Deadly Pacific Drain the Oceans

The Pacific Ocean harbors a tectonic monster deep below its surface, which poses a significant threat to the 500 million people living around its coast. The Ring of Fire, the planet's largest and most dangerous seismic zone, lies beneath the Pacific Ocean and is responsible for 90% of all earthquakes. The consequences of these earthquakes are devastating, as they generate huge surges of water, known as tsunamis. The latest underwater scanning technology has enabled scientists to reveal the secrets of the seafloor by emptying the oceans and turning accurate data into 3D images. The program, Drain the Oceans, explores the dangers hidden from view, including the world's biggest tsunami machine, and investigates whether the world's next mega-earthquake is brewing off the coast of Seattle. The discovery of an underwater volcano, just 44 miles from Tokyo, has seismic experts worried, and scientists caught up in an undersea earthquake learn about the dangers facing New Zealand. The program reveals the secrets of the deadly Pacific and the Cascadia subduction zone, which stretches 700 miles along the coastline of the Pacific Northwest and is home to 10 million people. The subduction zone generates not only earthquakes but also huge tsunamis, and evidence suggests that it has been inactive for centuries. However, scientists have discovered evidence of seismic devastation stretching back over thousands of years, and the last mega-quake occurred in January 1700, generating a tsunami that hit Japan, 4,500 miles away. The program uses the latest technology to visualize the titanic events of January 1700 and its deadly trail of destruction.Earthquake triggers a massive tsunami that floods the coast of Cascadia, including the red cedar forest and everything in its path. Although there is no written history of the 1700 earthquake and tsunami in Cascadia, native peoples of the region hold haunting memories of these terrible events. The First Nation peoples had oral histories about the great battle of Thunderbird and Whale that involved shaking of the ground and washing away of villages. The Great Thunderbird finally carried the Whale to its nest, causing shaking, jumping up, and trembling of the earth beneath and the rolling up of the great waters. Once these stories came to light, the Native Americans essentially said that they knew all about it and that the story had a moral, which was not to build villages too close to the beach.

However, evidently, no one was listening. Today, 10 million people live along the coast of Cascadia and in the cities of Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, and the question is how likely it is that the monster will roar again. If the Cascadia subduction zone repeats its 400-year cycle, then its next mega-quake could be imminent. The strain is building, and it is only a matter of time before it is released.

In a subduction zone earthquake, energy is stretched out, not for 10 or 20 seconds, but for more like three minutes. The shaking is not incredibly violent, but it lasts for a long time, and it is a very long, rolling motion. For tall buildings, that is not good news. With buildings collapsing and infrastructures shattered, it will be hard for the population to escape from the coastal area, the worst place to be trapped. The tectonic plates' sudden release of pressure forces a massive swell in the ocean above, resulting in a tsunami. The wave height, initially, might only be a couple of meters, but it might be 200 kilometers long, and it heads out at the deep-water wave speed, which is very fast, so it's jetliner speed, 500 or 600 miles an hour. Everything we've seen in Japan, we can expect, basically, the exact same thing in Cascadia.

A Cascadia mega-quake is predicted to be North America's worst-ever natural disaster. The fatalities could be fairly large, and we know the strain is building, which is quite harrowing to know that we could have the big one right now, as we speak. However, Cascadia is not the only populated region in the Ring of Fire danger zone. The islands of New Zealand lie directly on the Ring of Fire, and small earthquakes shake the ground here every week. In 2011, the country's second-largest city, Christchurch, was devastated by a magnitude 6.3 quake, killing 185 people. The town of Kaikoura, just north of Christchurch, is a peaceful holiday resort that's popular with nature lovers. Its deep, nutrient-rich waters entice whales close to the shore. However, geologists wonder if the Kaikoura Canyon, which is just half a mile from the town, poses a threat to those living on the nearby coast. Geologists know that landslides triggered by earthquakes in underwater canyons can generate lethal tsunamis.