scientists accidentally stumbled upon a leak in the ocean floor that could potentially induce
the final release of the long-feared big one a horrifying magnitude 9 earthquake that could
wipe out most of the Northwestern coast of the US and parts of Canada's British Columbia I'm
talking about a unique sea pole in the Pacific Ocean sea floor that is gushing out almost fresh
water at a higher rate than ever recorded what are the acts as a lubricant between the two tectonic
plates colliding in the Cascadia subduction zone off the coast of Newport Oregon many are freaking
out thinking that this will unleash Armageddon but does this really represent the risk many
fear and most importantly how will or should this discovery change your everyday life if
you live on the west coast of California as you can imagine it's really important to me I live
in San Diego so let's find out together I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
this video is brought to you by delete me okay so this is a very interesting story and I got
many people I know a bit nervous and I thought it was worth doing a little bit of research to see
exactly what's going on and why there's all this talk about an imminent Mega Quake off the coast
of Oregon I'll start with how the news broke a few months ago on January 2023 Brendan Phillip and a
team of marine geologists and geophysicists from the University of Washington published a paper and
science advances about a high flux seafloor seep within the central Cascadia subduction zone bear
with me a little bit I know it's a mouthful but we'll explain all that in just a bit the
soup was originally discovered by accident in 2015 by Philip when he and another team
of researchers were held back from going far out to sea because of bad weather and ended up
exploring the sea floor about 50 miles off the coast of Oregon they happen to notice a plume
of bubbles emerging from the sea floor about 0.6 miles below the water's surface so they decided
to check it out and sent an unmanned submarine for a close review apart from bubbles later confirmed
to be methane they discovered a series of holes that were gushing out warm water I mean there
was and still is water coming out of the ground into the ocean instead of the other way around
normally this would have attracted that much attention since seeps of water into the ocean have
fought lines as relatively common what surprised them was how fast water was pouring out I mean you
can actually see the flow of water in the video footage they call the site pythia's Oasis and
after years of studying the sleeps chemistry and analyzing surrounding geological data they finally
published their findings and their conclusions shocked the world before we get into that let's
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with delete me links in description huge thanks to delete me and you for supporting the show to
understand why we have to give a little bit of context and that means talking about earthquakes
and faults if you remember your earth science class from high school you're a call that you
can think of the Earth's crust as a gigantic puzzle made up of large pieces called tectonic
plates these plates are consistently moving and interacting with each other and sometimes they
can create cracks or fractures these cracks or fractures are what we call tectonic faults and
they're important because that for most of the earthquakes in the world come from the
cascadius abduction Zone houses a particularly deadly type of fault you see there are three
different types of faults that can form as these plates move around normal reverse and strike slip
in normal fault forms at the boundary of two plates as they're pulling away from each other
reverse faults are the opposite they form when two plates collide and compress against one another
head on with one of the plates lighting up and over the other which dips into the Earth's mantle
finally we have strike slip faults which are when plates slide horizontally past each other moving
in opposite directions when plates rub against each other they can sometimes get stuck because of
friction but since the massive plates keep moving with respect to each other this creates tension at
the boundary like compressing a spring eventually the fault slips and the whole thing moves suddenly
in one huge thrust unleashing all the accumulated energy and producing an earthquake it's kind of
like when you try to slide a wet finger Over clean glass it kind of sticks it first and then slides
all at once of the three types reverse faults are by far the most deadly the Cascadia subduction
zone is an example of a special type of a reverse fault called a mega thrust which is the deadliest
kind there is the fall stretch is 600 to 700 miles between the massive North America tectonic plate
and the Juan de Fuca plate and it runs from the cape Mendocino in Northern California to
Vancouver Island in British Columbia in the csz the oceanic plate called the Juan de Fuca plate
is being pushed underneath the Continental North American Plate when these plates lock or stick
to each other it causes the overlying plate here that's North American Plate to buckle and deform
this deformation can lead to the buildup of energy which is eventually released as a devastating
earthquake we used to think that the cascadius abduction Zone was a silent or a seismic fault
because there is no record of any earthquake or other activity happening there however geologist
Ruth Ludwin from the University of Washington discovered in the mid 80s that it was simply
in a quiet phase after digging a little deeper and looking at local Tales From native North Americans
in the area he noticed there was a recurring myth centered around the year 1700 where a completely
unrelated tribes had remarkably similar accounts of a cataclysmic event that shook the Earth and
flooded the land killing almost everyone near the shore he then discussed covered written
records from Japan of a completely unannounced tsunami that hit on the night of January 26 1700.
that tsunami which obliterated entire towns in Japan was the orphan wave of the last circadian
megathrust earthquake of an estimated 9.0 or more on the Richter scale and geologists quickly caught
on to what this meant this massive Mega thrust fault is just currently dormant so they set out to
find out more about his seismic history what they found was even more unsettling Geographic records
showed that over the last 10 000 years there have been not one but 41 Mega thrust Quakes in Cascadia
almost all of them above eight points on the Richter scale and at least five to seven of them
on a strength of nine or more if you already did the math then you know what this means this Quake
happens on average every 240 to 250 years and the last one was 323 years ago Cascadia is 73 years
overdue for a mega thrust earthquake scientists estimate a one in three chance of it happening in
the next 50 years and it's almost sure to happen before the next 100 to 150 years since in 10
000 years of History the longest period without a Cascadia Mega Quake has been around 500 years
so what does that have to do with pythia's Oasis now that we know the context and the danger that
the zse represents to the entire west coast of the US and Canada we can do a rundown on
Philip and his co-workers paper there were three things that stood out from the water seeping out
at pythia's Oasis one the amount of water pouring out to the water's chemical composition and three
the water's temperature the group of scientists measured water coming out at a flow rate of about
4 to 12 inches per second 10 to 30 centimeters per second now this doesn't seem huge but it actually
is with news outlets comparing it to a fire hose you see the maximum recorded flow rates of water
seeping out of the sea floor elsewhere in the region has been around four to forty thousand
inches per year compared to about 1.2 to 3.5 times 10 to the 8 inches per year observed of pythia's
Oasis so we're talking about water gushing out 3 to 9 1000 times faster than the highest flow rates
ever recorded to date the hole itself is about two inches wide so at that rate it adds about 3.2 to
9.5 gallons per minute a small 1.75 foot fire hose like the ones firemen go into burning buildings
with puts out about 120 to 180 gallons per minute or two to three gallons per second so pythia is a
waste it certainly isn't gushing like a fire hose of water but perhaps a garden hose the second
thing that caught the researcher's attention was the water's chemical composition which is at least
62 percent less salty than the surrounding water so it wasn't exactly sea water gushing out it was
a mixture of seawater and fresh water finally there was the water's temperature of around
53.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 12 degrees Celsius a little over 16 degrees warmer than the surrounding
37.4 degree water of the Pacific what geologists inferred from the unusually high flow rate high
temperatures and low salt content was that there must be a very high pressure fluid in the boundary
of the two tectonic plates and that the sediments there aren't as packed in as they thought but
rather fluid so to speak kind of as if the high pressure water was acting like a lubricant between
the two plates launder Juan de Fuca plate to slide smoothly under the North American Plate
so basically the cascading subduction zone is leaking lubricant and this is slowly increasing
friction between the plates remember what I said about what happens when the two plates stick
because of friction the top plate buckles and then thrusts out when it unsticks unleashing a mega
thrust Quake so now you understand what all this is about people fear that a were already overdue
for the next Mega quake and B the water seeping out of pythia's Oasis is only making things worse
people have been scared of this Mega quake since the 80s and they've even dubbed it the big one
we're talking about an earthquake of up to 9.2 on the Richter Scale even worse than the tohoku
quake in 2011 which was the most costly earthquake in the world's history even though the Japanese
are the best prepared in the world again against Earthquakes so what will something like this do to
Oregon dogs will start barking around 30 seconds before the seismic waves actually hit because they
can hear the high-pitched sound of rocks grinding against each other before the ground actually
starts to move the Tremors will start softly and strengthen lasting a terrifying five and a half
minutes on the northwest coast we only started implementing seismic proof construction code in
the mid 90s so over a million buildings are in danger of collapsing including two-thirds of all
hospitals and about 3 000 schools a total of 75 percent of all buildings along with the Northwest
Coastline could be compromised by the Quake alone the immediate aftermath will be horrible with
fires toxic chemical spills and Devastation all around but people will have to gather whatever
they can and run because the worst is yet to come a massive 600 mile long tsunami will be on the
way to finish the job according to the female Regional director Kenneth Murphy everything
west of Interstate 5 will be destroyed including Seattle Portland Eugene Salem Victoria and even
Vancouver I live 10 miles from Pacific Ocean here in San Diego and San Diego is not on that list I
wonder if we're safe let me know in the comments what you think after that all utilities would be
down hundreds to thousands to millions in the northwest coast will be left without power gas
or running water and to add insult to injury in the past three thousand years major Cascadia
Quakes have caused San Andreas to rupture as well at least nine times this means that it's very
likely that if Cascadia goes so will San Andreas unleashing another major earthquake in California
and Western Mexico as well gotta tell you this is scary as hell so the only thing I'm thinking about
is what we can do about it and I'll be honest At first I felt completely helpless there's nothing
literally nothing we could do to prevent and even predict when this Mega thrust Quake will hit we're
just sure that it's eventually going to but I'm not the type to make a a video for you guys just
to get you worked up and worried that you might die tomorrow it turns out there actually are
plenty of things that we can do to prepare even if it's not a magnitude 9 Quake even a much milder
8.0 retroscale earthquake could end up disrupting Power Water gas and communication systems going
off-grid is the perfect way to hedge against that risk and that's why I focus and worry so
much about it particularly if you live on Higher Ground if you live near the water though odds are
it really wouldn't make that much of a difference we've covered tons of stuff about how to go off
grid using solar batteries and switching to induction cooktops to atmospheric water
harvesting and all sorts of Technologies not good for Matt Farrell is also doing a entire series on
his channel on undecided another tip solar Plus starlink or whichever other satellite internet
company is going strong where you live would be another great way to stay on top of what's going
on with the news in the middle of the chaos living in California where almost all buildings are built
to withstand earthquakes this one came as a surprise to me if you live in the Northwest and
your house is over 30 years old odds are it won't take the beating from the earthquake like the big
one but you can actually fix this to prevent your home from collapsing or sliding off a foundation
you can retrofit it with seismic upgrades such as bolting it onto the foundation bracing the walls
and chimney reinforcing the roof and windows and installing flexible pipes and valves for gas and
water lines you can also secure your furniture and appliances to the wall or floor with straps
or braces and remove any heavy or sharp objects that could fall or fly during an earthquake there
are actually plenty of companies out there that do this sort of work like NW seismic a family-owned
business in Portland earthquake Tech and secure seismic but I bet you're thinking that's got to
be expensive but it's actually not as bad as you might think prices vary significantly the
average is about two to five dollars per square foot in Oregon the average size of family homes
around 2 200 square feet so that means you could cost between four thousand to eleven thousand to
retrofit your home and the best part is that there are grants and Loans available from the
government of Oregon for people who can't afford the added expenses straight up I'll leave a link
in the description where you can get more information just like single family homes
bigger buildings like schools and hospitals and other infrastructure can also be retrofitted for
earthquakes and also for tsunamis so waves and debris don't take the entire building down in
addition to making your home more earthquake resistant you should also have an emergency
plan and kit ready for yourself and your family your plan should include where to meet how to
contact each other and what to do in the case of an evacuation or a tsunami warning we've all been
taught at school that when an earthquake hits we should duck cover and hold but that may not
always be the best course of action according to seismologists it all depends on where you are when
the earthquake first starts if you're at home or in a safely reinforced building it's probably the
best place to be until the shaking stops but if you're in an old unreinforced masonry building
from before the 90s that building is Almost sure to collapse and if you're near the exit it may be
best to just run outside as soon as the minor Tremors start but honestly we're not here to
give advice on this stuff definitely consult the experts on what you should do earthquakes
form two types of waves the primary pressure waves or p waves are milder but travel faster than the
secondary Shear waves or S waves which are the most destructive so the P wave is like a warning
of what's to come p waves travel an average of 3.4 miles per second actually really fast
and that's weighs about 2.2 miles per second so if the earthquake forms at about 50 miles
off the coast it'll take about 40 seconds for the second wave to hit after the first one so
you can do a lot in 40 seconds like get out of the building that you know could collapse all
that said there may be a silver lining to this story yes lubricant is leaking out of
the subduction zone which is definitely bad but one thing news outlets neglected to mention was
that this whole and others like it may have been gushing water for the last 1500 years give or take
so we're talking about something that has been there throughout the last six Cascadian Quakes
including the last big one in 1700. so the fact that we've discovered it now really doesn't mean
anything in terms of the risk of an earthquake any more than discovering how the weather
Works increases the chance of a storm on the other hand the mere fact that we discovered the tectonic
lubricant was sleeping actually shows us that there was any lubricant between the plates to
begin with and I'm no seismologist but I'm guessing that means the plates aren't stuck
together but just sliding along and sliding means no energy buildup and no massive Mega thrust Quake
at least not in the short term of course news media do love to create a bit of panic and drama
around everything and these Mega disasters are just such low-hanging fruit Philip and his team
dubbed the hole in the Pacific pythia's Oasis in reference to the famous Oracle of Delphi who
went into a trance by inhaling fumes emanating from the fissures and the Earth underneath the
Temple of Apollo so figures in the ground things pour out looks kind of blurry kind of makes sense
right but it's the part about pythia being an oracle that's the most unsettling for me
considering the paper on pythus Oasis stirred up a Revival of the prophesized bigquake that is long
overdue in North America's Northwest something Philip and his crew had no way of knowing at
the time coincidence a hunch I'll let you be the judge of that and if you thought that was
insane you gotta watch this video on the super volcano lingering underneath Yellowstone next