Duck And Cover

Super-cool fan, Emily, writes in needing a little help in a marital dispute… that’s what we’re here for.

She writes: “We were talking about earthquake safety the other day – it’s a long story – and my husband told me that standing in a doorway during an earthquake is actually NOT safe. I had always been told to do that if you can’t get outside in time… is that true?

Ah, the good old days of fighting over what to do in an earthquake. Don’t worry, we’ll help you sort through the rubble.

A circulating email called ‘triangles of life’ claims that the safest thing to do in an earthquake isn’t the good old ‘duck-and-cover’. It cites examples, largely from other countries, where people were killed because they hid underneath objects like desks. It also uses some pretty extreme language like, ‘everybody doing it will always die’… kind of a thing.

In my experience, absolutes like ‘always’ are never true… Hardly ever true.

But the physics of ‘triangles of life’ actually make sense. It’s an inelastic collision – the walls come tumbling desks and the first things they hit, like desks or tables, are going to get deformed and crushed as a result. If the walls and roof stay intact there should be a triangular shape next to the crushed object… [looking at hands after demonstrating]… triangular.

According to the email, that’s the safest spot to be in, you know, if its a big enough triangle… ’cause if not, it’s not going to help you much.

People are not triangular-shaped. Maybe it’d work if you were, like, a yoga master.

Now there have been some accusations and rebuttals about the email. The American Red Cross says that the void-identification-method, or triangle-of-life, is hard to teach or identify where the spaces will be. But they NEVER say it’s the wrong thing to do.

They even admit that it may be best in other countries where building codes are different, because the risk of building collapse, even in moderate earthquakes, is much higher. But they also defend that the ‘drop, cover and hold on’ is NOT the wrong thing to do. Running out of the building, screaming, IS the wrong thing to do.

[Room shaking] EARTHQUAKE!!! WHERE’S THE DOOR?!

If everything is shaking and you’re not right next to an immediate exit… wait it out. FEMA and the Red Cross also haven’t recommended using doorways for earthquake protection for more than a decade… sorry, Emily.

The problem is that many of them are not structurally sound and so they may not offer any protection at all in an earthquake. So, yeah, stay out of the doorway.

Sometimes earthquakes have aftershakes: smaller earthquakes that follow them. But here’s something I hadn’t heard: did you know that really BIG earthquakes can have four shocks? It’s like the little earthquake that happens before the BIG one… that’s the fault slipping.

So after you feel an earthquake, even a little one, you might want to quickly and safely get outdoors once its over – just in case big brother’s on his way. So should you even worry about an earthquake? Statistically, you’re probably not in much danger, unless, of course, you live where I do ’cause, you KNOW it’s coming. And when it gets here, there’s going to be a little extra rock and roll in Southern California, ’cause about every 150 years or so the San Andreas Fault likes to do the ‘electric slide’ Shake it to the left, shake it to the right – the tectonic electric slide – wooh!, and since the last one was in 1857, that puts us on schedule for… last year.

Any day now.

It’s coming.

[Room shaking] This is not as exciting as everybody said it would be.

Transcribed by: Brad B. & Ian

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