That’s not a hypothetical question for a title, it’s a very real one. I’ve been to a lot of places and I’m consistently impressed with this place. Like… do I need to move here?

Maybe it’s because I’m writing this from Vancouver Island (if you read this at the time of publishing, I’ll still be here) but I’ve found myself feeling a little more poetic. A little more romantic, maybe. Definitely more geographic! Vancouver Island just has a way with me and, no matter how many times I’ve visited, I always come away more impressed by its raw nature.

Unfortunately, this is also a bit of a solemn article as, if you’re reading this right when it publishes, I’ll be mere minutes from boarding a ferry to head back to my neck of the woods in the Pacific Northwest. But the mountainous topography, the wild and windy coast, the iconic capital city of Victoria, and even the smaller, pluckier city of Nanaimo are all just so awe-inspiring in their own right. It’s honestly hard to leave.

Anyways, to celebrate this latest travel excursion of ours, I’ve compiled a little photo dump to share with you all. Complete with my own thoughts and ideas about the place I took a photo of. I hope you enjoy it!

All photos are my own, completely unedited. It pains me not to bring them into Photoshop for a bit of touching up, but I’ve got a deadline to keep!

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Join Geoff on a road trip through the remote and fascinating Idaho Panhandle! Starting in Wallace, Idaho—also known as the "Center of the Universe"—we explore the geo…

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I’ve always been fascinated by how states were formed. As someone who lives on the west coast, the process was fairly structured. A territory was formed (after lots of land was taken from the indigenous tribes, of course), the territory would then grow until it got to a point where the people who lived there wanted formal recognition and voting rights. They then petitioned the Congress who would vote on it. And so on and so forth. The process repeated constantly from Ohio all the way to Oregon. This is basically how we ended up with two Dakotas (even though we probably only need one).

But while this process was used for most states that exist today, there is a bit of a oddball in the mix. Or I should say two oddballs. I’m talking about North and South Carolina. Because, if you look at them on a map for long enough, you might find yourself wondering: why do we have two? Why did we ever need a second Carolina? Well, given that both North and South Carolina existed before the United States was even a thing, we gotta go back to the colonial era.

And trust me when I say that this particular geographic story is convoluted. So hang with me here.

The lost colony of Carolana

Okay, so the history of the North and South Carolina split is ultimately rooted in the history of how colonies even came to be colonies in the first place. Because it certainly wasn’t as clear cut as how states were formed throughout the 1800s. And here’s the weird thing: North Carolina and South Carolina actually started out their existence as a single territory called Carolana. And yes it’s spelled that way. It’s not a misspelling of “Carolina” it is 100% spelled “Carolana.”

Back in the late 1500s, the English monarchy was realizing that it was falling behind in the exploration and expansion of its empire in the “new world.” Of course the Americas weren’t new, and had actually been inhabited by thousands of different peoples for thousands of years but that’s a whole other story. But England quickly realized that if it was going to compete with the likes of Spain, who was busy pillaging much of Central and South America, it was going to need to start establishing its own colonies in what we now call North America. And so, it began issuing charters to various groups of people who wanted to establish settlements.

While the first English colony was established at Roanoke in modern day Virginia, which ultimately disappeared entirely, England persisted in its North American venture and began issuing more charters for more colonies. By the the mid-1600s, colonies were found up and down the east coast of the modern United States. Places like Massachusetts colony and the Virginia colony and then a colony called the province of Carolana. This colony consisted of the land from Albemarle Sound in present-day North Carolina, to the St. Johns River in the south, just a few miles below the current Florida-Georgia state line. So it was quite a bit more expansive than the Carolinas we know today.

But Carolana, for all its similarities to the Carolinas, would ultimately fail. A lack of funding and resources prevented it from growing and ultimately competing with the colonies in Virginia and Massachusetts. And, at the time, England simply found more value in its Caribbean colonies than it did in Carolana. But there would be a revival of sorts, this time with a slightly different spelling.

The Province of Carolina

After Carolana packed up and called it a day, the entire region was left in a state of limbo. King Charles, who issued the original charter, was executed in 1649, and the original retainer of the charter, Sir Robert Heath, fled to France. This all gets a bit into the weeds of 17th century English politics, but essentially this left the entire region without any sort of owner or occupier aside from the indigenous tribes of course. Apparently, Heath’s heirs did try to claim the land for themselves, but the new king, Charles II, ruled the claim invalid. And so the region largely remained untouched by Europeans.

Then, on March 24, 1663, Charles II issued a new charter to a group of eight English noblemen, called the Lords Proprietors, granting them the land formerly known as Carolana, as a reward for their faithful support of his efforts to regain the throne of England. And it was at this time officially renamed the Province of Carolina. The charter granted the Lords Proprietors title to all of the land from the southern border of the Virginia Colony at 36 degrees north to 31 degrees north. The goal here was to provide a buffer colony between the successful English colony of Virginia from the Spanish colony in present day Florida and prevent any northern expansion by the Spaniards.

Of the eight Lords Proprietors, only one would take much interest in the new province: Lord Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury, along with famed English philosopher John Locke, would set about attempting to create their vision for a utopian society in the Province of Carolina known as the Grand Model. Really this was simply a plan for how cities and towns would be laid out with a particular emphasis to be resistant to fires (due to London almost burning down in 1666). It also factored in things such as public health and safety, land use, and urban aesthetics. All things we take for granted now, but in 1666 were revolutionary in terms of city and town planning.

But while Shaftesbury and John Locke had big goals for Carolina, the reality is that the based laid plans always go awry. And in the case of Carolina, it was destined to eventually be split in two.

The north and south split

The first thing to know about the split between North Carolina and South Carolina is that there was no single event that caused the divide. Instead it was really more of a slowly simmering buildup that eventually boiled over. That said, we can point to a couple different events that really spurred the division along.

The first is the Tuscarora War in 1711 between British colonial settlers and the native indigenous peoples of the area. The Tuscarora tribe existed in what is today North Carolina for hundreds of years before European settlers invaded their land. And, as one might expect, they didn’t take too kindly to having their lands taken from them. More to that point, because the province of Carolina was ruled by eight separate Lords Proprietors, the treaties and deals they struck with the tribe were often overruled, ignored, or broken by one of the other lords. This inevitably would lead to friction and, eventually, the war.

The Tuscarora would ultimately lose, but it would build contention in the Carolina colony between those in the north who pulled in more resources to defend the land, and those in the south who felt like it really wasn’t their problem.

You see, the northern part of the Carolina province and the southern part were always a bit separate. Charles Town, known today as Charleston, was the capital of the colony, but the northern area governed themselves independently and had their own major towns in Albemarle and Cape Fear. In fact, both the north and south had their own governors well before the formal split.

And so, due to the tensions between the two halves, the Lords Proprietors inability to effectively govern the territory, and the burgeoning wealth by the southern part of the colony, the King reclaimed the southern part of Carolina for the crown in 1719, and left the northern part for the Lords Proprietors. And thus, North Carolina and South Carolina were officially separated.

And so there you have it! North Carolina and South Carolina exist as two independent states not for any modern political reason like the Dakotas do, but really for economic reasons. Had the North not ensnared themselves in a long, bitter war with the Tuscarora that trapped them with debt, it’s likely that the King wouldn’t have split the colony and taken the southern half for himself. Which means, today, we’d have just a single state called Carolina.

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Here’s a weird question for you to ponder over the weekend. Does area size matter in the grand scheme of geography? Or, better put, does having more physical land (and water) make your country (or state or province) more successful/wealthy/connected/whatever metric you want to use?

I’d wager that most people think size does matter. Certainly most leaders of countries do. Throughout history, the primary aim of kings, queens, states, empires, and so on was to lay claim to as much land as possible mostly as a way to siphon the natural resources of those lands back to a centralized location. Rome is the obvious example here, but sub out the Roman Empire for any empire throughout history and the pattern repeats itself.

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Think about South America for a minute. What are the first countries that pop into your head? Chances are you immediately went to the sunny beaches of Brazil, maybe the bright lights of Argentina’s largest city Buenos Aires, or the incredible mountains of Colombia (please consider donating to their recovery) or really any of the other large and prominent countries in South America. There are ten of them after all, right? So many to choose from! You almost can’t go wrong with any of them.

Wait, no, that’s actually not true. You CAN go wrong as it turns out. Because, even though I said there were 10 countries in South America, and you likely believed me, physically there are actually 13. It’s just that three of them don’t really count as being South America. These countries are Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.

These three countries, more than most other countries in the world, are kind of mysterious. We don’t really hear much about them. They’re usually not mentioned in terms of global geopolitics. And, when it comes to South American affairs, they’re not usually included. In fact, none of these three countries participate in CONMEBOL, the South American soccer (football) federation. Which means they don’t directly compete in international matches against the likes of Brazil or Argentina. Instead, they’re part of CONCACAF, the North American soccer (football) federation. And they compete competitively with the United States, Canada, Mexico, and so on.

So why is this? Why don’t we think of these three countries as being part of South America?

Physically isolated

Here’s the strange thing about the three countries. Despite each sharing a large, physical border with Brazil, and Guyana sharing an additional (very complicated) border with Venezuela, there are only two roads between the three that connect to anyone outside of their little bubble.

In the east you have Rupununi Road which connects Guyana and its capital of Georgetown to the Brazilian state of Roraima. But here’s the thing, Roraima is Brazil’s least populated state. Of the country’s 213 million people, less than half of 1% live in Roraima. So, needless to say, Guyana is not extremely well connected to Brazil.

And then, over in the west, you have French Guiana’s N2 highway which connects its capital of Cayenne to the Brazilian state of Amapá which just so happens to be Brazil’s second least populated state. Again, less than 1% of all Brazilians live in Amapá.

Suriname, for its part, has no direct connections to anyone aside from Guyana and French Guiana.

And this is all because of the Amazon Rainforest. It turns out that the thickest, heaviest, most difficult to traverse regions of the Amazon happen to be in this part of South America. Southern Suriname, for example, is almost completely bereft of any infrastructure whatsoever.

All this is to say, these three countries are disconnected from the rest of South America in a unique way. But they’re not disconnected from everyone. And that’s key to this story.

While Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana are isolated from Brazil and the rest of their continental neighbors, they’re very well connected to the Caribbean countries. Places like Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Grenada. In many ways, this oceanic connection to the Caribbean makes these three countries more Caribbean than South American and we see that play out in things like international soccer.

But there’s something else going on here too: language!

The language divide

South America is overwhelmingly dominated by two languages. You have Portuguese, predominantly spoken by Brazil. And then you have Spanish, spoken by every other country in South America (outside of our three). It’s actually crazy how close these two countries are in terms of natively spoken language at home. From what I can find, 215 million people speak Portuguese in South America and 214 million speak Spanish. That’s a crazy fun fact.

But regardless of how close the two languages are and how dominant they are, none of our three not-quite-South American countries speak either of those languages. Instead, they each speak a different European language. In Guyana, they predominantly speak English. In Suriname, the mostly speak Dutch. And in French Guiana they almost exclusively speak, you guessed it, French. And this is because these three countries had a radically different colonial history than the rest of the continent.

You see, these three countries were colonized by the British, Dutch, and French respectively. They weren’t Spanish or Portuguese. Which means, they don’t look or feel Spanish or Portuguese in the same way as every other country on the continent does. And while Portugal and Spain are different countries with different customs, they still share more in common with each other than they do Britain, the Netherlands, or France. Which is why Brazil still “feels” South American in a way that these three don’t despite not being Spanish (and the same the other way around).

In fact, one of these countries isn’t an independent country at all. And, technically, it’s part of Europe. French Guiana is still entirely ruled by France. They use the Euro. Follow French laws. And generally adhere to French customs.

All this is to say, on a fundamental linguistic base, which controls so much of how our culture looks and feels and flows through everything else, these three are different. And that kind of linguistic divide, combined with a very real physical one, means that, on a continental level, these guys sort of fall outside what it means to be part of South America… even if physically they very much are.

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I need to get something off my chest this week. And I know, I know… it’s about a topic that I’m sure everyone is sicking of hearing about it. I’m definitely tired of hearing about AI. I’m tired of reading articles about AI. I’m tired of every service I use coming out with a new “helpful” AI feature that proudly proclaims it can do everything better with that service than I can. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes that’s probably true. But I also like doing things for myself. Thankfully, Wikipedia is still happily AI-free (at least on the front end) and, because of that, I’ve quadrupled my monthly contribution to them. Let’s hope it keeps it that way!

Anyways, this is all getting off topic. Because while AI is definitely the topic at hand, my personal feelings towards it (them?) aren’t really part of the geography of it all. It’s just a daily frustration of mine. That said, in as much as I’m getting exhausted by AI personally, I do feel like the world is geographically getting exhausted by it as well.

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So here are 15 incredible geograp…

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In this video, Geoff and Alexa explore Portland, Maine, a city that once had all geographic ingredients to be a massive metropolis to rival Boston. With its prime locati…

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…

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There are lucky countries in the world. Countries who happened to land upon a wealth of natural resources, happened to be in a spot where global trade flows through, or happened to steal as much land as possible at the exact moment in time to become a global empire. And then there are unlucky countries. Countries who just can never seem to get it going be that through external oppression or something else entirely. And then there’s Haiti. Haiti isn’t just an unlucky country. It is, perhaps, the unluckiest country in the world. A country who, at seemingly every turn throughout its history both as an independent nation and as a colony of France, has just never been able to make things work for the betterment of itself.

Which is weird because, Haiti is not an isolated country in a far corner of the world, completely out of the way of everything. Were that the case, Haiti would probably be much better off actually. No. What makes Haiti’s situation so bizarre is that it shares a rather large island with another, much, let’s say, luckier country: the Dominican Republic.

So why has Haiti failed so spectacularly over the decades, while the Dominican Republic has become one of the wealthiest countries in the Caribbean? Well, let’s go through some of the biggest unlucky strikes that Haiti has had to endure.

Unlucky strike #1: France

Okay so, despite sharing the same island, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are different from each other in almost every way imaginable. And many of these differences actually stem from the two countries’ split colonial history. But let’s go back in time… all the way to the original colonizer: Christopher Columbus.

The island of Hispaniola was first landed on by Columbus in 1492 (you all know the rhyme I won’t repeat it). And Columbus would actually set foot on what is today the northwest coast of Haiti. Which means, because Columbus was funded by the Spanish monarchy, he would claim the entire island for Spain. Never mind all those indigenous peoples living on the island who had been there for thousands of years prior. It was all Spain now.

Of course, being claimed by Spain was one thing. At this point in time Spain was busy gobbling up and slaughtering indigenous peoples all over the Americas. Which means they never really paid Hispaniola much mind. At least in the beginning. Instead Spain would treat it more as a backwater outpost to resupply Spain’s more lucrative colonies in central and South America. And this gave another European colonial empire an in to the lucrative markets of the Caribbean: France.

On the western half of the island, a region completely ignored by Spain, an “unofficial” French outpost would appear. Unofficial in quotes because a lot of things happening in the Americas was “unofficial” in that it wasn’t directly ordered but was instead highly encouraged. After French colonizers had success growing tobacco on their side of the island, many more French settlers began moving in, creating conflict with the Spanish who claimed the island to be theirs. In 1697, as part of the Treaty of Ryswick, which ended the Nine Years War in Europe, Hispaniola was officially split between France on the western part of the island, and Spain on the east.

From this point on, the two halves of Hispaniola would drift farther and farther apart.

You see, in the early 1700s, France was a far wealthier colonizer than Spain. And because of this, France imported hundreds of thousands of enslaved peoples from Africa to their side of Hispaniola over the course of just few decades. By 1788, Haiti’s population consisted of about 25,000 French citizens, 22,000 free multi-racial peoples, and over 700,000 slaves. By contrast, in the colony that would become the Dominican Republic, there were approximately 38,000 Spanish citizens, 38,000 free multi-racial peoples and fewer than 15,000 slaves. And this disparity in the amount of slaves would directly lead to Haiti becoming one of the wealthiest colonies in the world, and the wealthiest colony in the French colonial empire. By 1800, Haiti accounted for fully half of France’s foreign profit due to its sugar plantations. Which were only so profitable because of the slave labor involved.

But this wealth didn’t flow to anyone but the French citizens. Certainly not the enslaved peoples. And, even worse, this was a brutal regime. Not that any slavery is good, but the stories uncovered by French slavers in Haiti are easily some of the most heinous, most tragically horrifying you’ll find. Which also means, after a long time of brutal oppression and slavery, the slaves would finally rise up and fight back and win their freedom in the early 1800s. But while victorious and now free, the repercussions would would be severe. France, it turns out, was very vindictive.

You see, Haiti, being a former slave colony that revolted and won its freedom, would be ostracized by both European and American government and business interests who didn’t want a former slave colony to succeed and give ideas to other regions around the world. And so, in order to eventually gain recognition, Haiti would agree to pay France 150 million Francs, a debt that it was never able to fully repay, but would irreparably damage the economic prospects of the new country.

On the other side of the island, the Spanish colony would remain relatively benign through much of this period. And because it wasn’t really managed all that much by Spain, the newly independent Haiti would actually take over the entire island of Hispaniola from 1822 to 1844. And during this rule, Haiti would tax the Dominican side of the island heavily in order to repay its French debt. This would inevitably lead to a second war for independence on the island, only this time from Haiti. By 1856, the Dominican Republic was its own country and the two halves of the island were finally settled. Haiti on the western 1/3rd and the Dominican Republic on the eastern 2/3rds.

But here’s the thing: while this is a single island, the two parts could not be more different from each other geographically.

Unlucky strike #2: The western half

Separating Hispaniola and the two countries from one another is a series of mountain ranges that effectively split the country in half geographically. And this has huge ramifications for how the two sides of the island function. On the eastern, Dominican side, storms blows in from the east bringing rain and precipitation to create a lush tropical forest. But because of the mountain range, Haiti exists in what we call a rain shadow wherein much of that rain and precipitation doesn’t actually make it over to them. So this means that Haiti is actually quite dry relative to its island neighbor.

And this has had a huge detrimental effect on the land itself. When it was a French slave colony, France embarked on a massive deforestation plan in order to ship lumber back on the very slave ships that brought over Africans. Gotta make money both ways, right? But because Haiti is much drier, it hasn’t been able to regrow its forests in the same way that the Dominican side has.

This obviously has had a cascading affect on the country as a whole. Less rain, means less vegetation. Less vegetation means less agriculture. Less agriculture means you have to buy more food from abroad leaving less money for infrastructure. And so on.

Which means Haiti’s infrastructure, in the best of times, isn’t great. Unfortunately, for Haiti, bad infrastructure doesn’t hold up well if you’re in a particularly shaky part of the world.

Unlucky strike #3: the Enriquillo fault

Haiti is the unlucky home of a particularly seismically active region we call the Enriquillo Fault. This exact region has been a consistent wrecking ball to Haiti throughout its existence. And while the Dominican Republic does host its own fault line, that specific fault has been much less active and runs through a region of the Dominican Republic that has far fewer people.

So, over its entire existence, Haiti has been subjected to frequent, large earthquakes that have consistently been something of a wrecking ball to its infrastructure. And then, in 2010, the country was struck by a 7.0 earthquake near Port-au-Prince, its largest city and capital. And because of wild mismanagement by previous rulers, the country was ill prepared to deal with such a large earthquake. Buildings came crumbling down and and estimated 300,000 Haitians are thought to have perished. This would be followed a decade later by another devastating earthquake that would hit the southwest part of the country.

So, with two major catastrophes so close to one another, the country sunk into its current state today. Still, after nearly have a decade since the last earthquake, Haiti is hanging on by a thread. But, at the same time, the Dominican Republic has done quite well for itself!

Haiti and the Dominican Republic today

Today, the two countries really could not be more different from each other in terms of stability and wealth. And while the Dominican Republic has had its own dealings with dictatorships in the past, its end result has been much different. The Dominican Republic has been able to diversify its economy and bring in a lot more money than its neighbor. As of 2025, the Dominican Republic had a GDP of about $353 billion with a per capita GDP of over $32,000. Meanwhile, Haiti has a GDP of about $38 billion with a GDP per capita of just $3,000. That’s an incredible difference! The Dominican Republic is nearly 10 times wealthier than Haiti. This is despite both countries having a very similar population (each are a bit of 11 million).

And I’ll grant you that GDP isn’t a great measure of “on the ground” success because wealth is rarely spread equally. But by every metric the Dominican Republic is doing very well for itself in 2026. But Haiti, as of 2026, is probably worse than its ever been in the modern era. There’s just no letting up for the country. And that’s incredibly sad because, if Haiti would just be able to catch a break, I believe its unique culture would truly thrive.

Maybe in the 2030s…

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I’m gonna write the weirdest thing I’ve ever written. Like this is almost conspiracy-level stuff. But it’s also geography so the conspiracy is harmless at best. I almost didn’t write it at all though. I was going to write about something more boring because I didn’t think this would land (it was about Antarctica’s weird pie borders… yawn!). But in staying true with what “Free Thought Fridays” are all about, I owe it to you all to just get it out there. Mostly because I can’t stop thinking about it. So, bear with me a bit and we’ll go down a particularly weird geographic rabbit hole… together.

Okay, so there’s a constant debate that rages in geographic circles online around Europe. Not about which country is best. Or about why Germany is so wealthy, or France so cultured, or Italy so… whatever. Those questions are asked of course, constantly, but the real question at the heart of this article focuses on the entire region of Europe. It’s focuses on what Europe is specifically.

Now, I’ve never weighed in personally because my real geographic opinion is that geographically, continents don’t matter. I have written about how many continents we have, but that’s a bit beyond the scope here. At the end of the day I don’t see much difference if there’s a North America and a South America or just an America, at least not geographically or politically. Continents don’t have central governments or sovereignty. They’re just place names. Geologically, of course, there’s a pretty sound argument because many of these places sit on different tectonic plates, but if we used that as our metric, we'd have lot more continents.

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We’re going to dive deep today into a subject that I am equal parts fascinated by and terrified of. Earthquakes are, in my opinion, the most frightening aspect of our planet. Like, at any given moment, the Earth could just decide to grind and tear itself apart emitting unfathomable amounts of energy and unleash chaos and devastation across an entire region. And as someone who lives in a region that doesn’t get them often, but is expected to get a REALLY LARGE one in the future… ya I’m a bit scared.

But it’s also for this reason that I’m so interested in them. After all, earthquakes have a geography unto themselves that is unlike anything else on the planet. There’s nothing else that can hit in one place and physically be felt hundreds or thousands of miles away at nearly the exact same time. Maybe you could make that argument for hurricanes or typhoons, but I just don’t think its the same.

All of this is to say, while earthquakes are endlessly fascinating broadly. What I’m most interested in are places that are seemingly free or devoid of earthquakes, but, in reality, are anything but. And that brings us to today’s subject: the hidden fault line under the dead center of the United States. That’s right, this article is all about the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

And, of course, I’m writing about this today because, well, earlier this week Japan was struck by a rather large earthquake in its southern prefecture of Kyushu. The devastation, of course, is heartbreaking and I hope that survivors are found and Japan recovers quickly.

Hiding in middle America

The New Madrid Seismic Zone is one of the more interesting seismic regions in the world. For one, it’s right in the middle of a tectonic plate. These are those really big pieces of crust that occasionally rub or push or pull against each other causing, well, earthquakes. Japan, widely considered to be the most seismically active country in the world, sits at the confluence of four different plates:

• North America Plate (yes, despite being in Asia)

• Pacific Plate

• Philippine Plate

• Eurasian Plate

Being near so many plate borders is a recipe for earthquakes because it is, quite literally, where all the action happens. So, needless to say, Japan is also one of the most prepared regions in the world when it comes to earthquakes. Which is why the New Madrid Seismic Zone is so weird: it’s nowhere near where a tectonic plate would be ripping and grinding past another plate. Which brings us to the second reason its so interesting: it’s ancient.

As it turns out, the New Madrid Seismic Zone sits above a geologic feature known as the Reelfoot Rift. And this rift was formed, get this, somewhere around 51 million years ago during the Cambrian Period. Its theorized that this rift is the remains of a failed attempt (of sorts) by the world to split the North American continent into two continents. However, just because it failed to split the continent into two pieces, doesn’t mean that it went away entire. So what we have is something of a “weak spot” in the Earth’s crust, a place that can and does get earthquakes because, on some level, maybe it’s still trying to create that split.

That’s mind-blowing. 🤯

This is why, back in the early 1800s, an earthquake swarm hit the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The Reelfoot Rift, the weakened part of the North American plate, had some sort of event (perhaps the continent trying to pull apart again?) and a bunch of earthquakes hit the region. We have documented evidence of this happening because, at this point in time, American settlers were living in the area. In fact, the earthquakes are estimated to have been somewhere between a 7.0 and an 8.2 in magnitude. Those are very larger earthquakes. So large, in fact, that it reversed the course of the Mississippi River for a period of time.

Oh and the earthquake that just hit Japan and is wreaking havoc? That was a 6.8.

But will an earthquake hit again soon?

The short answer is, as it always is with earthquakes: we have no idea! There are predictions, of course. There are range expectations where an earthquake is likely or supposedly likely to hit within that range. But remember, we’re looking at a geologic time scale. A thousand years to the Earth is basically nothing. We all live on a human time scale where anything long than one year feels like an eternity away that we don’t really have to plan for.

In fact, there’s not actually broad consensus between scientists over whether there will ever be another earthquake here. According to a few different studies in late aughts, data from GPS data showed that there’s very little movement in the New Madrid Seismic Zone overall (certainly nothing compared to the San Andreas Fault) and therefore, it could be a signal that the seismic zone is shutting down entirely.

But again, we’re talking about a geologic entity sitting on a time scale that we have no way of predicting. And earthquakes, for all the research we’ve done on them, are still very mysterious. We really can’t predict when one will happen at all. It’s more like we’re just making educated guesses. Which is unfortunate because, if another earthquake swarm did hit the New Madrid Seismic Zone, like what happened in the early 1800s, there’s going to be a lot of damage. According to a FEMA report released in 2009 (from the Wikipedia page):

The report found that there would be significant damage in the eight states studied – Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee – with the probability of additional damage in states farther from the NMSZ. Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri would be most severely impacted, and Memphis and St. Louis would be severely damaged. The report estimated 86,000 casualties, including 3,500 fatalities, 715,000 damaged buildings, and 7.2 million people displaced, with two million of those seeking shelter, primarily due to the lack of utility services. Direct economic losses, according to the report, would be at least $300 billion.

So let’s hope it is shutting down because, if not, middle America is gonna be in for a very rude awakening. In the mean time, I’ll go back to waiting for the Cascadia Subduction Zone to rip open… something we definitely know is going to happen sometime soon-ish (but hopefully in 100 years when I’m long gone).

Do you live in this region? Are you worried about an earthquake? Let me know in the comments!

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