An Analysis Of Kathryn Schultz's 'The Place We Thought Was Perfect'

The Place We Thought Was Perfect The pacific northwest is abundant in life, it has, lush forests thriving with animals, great cities and communities tucked away in the valley alongside the beautiful cascade mountain range. An hour from the center of any state in the pacific northwest you can reach the ocean to have a fun beach day, or you can go an hour the opposite way and come across the beautiful mountains of the cascades and go snowboarding. A fun adventurous area tucked away in the United States that has really had no history of natural disasters. A perfect corner of the U.S. with no threats, that is until we found out that is area has the greatest potential threat known to humans thus far. The cascadia subduction zone, which can cause

Kathryn Schultz explains her concern for this once known “perfect area” due to this subduction zone in her article “The Really Big One.” She has very strong points in her

Schultz expresses her concern for places like this in the northwest but she then goes over the top stating “The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system” (Schultz 245). This statement is not true, early warning earthquake systems are in use throughout the world and they are especially in use in the northwest of the United States. The United States Geological Survey is just one source that sends out message to citizens warning them of an earthquake approaching. But one thing that is a fact is that earthquakes are impossible to predict, even earthquake warning systems have a blind zone where they will not be able to detect a sudden earthquake. The statement made by Shultz shows that she did not look in depth into the northwest’s readiness for the big one and that is a very weak point in her article. She basically accuses the leaders in the northwest of not protecting its citizens when in reality they have done so. With such a large earthquake looming there will undoubtedly be disaster but the northwest is more ready for it than Shultz depicts. Schultz even uses other sources to show predictions of the big earthquake but they are wrong