Withholding speculation as to whether FEMA are in fact wizards, that's a pretty "oh shit" moment right there if you live in San Francisco. It also emphasizes the fact that the continued existence of San Francisco is a testament to mankind's ongoing desire to engage in a staring contest against horrible catastrophe.

And let's be clear, this isn't some sensationalist scare tactic -- at some point, an earthquake is going to devastate the city. The United States Geological Survey says that the chances of a quake of at least 6.7 on the Richter scale hitting San Fran in the next 30 years sits at a cozy 99 percent.

And there is nothing we can do about it. It happened in 1906, and in 1989 it gave everyone a preview of what was coming.

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Holy Shit! What Can We Do?

Of course, San Franciscans are more than ready for this kind of thing, right? When you know that your city is prone to devastating earthquakes, then you're going to make sure that earthquakes factor into your building ordinances. Well, it's true that the state of California did decide to start earthquake-proofing all their new buildings ... in 1980. So if you're wondering whether your highrise office is going to withstand the inevitable Big One, you'd just better hope that the building doesn't outdate hair metal.

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The problem is the fact that most of the Bay Area is built upon a foundation of soft mud that, during an earthquake, is prone to something frighteningly referred to as liquefaction, which is exactly what it sounds like. Estimates say that a quake in the range of a 7.8 on the Richter scale (which is right in the range of what we'd expect -- the 1906 quake was an 8.0) would topple 1,500 buildings and badly damage another 300,000. The government has just started rushing against time to brace the Golden Gate Bridge after reports showed a quake would cause it to utterly collapse.

Wikipedia

But what's really standing between San Francisco and avoiding total annihilation is money. With a $25.4 billion budget deficit, the California government wants property owners to retrofit their own damn buildings if they're so scared of earthquakes, a cost that no average person can afford, forcing them into a much cheaper but less effective form of earthquake insurance -- prayer. Never mind that the cost of earthquake-proofing San Francisco would only be around $260 million, compared to the estimated cost of rebuilding after a quake -- $200 billion. But, hey, we're not economists.

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It turns out Venice, built practically on top of a body of water, is not exactly the best-planned city. Back in the 12th century when Venice went through a population explosion, the city used up all of its available land and was forced to build upon acres of really shitty mud. Since these were the Dark Ages and everyone was an idiot, the rulers decided to just cover the ground with millions of wooden planks and build on top of that. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing has been very slowly sliding into the ocean ever since.

It didn't help that, in the early 1900s, city officials began pumping water out of the bedrock underneath the city for some reason, which is kind of like playing a game of Jenga by taking all the blocks out from the bottom first.

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Because Venice smartly sits right at sea level, it already floods basically every Tuesday. The Acqua Alta is the name the locals give to the regular flooding that turns the morning work commute into a 3-mile breaststroke. The thing is, back in 1900, the Acqua Alta came 10 times a year, while these days it's closer to 100, because the city sank 20 centimeters over that time.

Gwenael Piaser

And now we have global warming.

As in, the thing that causes the sea levels to rise thanks to melting ice and thermal expansion of ocean water. Scientists say that the combined threat means that Venetians will need to evolve gills by 2100.

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Holy Shit! What Can We Do?

The Venetian government is making plans to offset the rapidly encroaching Atlantisification of their city, though it sounds more like something Mr. Burns would propose than anything practical. The Moses Project is a plan to surround Venice with a series of gigantic, ridiculously expensive moving barriers that are supposed to hold back the ocean if it starts acting like a mean drunk.

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But Italy is under constant pressure to scrap the project with concerns that it simply won't do shit, though nobody has proposed a better solution that doesn't involve retrofitting the entire city with giant inflatable balloons.

Yes, an earthquake. In Seattle. The coffee-soaked home of Frasier isn't exactly on the edge of its seat waiting for the ground to start shaking, but maybe it should be -- it's looking down the barrel of what could be one of the worst earthquakes in history.

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The state of Washington was last hit by an earthquake in 2001, and while no deaths were recorded, nature was just getting started. Some science people say that there is an 80 percent chance within the next 50 years that a massive fault off the shore of the Pacific Northwest is going to break apart and trigger what they are unnervingly calling a "megaquake."

Wikipedia

The fault, which could be the biggest in the world, has started building up strain, which is the earthquake equivalent of smoke billowing from the top of a volcano, and scientists have been scrambling to find some way to get the residents of Seattle and the surrounding areas to give a damn.

Here's a computer simulation of the devastation, put together by the Washington State Department of Transportation:

That's simulating a 7.0 quake. The fault line could produce a 9.0 -- as powerful as the one that just devastated Japan.

Holy Shit! What Can We Do?

If you built a city along the most gaping fault line on planet Earth, that should be the most earthquake-prepared city in existence, right? The buildings should be made from adamantium. But the truth is, Seattle just doesn't know much about earthquakes. Ask around, and old timers will tell you tales of the dreaded 5.5 Duvall quake which momentarily interrupted a Mariners game. Because it's been so long since the last "big one," modern-day Seattle is so unprepared for earthquakes that it's full of completely unreinforced masonry structures that basically fall over if you sneeze too hard.

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The last time the megaquake happened was in 1700. Native Americans still tell chilling campfire tales about it, and the devastation was well documented in Japan. That's right -- the last time this fault line went off in a big way, it damaged Japan.

On the bright side, the Space Needle is predicted to withstand a quake of up to around 9.1, so when the big one hits, you know where to go.

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With a population of about 500,000 people, Goma, a major city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is about the size of Kansas City. However, there are a few key differences -- unlike Goma, Kansas City does not currently sit right next to an active volcano.

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To be fair, the volcano is 18 kilometers away, but since the lava can only flow in one of two directions, it has a 50-50 chance of striking the city, which reduces the fate of the African population to a coin flip every time the volcano starts huffing smoke. The last time it happened, in 2002, Goma lost the coin toss, and a fifth of the city was drenched in liquid rock.

But even if the residents do evolve lava-resistant skin, they still live in the Great Rift Valley, which means there is another disaster lurking that can team up with the volcano to wipe out the city, like a coalition of supervillains.

Radio Okapi

Limnic eruptions are freak events in which lakes containing an abundance of carbon dioxide suddenly vomit out a cloud of the stuff so huge that it suffocates everything nearby. The combination of volcanic and seismic activity needed to make this happen is pretty rare, but one lake with just the right ratio of horrible ingredients is Lake Kivu. And what city lies on the shores of Lake Kivu? Why, it's "We live right next to a constantly exploding volcano" Goma, of course.

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Kivu is one of only three known "exploding lakes" in the world, and it's an uneasy sign that the other two both exploded recently.

Holy Shit! What Can We Do?

Efforts are underway to remove the gas from Kivu, but that's not going to do anything about the fucking volcano. So maybe rather than addressing either, it'd be easier just to, you know, move the town down the road a few miles.

Wendkuni

But the hits just keep coming. In 1989, a tornado devastated the city. That's no surprise because Bangladesh is the most tornado-prone place in the world behind North America. And did somebody say earthquakes? They have those, too. Living in Dhaka is basically living in a Roland Emmerich movie every single day. Seriously, we're waiting to hear reports of comet bombardment or flat-out alien invasion.

Red Cross

Oh wait, did we forget to mention the tsunami threat? Really, the most important thing we have to learn from Dhaka is how the hell it still exists.

Wikipedia

Holy Shit! What Can We Do?

Despite living in the most flat-out horrifying and disaster-ridden area of the globe, the people of Dhaka just haven't prepared for the quakes. Perhaps it slipped their mind while they were dodging tornadoes. Scientists say that a magnitude 6 quake, which really isn't that big, has the capacity to damn near obliterate the city. Their buildings are so poorly equipped for a quake that 80 to 90 percent of the concrete structures in the city would just collapse.

Remember when, way back at the beginning, we said San Francisco didn't have the cash to quake-proof all of its buildings? Now imagine a massive city that's known as the rickshaw capital of the world and where the average person makes $1,350 a year and 34 percent live in poverty.

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So they, like the rest of mankind to one degree or another, are hoping nature will hold off until we get our shit together.

For more doomsday-like disasters we should be ready for, check out 6 Man-Made Natural Disasters Just Waiting to Happen, Or see the ones that have already happened in 6 Natural Disasters That Were Caused by Human Stupidity.

And stop by LinkSTORM to see which site eats it first when the Internet apocalypse arrives.

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