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Seismic St. Louis

Emily Sekine
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I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

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Andreas_Rebmann
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It was a new way of addressing disaster in 1971 when it was founded. 

“It’s simple really: go where the patients are. It seems obvious, but at the time it was a revolutionary concept because borders got in the way. It’s no coincidence that we called it ‘Médecins Sans Frontières.’”

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Andreas_Rebmann
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This article covers the investigation procedure following a tragedy, and how the outcomes of these investigations tend to be muddled due to factors outside of logic and reason. These influencing factors make it difficult to draw conclusions as to what contributing factors were most significant in the damage sustained during the tragedy, and how to best avoid them in the future. For this reason, it addresses how difficult it is to improve disaster-response when so little useful information can be gleaned from the modern investigatory procedure. 

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Andreas_Rebmann
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They use aggregated interviews wherein all or many of the survivors repeat the same issues with long term effects of the disaster.

They also study the socioeconomic longterm effects of the disaster by comparing New Orleans years later to the past, showing how permanent an effect the storm had despite eventual recovery.

They also used sociological surveys that showed widespread mental health disorders that developed throughout the survivor population in greater frequency than that of the normal population due to the events that occured.

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Andreas_Rebmann
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"This realization (of having to face Nuclear disasters) marks a major shift in our thinking about nuclear risk, away from accident prevention, and toward accident mitigation and more rigorous emergency preparedness."

"Severe nuclear accidents may thus require international instiutions to coordinate their mitigation."

"...the 'culture of control' (that is, attempts to regulate every last action of the operating staff) is too rigid to account for all imaginable situations... it would appear to be in the interest of voerall nuclear safety to log and learn from these incidents, rather than conceal them."