Imagining life "After the Big One" hits a major U.S. city

Vice today published a 5-part, deeply reported and researched science fiction series about what happens after the a massive earthquake hits an American city.

Read the first installment here.

Vice editor Brian Merchant tells Boing Boing:

"After the Big One" is an experiment in what we're calling "reported science fiction"–a story about the incoming mega-quake that's as accurate and fact-based as possible. Writer and archivist Adam Rothstein takes us on a tour of what, according to the evidence, will happen to Portland, Oregon, after the so-called "Really Big One"–a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that geologists are expecting any time now–hits the region.

Rothstein pored over every official document and scientific report he could get his hands on, from FEMA emergency plans to city disaster guides to seismic evaluations, to create the most comprehensive and realistic treatment of a post-quake Portland that's ever been put to paper. The piece relays which buildings and bridges will go down, how many will perish, and how people will survive the disaster, according to science's best predictions.

It looks great, and I'm looking forward to reading it and updating my go-bag and earthquake preparedness kit while I pray it doesn't happen here in Los Angeles here in my lifetime.