Posthuman Blues

New Data Confirms Strong Earthquake Risk to Central U.S.

"Such a strong earthquake would rock the entire eastern half of the country and prove devastating to the local region. A lesser but still damaging quake of magnitude 6 or greater has a 90 percent chance of striking in the next five decades."

I have a morbid fascination with disasters, natural or otherwise, although oddly enough 9/11 came as no particular surprise and didn't influence my day's activities in the least. (Lack of empathy? Denial?)

When I dream I often find myself in a blighted urban netherworld I've come to call the "Land of the Dead," after William S. Burroughs. Recently I've had two striking dreams of vehicles and people streaming from the sites of undefined disasters that put me in mind of nuclear explosions or disease outbreaks.

In "Heavy Weather," a great novel by Bruce Sterling, we're introduced to a subculture of "evacuation fetishists" (at least I think that's what he called them) that rush to the sites of climate disaster zones to take in the fleeing populace. I can easily see this becoming reality, especially given wireless technology. Imagine a thrill-seeking indie journalist giddily video-blogging the aftermath of some ecoterrorist blast or tsunami-soaked coastal city.