WEBVTT - Alaska Earthquake of 1964 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:09.200 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.520 Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is Stuff you 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:20.880 should Know about earthquakes in Alaska in nineteen sixty four. 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:23.880 I'm going to talk like this, Oh the rest of 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:25.840 the podcast. What do you think? 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:30.000 I think that sixty percent of the people just stop listening. 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.120 Well, they are going to be sorry, because this is 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:35.760 going to be an interesting episode. 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.920 Yeah, this is you know, I had no idea how 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:45.159 earthquake prone Alaska is was and is until doing this 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:45.839 kind of research. 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.160 Oh. I was raised on that knowledge. My family talked 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:50.640 about it a lot. 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:52.879 No comment in Toledo. 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:56.320 Hey, Chuck, I have a question. Will you ask me 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.360 the first time I was ever in an earthquake or 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:00.520 ever felt in earthquake? 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:03.560 When's the first time you ever felt to earthquake? 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:07.720 Yesterday? Chuck? Will you ask me a follow up question? 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:12.520 Ask what I was reading while I experienced that first earthquake? 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.039 Well, where were you and what were you reading? 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:20.000 I was reading this article about Alaska earth the Alaska 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.720 earthquake of nineteen sixty four, and I was at home. 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.440 Wow, I didn't know that you guys felt a trimmer. 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.000 There was one in Cuba, like a six point eight, 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:31.520 and I felt it in Central Florida, plain a day. 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.800 Wow, I've never I lived in LA for five years 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:36.440 and I never felt a single anything. 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.520 Yeah. I pretty much assumed I would go the rest 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:43.279 of my life with that feeling an earthquake, and nope, nope. 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:45.000 Cuba had other ideas. 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:49.520 Yeah, well, I mean after reading about how like far away, 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.760 Like there's some pretty startling stuff in this episode, like 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.840 as far as how far away could feel things, and 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.520 like the upset that it caused like around the world, 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:01.560 it's nuts. 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.320 Yeah, a lot of people were upset about this for sure. 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.600 All Right, Well, we're talking about the Good Friday earthquake 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:12.200 of nineteen sixty four in Alaska, which at the time 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:16.800 was the biggest, well the second largest ever in the 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.320 world that they had recorded at nine point two, just 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:24.880 behind the nine point five that hit Chile in nineteen sixty. Yeah, 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.640 and considering the devastation that happened in Alaska, and probably 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.760 only because it happened in Alaska, it only killed one 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:34.840 hundred and thirty one people, which is a lot. But 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.400 I think the earthquake itself in Alaska. How many people 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:41.320 It's like fifteen people. 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:44.920 Maybe, yeah, I think there was actually in the whole 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:45.840 state something like. 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:48.360 No, no, no, I'm saying how many people it killed? 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:50.120 Was only oh oh, sorry, I thought you're saying how 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:51.799 many people lived in Alaska. 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:54.840 No, just like the literal earthquake of people in Alaska. 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:57.240 I think it was like, yeah, fifteen or sixteen people. 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.839 That was it from the actual earthquake. Yeah, I wonder 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.560 why he laughed. Yeah, that was why, because I thought 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:05.680 you were making a joke and I thought it was hilarious. 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:08.320 So let's get to today. 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.000 Well, there was one other big thing about this earthquake 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.640 besides just the massiveness. I mean, nine point five that 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:16.360 is awfully close to as high as you can go 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:17.880 on the Richter scale. 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:19.760 Right, yeah, nine point two was this one? Yeah? 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.160 Nine point two? Sorry, Chili was the nine point five 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.800 Still nothing to sneeze at, right, second largest earthquake on record. 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:29.760 One of the other reasons that it's important or significant 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.920 is because it basically opened up the door for seismology 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:38.040 and our understanding of earthquakes and tsunamis and basically everything 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:42.680 we know about those things today. Kind of kicked off 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.400 with this nineteen sixty four earthquake because we were able 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:47.840 to like go study it. It happened at just the 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:48.560 right time in a. 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:53.400 Sense, Yeah, for sure. And this was a mega thrust earthquake. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.480 And as it turns out, the most destructive kind of 0:03:56.520 --> 0:04:00.280 earthquake that the world knows is the mega thrust. Out 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.360 of the ten of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded have 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.640 been mega thrust. And that is where and you know, 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.520 we've talked about this in the Earthquakes episode as well 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:14.120 as other ones, probably the Japanese tsunami one as well. Sure, 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.240 but this mega thrust earthquake is what happens when you 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:22.440 have two tectonic plates hitting one another, and the case 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.200 of the mega thrust, the heavier one slides below the 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:31.279 lighter one, and that heavier plate just dives into the mantle. 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:33.680 It's you know, we talked about subduction a lot, but 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:36.839 it subduces. 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.719 Right, Yeah, It's subdued by the top one, right, And 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.000 as it goes further and further in like the whole 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:46.440 Earth's crust gets recycled over incredible spans of time. The 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.720 problem is what causes a megathrust earthquake is that in 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:55.560 some places that subdued plate doesn't go down. It locks 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.279 with the plate on top when they converge, and they 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.800 just press, impressed and press and press, and then eventually 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.000 one of them is going to give. It's like a 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.000 game of chicken or something like that. And when they give, 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:11.680 it just slips, and it slips really quickly, and the entire, 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:16.320 an entire region of Earth suddenly lurches forward like fifty feet. 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.480 And when that happens, that's where you get like ten 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.320 out of the ten most powerful earthquakes. That's where they 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:26.880 come from. They're all mega thrust earthquakes, and that's how 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:27.560 they're produced. 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.880 That's right. The one in sixty four in Alaska was 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:37.240 at the Alaska Aleutian Subduction Zone, and that's where the 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.920 plates here in North America side over the Pacific plates 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.359 is where they meet one another. And I think it 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.600 runs from the Gulf of Alaska, and as we'll see, 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:52.400 the epicenter was kind of right there on the waterfront almost, 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.239 but it runs along the Gulf of Alaska to Russia's 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.400 Kamchatka Peninsula. 0:05:58.320 --> 0:05:59.960 Which is an island in Russia. 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:00.440 That's right. 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:05.599 Yeah, it's basically like the worst place to live. But 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.760 at the time when people were settling along Alaska seward 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:14.560 and what was the other big city that was affected 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.599 by this anchorage and then a bunch of other slightly 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:21.279 smaller cities, they didn't know that the subduction zone existed. 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:23.160 It's nothing you can walk up to and point to. 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:27.520 This thing exists under the oceans off shore. So they 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.479 didn't know. But they found out in a big way 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.160 after this earthquake that oh, yeah, actually there's a subduction zone. 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:35.640 And as a matter of fact, the whole theory of 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.479 plate tectonics is correct. This was another thing that it 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:39.440 proved or showed. 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.320 Yeah, so you know, you said that that can happen 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.039 really quickly. That's kind of what happens with these mega 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:50.240 thrust earthquakes and why they're so kind of spectacular is 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:52.800 that the speed at which it happens. And then in 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.720 this case, just like how much was was moving. They 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.719 said that the plates moved they estimate between thirty to 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.520 six defeat kind of all at the same time, and 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:07.719 that the area that moved, this is staggering, was five 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:09.960 hundred miles by one hundred and twenty five. 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:14.040 Miles suddenly moved sixty feet like in seconds. 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:18.800 Yeah, it's just yeah, it's hard to believe, right. 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.480 And so again, like this five hundred by one hundred 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:28.280 and twenty five mile chunk Anchorage, Valdez, sorry, Valdez, Seward 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:31.480 and a bunch of other towns are like on that 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.200 chunk of land that suddenly lurched forward. So not only 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:39.400 did the land lurch, this earthquake just had all sorts 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:43.880 of crazy effects, in part because the earthquake itself, nine 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:49.400 point two, lasted for like four minutes. Yeah, four minutes 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:54.600 of a nine point two earthquake sounds terrifying and crazy destructive. 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.280 Yeah. This was on March twenty seventh of that year, 0:07:57.920 --> 0:07:59.880 at about five thirty six pm is when it kicked 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:02.800 out off. And you know when I talked about like 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.160 how far reaching it was. Here are some like pretty 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:11.360 startling examples. There were water level changes registered across every 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:15.920 United State state except for Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.800 And when you see things like a well or a 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.840 pond slashing back and forth, like water that doesn't normally 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:28.400 move around is being moved, those are called seashwaves. And 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.320 those were reported as far away as Australia and South Africa. 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.880 Yeah, can't you see some little Australian can go a 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:37.959 paw the pond's moving. 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:40.480 It's a good Australian kid. 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.160 Yeah, I thought so too. So those what'd you call 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:45.080 them seiche waves? 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:48.000 I called them siashwaves, seashwaves. 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:53.040 Okay, So in the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico, fishing 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:57.400 boats sank off Louisiana because those seishewaves slashing back and 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.080 forth in the Gulf of Mexico was so potent so 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.800 that it swamped some boats and sank them in the 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.080 Gulf of Mexico, which is nowhere near Alaska. 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.600 Yeah, it swayed the space needle. And by the way, 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.280 you maybe had been reading too much of German on 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:14.160 the show, because I think it probably would be siche 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:14.640 in German. 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:20.280 Yeah, something happened my brain like just ticked into just 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:22.520 enough German that I mispronounced stuff a lot. 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.280 Now, well I may be wrong too, but because maybe 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:26.600 it's a German word, I have no idea. 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.880 Well, let's spell it for everybody and then the listeners 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.280 can make up for themselves how to pronounce it, shall we. 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.120 I'll take the first letter, you take the second. We'll 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:35.079 just alternate, like that. 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.959 Okay, s E C H. 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:41.440 E E E waves. 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.120 Just want to get the end. Yeah, that thing rocked 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.520 the space Needle, which is about a thousand miles away. 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:53.280 And they did, you know, geological surveys afterward. They showed 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.720 some parts of the coast were close to forty feet 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.720 higher than they used to be. Other parts were, you know, 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:01.720 a to eight feet lower than they used to be. 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:07.520 It literally changed the coastline of Alaska as much as 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.360 fifty feet in some parts. And this is like, you know, 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:11.640 this is the kind of thing you think of when 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:13.800 you think of an earthquake, like in a movie, Like 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.240 you know, train tracks getting curled up, and telephone lines 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.319 snapping like toothpicks, and cars being sucked into the earth. 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.120 This is the kind of thing that presents a challenge 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:23.720 to the rock. 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.160 Yeah, exactly, only he could save us, exactly. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.320 Unfortunately he was just a little tike if he was 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.800 even born at this time, so he couldn't help anybody. 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:36.720 One of the things that just fascinates me is that 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.360 there were entire swaths of forests on the coastline that 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:45.160 dropped into the ocean, not like oh, the lands caving 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.000 in and all these these trees are like falling over 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:53.319 down into the ocean. The entire stretch of forest still 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:57.080 standing upright, just plunged downward into the ocean and was 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.880 covered by the water. It just dropped. And that to 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:05.360 me just is crazy fascinating. I like anything underwater I 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.720 find fascinating, but also the idea of that happening like 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.840 that suddenly is just mind boggling to me. 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:13.600 Anything underwater's fascinating. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.959 Anything that's not supposed to be underwater that is underwater. 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:18.320 Ah. 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.920 Okay, have you seen the Drowned House? 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:23.640 I don't think so. 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:27.440 It's like a found footage, but it's actually good found footage. 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.720 It's an indie film where these scuba divers are exploring 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.719 this house that was like at the bottom of a reservoir, 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.320 so it's now underwater, and just that alone is awesome, 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:39.680 But the plot's pretty cool too. 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.600 So you're going deep with your horror. 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.920 I mean, there's just so much bad horror out there 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:49.520 that you really have to hunt. 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.559 Yeah, and I didn't mean that to be a pun. 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.200 By the way, going deep with the horror, yeah underwater? 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.520 Oh oh yeah, German part of me, I'm taking everything 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:04.160 quite literally. There's no such thing as anything funny. 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:08.480 You know, we're going to talk a lot about the 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.080 effects of the water, because again it's some pretty like 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:16.560 devastating and remarkable stuff happened. I was right, It was 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:19.120 only about fifteen people were killed from the actual earthquake. 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:21.800 Most of the people died in the tsunamis that followed, right. 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:24.959 There was one big one and a lot of smaller ones. 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.280 I think the big one reached a wave reached a 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:32.120 height of about two hundred feet, which is incredible to 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:36.439 think about it. You know, as far south as California, 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:41.000 like twelve people died in California from an earthquake that 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:42.160 happened in Alaska. 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.199 Yeah, I went southward. It also went westward, went right 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.640 past Hawaii all the way to Japan. It it kind 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:51.840 of petered out by the time it hit Japan. But 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.520 I mean, like that's a long way for a single 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.560 wave to travel. I mean two hundred feet that's just nuts. 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.920 Right, Yeah, this is a big wave. 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:05.200 It is. It's a giant So with a tsunami, though, 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.880 you have a really long time, you kind of have 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.520 some warning after an earthquake, you can expect if you're 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.360 along the coast that a tsunami is probably coming, so 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.880 you can get away from that. The problem was is 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.680 that all sorts of different towns and communities along the 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:24.880 coast got swamped like almost immediately with tsunamis, not two 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:27.719 hundred foot tsunamis, but still enough to like reck an 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.720 entire town. And that was another thing that kind of 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:34.720 the science finally got to the bottom of. But in 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:37.920 some of these tsunamis, like for example, there's a village 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:42.800 called Chenega, and four minutes after the earthquake, it just 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.199 got washed away. There were sixty eight people who live there, 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:48.840 twenty three of them died and the only thing that 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.040 survived as far as their buildings are concerned, was the schoolhouse, 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.439 which was built on higher ground one hundred feet above 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.400 sea level. So like everything else in the town was 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.040 just gone thanks to a tsunami that hit like lightning fast. 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:07.200 Yeah, I've got one for everyone here. Valdis, at Port Valdiz, 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:10.880 they were, you know, everything kind of along the coastline. 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.200 There was obviously swept into the ocean. Thirty two people 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:20.440 very sadly passed in Valdiese and it ended up catching 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.240 on fire, the oil tankers and stuff that were there, 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:26.920 and then those were brought out to see so like 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:30.960 you talk about a movie like oil tankers on fire 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.040 in a wave being transported across the ocean. 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:36.640 Yeah, for sure. And then one of the other problems 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:39.560 with Port Valdez was that the town was built on 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.280 sand and gravel, not bedrock. And one of the things 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:47.400 about Omega Thrust earthquake is it liquefies the soil. It 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:51.320 turns what seemed to be totally solid ground into essentially 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.840 a liquid and it can swallow stuff up like almost immediately. 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.000 So huge parts of that town were also swallowed up 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:00.640 by the earth all of a sudden, like this is 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:03.840 Biblical end Times kind of stuff. You know. 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.440 Yeah, and you know, at the risk of just going 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.720 on and on, I got one more, I think, and 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:12.440 then we can probably take a break. But if you're 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.240 talking about Anchorage, you know, the biggest city there that 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.960 got you know, an Alaska at least that got hit. 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:22.680 There was a landslide because it also triggered landslides. We 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.200 should have mentioned that, and the entire business district sank 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.280 about nine feet. There were some building collapses, to be sure, 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.360 but others just look kind of like the forest just dropped, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:37.240 like you know, anywhere from nine to twenty feet below 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:39.000 ones that were just on the other side of the street. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:40.880 Did you see photos of that? 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:43.400 Oh yeah, Life magazine has a I mean there's a 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.520 ton of good photos online that are just kind of 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:48.160 hard to wrap your head around, like what you're looking 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:49.240 at sometimes. 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.600 Yeah, it takes a section for sure, like one of 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:55.480 those three d I posters, but with earthquake stuff instead. 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:57.200 We did a whole episode on those. 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.120 We did, and if I remember correctly, that was pretty interesting. 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:01.400 Yeah, the magic I think. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.320 You want to take that break you mentioned. 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:07.800 Yeah, we'll take a break and talk about sort of 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:09.000 what happened after right after this. 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:37.440 So four minutes later, the earthquake stops, but there's still tsunamis, 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.080 there's fires at sea, even like whole towns of collapse, 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.840 Like it takes a little while for the dust to 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:49.040 finally settle. When it does, I think, like the next day, 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.240 Lyndon Johnson, who was president at the time, said, Alaska 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:56.760 as a whole is a major disaster area. Remember I said, 0:16:56.760 --> 0:17:00.240 like telephone poles snapped and there were no roads anymore 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:05.359 or railroads. That meant that people couldn't communicate with the 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.520 outside world. So if you had family and friends outside 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.800 of Alaska and they heard about this earthquake, they couldn't 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:13.320 get in touch with you, and you couldn't get in 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:15.280 touch with them. So it was a very hairy time 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.040 for a lot of people until they could find out 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:20.520 whether their loved ones were alive or not. And I 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.320 think that damage is something like three billion dollars in 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:27.119 today's dollars. Yeah, which again, like this is a state 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:29.280 with like a population of I think two hundred and 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.320 fifty thousand people at the time, Like it was not 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:37.560 populated at all, but that's how much damage that earthquake did. 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.520 Still, Yeah, they had to you know, I mentioned earlier 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.960 that it changed the shape of Alaska and its coastline. 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:47.119 It was so drastic that they had to kind of 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:51.639 redraw the shipping lanes and say like hey, like you 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.360 can't go that way anymore because of this, and they 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.080 had to kind of, you know, redraw all of that area. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.960 Some people were, you know, Alaska strong, so we're not leaving. 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.880 We're gonna build on top of where we were. Other 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:06.679 people said, you know what, I'm going to go higher. 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:12.680 Entire towns were gone and then popped up in other places, 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.600 and Valdis is a great example because the Army Corps 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:19.200 of Engineers came in and said, you know, Josh Clark 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:21.000 one day will say that this was built on a 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:24.320 gravel foundation, so you shouldn't even rebuild there. And there 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:26.880 were only about five hundred, you know, plus or minus 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:29.679 people living there at the time, and they said, you 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.159 got three years to get out of here. We got 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.400 a new Valdis for you about four miles away, and 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:39.960 that's generally what happened. People left set up the new 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.040 town of Valdis, which now has close to four thousand people, 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.720 and they burned the rest of what was there down 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:48.679 just to make sure that people didn't kind of like 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:50.120 set up and squat there. 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:52.959 Yeah, it's kind of cool. You can go hike the 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:57.160 old Valdis town. There's an intersection still of the two 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.280 main drags, and I think, like there's the street sign 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.480 up still and then they have plaques showing what used 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.400 to be where. It looks like a pretty cool hike. 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:07.560 Yeah. 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:12.080 So, Chuck, we talked about how this kind of changed science. 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.440 I think we should really kind of expand on that 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:17.359 because it really changed science. Chuck. 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:20.280 Yeah, and you know, this next part we need to 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:24.840 think specifically, I think Livia used a Smithsonian Magazine article 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.399 by Christian Elliott for this part. So big thanks to 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.879 Christian Elliot for all the hard work and Livia so 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:34.920 well of course in Libya always she's our north star 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:39.159 after all. But you know, we've already kind of said it, 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:42.919 but I guess more specifically we should say that, you know, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.160 at this time in nineteen sixty four, the idea of 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:51.480 what we knew about plate tectonics was not you know, entrenched, 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:53.359 Like people kind of had a good idea of what 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.920 they thought was going on for a long time. People 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:58.760 had been checking out maps and saying like, hey, I 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.680 think that this used to be connected right here, and 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.200 maybe things stripped it apart, but it was still sort 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:09.439 of being actively debated at the time, and this really 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.960 kind of like laid bare, like, yeah, this is not 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:14.200 a hypothesis anymore. 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.879 Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think that plate tectonics 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:21.480 wasn't accepted until the sixties, but that's that's exactly how 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:24.159 it was. So this was such a massive earthquake, it 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:29.080 just presented all sorts of different places where evidence kind 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:31.680 of came along that said, Okay, explain this, what explains 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.160 this what explains that? And it turns out that plate 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:39.160 tectonics essentially was the only theory that fit, you know, 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.280 that explained how the earth went up here, or how 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.040 it sunk here, or how it moved fifty feet onto 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:48.760 the sea here, or why this you know, this town 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:51.640 just got swallowed up. All of this could be explained 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:55.119 by plate tectonics and not the other rival theories. I 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:59.520 think the the other rival theory was that earthquakes were 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:03.480 God's will, and play tectonics just explains it better. 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.239 Yeah, I agree. This is obviously a gold mine for 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:12.120 the US Geological Survey. So they got people to Alaska 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.960 like really quick, and you know, got out all their 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:21.720 do hickeys and whirley gigs and measuring tape, and we're like, hey, 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.280 we can really learn a lot from this stuff. You know, 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:27.440 people are being taken care of, so now we need 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:32.120 to kind of figure out what happens moving forward. One 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:35.040 of the interesting things they found, and some of the 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.520 stuff gets really really interesting. I think that popped up especially. 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.760 I'll just tease out the fungus that's coming among us soon. 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:43.480 Nice. 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:46.720 But they looked at those forests that you were talking 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:50.560 about that sunk below the ocean they you know, filled 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:52.679 up with like sediment and seawater and stuff. And they 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:55.280 were digging around down there trying to just study it. 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:57.520 And they kept digging and they said, you know what, 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:01.760 there's other like below this stuff. We're finding older land plants. 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:06.880 And so this has happened before, you guys, like probably 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:10.159 more than several times over the last like thousands or 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:12.600 millions of years, and it's gonna happen again. 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:15.720 Yeah, can't you kind of just see like if you 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:18.639