Quakeland is a journey across America, examining earthquakes both naturally-occurring as well as man-made. It takes a hard look at what we humans are doing to contribute to the frequency and severity of them, as well as what we are doing to prepare and recover from them.
The conclusion is that earthquakes can happen pretty much anywhere. And we are contributing to their frequency and severity. And we know so little about them that we don't have a way of predicting them. And because big ones happen so rarely and people's memories are so short, most governments do not find it worthwhile to spend the money so that we are prepared. It's a pretty scary conclusion.
A good chunk of this book (Part 2) is focused on earthquakes with man-made causes. This includes dams, drilling, mines, injection wells, geothermal energy, fracking, etc. Since there are so many of these topics, at times this part of the book feels thinly stretched, with fact-after-fact thrown in, but not enough depth or an overarching story that the reader can really remember it all. In the end, I'm not sure I retained much details from the topics in this part.
I went into this book wanting to understand more about the well-known earthquake zones, such as the Cascadia subduction zone and Ring of Fire, but the book didn't spent much time covering those, just a chapter here and there. It would have been nice to see more coverage about their histories, what we know about the lead-up to their tremors, and how communities rebuilt afterwards.
Part 3 of the book is the most interesting to me. It talks about urban planning with respect to earthquakes, mental health effects of those who have experienced a traumatic earthquake, tsunamis, earthquake predictions, and early warning systems. I really enjoyed this part of the book and thought it was well-written and engaging.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
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