Unwilling Visitors to Arrive in Alaska via Plate Tectonics

While doomsday prophets gleefully proclaim that southern California will soon share the fate of Atlantis and "drop off into the ocean," there are still some skeptics around who doubt the possibility.

Admittedly, modern scientific measurements reveal that the Pacific coast west of the San Andreas fault is moving "North to Alaska" at the rate of a couple of inches a year, but a precipitous plunge into the briny does not appear imminent.

What this does mean, however, is that in about 12 million years, Los Angeles and San Francisco will be suburbs of each other. Beyond that, in another 60 million years, give or take a couple of weeks, Los Angeles and environs will arrive offshore Alaska, where the real fun begins.

When the northwestward migrating Pacific "plate," as it is called, reaches the Aleutian Trench, it is absorbed back into the earth. This downwelling process is what produces the earth's oceanic trenches in the first place. Los Angeles will take a long time to go under, but there's nothing that can be done to prevent it. If this is what is being foretold by the catastrophists, they're going to have to be very patient if they want to see their prophesy fulfilled.

Aside from producing an influx of unwilling immigrants into the state, this continuing process has another very real impact on Alaska. It produces earthquakes and volcanoes. The famous 1964 Prince William Sound earthquake was a product of the sudden underthrusting of portions of the Pacific floor into the Aleutian Trench, and this process goes on daily on a smaller scale.

Although it is not well publicized, primarily because the population density of the state is so low, Alaska produces approximately twice the number of earthquakes than all the other states combined. Nearly all of these are directly or indirectly related to the state being rammed from the south by the marauding Pacific plate.