Drink to who played the 'An American in Paris' best for a drum corps Bastille Day

Happy Bastille Day! I haven't celebrated today as one of my trademark drum corps holidays since Drink to who played the '1812 Overture' best for a drum corps Bastille Day in 2021 and I think it's about time I return to that tradition with Drum Corps International (DCI) asking Who Did It Best? | Gershwin's "An American in Paris" – Phantom Regiment Edition.

The George Gershwin classic, "An American in Paris," performed by Phantom Regiment four different times over 40 years — Who did it best?

The consensus among those leaving comments at the video is 2015 and I agree. It helps that 2005 was the highest placing year, third. 1976 was fourth, 2015 was seventh, and 1975 was tenth. That written, I have a certain fondness for 1975. Not only was it the first year I saw the corps on the PBS broadcast, I marched in a youth band that played "An American in Paris" while performing the scatter drill into a company front in 1977. The band also played the French National Défilé, which I featured in France 24 English asks 'France and the US: Best frenemies?' for Bastille Day 2022. I'm in a sharing mood today.

Speaking of sharing, I observed the following in 2021.

With this video, I've featured five different years of Phantom Regiment in three different posts to celebrate Bastille Day. That makes them by far my favorite for this holiday.

While 2015 is a repeat, although the part of the show is new to this blog, 1975, 1976, and 2005 are new, so it's now eight years in four posts for Phantom Regiment on this holiday. I think they're still second behind the Madison Scouts overall.

Today is also National Grand Marnier Day, which I haven't observed since 2023, so I'm embedding another take on a recipe I've shared before, Make and Drink Frozen's How to Make the Best Orange Slush from Epcot’s France Pavilion!


Here's the AI summary.

This video details a copycat recipe for the Grand Marnier orange slush from Epcot’s France pavilion. The creator explains why they distrust most online recipes for this drink and shares their personal recipe, which uses Planter’s rum, Grand Marnier, Grey Goose orange vodka, and orange juice. The video concludes with a tasting of the slush and a discussion of how well it matches the original.

To recycle what I wrote in 2023 and 2021, "Vive la France (Pavilion)! Liberté, Egaliteé, Fraternité!"

Fun with wombats and ice cream for Souther 2025

Happy Souther, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Summer Solstice, a holiday created by John Michael Greer, who also designated the wombat as the animal mascot. Since the first Souther fell on National Ice Cream Day and usually occurs during July, National Ice Cream Month, the food for today is ice cream. I managed to find a cartoon wombat trying to get an ice cream cone to a friend in Chutes and Ladders | Work It Out Wombats! on PBS KIDS.

Sammy is sick and in need of ice cream! Can his best friend Malik travel across the Treeborhood before the cold treat melts?

I've found a cartoon for Souther just like Grizzy & the Lemmings for Norther, another fake holiday Greer created. Yay! More relevant content!

The fake holiday even has a theme song, "Ice Cream" by The Wombats. Watch The Wombats "Ice cream" @ Le Trabendo Paris - 05/02/2019.


That concludes today's celebration of a fake holiday. The next fake holiday is Wester, which inspired Greer to create both Souther and Norther, on October 12th. In the meantime, stay tuned for Bastille Day, the third patriotic holiday I celebrate during July.

'The Last of Us' leads TV nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards

As I promised twice, I'm beginning my coverage of the TV nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards as an early Sunday entertainment feature. Like last year, The Last of Us has the most nominations among TV shows. Here's the relevant paragraph from the press release.

“The Last of Us” leads this year’s television nominees with 6 nominations overall including Best Superhero Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie and Best Horror Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie. Pedro Pascal received nods for both Best Actor in a Superhero Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie and Best Actor in a Horror Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie, while Bella Ramsey earned nominations for both Best Actress in a Superhero Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie and Best Actress in a Horror Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie. (Superhero categories also include Comic Book and Video Game Inspired series.)

The Last of Us swept all of its nominated categories last year, so I wouldn't be surprised if does so this year. As I'm fond of writing about awards shows, electorates matter, and this is the same electorate. That written, The Last of Us is neither the most nominated show solely in the categories of horror series nor in superhero series. Follow over the jump to find out what shows those are.

Listening to people worry about lower birthrates on World Population Day is enough to drive me to drink on National Mojito Day

Happy World Population Day and National Mojito Day! I begin the holiday observances with Newsweek's Singles Pandemic: Why Global Birthrates Are Falling—and What It Means for Our Future.

Birthrates are falling fast—and the impact could reshape the future of economies, families, and entire nations.

In this episode of Blind Spots, we explore the global fertility crisis, from Japan and South Korea to the United States. Why are fewer people having children? How do economic pressure, changing cultural norms, and government policy play a role? And what happens when aging populations outnumber the young?

Singles Pandemic breaks down one of the most urgent demographic trends of our time.

It was time to put the world back in World Population Day after concentrating on U.S. trends since 2020. Japan and especially South Korea have it worse than the U.S., while the French seem to have it better.

Speaking of focusing on the U.S., I'm looking at the other side of American population equation before examining birth rates with TODAY reporting U.S. life expectancy rose to 78.4 years in 2023 early this year.

U.S. life expectancy rose to 78.4 years in 2023, hitting its highest level since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Well, that's good news, although U.S. life expectancy still hasn't risen to its 2014 value of 78.9 years. It sank most of the years since, which I started blogging about in 2016, before collapsing during the pandemic and recovering afterwards. If U.S. life expectancy reaches 80 years, I might post Professor Farnsworth. That might be awhile.

Follow over the jump for videos about the situation in the U.S., including what, if anything, can be done about it, plus a video about National Mojito Day.

Drink to the action movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards on National Piña Colada Day

Happy Piña Colada Day! I closed PBS Terra explains 'The REAL STORY of Climate Skeptics New Favorite Graph' by wondering about today's post: "Tomorrow is Piña Colada Day. Stay tuned to see if I celebrate it or cover the action movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards. Maybe I will do both." I've decided to do both.

While Civil War and The Fall Guy tie for the lead in Best Action Movie with three Critics Choice Super Awards nominations apiece, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with two nominations is my choice to win this category. Tying Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning at two nominations each are Monkey Man and Rebel Ridge, while Warfare has only this one nomination.

I see one snub, Twisters. That would have been my vote for Best Action Film at the Saturn Awards had Deadpool & Wolverine not been added to that category in the absence of Best Superhero Film. Yeah, but which nominee would it have replaced? I don't know.


Just like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is my pick to win Best Action Movie, its star Tom Cruise is my choice to win Best Actor in an Action Movie. I don't think it's even close. Sorry, Taron Egerton, Ryan Gosling, Dev Patel, Aaron Pierre, and Jack Quaid are all great actors, but they don't have Cruise's star power.


Without a nominated actress from Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning to create the likelihood of a full sweep, Best Actress in an Action Movie is much more open. Emily Blunt, Ana de Armas, Kirsten Dunst, and June Squibb all have Oscar nominations, Anya Taylor-Joy has an Emmy nomination, and Cailee Spaeny has a second nomination at these awards for Alien: Romulus. Since electorates matter, I'm giving the edge to Blunt because she has the most Critics Choice Award nominations and wins, including winning Best Actress in an Action Movie for Edge of Tomorrow when this award was part of the main ceremony before the Critics Choice Association split off the Super Awards. Besides, like Cruise, I think she has the most star power.

Now for a category I last revisited in 'Sinners' leads Best Horror Movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards.

Emma Corrin really chewed the scenery in Deadpool & Wolverine, making for a good villain one loves to hate, but I'm not going to pick a winner yet. I have until August 7th to do that, so I'll hold off until I look at the rest of the categories.

As I wrote above, Austin Butler has a better chance to win Best Villain in a Movie and might do so as part of a Dune: Part Two sweep. Still, I think there are better villains, or at least villains played by more well-known actors, like Hugh Grant and Denzel Washington, so I'm not getting out the broom just yet.

I'm going along with Hunter and picking Grant over Washington. Why not?

This is the only nomination for Gladiator II, which qualifies it for consideration in the next paragraph.

Like Best Horror Film, there are plenty of nominees for action/adventure and thriller film at the upcoming Saturn Awards among the movies nominated here, although I have to include all the acting nominees to say so. Joining Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Warfare from the movie category would be Carry-On, Novocaine, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, and Gladiator II from the acting categories.* That's a full slate for one category right there.

Box Office Mojo's top grossing films of 2024 adds in one other possible nominee, September 5 — Red One is also an action movie, but I think it's more likely to be nominated as fantasy — while Box Office Mojo's top movies of 2025 adds F1: The Movie, The Accountant 2, Karate Kid: Legends, The Amateur, A Working Man, Den of Thieves: Pantera, Flight Risk, Black Bag, Last Breath, Babygirl, and The Phoenician Scheme in the top 50. There are 150 movies with lower box office totals that I didn't even look at! Furthermore, Box Office Mojo's Calendar lists Sovereign, She Rides Shotgun, and The Naked Gun upcoming between now and August 10th. While they are likely to be split among three categories, action/adventure, thriller, and independent film, there are still enough to fill all three and then some. There is no need to sacrifice the superhero film category to add Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World to Best Action Film!

I close with National Day Calendar's NATIONAL PINA COLADA DAY | July 10 to celebrate today's holiday.

July 10 recognizes a sweet, rum-based cocktail on National Pina Colada Day. Today, we are anxiously waiting for the end of the work day to enjoy the cream of coconut and pineapple juice with a dash of run cocktail.

Sorry, no update on the prospects for Puerto Rican statehood today. Like Flag Day, I wasn't feeling it. Maybe next year.

This concludes my examination of the movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards. I think I'll begin blogging about the television nominees on Saturday, for an early Sunday entertainment feature because Sunday is Souther. In the meantime, stay tuned for a joint celebration of World Population Day and National Mojito Day.

*I predicted "I expect Gladiator II will be nominated for Best Action/Adventure Film at next year's Saturn Awards" last December. As I wrote then, "You read it here first."

Previous entries about the 5th Critics Choice Super Awards

• 'Deadpool & Wolverine' and 'Thunderbolts*' lead movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards
• 'Dune: Part Two' at the Critics Choice Super Awards
• 'Sinners' leads Best Horror Movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards

PBS Terra explains 'The REAL STORY of Climate Skeptics New Favorite Graph'

I'm returning to climate change with PBS Terra explaining The REAL STORY of Climate Skeptics New Favorite Graph.

Is global warming just part of Earth’s natural cycle? In this episode of Weathered, we break down why that’s not the full story. From ice ages and Milankovitch cycles to the role of CO2 and fossil fuels, today’s climate change is unlike anything in Earth’s deep past. Learn why the speed of warming matters and how we can bring our temperature down.

It's because of my knowledge of Milankovitch cycles that I was able to answer a persistent but now gone skeptic, which I recapped in PBS Digital's Be Smart debunks 'The Biggest Myth About Climate Change'.

I have mentioned several times that I'm a paleontologist who studies Pleistocene fossils, particularly snails. What I don't mention is that I used data from the snails, clams, and plants of Rancho La Brea to reconstruct the late Pleistocene climate of southern California, so I'm quite familiar with natural climate change. That's why I was able to respond intelligently to Ed, the troll who was better than a spammer, when he snarked "Maybe you can tell us what the climate is supposed to be so we will know if it's changing too much."

Ed, actually, I can. The average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere should be almost two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it is today based on the pre-1900 temperature trend, three degrees based on the progress of previous interglacials. If you want the reasoning and evidence, you will have to wait until I put together an entire entry with links; it will take more effort than a simple comment is worth. In the meantime, count your blessings that you stumbled onto someone who actually knows the answer to what you may have thought was a rhetorical question too hard to answer.

That was back in 2015.

I'm glad to see Maiya May and Jessica Tierney of the University of Arizona confirm both what the climate would have been doing naturally and what it's doing instead. It shows what I told Ed was (and still is) correct.

I teach Milankovitch cycles to my geology students, both on the first field trip where I ask them to describe a display at a museum which summarizes the effects as "stretch, wobble, and tilt (eccentricity, precession, and obliquity)" and in a lecture about glaciers and glacial features, where I reinforce my point with The History of Climate Cycles (and the Woolly Rhino) Explained from PBS Eons.

Throughout the Pleistocene Epoch, the range of the woolly rhino grew and shrank in sync with global climate. So what caused the climate -- and the range of the woolly rhino -- to cycle back and forth between such extremes?

I've been showing this video since just before the pandemic; I'm surprised I haven't embedded it here until now. I guess I just needed the right opportunity.

Back to May on PBS Terra, who is revisiting PBS Terra's Weathered asks 'Earth's Temperature Has Changed WILDLY, So What's the Big Deal About a Few Degrees?'

The correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature from ice-core data is another story I tell my students. I asked them about it in my worksheets about An Inconvenient Truth and still ask them about it in my worksheet for Chasing Ice. I also ask them about it on my exams, but for test security reasons, I don't post those here. Maybe after I retire.

As Dr. Tierney points out, carbon dioxide is at levels not seen for 3.6 million years so the Earth is on track for much warmer temperatures even if humans stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Because of the fossil foolishness in the Big Brutal Bill, the U.S. alone will continue emitting carbon dioxide and methane for years. Worse yet, as Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth described, it will take 400,000 years for natural processes to remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That's four more Milankovitch cycles! Maybe that will make our distant descendants less subject to ice ages, but it's going to mess up the near future for us and progeny down to our great-grandchildren.

That's a wrap for today's story I tell my students. Tomorrow is Piña Colada Day. Stay tuned to see if I celebrate it or cover the action movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards. Maybe I will do both.

'Sinners' leads Best Horror Movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards

I'm returning to the the Critics Choice Super Awards nominations once again, this time to examine the nominees for Best Horror Movie. The most nominated horror film is Sinners with four nominations, one each in all the categories in which it's eligible, followed by Heretic and Nosferatu with three each and Bring Her Back, Longlegs, and The Substance with two nominations apiece. I think this award is among Sinners, Nosferatu, and The Substance with Sinners as the nominal favorite by a nose, although I admit being influenced by Jim Hunter, critic at WEHT-ABC and WTVW-CW in Evansville, Indiana, who picked Sinners over The Substance.


Hunter's choice is Michael B. Jordan for his double role in Sinners. That's not a gimme, as Jordan is contending against heavy hitters Nicolas Cage in Longlegs, Hugh Grant in Heretic and Bill Skarsgård in Nosferatu and up-and-comers David Dastmalchian in Late Night With the Devil and Justice Smith in I Saw the TV Glow. I'll go with Hunter's pick after noting that Nicolas Cage won Best Actor in a Film at the Saturn Awards. I doubt the Critics Choice Association will go along with that; electorates matter.


While Demi Moore won Best Actress in a Film at the Saturn Awards, she also won Best Actress at the main Critics Choice Awards. Electorates matter, which is why I had her picked to win even before I heard Hunter.

Now for a category I've examined twice before.

Emma Corrin really chewed the scenery in Deadpool & Wolverine, making for a good villain one loves to hate, but I'm not going to pick a winner yet. I have until August 7th to do that, so I'll hold off until I look at the rest of the categories.

As I wrote above, Austin Butler has a better chance to win Best Villain in a Movie and might do so as part of a Dune: Part Two sweep. Still, I think there are better villains, or at least villains played by more well-known actors, like Hugh Grant and Denzel Washington, so I'm not getting out the broom just yet.

I'm going along with Hunter and picking Grant over Washington. Why not?

Unlike Superhero Film, where the best nominees have yet to premiere, and Science Fiction Film, where the best nominees have already been honored at the last Saturn Awards, these nominations yield a rich field of possible nominees for Best Horror Film at the next Saturn Awards, including Bring Her Back, Heretic, Nosferatu, and Sinners.* Box Office Mojo's top movies of 2025 adds Clown in a Cornfield, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Heart Eyes, Until Dawn, and Wolf Man, along with several more than I care to name. Box Office Mojo's Calendar lists Skillhouse, Abraham's Boys, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Bambi: The Reckoning, House on Eden, Ick, and Weapons between now and August 8th. There is no shortage of horror films!

I have one more movie genre, action, to cover before I move on to the television nominees. I expect to get to that Thursday or Friday. Stay tuned.

*For what it's worth, I've been looking forward to this category since April, when I wrote, "Nosferatu [is] my co-favorite so far with Sinners for Best Horror Film at the next Saturn Awards." Still is.

Previous entries about the 5th Critics Choice Super Awards

• 'Deadpool & Wolverine' and 'Thunderbolts*' lead movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards
• 'Dune: Part Two' at the Critics Choice Super Awards

'Human Footprint' on PBS Terra explains 'How Supermarkets Rewired The Planet'

The Emmy-nominated Human Footprint has returned and PBS Terra is uploading videos from the show's second season, beginning with How Supermarkets Rewired The Planet.

The supermarket is one of the strangest and most powerful inventions in human history. 

Grocery shopping is often perceived as a simple, mundane activity. And for many, access to food has never been more effortless. But supermarkets hold far more power than we realize. The journey our groceries take to reach the shelves touches every part of our lives – from our health, to our culture, to the environment. In this episode of Human Footprint, Shane Campbell-Staton embarks on a global investigation into the supermarket’s origins, revealing how they transformed the world and grappling with what the future may bring. He explores how innovations in food production, packaging, transportation, advertising, and retail design revolutionized how we buy our food. 

Today, supermarkets offer endless choices and low prices, but behind the shelves lies a darker truth. In pursuit of efficiency, we’ve surrendered control of our food system to vast corporations, promoted global supply chains that hide labor and environmental abuses, and flooded our diets with ultra-processed foods. Shane travels from surreal supermarket art installations to apple orchards, commercial film sets, shrimp farms, urban food co-ops, and beyond, connecting with people whose lives are intertwined with this system. What he uncovers is a complex story of the modern grocery store, the true cost of convenience, and the urgent need to reimagine the way we feed ourselves[.]

I first encountered the story of the supermarket in Stuffed and Starved, one of the textbooks my co-instructor and I chose for Global Politics of Food, the course we taught when I started this blog. Here's what I wrote then.

[T]here is a lot wrong with the international food system, some of which is contributing to global collapse and much of which won't survive collapse, either, such as the long supply lines and heavy use of fossil fuels. In this book, Raj Patel gives a piercing critique of the way global capitalism shapes what humans grow and eat, exposing many of the flaws in the food system that contribute to collapse and what can be done about it. It's also an entertaining and informative read and Raj Patel is a charming and compelling person who knows his gin.

Yes, I know Raj Patel, and I was pleased to see that Shane Campbell-Staton interviewed him for this episode. It really wouldn't have been complete without him.

I'm also pleased that this episode told the backstory to the rivalry between Kellogg's and Post satirized in Emmy nominee and double Razzie winner Unfrosted. That movie wasn't as stupid as it first seemed.

The most appalling thing I learned from this video was about shrimp. The TED-Ed video I embedded as the second video in Whales and fish, two stories I tell my students mentioned the environmental effects of shrimp farming on mangrove swamps and other coastlines, but it didn't include how shrimp farming contributed to depleting other fisheries and resulted in enslaved fishing crews. I know I write that "it's always a good day when I learn something new," and both of those were new to me when I first watched this, but both of them are terrible facts to learn about farm-raised shrimp, enough to make me not want to eat "America's most popular seafood." The problem is that it's not just shrimp, it's throughout the supply chains of dozens of foodstuffs, including coffee. It looks like Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller has lots of material still to cover.*

All of the above serve as examples of two of Commoner's Laws: "There is no free lunch" and "Everything is connected to everything else." Maybe the rest of the episode goes into the waste created by the food system as an example of "Everything must go somewhere (There is no away)," the emphasis of the last time I referenced Commoner's Laws. Instead, Dr. Campbell-Staton concludes with an example of "Nature knows best" in the Detroit People's Food Co-op. I'm glad to see a happy ending from Detroit.

*Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller won four Emmy Awards, although not the ones I covered in 'The Dirty Business of Monkey Laundering' and 'Apes,' two nominees at the News & Doc Emmy Awards for World Rainforest Day. I plan on writing about its awards later this month. Stay tuned.

'Dune: Part Two' at the Critics Choice Super Awards

I teased Awards shows for the first Sunday entertainment feature of July, so I'm returning to the the Critics Choice Super Awards nominations to examine the nominees for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie. The most nominated film in this category is Dune: Part Two with 5 nominations, followed by three films, Alien: Romulus, Companion, and Mickey 17, with three nominations, The Wild Robot with two, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes with just this one. Picking the winner is trivial; it will be Dune: Part Two. It already has a Critics Choice Award for visual effects and the same people are voting here. Electorates matter.

This could have been a more interesting contest if the Critics Choice Association (CCA) had nominated Wicked. This category is for science fiction and fantasy films, and Wicked is my choice for Best Fantasy Film at the next Saturn Awards. It's not better than any of the nominated movies here? Really? What a snub!


Out of a field that comprises Austin Butler and Timothée Chalamet for Dune: Part Two, David Jonsson for Alien: Romulus, Robert Pattinson for Mickey 17, Jack Quaid for Companion, and Miles Teller for The Gorge, I'm picking Timothée Chalamet to win. I think his only serious competition is Robert Pattinson. Austin Butler? He has a better chance to win Best Villain in a Movie.


While I think two-time Emmy winner Zendaya has the inside track for her role in Dune: Part Two, I also think she has stiffer competition than Chalamet in his category. Both Lupita Nyong'o for The Wild Robot and Alicia Vikander for The Assessment are Oscar winners, although the former is a voice acting role and the latter is in a less heralded movie than either Dune: Part Two or The Wild Robot, so those circumstances help Zendaya. That's not to count out the rest of the field. Naomi Ackie for Mickey 17 won a BAFTA TV Award, so she's a credible nominee. So are Cailee Spaeny for Alien: Romulus, who earned a second nomination at these awards for Civil War, and Sophie Thatcher for Companion, who seems to have a breakthrough performance.

I conclude the movie categories with one I covered in 'Deadpool & Wolverine' and 'Thunderbolts*' lead movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards.

Emma Corrin really chewed the scenery in Deadpool & Wolverine, making for a good villain one loves to hate, but I'm not going to pick a winner yet. I have until August 7th to do that, so I'll hold off until I look at the rest of the categories.

As I wrote above, Austin Butler has a better chance to win Best Villain in a Movie and might do so as part of a Dune: Part Two sweep. Still, I think there are better villains, or at least villains played by more well-known actors, like Hugh Grant and Denzel Washington, so I'm not getting out the broom just yet.

I conclude the movie section by looking at what the nominees in the above categories mean for the Saturn Awards. Only two of the nominees for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Film are eligible, Companion and Mickey 17. The rest were already recognized in this winter's ceremony, where Dune: Part Two and Alien: Romulus won Science Fiction and Horror Film, respectively. The Gorge and The Assessment from the acting categories make two more. Looking through Box Office Mojo shows only three more potential nominees, Lilo & Stitch, Jurassic World: Rebirth, and M3GAN 2.0, four if A Minecraft Movie gets nominated as Science Fiction instead of Fantasy. That's enough for a full field of nominees and would set up a match between Lilo & Stitch and Jurassic World: Rebirth. Just the same, I wouldn't be surprised if the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA sacrifices the Superhero Film category again and nominates Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps for Best Science Fiction Film. I hope they don't.

The Dune franchise also has a TV nomination, but I'm saving that for a future post. Stay tuned.

Previous entries about the 5th Critics Choice Super Awards

• 'Deadpool & Wolverine' and 'Thunderbolts*' lead movie nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards

PBS Terra exclaims 'Wait...The Worst Possible US Disaster Just Got EVEN WORSE?!?'

The 4th of July is over and my blog has already passed its monthly page view goal, so it's time to write about topics worth sharing in August. Fortunately, PBS Terra's most recent video fits the bill, Wait...The Worst Possible US Disaster Just Got EVEN WORSE?!? (Cascadia Megaquake).

The Big One is coming and it could be far worse than anyone imagined.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone, just off the Pacific Northwest coast, is building toward a massive earthquake and tsunami. But new research reveals an even more terrifying possibility: widespread toxic spills, infrastructure collapse, wildfires, and deadly gas plumes. All triggered by a single seismic event.

In this episode of Weathered, we dig into the science behind the Cascadia Megaquake, why the Pacific Northwest is especially vulnerable, and how climate change could make it worse. We explore what you can do to stay safe and why your community might be your best line of defense.

This video is the latest in a series that began with PBS examines the risks from a major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest and continued with PBS Terra explains 'Here's EXACTLY What to Do When the Next Megaquake Hits: Cascadia Subduction Zone', PBS Terra asks 'What's the ONE THING You Can Do To Survive a Tsunami?', and PBS Terra explains 'How Scientists Solved the Mystery of a 300-Year-Old Megaquake'. It's also inspired a multi-year conversation between Infidel753, who lives in the Pacific Northwest, and myself that's played out in the comments, which then gets recycled in the next post in the series. This post is no exception. Here's the exchange from January.

Infidel753: The Portland metro area has two million people and Seattle is even bigger. Even if 125,000 people were killed on the Oregon coast and a similar number on the Washington coast, I would still expect the death toll from structural collapses and fire in Portland and Seattle to be much larger.

Me: I looked up estimates of deaths, injuries, and homelessness from a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest and found these from Surviving Cascadia, themselves quoted from Oregon's Cascadia Rising Exercise document (PDF).

Coastal fatalities (Oregon): 4,800 (4,500 from tsumami, 300 from the earthquake itself)
I-5 corridor fatalities (Oregon): 400 (all from earthquake)
Coastal injuries (Oregon): 6,500 (5,000 from earthquake, 1,500 from tsunami)
I-5 corridor injuries (Oregon): 9,000 (all from earthquake)
Homelessness/needing shelter (Oregon): 520,000 (500,000 earthquake, 20,000 tsunami)
Coastal fatalities (Washington): 9,100 (9,000 from tsunami, 100 from earthquake)
I-5 corridor fatalities (Washington): 300-1,600 (300 earthquake, 0-1,300 tsunami)
Coastal injuries (Washington): 5,000 (2,000 earthquake, 3,000 tsunami)
I-5 corridor injuries (Washington): 7,400 (7,000 earthquake, 400 tsunami)
Homelessness/needing shelter (Washington): 415,000 (370,000 earthquake, 45,000 tsunami)

According to these estimates, more people will die from the earthquake along the I-5 corridor than along the coasts in both Oregon and Washington, but far more will die from the tsunami along the coasts alone (13,500) than the total that will die from the shaking throughout both states (1,100). So, no, the official estimates do not support your expectation that "the death toll from structural collapses and fire in Portland and Seattle to be much larger" than tsunami deaths on the Oregon and Washington coasts.

Infidel753: Very interesting links, thank you. I need to think further about this.

Me: Thanks for linking to the sources of these statistics and the blog as a whole in Link round-up for 18 January 2025. I'm glad to have informed you and your readers.

The statistics quoted are from a 2016 document, but the casualty numbers are higher than in the video, 43,800 total deaths and injuries in the document compared to "over 30,000 casualties" (total deaths and injuries) cited by Tina Dura of Virginia Tech. Surviving Cascadia also cites a 2022 study by Patrick Massey for FEMA that projects 1,100 earthquake-related fatalities, 13,000 tsunami-related fatalities, and 24,000 injured. The death count is substantially the same, but the number of injuries is less than the 27,900 predicted in the 2016 estimate, altough the 2022 report was for a February earthquake and tsunami. Casualties could be higher during the peak of tourist season. Cascadia Rising didn't list a dollar amount, but I can believe the video's estimate of $81 billion dollars of damage.

On the other hand, Luke Hanst of Portland State University added up to 2,500 deaths from toxic gas exposure resulting from burning fuel and chemical storage tanks and hundreds of thousands of people affected, adding tens of thousands of injuries. Even adding the 2,500 deaths to the 400 from the earthquake listed above for Oregon's I-5 corridor would not push it above the 4,800 deaths expected along Oregon's coast, but it does make the risk more even as well as much higher along the interior.

The video added two items of scientific interest, the effects of liquefaction and climate change. I make a big deal of the former when I lecture about earthquakes, especially the 1964 Alaska Good Friday earthquake. I might show this video to my geology students just to reinforce the point. Climate change will make the subsidence along the coast, which the video in January's post showed happening in 1700, even worse.

Finally, this isn't the first time Maiya May has described pro-social behavior in the aftermath of disaster. That might have been in PBS Terra's 'Weathered' asks 'Do You Need a Gun to Survive the Next Disaster?'

For what it's worth, I've seen similar, if not the same, findings about lower crime rates and increased cooperation after natural disasters and wrote about them five years ago in Seeker/DNews is optimistic about how people would behave during the apocalypse. As I wrote then, "that's good news, even if it might not be good entertainment."

Still good news.

That concludes the latest installment in this series. Stay tuned for the first Sunday entertainment feature of July. Awards shows!