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Seismic St. Louis

Emily Sekine

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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seanw146

                The main argument Stephen and Andrew make is that the systems for biosecurity interventions at the global level have many issues to address, solve, and improve on in regards to biosecurity, global health and emergency response, health security and modernization risks, and toward critical, reflexive knowledge. 

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seanw146

This book which the article is from received a positive review from Metapsychology. (http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6430)

Another well recived review was done by Dr. Duncan Wilson on the Centre for Medical Humanities website. (http://centreformedicalhumanities.org/humanitarian-reason-a-moral-history-of-the-present-reviewed-by-dr-duncan-wilson/)

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seanw146

The authors talks about Katrina and the failure in leadership which led to a poor response and worse results which impacted first responders. The emergency response did not have the resources or personnel to tackle the problem. The article also looks at the long-term view of emergency response and the failures in current protocol or the lack there of.