big thing about this earthquake
- 3:11Speaker 2: besides just the massiveness. I mean, nine point five that
- 3:13Speaker 2: is awfully close to as high as you can go
- 3:16Speaker 2: on the Richter scale.
- 3:17Speaker 1: Right, yeah, nine point two was this one? Yeah?
- 3:19Speaker 2: Nine point two? Sorry, Chili was the nine point five
- 3:22Speaker 2: Still nothing to sneeze at, right, second largest earthquake on record.
- 3:27Speaker 2: One of the other reasons that it's important or significant
- 3:29Speaker 2: is because it basically opened up the door for seismology
- 3:34Speaker 2: and our understanding of earthquakes and tsunamis and basically everything
- 3:38Speaker 2: we know about those things today. Kind of kicked off
- 3:42Speaker 2: with this nineteen sixty four earthquake because we were able
- 3:45Speaker 2: to like go study it. It happened at just the
- 3:47Speaker 2: right time in a.
- 3:48Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, for sure. And this was a mega thrust earthquake.
- 3:53Speaker 1: And as it turns out, the most destructive kind of
- 3:56Speaker 1: earthquake that the world knows is the mega thrust. Out
- 4:00Speaker 1: of the ten of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded have
- 4:03Speaker 1: been mega thrust. And that is where and you know,
- 4:06Speaker 1: we've talked about this in the Earthquakes episode as well
- 4:09Speaker 1: as other ones, probably the Japanese tsunami one as well. Sure,
- 4:14Speaker 1: but this mega thrust earthquake is what happens when you
- 4:17Speaker 1: have two tectonic plates hitting one another, and the case
- 4:22Speaker 1: of the mega thrust, the heavier one slides below the
- 4:25Speaker 1: lighter one, and that heavier plate just dives into the mantle.
- 4:31Speaker 1: It's you know, we talked about subduction a lot, but
- 4:34Speaker 1: it subduces.
- 4:36Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, It's subdued by the top one, right, And
- 4:39Speaker 2: as it goes further and further in like the whole
- 4:42Speaker 2: Earth's crust gets recycled over incredible spans of time. The
- 4:46Speaker 2: problem is what causes a megathrust earthquake is that in
- 4:49Speaker 2: some places that subdued plate doesn't go down. It locks
- 4:55Speaker 2: with the plate on top when they converge, and they
- 4:59Speaker 2: just press, impressed and press and press, and then eventually
- 5:02Speaker 2: one of them is going to give. It's like a
- 5:05Speaker 2: game of chicken or something like that. And when they give,
- 5:08Speaker 2: it just slips, and it slips really quickly, and the entire,
- 5:11Speaker 2: an entire region of Earth suddenly lurches forward like fifty feet.
- 5:16Speaker 2: And when that happens, that's where you get like ten
- 5:20Speaker 2: out of the ten most powerful earthquakes. That's where they
- 5:24Speaker 2: come from. They're all mega thrust earthquakes, and that's how
- 5:26Speaker 2: they're produced.
- 5:27Speaker 1: That's right. The one in sixty four in Alaska was
- 5:32Speaker 1: at the Alaska Aleutian Subduction Zone, and that's where the
- 5:37Speaker 1: plates here in North America side over the Pacific plates
- 5:40Speaker 1: is where they meet one another. And I think it
- 5:44Speaker 1: runs from the Gulf of Alaska, and as we'll see,
- 5:47Speaker 1: the epicenter was kind of right there on the waterfront almost,
- 5:53Speaker 1: but it runs along the Gulf of Alaska to Russia's
- 5:56Speaker 1: Kamchatka Peninsula.
- 5:58Speaker 2: Which is an island in Russia.
- 6:00Speaker 1: That's right.
- 6:02Speaker 2: Yeah, it's basically like the worst place to live. But
- 6:05Speaker 2: at the time when people were settling along Alaska seward
- 6:08Speaker 2: and what was the other big city that was affected
- 6:14Speaker 2: by this anchorage and then a bunch of other slightly
- 6:17Speaker 2: smaller cities, they didn't know that the subduction zone existed.
- 6:21Speaker 2: It's nothing you can walk up to and point to.
- 6:23Speaker 2: This thing exists under the oceans off shore. So they
- 6:27Speaker 2: didn't know. But they found out in a big way
- 6:29Speaker 2: after this earthquake that oh, yeah, actually there's a subduction zone.
- 6:34Speaker 2: And as a matter of fact, the whole theory of
- 6:35Speaker 2: plate tectonics is correct. This was another thing that it
- 6:38Speaker 2: proved or showed.
- 6:39Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, you said that that can happen
- 6:43Speaker 1: really quickly. That's kind of what happens with these mega
- 6:46Speaker 1: thrust earthquakes and why they're so kind of spectacular is
- 6:50Speaker 1: that the speed at which it happens. And then in
- 6:52Speaker 1: this case, just like how much was was moving. They
- 6:56Speaker 1: said that the plates moved they estimate between thirty to
- 6:59Speaker 1: six defeat kind of all at the same time, and
- 7:03Speaker 1: that the area that moved, this is staggering, was five
- 7:07Speaker 1: hundred miles by one hundred and twenty five.
- 7:09Speaker 2: Miles suddenly moved sixty feet like in seconds.
- 7:14Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just yeah, it's hard to believe, right.
- 7:19Speaker 2: And so again, like this five hundred by one hundred
- 7:22Speaker 2: and twenty five mile chunk Anchorage, Valdez, sorry, Valdez, Seward
- 7:28Speaker 2: and a bunch of other towns are like on that
- 7:31Speaker 2: chunk of land that suddenly lurched forward. So not only
- 7:35Speaker 2: did the land lurch, this earthquake just had all sorts
- 7:39Speaker 2: of crazy effects, in part because the earthquake itself, nine
- 7:43Speaker 2: point two, lasted for like four minutes. Yeah, four minutes
- 7:49Speaker 2: of a nine point two earthquake sounds terrifying and crazy destructive.
- 7:54Speaker 1: Yeah. This was on March twenty seventh of that year,
- 7:57Speaker 1: at about five thirty six pm is when it kicked
- 7:59Speaker 1: out off. And you know when I talked about like
- 8:02Speaker 1: how far reaching it was. Here are some like pretty
- 8:06Speaker 1: startling examples. There were water level changes registered across every
- 8:12Speaker 1: United State state except for Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware.
- 8:16Speaker 1: And when you see things like a well or a
- 8:19Speaker 1: pond slashing back and forth, like water that doesn't normally
- 8:23Speaker 1: move around is being moved, those are called seashwaves. And
- 8:28Speaker 1: those were reported as far away as Australia and South Africa.
- 8:32Speaker 2: Yeah, can't you see some little Australian can go a
- 8:36Speaker 2: paw the pond's moving.
- 8:39Speaker 1: It's a good Australian kid.
- 8:40Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought so too. So those what'd you call
- 8:44Speaker 2: them seiche waves?
- 8:46Speaker 1: I called them siashwaves, seashwaves.
- 8:48Speaker 2: Okay, So in the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico, fishing
- 8:53Speaker 2: boats sank off Louisiana because those seishewaves slashing back and
- 8:57Speaker 2: forth in the Gulf of Mexico was so potent so
- 9:00Speaker 2: that it swamped some boats and sank them in the
- 9:02Speaker 2: Gulf of Mexico, which is nowhere near Alaska.
- 9:06Speaker 1: Yeah, it swayed the space needle. And by the way,
- 9:09Speaker 1: you maybe had been reading too much of German on
- 9:12Speaker 1: the show, because I think it probably would be siche
- 9:14Speaker 1: in German.
- 9:15Speaker 2: Yeah, something happened my brain like just ticked into just
- 9:20Speaker 2: enough German that I mispronounced stuff a lot.
- 9:22Speaker 1: Now, well I may be wrong too, but because maybe
- 9:25Speaker 1: it's a German word, I have no idea.
- 9:26Speaker 2: Well, let's spell it for everybody and then the listeners
- 9:28Speaker 2: can make up for themselves how to pronounce it, shall we.
- 9:31Speaker 2: I'll take the first letter, you take the second. We'll
- 9:34Speaker 2: just alternate, like that.
- 9:35Speaker 1: Okay, s E C H.
- 9:39Speaker 2: E E E waves.
- 9:42Speaker 1: Just want to get the end. Yeah, that thing rocked
- 9:45Speaker 1: the space Needle, which is about a thousand miles away.
- 9:48Speaker 1: And they did, you know, geological surveys afterward. They showed
- 9:53Speaker 1: some parts of the coast were close to forty feet
- 9:56Speaker 1: higher than they used to be. Other parts were, you know,
- 9:59Speaker 1: a to eight feet lower than they used to be.
- 10:02Speaker 1: It literally changed the coastline of Alaska as much as
- 10:07Speaker 1: fifty feet in some parts. And this is like, you know,
- 10:10Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing you think of when
- 10:11Speaker 1: you think of an earthquake, like in a movie, Like
- 10:14Speaker 1: you know, train tracks getting curled up, and telephone lines
- 10:17Speaker 1: snapping like toothpicks, and cars being sucked into the earth.
- 10:20Speaker 2: This is the kind of thing that presents a challenge
- 10:23Speaker 2: to the rock.
- 10:24Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, only he could save us, exactly.
- 10:27Speaker 2: Unfortunately he was just a little tike if he was
- 10:30Speaker 2: even born at this time, so he couldn't help anybody.
- 10:33Speaker 2: One of the things that just fascinates me is that
- 10:36Speaker 2: there were entire swaths of forests on the coastline that
- 10:41Speaker 2: dropped into the ocean, not like oh, the lands caving
- 10:45Speaker 2: in and all these these trees are like falling over
- 10:48Speaker 2: down into the ocean. The entire stretch of forest still
- 10:53Speaker 2: standing upright, just plunged downward into the ocean and was
- 10:57Speaker 2: covered by the water. It just dropped. And that to
- 11:01Speaker 2: me just is crazy fascinating. I like anything underwater I
- 11:05Speaker 2: find fascinating, but also the idea of that happening like
- 11:08Speaker 2: that suddenly is just mind boggling to me.
- 11:12Speaker 1: Anything underwater's fascinating.
- 11:14Speaker 2: Anything that's not supposed to be underwater that is underwater.
- 11:18Speaker 1: Ah.
- 11:18Speaker 2: Okay, have you seen the Drowned House?
- 11:22Speaker 1: I don't think so.
- 11:24Speaker 2: It's like a found footage, but it's actually good found footage.
- 11:28Speaker 2: It's an indie film where these scuba divers are exploring
- 11:31Speaker 2: this house that was like at the bottom of a reservoir,
- 11:35Speaker 2: so it's now underwater, and just that alone is awesome,
- 11:38Speaker 2: But the plot's pretty cool too.
- 11:39Speaker 1: So you're going deep with your horror.
- 11:44Speaker 2: I mean, there's just so much bad horror out there
- 11:47Speaker 2: that you really have to hunt.
- 11:50Speaker 1: Yeah, and I didn't mean that to be a pun.
- 11:53Speaker 2: By the way, going deep with the horror, yeah underwater?
- 11:57Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, German part of me, I'm taking everything
- 12:01Speaker 2: quite literally. There's no such thing as anything funny.
- 12:06Speaker 1: You know, we're going to talk a lot about the
- 12:08Speaker 1: effects of the water, because again it's some pretty like
- 12:12Speaker 1: devastating and remarkable stuff happened. I was right, It was
- 12:16Speaker 1: only about fifteen people were killed from the actual earthquake.
- 12:19Speaker 1: Most of the people died in the tsunamis that followed, right.
- 12:22Speaker 1: There was one big one and a lot of smaller ones.
- 12:25Speaker 1: I think the big one reached a wave reached a
- 12:28Speaker 1: height of about two hundred feet, which is incredible to
- 12:32Speaker 1: think about it. You know, as far south as California,
- 12:36Speaker 1: like twelve people died in California from an earthquake that
- 12:41Speaker 1: happened in Alaska.
- 12:42Speaker 2: Yeah, I went southward. It also went westward, went right
- 12:46Speaker 2: past Hawaii all the way to Japan. It it kind
- 12:49Speaker 2: of petered out by the time it hit Japan. But
- 12:52Speaker 2: I mean, like that's a long way for a single
- 12:54Speaker 2: wave to travel. I mean two hundred feet that's just nuts.
- 12:58Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this is a big wave.
- 13:01Speaker 2: It is. It's a giant So with a tsunami, though,
- 13:05Speaker 2: you have a really long time, you kind of have
- 13:08Speaker 2: some warning after an earthquake, you can expect if you're
- 13:11Speaker 2: along the coast that a tsunami is probably coming, so
- 13:14Speaker 2: you can get away from that. The problem was is
- 13:17Speaker 2: that all sorts of different towns and communities along the
- 13:20Speaker 2: coast got swamped like almost immediately with tsunamis, not two
- 13:25Speaker 2: hundred foot tsunamis, but still enough to like reck an
- 13:27Speaker 2: entire town. And that was another thing that kind of
- 13:31Speaker 2: the science finally got to the bottom of. But in
- 13:34Speaker 2: some of these tsunamis, like for example, there's a village
- 13:37Speaker 2: called Chenega, and four minutes after the earthquake, it just
- 13:43Speaker 2: got washed away. There were sixty eight people who live there,
- 13:46Speaker 2: twenty three of them died and the only thing that
- 13:48Speaker 2: survived as far as their buildings are concerned, was the schoolhouse,
- 13:52Speaker 2: which was built on higher ground one hundred feet above
- 13:55Speaker 2: sea level. So like everything else in the town was
- 13:58Speaker 2: just gone thanks to a tsunami that hit like lightning fast.
- 14:02Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got one for everyone here. Valdis, at Port Valdiz,
- 14:08Speaker 1: they were, you know, everything kind of along the coastline.
- 14:10Speaker 1: There was obviously swept into the ocean. Thirty two people
- 14:14Speaker 1: very sadly passed in Valdiese and it ended up catching
- 14:20Speaker 1: on fire, the oil tankers and stuff that were there,
- 14:24Speaker 1: and then those were brought out to see so like
- 14:27Speaker 1: you talk about a movie like oil tankers on fire
- 14:30Speaker 1: in a wave being transported across the ocean.
- 14:34Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And then one of the other problems
- 14:36Speaker 2: with Port Valdez was that the town was built on
- 14:39Speaker 2: sand and gravel, not bedrock. And one of the things
- 14:43Speaker 2: about Omega Thrust earthquake is it liquefies the soil. It
- 14:47Speaker 2: turns what seemed to be totally solid ground into essentially
- 14:51Speaker 2: a liquid and it can swallow stuff up like almost immediately.
- 14:54Speaker 2: So huge parts of that town were also swallowed up
- 14:58Speaker 2: by the earth all of a sudden, like this is
- 15:01Speaker 2: Biblical end Times kind of stuff. You know.
- 15:04Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, at the risk of just going
- 15:07Speaker 1: on and on, I got one more, I think, and
- 15:10Speaker 1: then we can probably take a break. But if you're
- 15:12Speaker 1: talking about Anchorage, you know, the biggest city there that
- 15:16Speaker 1: got you know, an Alaska at least that got hit.
- 15:20Speaker 1: There was a landslide because it also triggered landslides. We
- 15:22Speaker 1: should have mentioned that, and the entire business district sank
- 15:26Speaker 1: about nine feet. There were some building collapses, to be sure,
- 15:30Speaker 1: but others just look kind of like the forest just dropped,
- 15:33Speaker 1: like you know, anywhere from nine to twenty feet below
- 15:37Speaker 1: ones that were just on the other side of the street.
- 15:39Speaker 2: Did you see photos of that?
- 15:41Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Life magazine has a I mean there's a
- 15:43Speaker 1: ton of good photos online that are just kind of
- 15:46Speaker 1: hard to wrap your head around, like what you're looking
- 15:48Speaker 1: at sometimes.
- 15:48Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes a section for sure, like one of
- 15:51Speaker 2: those three d I posters, but with earthquake stuff instead.
- 15:55Speaker 1: We did a whole episode on those.
- 15:57Speaker 2: We did, and if I remember correctly, that was pretty interesting.
- 16:00Speaker 1: Yeah, the magic I think.
- 16:03Speaker 2: You want to take that break you mentioned.
- 16:05Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll take a break and talk about sort of
- 16:07Speaker 1: what happened after right after this.
- 16:31Speaker 2: So four minutes later, the earthquake stops, but there's still tsunamis,
- 16:37Speaker 2: there's fires at sea, even like whole towns of collapse,
- 16:41Speaker 2: Like it takes a little while for the dust to
- 16:43Speaker 2: finally settle. When it does, I think, like the next day,
- 16:49Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson, who was president at the time, said, Alaska
- 16:52Speaker 2: as a whole is a major disaster area. Remember I said,
- 16:56Speaker 2: like telephone poles snapped and there were no roads anymore
- 17:00Speaker 2: or railroads. That meant that people couldn't communicate with the
- 17:05Speaker 2: outside world. So if you had family and friends outside
- 17:08Speaker 2: of Alaska and they heard about this earthquake, they couldn't
- 17:11Speaker 2: get in touch with you, and you couldn't get in
- 17:13Speaker 2: touch with them. So it was a very hairy time
- 17:15Speaker 2: for a lot of people until they could find out
- 17:18Speaker 2: whether their loved ones were alive or not. And I
- 17:20Speaker 2: think that damage is something like three billion dollars in
- 17:23Speaker 2: today's dollars. Yeah, which again, like this is a state
- 17:27Speaker 2: with like a population of I think two hundred and
- 17:29Speaker 2: fifty thousand people at the time, Like it was not
- 17:32Speaker 2: populated at all, but that's how much damage that earthquake did.
- 17:37Speaker 1: Still, Yeah, they had to you know, I mentioned earlier
- 17:41Speaker 1: that it changed the shape of Alaska and its coastline.
- 17:44Speaker 1: It was so drastic that they had to kind of
- 17:47Speaker 1: redraw the shipping lanes and say like hey, like you
- 17:51Speaker 1: can't go that way anymore because of this, and they
- 17:54Speaker 1: had to kind of, you know, redraw all of that area.
- 17:58Speaker 1: Some people were, you know, Alaska strong, so we're not leaving.
- 18:02Speaker 1: We're gonna build on top of where we were. Other
- 18:04Speaker 1: people said, you know what, I'm going to go higher.
- 18:08Speaker 1: Entire towns were gone and then popped up in other places,
- 18:12Speaker 1: and Valdis is a great example because the Army Corps
- 18:16Speaker 1: of Engineers came in and said, you know, Josh Clark
- 18:19Speaker 1: one day will say that this was built on a
- 18:21Speaker 1: gravel foundation, so you shouldn't even rebuild there. And there
- 18:24Speaker 1: were only about five hundred, you know, plus or minus
- 18:27Speaker 1: people living there at the time, and they said, you
- 18:29Speaker 1: got three years to get out of here. We got
- 18:32Speaker 1: a new Valdis for you about four miles away, and
- 18:35Speaker 1: that's generally what happened. People left set up the new
- 18:40Speaker 1: town of Valdis, which now has close to four thousand people,
- 18:43Speaker 1: and they burned the rest of what was there down
- 18:46Speaker 1: just to make sure that people didn't kind of like
- 18:49Speaker 1: set up and squat there.
- 18:50Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of cool. You can go hike the
- 18:53Speaker 2: old Valdis town. There's an intersection still of the two
- 18:57Speaker 2: main drags, and I think, like there's the street sign
- 19:00Speaker 2: up still and then they have plaques showing what used
- 19:03Speaker 2: to be where. It looks like a pretty cool hike.
- 19:06Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 19:07Speaker 2: So, Chuck, we talked about how this kind of changed science.
- 19:12Speaker 2: I think we should really kind of expand on that
- 19:14Speaker 2: because it really changed science. Chuck.
- 19:18Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, this next part we need to
- 19:20Speaker 1: think specifically, I think Livia used a Smithsonian Magazine article
- 19:24Speaker 1: by Christian Elliott for this part. So big thanks to
- 19:28Speaker 1: Christian Elliot for all the hard work and Livia so
- 19:32Speaker 1: well of course in Libya always she's our north star
- 19:35Speaker 1: after all. But you know, we've already kind of said it,
- 19:39Speaker 1: but I guess more specifically we should say that, you know,
- 19:43Speaker 1: at this time in nineteen sixty four, the idea of
- 19:46Speaker 1: what we knew about plate tectonics was not you know, entrenched,
- 19:51Speaker 1: Like people kind of had a good idea of what
- 19:53Speaker 1: they thought was going on for a long time. People
- 19:56Speaker 1: had been checking out maps and saying like, hey, I
- 19:58Speaker 1: think that this used to be connected right here, and
- 20:02Speaker 1: maybe things stripped it apart, but it was still sort
- 20:05Speaker 1: of being actively debated at the time, and this really
- 20:10Speaker 1: kind of like laid bare, like, yeah, this is not
- 20:13Speaker 1: a hypothesis anymore.
- 20:15Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think that plate tectonics
- 20:17Speaker 2: wasn't accepted until the sixties, but that's that's exactly how
- 20:21Speaker 2: it was. So this was such a massive earthquake, it
- 20:24Speaker 2: just presented all sorts of different places where evidence kind
- 20:29Speaker 2: of came along that said, Okay, explain this, what explains
- 20:31Speaker 2: this what explains that? And it turns out that plate
- 20:34Speaker 2: tectonics essentially was the only theory that fit, you know,
- 20:39Speaker 2: that explained how the earth went up here, or how
- 20:42Speaker 2: it sunk here, or how it moved fifty feet onto
- 20:45Speaker 2: the sea here, or why this you know, this town
- 20:48Speaker 2: just got swallowed up. All of this could be explained
- 20:51Speaker 2: by plate tectonics and not the other rival theories. I
- 20:55Speaker 2: think the the other rival theory was that earthquakes were
- 20:59Speaker 2: God's will, and play tectonics just explains it better.
- 21:04Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. This is obviously a gold mine for
- 21:08Speaker 1: the US Geological Survey. So they got people to Alaska
- 21:12Speaker 1: like really quick, and you know, got out all their
- 21:16Speaker 1: do hickeys and whirley gigs and measuring tape, and we're like, hey,
- 21:21Speaker 1: we can really learn a lot from this stuff. You know,
- 21:25Speaker 1: people are being taken care of, so now we need
- 21:27Speaker 1: to kind of figure out what happens moving forward. One
- 21:32Speaker 1: of the interesting things they found, and some of the
- 21:35Speaker 1: stuff gets really really interesting. I think that popped up especially.
- 21:38Speaker 1: I'll just tease out the fungus that's coming among us soon.
- 21:43Speaker 2: Nice.
- 21:44Speaker 1: But they looked at those forests that you were talking
- 21:46Speaker 1: about that sunk below the ocean they you know, filled
- 21:50Speaker 1: up with like sediment and seawater and stuff. And they
- 21:52Speaker 1: were digging around down there trying to just study it.
- 21:55Speaker 1: And they kept digging and they said, you know what,
- 21:57Speaker 1: there's other like below this stuff. We're finding older land plants.
- 22:02Speaker 1: And so this has happened before, you guys, like probably
- 22:06Speaker 1: more than several times over the last like thousands or
- 22:10Speaker 1: millions of years, and it's gonna happen again.
- 22:13Speaker 2: Yeah, can't you kind of just see like if you
- 22:15Speaker 2: sped it up like a forest just sinking into the
- 22:18Speaker 2: sea and then being covered with sediment and a new
- 22:20Speaker 2: forest grows on top of it, and that sinks in
- 22:22Speaker 2: the sea, and if you do it fast enough that
- 22:24Speaker 2: bugs Bunny Powerhouse song just starts playing like it just
- 22:27Speaker 2: becomes a conveyor belt.
- 22:29Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just nuts to think about.
- 22:31Speaker 2: But that's exactly what they found with that. And they
- 22:34Speaker 2: found that from the Alaska earthquake. And they were like, Okay,
- 22:36Speaker 2: didn't know that this happened. Now that we know this,
- 22:40Speaker 2: this is a thing, we can start looking for it
- 22:41Speaker 2: in other places we think are earthquake prone. And they
- 22:45Speaker 2: started looking around and they found it in other places
- 22:48Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, the big one along the
- 22:50Speaker 2: Cascadian subduction zone that threatens California every moment of every day.
- 22:57Speaker 2: We know about that thanks to the science that they
- 23:01Speaker 2: figured out thanks to the Alaska earthquake of sixty four.
- 23:05Speaker 1: Yeah, at birthed a new science in paleo seismology, which
- 23:09Speaker 1: is that I meaning that didn't happen every day. We
- 23:11Speaker 1: try all the time to birth new sciences and no
- 23:14Speaker 1: one's listening.
- 23:15Speaker 2: Now, but we don't have cool names like paleo seismology
- 23:18Speaker 2: or megathrust, and maybe we should rethink things.
- 23:20Speaker 1: That's true. Mega thrust is the sexiest science.
- 23:23Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like a Guar album.
- 23:26Speaker 1: Oh it does actually.
- 23:27Speaker 2: Yeah. Another thing was that we kind of talked about
- 23:30Speaker 2: that we didn't really understand before were tsunamis title waves,
- 23:35Speaker 2: And of course we knew about tsunamis and title waves,
- 23:37Speaker 2: and I guess science has kind of had a pretty
- 23:40Speaker 2: decent grasp. I'm like, Okay, an epicenter of a major
- 23:45Speaker 2: earthquake out at sea is going to send a tsunami
- 23:47Speaker 2: and maybe we can't even calculate how long it'll take
- 23:50Speaker 2: to get there and all that stuff. But they were
- 23:53Speaker 2: baffled by why some of these coastal areas were hit
- 23:56Speaker 2: by tsunamis within just a couple of minutes of the earthquake.
- 24:00Speaker 2: It just did not fit into the understanding of tidal
- 24:02Speaker 2: waves at the time.
- 24:04Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So they you know, did some literal
- 24:07Speaker 1: digging and some figurative digging, and they came to this
- 24:12Speaker 1: was the unique shape of Alaska's coastline at the time,
- 24:16Speaker 1: where you know, very jagged and you'd have some deep
- 24:18Speaker 1: fiords where glaciers had cut into the land that would
- 24:22Speaker 1: send silts onto the ocean floor. And the quake just
- 24:26Speaker 1: kind of stirred all this stuff up, like you know,
- 24:29Speaker 1: sand in a glass that had been settled down there
- 24:32Speaker 1: for centuries and centuries. And these were basically underwater landslides
- 24:37Speaker 1: that caused these waves. So it was I think that
- 24:41Speaker 1: a new term was birth, which was land landslide tsunami.
- 24:45Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like dropping something heavy in a bathtub
- 24:48Speaker 2: and preduke like that. But it's a little different, but
- 24:52Speaker 2: the same thing kind of.
- 24:54Speaker 1: That's right. And you man, you got to tell them
- 24:56Speaker 1: about this spungus.
- 24:56Speaker 2: This is it I hard to believe, this is yours.
- 24:59Speaker 2: I'll tee it up for you, all right, there is
- 25:01Speaker 2: a mystery with some fungus. Get to it.
- 25:06Speaker 1: Yeah, so Crypto caucus, that's pretty easy. Cryptoccus Gatti too,
- 25:12Speaker 1: TI's two eyes.
- 25:13Speaker 2: No is Cryptococcus Gotti?
- 25:16Speaker 1: Yeah, I got Ti? That's right. And how you have
- 25:18Speaker 1: to say it?
- 25:19Speaker 2: I think so, but you have to go up really high.
- 25:21Speaker 1: Pitched got te. So this is a microscopic fungus. It
- 25:27Speaker 1: can be pretty bad. It can cause fatal infections. But
- 25:30Speaker 1: it's like this native to the tropics, So Alaska's like,
- 25:33Speaker 1: we don't have to worry about that kind of thing. Sure,
- 25:35Speaker 1: it grows on rotting wood in the tropics, and apparently
- 25:39Speaker 1: it survives pretty well in seawater. At the turn of
- 25:42Speaker 1: the twentieth century, apparently some of this fungus ended up
- 25:45Speaker 1: among us and by way of a ballast in the
- 25:49Speaker 1: water of a ship that was going on a route
- 25:52Speaker 1: from Brazil to Vancouver and off the coast of the
- 25:55Speaker 1: Pacific northwest there. Once this stuff was spilled out of
- 25:59Speaker 1: that ballast, it said, Hey, we like the seawater. We're
- 26:03Speaker 1: going to adapt and we're here. You don't know we're
- 26:05Speaker 1: here yet, but we're going to be here. In nineteen
- 26:07Speaker 1: sixty four, when this tsunami happens, and it's going to
- 26:10Speaker 1: spread us now far and wide, right, Yeah.
- 26:14Speaker 2: I mean that tsunami took this stuff that had just
- 26:16Speaker 2: been hanging out off the coast that no one even
- 26:18Speaker 2: knew was there except maybe that ship captain if he
- 26:22Speaker 2: was nefarious, that's right, and just spread it inland. This
- 26:25Speaker 2: is nineteen sixty four, and now all of a sudden,
- 26:27Speaker 2: the fungus is like, Okay, we're in a new habitat,
- 26:30Speaker 2: new ecosystem. Let's get to adapting here. And it did.
- 26:33Speaker 2: It survived that tsunami and started to readapt to life
- 26:37Speaker 2: on land, but life on land in the tundra essentially.
- 26:42Speaker 2: And so as that stuff started adapting and adapting, by
- 26:46Speaker 2: the nineties it was capable of infecting people again. And
- 26:50Speaker 2: there was this mysterious outbreak of Cryptococcus gati and they
- 26:55Speaker 2: could not figure out what the heck was going on because,
- 26:57Speaker 2: as far as anybody knew, the only place you found
- 27:00Speaker 2: that was in the tropics on rotting wood. I guess
- 27:03Speaker 2: some epidemiologists kind of put two and two together based
- 27:07Speaker 2: on the tsunami. He was like, basically, the only way
- 27:10Speaker 2: you could have taken this stuff and gotten it all
- 27:13Speaker 2: over the land is from a tsunami, so he figured
- 27:16Speaker 2: that's what happened.
- 27:17Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's I just I would love to know
- 27:20Speaker 1: more about the story of how they traced it to
- 27:22Speaker 1: this one ship that went from Brazil to Vancouver. You know,
- 27:27Speaker 1: obviously shipping records, but it's still like quite a bit
- 27:30Speaker 1: of scientific detective work.
- 27:31Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I'm not sure if
- 27:34Speaker 2: he figured that part out too or not, but I
- 27:36Speaker 2: know that I was reading in that article by Christian
- 27:40Speaker 2: Elliott in Smithsonian. He's talking about how the guy figured
- 27:43Speaker 2: out how it got onto land at least.
- 27:45Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool. All right, So we'll take our final
- 27:48Speaker 1: break here and we'll talk about maybe a silver lining
- 27:51Speaker 1: that came out of this right after this, all right. So,
- 28:16Speaker 1: you know, anytime something like this happens, there is usually
- 28:19Speaker 1: a scientific silver lining as far as just learning, you know,
- 28:22Speaker 1: about things that took place, learning how to maybe not
- 28:26Speaker 1: prevent in the future, but at least get more lead
- 28:29Speaker 1: time in the future. And then also and most importantly
- 28:32Speaker 1: probably is like how to build and where to build
- 28:34Speaker 1: moving forward.
- 28:35Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Alaska earthquake taught us not there, Nope,
- 28:41Speaker 2: not there either, Yeah, not there, not there, And it
- 28:45Speaker 2: just goes on like that, right, But people were like, no,
- 28:47Speaker 2: we want to build there. So one of the things
- 28:49Speaker 2: that we learned how to do was to number one,
- 28:52Speaker 2: figure out where not to build, but also how to
- 28:55Speaker 2: build so that like buildings just didn't immediately call apps
- 29:00Speaker 2: and whole towns weren't just swallowed up at the drop
- 29:02Speaker 2: of a richter. You know.
- 29:04Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Alaska as a state started adopting you know,
- 29:10Speaker 1: obviously new building codes, and you know, especially if it
- 29:15Speaker 1: was like a big building, if it was like a
- 29:17Speaker 1: like a large apartment building, which I mean I don't
- 29:20Speaker 1: think Alaska has a ton of those, but you know,
- 29:22Speaker 1: larger buildings. They are now kind of neck and neck
- 29:27Speaker 1: with California for having the strictest building codes, and it's
- 29:31Speaker 1: worked pretty well. There was another big earthquake and Anchorage
- 29:33Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen that injured about one hundred and seventeen people.
- 29:37Speaker 1: That was a seven point zero and caused seventy six
- 29:41Speaker 1: million dollars in damages. But and you know, stuff got destroyed,
- 29:44Speaker 1: like roads and stuff, to be sure, but no one died.
- 29:47Speaker 1: There were no like really serious injuries, and a lot
- 29:50Speaker 1: of those buildings stayed you know upright.
- 29:54Speaker 2: Yeah, And So one reason or one way that they
- 29:56Speaker 2: developed those building codes and also where to build was
- 30:00Speaker 2: the widespread deployment of seismographs. Right. I think in the
- 30:05Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four earthquake, there were only two seismograph stations
- 30:08Speaker 2: in all of Alaska, right, and the oldest one had
- 30:12Speaker 2: been installed sixty years before. Right after that, they started
- 30:16Speaker 2: throwing seismic stations up all over Alaska, around California, in
- 30:21Speaker 2: western Canada, and we started to develop more and more information.
- 30:27Speaker 2: One thing I saw is that the thing that really
- 30:30Speaker 2: got seismographs out there though, was the arms race. The
- 30:34Speaker 2: nuclear arms race.
- 30:35Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we.
- 30:36Speaker 2: Were using seismographs to listen out for other countries secretly
- 30:40Speaker 2: testing nukes, and that that's what we were using them
- 30:43Speaker 2: for initially, and then people were like, huh, let's start
- 30:45Speaker 2: actually listening for earthquakes. So by being able to get
- 30:48Speaker 2: a lot of information about big and small quakes, how
- 30:52Speaker 2: frequently they were, where they were epicentered, we were able
- 30:56Speaker 2: to really kind of zero in and come up with
- 30:59Speaker 2: entire maps of where to build, where not to build.
- 31:02Speaker 2: There's this National Seismic Hazard Map, which is a party
- 31:07Speaker 2: in a map from what I understand, and we have
- 31:13Speaker 2: that thanks to this earthquake in the science that it
- 31:15Speaker 2: kicked off.
- 31:16Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think just like less than ten
- 31:19Speaker 1: years later, there were up to ninety seismic stations in
- 31:22Speaker 1: Alaska alone, and then by the mid two thousands, I
- 31:28Speaker 1: think one hundred and ninety seven sites in Alaska and
- 31:32Speaker 1: Western Canada. That was just over like a three year
- 31:35Speaker 1: period through the National Science Foundation's us Array project from
- 31:39Speaker 1: twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen is when they got all
- 31:41Speaker 1: those and then what we learned about, you know, tsunamis
- 31:45Speaker 1: and people living along the coast like that led to
- 31:47Speaker 1: a lot of new information as far as what was
- 31:52Speaker 1: ended up being the National Tsunami Warning Center.
- 31:54Speaker 2: Yeah, we definitely got way better at predicting where tsunamis
- 31:58Speaker 2: would hit, how bad it would be. And one of
- 32:00Speaker 2: the other things too, is I guess people didn't really
- 32:03Speaker 2: realize this, but if you were living on the coast,
- 32:05Speaker 2: probably if you were of European descent, I'll bet if
- 32:07Speaker 2: you were indigenous, you already knew this. But if you
- 32:10Speaker 2: feel an earthquake, go run to high land, Yeah, because
- 32:13Speaker 2: there's probably a tsunami coming within a couple minutes. That
- 32:17Speaker 2: seemed to have been widely understood only after the earthquake
- 32:22Speaker 2: in Alaska, which I guess makes sense if we didn't
- 32:24Speaker 2: understand local tsunamis at the time.
- 32:27Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure they. I think the retreating glaciers are
- 32:33Speaker 1: potentially causing even more trouble as far as today goes
- 32:36Speaker 1: in Alaska. That permafrost could make the land more vulnerable
- 32:41Speaker 1: to you know, destruction. I know, I mentioned the twenty
- 32:44Speaker 1: eighteen one. There was even bigger one just a few
- 32:46Speaker 1: years ago in twenty twenty one, that reached eight point two,
- 32:50Speaker 1: but being Alaska, it was fortunately in a more remote area. Yeah,
- 32:55Speaker 1: and so a lot less damage. That's kind of you know,
- 32:57Speaker 1: the one benefit of Alaska. The reason this one was
- 33:00Speaker 1: so bad, it was because it hit the towns and
- 33:02Speaker 1: cities along.
- 33:02Speaker 2: The coast right exactly for sure. Yeah. And the fossil
- 33:07Speaker 2: fuel industry was joyous because there pipeline, the Trans Alaska Pipeline,
- 33:14Speaker 2: did not suffer much damage in earthquake in two thousand
- 33:18Speaker 2: and two, I.
- 33:18Speaker 1: Think, Yeah, I mean that's one of the big worries
- 33:22Speaker 1: is that there's so much oil activity there in fossil
- 33:26Speaker 1: fuel infrastructure that you know, an another big one that
- 33:30Speaker 1: did a lot of damage to that could cause you know,
- 33:34Speaker 1: big obviously human concerns, but very much could devastate the
- 33:39Speaker 1: region environmentally for sure.
- 33:42Speaker 2: And I mean in part because so the Trans Alaska pipeline.
- 33:48Speaker 2: In this case, it was the Dnali fault that caused
- 33:51Speaker 2: a seven point nine magnitude earthquake the two thousand and
- 33:53Speaker 2: two to one, and that pipeline goes right across the fault.
- 33:57Speaker 2: So yes, it is a very seems like a tenuous
- 34:02Speaker 2: technology as it stands. For sure, you got anything else
- 34:06Speaker 2: about the Alaska earthquake of nineteen sixty four, I do not. Nope, Okay,
- 34:13Speaker 2: I don't either, So I guess that means it's time
- 34:15Speaker 2: for listener mail.
- 34:18Speaker 1: Well, we're going to forego listener mail for the next
- 34:20Speaker 1: couple of weeks to chat a little bit like at
- 34:23Speaker 1: fireside chat about our upcoming sea voyage with Virgin Cruises
- 34:29Speaker 1: above the Valiant Lady, We're going to be taken to see, Okay,
- 34:33Speaker 1: taking and taken to see. We're going from New York
- 34:36Speaker 1: City to Bermuda October second through seventh with our colleagues,
- 34:42Speaker 1: our old pals. You know that we started the stuff
- 34:44Speaker 1: shows with way back in the day, A couple of
- 34:46Speaker 1: which stuff Mom never told you, and stuff they don't
- 34:49Speaker 1: want you to know. We'll be there with us, we'll
- 34:51Speaker 1: be doing a live show, we'll be doing some other stuff.
- 34:54Speaker 1: They keep talking about these other events we're going to do.
- 34:56Speaker 1: I don't know if it's like a trivia night or
- 34:58Speaker 1: definitely like meet and greets and stuff. But we're pretty
- 35:01Speaker 1: excited about it.
- 35:02Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And I think, did you say we're
- 35:05Speaker 2: going to Bermuda? Yeah, okay, so I think it's worth
- 35:09Speaker 2: saying again we're going to Bermuda on this and it's
- 35:11Speaker 2: going to be a pretty fun five night cruise. And
- 35:14Speaker 2: I believe there's still passages that can be booked, but
- 35:17Speaker 2: they're actually selling like pretty fast. I'm impressed with us, Chuck.
- 35:21Speaker 1: I know, I'm excited. And we just found out, you know,
- 35:24Speaker 1: Matt and Noel and Ben with stuff they don't want
- 35:27Speaker 1: you to know, have been on one of these before.
- 35:29Speaker 1: And they said it was a great time. And they said,
- 35:31Speaker 1: here's a little pro tip. You know, the venue where
- 35:35Speaker 1: we're doing our actual the live podcast portion, you know,
- 35:37Speaker 1: can't fit twenty seven hundred like everybody on board, right,
- 35:42Speaker 1: And they said, hey, pro tip here is when you
- 35:45Speaker 1: get on board, you sign up for the different stuff.
- 35:47Speaker 1: So I think through the app, so they like tell
- 35:50Speaker 1: everybody to get on there and sign up for your
- 35:51Speaker 1: live show. But I think they're also like, they're gonna
- 35:54Speaker 1: have cameras and you can watch it on TV in
- 35:56Speaker 1: your room as well.
- 35:57Speaker 2: Oh, Nate, closed circuit Is there anything more wondrous than
- 36:01Speaker 2: close circuit TV?
- 36:03Speaker 1: I don't know. We should do a show about it.
- 36:06Speaker 2: Yeah, that should be our onboard show, that's right. Yes,
- 36:09Speaker 2: So you can go to Virgin dot com slash Stuff
- 36:13Speaker 2: at Sea.
- 36:15Speaker 1: Right, yeah, or just google Stuff at Sea Virgin Cruises,
- 36:19Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Cruise. It'll all get you.
- 36:21Speaker 2: There, and there really is no better time to learn
- 36:24Speaker 2: how to walk around with a parrot on your shoulder
- 36:26Speaker 2: than this particular.
- 36:27Speaker 1: Cruise, agreed.
- 36:28Speaker 2: So yeah, So we'll see you guys in October, but
- 36:31Speaker 2: even before then, we'll see you on the next episode
- 36:33Speaker 2: of Stuff you Should Know. And in the meantime you
- 36:36Speaker 2: can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
- 36:39Speaker 2: dot com.
- 36:43Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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