Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011

["Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net>]

On Aug 24, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> > From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net>
>
> > On Aug 24, 2011, at 8:55 AM, JC Dill wrote:
> > > On 23/08/11 3:13 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > > > A. Our structures aren't built to seismic zone standards. Our
> > > > construction workers aren't familiar with*how* to build to seismic
> > > > zone standards. We don't secure equipment inside our buildings to
> > > > seismic zone standards.
> > >
> > > They should be.
> > > They should be.
> > > You should.
> > >
> > > Earthquakes can happen anywhere. There's no excuse to fail to
> > > build/secure to earthquake standards.
> >
> > Tornados can happen anywhere, there's no excuse to fail to
> > build/secure for tornados.
> >
> > [Etc.]
> >
> > Things that cost money are not done unless the probability of the
> > danger is higher than vanishingly small. This temblor - at 5.8 with no
> > injuries or fatalities - was the largest earthquake on the entire east
> > coast in 67 years, and the largest in VA in well over a century. Think
> > of the _trillions_ of dollars which could have been put into
> > healthcare, public safety, hell, better networking equipment :) we
> > could have used instead of making all buildings on the east coast
> > earthquake safe.
>
> False economy.  That argument was valid *before* the Internet became a 
> Generally Mission Critical Utility.  It is now.  And, alas, commerce being
> what it is, it's not deployed to be *nearly* as failover redundant as it
> was designed to be,[1]

The original quote was not limited buildings which house Internet infrastructure.

As for whether it is true for "Internet", I would argue the point, but ain't got the time.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick